guardians_song (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
guardians_song) wrote2013-05-27 04:53 pm
guardians_song) wrote2013-05-27 04:53 pm
Entry tags:
Just talking a bit about Resident Evil's cliches...
[The zeroth thing to know is that I haven't actually played the games, but I'm in the fandom via LPs.]
The first thing to know is that there is always a psychopathic maniac of a scientist running about. Sometimes the scientist doesn't appear in-game, but that scientist will be behind the newest strain of Body-Horror WTFery.
The major Umbrella Corporation scientists are William Birkin, Albert Wesker, Alexia Ashford, and James Marcus. You may quickly remember them as "the guy who invented most of the monsters", "the guy who aspired to look like he was in The Matrix", "the genetically-engineered twelve-year-old", and "the opera-singing leechfurry".
Yes, the last two really happened. You now have a much better idea of Resident Evil's sanity level.
The second thing to know is that there's a new strain of Body-Horror every game or so. These strains are zombie (T-Virus), regenerating cancer-blob (G-Virus), unkillable parasite-fueled giant (Nemesis), antfurry pyromaniac weirdness (T-Veronica), leechkin necromancy (Marcus's strain of Progenitor), chattering herd-parasites (Las Plagas), and... apparently shape-shifting zombies? (C-Virus, a.k.a. G-Virus + T-Veronica)
The third thing to know is that Umbrella would be much, much better off just cloning the protagonists and being done with it. When you can successfully knife a tentacled blob of flesh and teeth the size of a train-car to death, you count as something superhuman anyway. (And Leon's abilities only get sillier as the franchise goes on. If I recall the knife-only run of RE4 correctly, a skilled player can make him kill a many-eyed armored-spider monstrosity with knife-blows and hurled eggs...)
The fourth thing to know is that the female heroes are generally as strong as the male heroes. RE0 has a female Cleric/male Paladin dynamic (excuse me, medic/ex-Marine), so you can guess which one has more physical endurance. Also, RE3 and RE4 only have one hero (a female one for RE3, a male one for RE4), so we can't check equality there - but in all other cases, the games have both a female hero and a male hero, and the heroes are of roughly equal strength. So it's decent on the war-of-the-sexes front.
The fifth thing to know is that it's best not to think too hard about continuity, logic, or anything of the like. We have psychic tentacle powers. We have opera-singing leechfurries. We have a giant spider plant dinosaur skeleton. You indeed read that sentence correctly. (Though that was from a side game, so it's not quite main-series continuity...) Leave your disbelief at the door. A zombie will come along to eat it.
Anyway, that's a brief overview of the Resident Evil series. ...Will somebody tell me what the designers are smoking? It seems like some potent stuff...
The first thing to know is that there is always a psychopathic maniac of a scientist running about. Sometimes the scientist doesn't appear in-game, but that scientist will be behind the newest strain of Body-Horror WTFery.
The major Umbrella Corporation scientists are William Birkin, Albert Wesker, Alexia Ashford, and James Marcus. You may quickly remember them as "the guy who invented most of the monsters", "the guy who aspired to look like he was in The Matrix", "the genetically-engineered twelve-year-old", and "the opera-singing leechfurry".
Yes, the last two really happened. You now have a much better idea of Resident Evil's sanity level.
The second thing to know is that there's a new strain of Body-Horror every game or so. These strains are zombie (T-Virus), regenerating cancer-blob (G-Virus), unkillable parasite-fueled giant (Nemesis), antfurry pyromaniac weirdness (T-Veronica), leechkin necromancy (Marcus's strain of Progenitor), chattering herd-parasites (Las Plagas), and... apparently shape-shifting zombies? (C-Virus, a.k.a. G-Virus + T-Veronica)
The third thing to know is that Umbrella would be much, much better off just cloning the protagonists and being done with it. When you can successfully knife a tentacled blob of flesh and teeth the size of a train-car to death, you count as something superhuman anyway. (And Leon's abilities only get sillier as the franchise goes on. If I recall the knife-only run of RE4 correctly, a skilled player can make him kill a many-eyed armored-spider monstrosity with knife-blows and hurled eggs...)
The fourth thing to know is that the female heroes are generally as strong as the male heroes. RE0 has a female Cleric/male Paladin dynamic (excuse me, medic/ex-Marine), so you can guess which one has more physical endurance. Also, RE3 and RE4 only have one hero (a female one for RE3, a male one for RE4), so we can't check equality there - but in all other cases, the games have both a female hero and a male hero, and the heroes are of roughly equal strength. So it's decent on the war-of-the-sexes front.
The fifth thing to know is that it's best not to think too hard about continuity, logic, or anything of the like. We have psychic tentacle powers. We have opera-singing leechfurries. We have a giant spider plant dinosaur skeleton. You indeed read that sentence correctly. (Though that was from a side game, so it's not quite main-series continuity...) Leave your disbelief at the door. A zombie will come along to eat it.
Anyway, that's a brief overview of the Resident Evil series. ...Will somebody tell me what the designers are smoking? It seems like some potent stuff...
no subject
Yes, there were shapeshifting zombies. "J'avo" can mutate depending on how you kill them, Bloodshots spawn from dead zombies, and then there's Simmons, who really does turn into a T-rex and back about five times over the course of his third boss fight. He's a giant insect by the last round, but at least the game tries to justify it by having him eat zombies.
5 and 6 do also continue nicely the "female characters being as strong as the males" trend! All the campaigns except Chris and Piers are a malexfemale teamup (and the developers didn't want Piers to be female because Chris gets all confrontational and up in his face several times). Ada gets her own campaign. Really, the biggest thing in the malexfemale teamups seem to be an experience gap in dealing with zombies - Leon is more experienced than Helena, Sherry is more experienced than Jake. But the game is good at giving you the impression that they are a team.
(And they are ridiculously superhuman. My god, the number of explosions and crashes they all survive is just...well, ridiculous. No vehicle is safe with Leon at the wheel.)
All told, it's a wacky series, it gets utterly ridiculous at points, but I've found myself fond of it.