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Hello, I'm new to this forum. This is going to be a fairly long topic, but I hope you find it interesting and worth discussing.
Is Resident Evil 2 a REMAKE of the original Resident Evil?
Being a Resident Evil fan since 1996, I’ve witnessed most of the changes and evolution of the series through time. Of all of those events I am going to focus on one: the cancellation of the original version of Resident Evil 2, which we now call Resident Evil 1.5, and the final version that was released.
The point of origin of this forum post and its title is Capcom’s “official reason” why the game was cancelled: “resembling the original Resident Evil too closely”.
All veteran Resident Evil fans know how questionable this is and I decided to make an analisys of it based on the first two chapters. What I do think is a perfect fact (beyond opinion) is that Capcom made such a statement because it was better than saying nothing at all. In my eyes, the released version of Resident Evil 2 is so similar to the original Resident Evil to the point of it being almost a Remake and I really don’t think I am exaggerating.
The fact is that Capcom got an unexpected gold mine in their hands with the release of the original Resident Evil, a game series so successful (and profitable) that from the moment it appeared it became the company’s best and flagship franchise taking the throne from the Street Fighter series. It completely exceeded to company’s expectations to the point of becoming the first Sony PlayStation title to break the one million units sold mark. Originally planned as a PlayStation exclusive, the unsuspected success of the game lead Capcom to reconsider this and ported the game to two more platforms, the Sega Saturn and Microsoft Windows.
With such a response from the public, the company started the works on a sequel a few months later, which in the end allegedly did not meet THEIR expectations and was also affected by other internal movements and circumstances of the company (such as the resignation of Yoshiki Okamoto from Capcom and the project being continued under Hideki Kamiya) and decided to cancel it. With the success of the original game, plus the already announced sequel (now cancelled) and the expectation that came with it (and the corporate profits it would represent), Capcom could not afford the luxury of cancelling the game and releasing nothing at all or an all new game a couple of years later. They couldn’t let the opportunity go and have all that public interest cool down. They had to start all over again the very moment the original version was cancelled, and that’s exactly what they did.
Resident Evil 1.5’s scheduled release date was at a point between March and April of 1997, Shinji Mikami wishing the game would coincide with the first anniversary of the series. The final Resident Evil 2 was released in December 1997 in Japan and early 1998 in the rest of the world. Capcom allegedly spent 21 months developing Resident Evil 2 from the first sketch of Resident Evil 1.5 to the first release date of the final version. Such time frame is allegedly divided in the first nine months for Resident Evil 1.5 and the remainder of the run for the final Resident Evil 2.
After this long prologue, let’s get to the analysis of how much is Resident Evil 2 similar to the original Resident Evil, just a little or way too much.
Differences
Before turning directly to what makes both games similar, let’s start from the opposite end. How Resident Evil 2 updated the formula of the original title.
The original Resident Evil was a horror game focused at survival with action and investigation elements. It showcased two playable characters that defined the difficulty level of the game, Jill Valentine being the easy mode and Chris Redfield the hard one. Both characters had their share of advantages and disadvantages, which would also lead to the involvement of supporting characters and even make them playable, such as Rebecca Chambers while playing as Chris. It consisted in the collection on items on a limited cargo capacity and the limited presence of storage points scattered throughout the game, points that also were the way of saving your progress. The combat system consisted of several different weapons with different effectiveness on the particular enemy they were used against as well as a limited amount of ammunition for each. Some weapons were shared by both characters alike while others were exclusive to one of them, such as the bazooka for Jill and the flamethrower for Chris. Aside from the threat of monsters, the game also portrayed several sets of in-room traps that had to be walked around or disabled, some of them counted as puzzles too. The narrative of the storyline was told through Full Motion Video scenes, real time cut-scenes showing characters interacting and document files scattered throughout the game. What made the game so popular and successful was how well-achieved the horror element was, it managed to deliver a real sense of isolation and insecurity as well as being constantly under threat to the point of gaining the passion and amazement of the audiences at the time.
As Resident Evil 2 came, it retained the formula in several aspects, added new ones and refined others. The original format of the game of offering two playable characters with exclusive supporting characters was kept, but the difficulty difference they represented in the original game was removed. Both Leon and Claire have the same resistance towards damage, enemies have the same resistance to the attacks of either character, both characters have the same amount of inventory space, both handle the weapons the same way, both have a special item plus a hand gun and a knife alike. The main menu of the game offers a difficulty setting for the player to choose. Instead of using a specific character as a difficulty setting and both following one equal storyline with only a few exclusive elements for each, Resident Evil 2 uses the two characters in a single parallel storyline where one is more advanced than the other. The actions and decisions made by the first character would affect the progress of the second character. Once the game is beaten using one character, the second character comes in starting from the beginning. Also, the amount of exclusive elements and even game areas per character is expanded. The game was more action-based than the original in the form of a larger number of enemies on screen, changing from three zombies to six and a larger number and diversity of weapons. In this game, more than half of the weapons are exclusive to either character. Innovations to the series formula by Resident Evil 2 include the possibility of upgrading weapons, weapons occupying two inventory spaces, the possibility of expanding your cargo capacity, frequent items such as desk keys being able to be accumulated in a single inventory space instead of taking multiple spaces, character health being reflected on his/her movements, the first battle mode in an original version of the title (the Hunk and Tofu scenarios) for added replay value.
Similarities
We finally get to the title of this forum post/article. Despite the differences, innovations, additions and improvements, the amount of similarities between Resident Evil 2 and the original Resident Evil are staggering in my own individual opinion. I still remember the very first time I saw Resident Evil 2 in action with my brother and a friend of his back in 1998. As soon as he reached the police station after the short segment of going through the zombie-crowded streets of Raccoon City, as he passed through the police station’s main entrance he made a comment. He said: “It looks like they turned the mansion of original game into a police station”. THAT was my brother’s first impression and several years later and myself playing the game from start to finish countless times I can say that I totally agree with him. It is not farfetched to imagine an alternate ending/storyline in which the authorities of Raccoon confiscated the mansion after the events of the first title and ended up remodeling it as something else, in this case a police station. One incredible similarity between the police station in Resident Evil 2 and the mansion in Resident Evil 1 is the corner of both buildings with a staircase and a save room, the orange corridor where Barry and Wesker leave items in the original game and the dark room corridor with the secret costumes in the sequel. Both titles have a library in their initial location and both libraries have a hidden section where a puzzle is involved, one holds an MO Disk and the other one of the chess plugs or squared stones. Individual separate puzzles are also similar, such as the one where a lighter is used to change a painting on a fire place to get either a jewel or second floor map. How similar do you consider the use of two jewels of different color in the Tiger statue of the original compared to the two red jewels in the knight statue of the storage room near Brian Irons’s office in the sequel? I would dare any hardcore Resident Evil fan to compare the Keeper’s Diary in the original with the Watchman’s Diary in the sequel and tell if they are more different than similar. I’d say that they are an example of what we call history repeating itself. The weapons room in the flooded basement of the guardhouse in the original Resident Evil is not much different from the weapons storage of the police station in Resident Evil 2. Switching to the B scenarios of the second chapter, the final boss battle in which you take out an unbeatable mutated Mr. X with a rocket launcher is no different from the final battle of the original game in the mansion heliport against the original Tyrant. I was not surprised that in S. D. Perry’s novelization of Resident Evil 2 Claire used an automatic rifle instead of a rocket launcher to kill Mr. X to avoid redundancy from the previous novel based on the original game. To leave the mansion in the original title you need four crests, to leave the police station in the second chapter you need either four chess piece-shaped plugs or three squared stones divided in four parts. These are just a few examples, but there more of them.
Leaving aside small individual elements of the two games like the ones mentioned before, another very strong similarity between them is how the game progress of each title goes. The mansion in the original Resident Evil uses four keys with a knight theme on them. The police station in Resident Evil 2 uses four keys with a poker theme on them. In the original, only three keys are available in the first run of the mansion, the Helmet one is located in an outside location (the guardhouse) and demands a return to the mansion once it found. That’s exactly what happens in Resident Evil 2. You find three of the four keys in the first run of the police station, find the fourth in an external location (the sewage disposal plant) and go back to the police station. Capcom didn’t change the music and put Hunters in the police station after retrieving the Club key because otherwise Resident Evil 2 would have been judged as complete plagiarism to the original Resident Evil and gamers would have felt ripped off for paying twice for the same game they bought just two years before. The progress between the two games is almost the same. The passing from the mansion to the garden in the first chapter is practically the same as passing from the police station to the basement of the same building in the second chapter. In the original, the player advances from the garden to the guardhouse, which in the sequel is the advancement from the basement of the police station to the sewage disposal plant. In the guardhouse you find the helmet key and the in the sewage disposal plant you find the club key. Just like these two locations are practical equivalents between the two games, they even share a puzzle that is almost the same, the makeshift bridge consisting of three wooden crates on water to make this even more similar. After obtaining the final key, you return to the mansion from the guardhouse and to the police station from the sewage disposal plant, you unlock three doors with this final key in both games. The passing from the mansion to the garden and then to the underground is practically the same as the passing from the police station to the basement and then to the sewers. The underground takes to the garden fountain in the original while the sewers take to the abandoned factory in the sequel, from those two points onward is the respective Umbrella lab of every game. To add yet another similarity, the wolf and eagle medals return in Resident Evil 2 and they work to solve another water-based puzzle, the water flow of the sewers while in the original it was the water fountain. Also, doesn’t THAT water flow look similar to the one in the garden blocking passage to the underground of the original title?
Verdict
My personal opinion on Resident Evil 2 is that it was a worthy successor to the original Resident Evil, it is one of the best videogames I’ve ever played and one of my personal favorites titles as a survival horror fan and general videogames enthusiast. As a survival horror example, it is the perfect balance between an action game and a horror game, which was lost in subsequent titles of the series and other franchises of the genre. It had a superb storyline and character design.
However, on the other side of the coin, I do think it is one of the most overrated games not just of the series but survival horror in general. I remember back in 1998 and 1999 there were a lot of Resident Evil 2 fan sites on the web; some did have an announced Resident Evil 1 section that in most cases was never finished or launched. By the time Resident Evil 3 Nemesis came out, most of those almost Resident Evil 2 only sites were abandoned. Only the sites covering the full series continued. When I first bought the S.D. Perry Resident Evil novels, the RE 2 one City of the Dead was sold out while the rest were in stock. Some Resident Evil fans think it is an example of a sequel being superior to the original, which is a matter of personal taste; I think such a statement is exaggerated. As great as Resident Evil 2 turned out to be, loved by fans of the series and general gamers alike, I am convinced the game could have been much better, not by comparing it by what was seen in future titles such as Resident Evil 3 Nemesis or Resident Evil CODE: Veronica, but what was present in Resident Evil 1.5 .
Is Resident Evil 2 a REMAKE of the original Resident Evil?
Being a Resident Evil fan since 1996, I’ve witnessed most of the changes and evolution of the series through time. Of all of those events I am going to focus on one: the cancellation of the original version of Resident Evil 2, which we now call Resident Evil 1.5, and the final version that was released.
The point of origin of this forum post and its title is Capcom’s “official reason” why the game was cancelled: “resembling the original Resident Evil too closely”.
All veteran Resident Evil fans know how questionable this is and I decided to make an analisys of it based on the first two chapters. What I do think is a perfect fact (beyond opinion) is that Capcom made such a statement because it was better than saying nothing at all. In my eyes, the released version of Resident Evil 2 is so similar to the original Resident Evil to the point of it being almost a Remake and I really don’t think I am exaggerating.
The fact is that Capcom got an unexpected gold mine in their hands with the release of the original Resident Evil, a game series so successful (and profitable) that from the moment it appeared it became the company’s best and flagship franchise taking the throne from the Street Fighter series. It completely exceeded to company’s expectations to the point of becoming the first Sony PlayStation title to break the one million units sold mark. Originally planned as a PlayStation exclusive, the unsuspected success of the game lead Capcom to reconsider this and ported the game to two more platforms, the Sega Saturn and Microsoft Windows.
With such a response from the public, the company started the works on a sequel a few months later, which in the end allegedly did not meet THEIR expectations and was also affected by other internal movements and circumstances of the company (such as the resignation of Yoshiki Okamoto from Capcom and the project being continued under Hideki Kamiya) and decided to cancel it. With the success of the original game, plus the already announced sequel (now cancelled) and the expectation that came with it (and the corporate profits it would represent), Capcom could not afford the luxury of cancelling the game and releasing nothing at all or an all new game a couple of years later. They couldn’t let the opportunity go and have all that public interest cool down. They had to start all over again the very moment the original version was cancelled, and that’s exactly what they did.
Resident Evil 1.5’s scheduled release date was at a point between March and April of 1997, Shinji Mikami wishing the game would coincide with the first anniversary of the series. The final Resident Evil 2 was released in December 1997 in Japan and early 1998 in the rest of the world. Capcom allegedly spent 21 months developing Resident Evil 2 from the first sketch of Resident Evil 1.5 to the first release date of the final version. Such time frame is allegedly divided in the first nine months for Resident Evil 1.5 and the remainder of the run for the final Resident Evil 2.
After this long prologue, let’s get to the analysis of how much is Resident Evil 2 similar to the original Resident Evil, just a little or way too much.
Differences
Before turning directly to what makes both games similar, let’s start from the opposite end. How Resident Evil 2 updated the formula of the original title.
The original Resident Evil was a horror game focused at survival with action and investigation elements. It showcased two playable characters that defined the difficulty level of the game, Jill Valentine being the easy mode and Chris Redfield the hard one. Both characters had their share of advantages and disadvantages, which would also lead to the involvement of supporting characters and even make them playable, such as Rebecca Chambers while playing as Chris. It consisted in the collection on items on a limited cargo capacity and the limited presence of storage points scattered throughout the game, points that also were the way of saving your progress. The combat system consisted of several different weapons with different effectiveness on the particular enemy they were used against as well as a limited amount of ammunition for each. Some weapons were shared by both characters alike while others were exclusive to one of them, such as the bazooka for Jill and the flamethrower for Chris. Aside from the threat of monsters, the game also portrayed several sets of in-room traps that had to be walked around or disabled, some of them counted as puzzles too. The narrative of the storyline was told through Full Motion Video scenes, real time cut-scenes showing characters interacting and document files scattered throughout the game. What made the game so popular and successful was how well-achieved the horror element was, it managed to deliver a real sense of isolation and insecurity as well as being constantly under threat to the point of gaining the passion and amazement of the audiences at the time.
As Resident Evil 2 came, it retained the formula in several aspects, added new ones and refined others. The original format of the game of offering two playable characters with exclusive supporting characters was kept, but the difficulty difference they represented in the original game was removed. Both Leon and Claire have the same resistance towards damage, enemies have the same resistance to the attacks of either character, both characters have the same amount of inventory space, both handle the weapons the same way, both have a special item plus a hand gun and a knife alike. The main menu of the game offers a difficulty setting for the player to choose. Instead of using a specific character as a difficulty setting and both following one equal storyline with only a few exclusive elements for each, Resident Evil 2 uses the two characters in a single parallel storyline where one is more advanced than the other. The actions and decisions made by the first character would affect the progress of the second character. Once the game is beaten using one character, the second character comes in starting from the beginning. Also, the amount of exclusive elements and even game areas per character is expanded. The game was more action-based than the original in the form of a larger number of enemies on screen, changing from three zombies to six and a larger number and diversity of weapons. In this game, more than half of the weapons are exclusive to either character. Innovations to the series formula by Resident Evil 2 include the possibility of upgrading weapons, weapons occupying two inventory spaces, the possibility of expanding your cargo capacity, frequent items such as desk keys being able to be accumulated in a single inventory space instead of taking multiple spaces, character health being reflected on his/her movements, the first battle mode in an original version of the title (the Hunk and Tofu scenarios) for added replay value.
Similarities
We finally get to the title of this forum post/article. Despite the differences, innovations, additions and improvements, the amount of similarities between Resident Evil 2 and the original Resident Evil are staggering in my own individual opinion. I still remember the very first time I saw Resident Evil 2 in action with my brother and a friend of his back in 1998. As soon as he reached the police station after the short segment of going through the zombie-crowded streets of Raccoon City, as he passed through the police station’s main entrance he made a comment. He said: “It looks like they turned the mansion of original game into a police station”. THAT was my brother’s first impression and several years later and myself playing the game from start to finish countless times I can say that I totally agree with him. It is not farfetched to imagine an alternate ending/storyline in which the authorities of Raccoon confiscated the mansion after the events of the first title and ended up remodeling it as something else, in this case a police station. One incredible similarity between the police station in Resident Evil 2 and the mansion in Resident Evil 1 is the corner of both buildings with a staircase and a save room, the orange corridor where Barry and Wesker leave items in the original game and the dark room corridor with the secret costumes in the sequel. Both titles have a library in their initial location and both libraries have a hidden section where a puzzle is involved, one holds an MO Disk and the other one of the chess plugs or squared stones. Individual separate puzzles are also similar, such as the one where a lighter is used to change a painting on a fire place to get either a jewel or second floor map. How similar do you consider the use of two jewels of different color in the Tiger statue of the original compared to the two red jewels in the knight statue of the storage room near Brian Irons’s office in the sequel? I would dare any hardcore Resident Evil fan to compare the Keeper’s Diary in the original with the Watchman’s Diary in the sequel and tell if they are more different than similar. I’d say that they are an example of what we call history repeating itself. The weapons room in the flooded basement of the guardhouse in the original Resident Evil is not much different from the weapons storage of the police station in Resident Evil 2. Switching to the B scenarios of the second chapter, the final boss battle in which you take out an unbeatable mutated Mr. X with a rocket launcher is no different from the final battle of the original game in the mansion heliport against the original Tyrant. I was not surprised that in S. D. Perry’s novelization of Resident Evil 2 Claire used an automatic rifle instead of a rocket launcher to kill Mr. X to avoid redundancy from the previous novel based on the original game. To leave the mansion in the original title you need four crests, to leave the police station in the second chapter you need either four chess piece-shaped plugs or three squared stones divided in four parts. These are just a few examples, but there more of them.
Leaving aside small individual elements of the two games like the ones mentioned before, another very strong similarity between them is how the game progress of each title goes. The mansion in the original Resident Evil uses four keys with a knight theme on them. The police station in Resident Evil 2 uses four keys with a poker theme on them. In the original, only three keys are available in the first run of the mansion, the Helmet one is located in an outside location (the guardhouse) and demands a return to the mansion once it found. That’s exactly what happens in Resident Evil 2. You find three of the four keys in the first run of the police station, find the fourth in an external location (the sewage disposal plant) and go back to the police station. Capcom didn’t change the music and put Hunters in the police station after retrieving the Club key because otherwise Resident Evil 2 would have been judged as complete plagiarism to the original Resident Evil and gamers would have felt ripped off for paying twice for the same game they bought just two years before. The progress between the two games is almost the same. The passing from the mansion to the garden in the first chapter is practically the same as passing from the police station to the basement of the same building in the second chapter. In the original, the player advances from the garden to the guardhouse, which in the sequel is the advancement from the basement of the police station to the sewage disposal plant. In the guardhouse you find the helmet key and the in the sewage disposal plant you find the club key. Just like these two locations are practical equivalents between the two games, they even share a puzzle that is almost the same, the makeshift bridge consisting of three wooden crates on water to make this even more similar. After obtaining the final key, you return to the mansion from the guardhouse and to the police station from the sewage disposal plant, you unlock three doors with this final key in both games. The passing from the mansion to the garden and then to the underground is practically the same as the passing from the police station to the basement and then to the sewers. The underground takes to the garden fountain in the original while the sewers take to the abandoned factory in the sequel, from those two points onward is the respective Umbrella lab of every game. To add yet another similarity, the wolf and eagle medals return in Resident Evil 2 and they work to solve another water-based puzzle, the water flow of the sewers while in the original it was the water fountain. Also, doesn’t THAT water flow look similar to the one in the garden blocking passage to the underground of the original title?
Verdict
My personal opinion on Resident Evil 2 is that it was a worthy successor to the original Resident Evil, it is one of the best videogames I’ve ever played and one of my personal favorites titles as a survival horror fan and general videogames enthusiast. As a survival horror example, it is the perfect balance between an action game and a horror game, which was lost in subsequent titles of the series and other franchises of the genre. It had a superb storyline and character design.
However, on the other side of the coin, I do think it is one of the most overrated games not just of the series but survival horror in general. I remember back in 1998 and 1999 there were a lot of Resident Evil 2 fan sites on the web; some did have an announced Resident Evil 1 section that in most cases was never finished or launched. By the time Resident Evil 3 Nemesis came out, most of those almost Resident Evil 2 only sites were abandoned. Only the sites covering the full series continued. When I first bought the S.D. Perry Resident Evil novels, the RE 2 one City of the Dead was sold out while the rest were in stock. Some Resident Evil fans think it is an example of a sequel being superior to the original, which is a matter of personal taste; I think such a statement is exaggerated. As great as Resident Evil 2 turned out to be, loved by fans of the series and general gamers alike, I am convinced the game could have been much better, not by comparing it by what was seen in future titles such as Resident Evil 3 Nemesis or Resident Evil CODE: Veronica, but what was present in Resident Evil 1.5 .
), but in your conclusion you don't answer your own question and instead focus on a different topic. Do you find that that RE2 makes enough changes to warrant being called a classic sequel, or an unimaginative one that follows the template of the first too closely?
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