Capcom: Western-Developed Resident Evil Game "Absolutely" Possible

[Archelon]

It was certainly scarier than the last Resident Evil or Silent Hill games for me, but since everyone is different...

Maybe I'm just emotionally dead inside or something, but I still have yet to play a single survival horror game that actually scared me or even made me feel uneasy. Of course, this may also have something to do with the fact that I have yet to see a single horror movie that has actually scared me or made me feel uneasy.

But this is ultimately why I find it amusing when people complain about the RE games not being scary anymore. Maybe for them they're not scary anymore, but for me, they were never scary to begin with. Of course, I never played the RE games to be scared, and it's probably a good thing I didn't, otherwise I would have been sorely disappointed.

Or maybe I just haven't been playing them correctly, as Carn seems to imply in the following post, despite the fact that I've played through all of them on the hardest difficulty using just a knife. Hmm. Maybe I'm just that awesome?

(That was sarcasm, by the way, before anyone gets offended.)

and anyone who didn't find that tense and somewhat unsettling need to get off their easy difficulty setting and start to play survival horror games with a bit of risk involved again... you know... so there's actually survival going on and a reason to be afraid and on edge and not just you running around shooting everything that moves 'cause it's fun to shoot stuff

Not sure why I've even dignifying such a childish retort with a response, but regardless of what difficulty I played it on, I did not find Dead Space the least bit scary or even tense. I was never once "on edge." The bullet time effect, whatever it was called, pretty much removes any and all challenge from even the tougher enemies in the game. I suppose the game might be more challenging if you went through it without actually using this ability, but I shouldn't have to make the game more challenging myself by assigning handicaps to my playstyle. That's the developers' responsibility, to balance all of the elements out.

My biggest issue with Dead Space is that it's just plain boring. It was basically Doom 3 all over again, even down to the monster closets. It's kind of hard to be frightened in a game when you can see where the monsters are going to be coming from a mile away. Whenever you see a vent or a dead body, you already know a monster is going to be coming at you, and it pretty much never fails. It would have worked better if you encountered some dead bodies of monsters that did not jump up at you as you passed by. And yet every single one of them did, and pretty much every single closed off vent you come across is housing a monster in it. It becomes yawn-inducing after awhile.

Another issue is that Dead Space can't even decide what kind of horror game it wants to be. It's almost as if the developers weren't sure what kind of horror game they wanted to make, so they basically threw everything at the wall to see which stuck. You have elements of shock horror, "gore" horror, and even some cheap "psychological" horror, but it never meshes together. It's like there's an invisible line marking off each segment of the horror spectrum. It's kind of hard to be frightened when you can tell just what kind of emotional response the developer is trying to elicit from you at that particular moment in time. They're just there for the sake of being there, because the developers wanted to toss everything they could into it without actually creating any real cohesion between the disparate parts.

Heck, the game even gives up on being any kind of horror game by the end when it devolves into your average third person shooter. The highly touted strategic dismemberment falls by the wayside when it proves to be far more effective to just mow down the enemies with the plasma rifle. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess I'm not playing the game correctly.

Don't even get me started on the story, which is laughable, and not in the cheesy, Capcom "so bad it's good way," either. They tried to do far too much in far too little time, and forget about forming any kind of emotional connection with Isaac, despite the developers wanting you to so badly.

[Darkmoon]

Maybe I'm just emotionally dead inside or something, but I still have yet to play a single survival horror game that actually scared me or even made me feel uneasy. Of course, this may also have something to do with the fact that I have yet to see a single horror movie that has actually scared me or made me feel uneasy.

But this is ultimately why I find it amusing when people complain about the RE games not being scary anymore. Maybe for them they're not scary anymore, but for me, they were never scary to begin with. Of course, I never played the RE games to be scared, and it's probably a good thing I didn't, otherwise I would have been sorely disappointed.

Well, in my case the reason I tend to find certain things scary is because I have a very, very good imagination. Not just a powerful one but one that allows me to emphasis with characters (which is also part of why I dislike Leon so much in RE4...why should I be afraid if he isn't?) and the situation they're in. I can feel the terror of the situation from the characters situation in a good game, and that makes the game enjoyable.

Looking at Dead Space Isaac is alone, on a strange ship that has been infested with the reactivated corpses of the crew. As a technician he knows how many people Ishimura holds, and worse, knows all the things that can wrong with a ship that size left unchecked by humans. How long can the computers keep the ship alive while the remains of the crew destroy it from the inside out?

Then you have the knowledge that if you die you may well become one of these creatures, and the idea must run through your mind...how much of the person that was is still inside the body, mutating under an alien influence and screaming to be set free in a body driven by another force entirely? And the situation is quite possible, given that Isaac is no soldier, and the enemies often have plenty of advantages over him, such as access to areas he can't and the ability to function despite heavy damage.

Then, you have friends and a loved one aboard the ship. How are you going to help them? Can you help them? What happens if you screw up and someone else suffers for it?

Combine that with the Ishimura herself and the superb sets, and I think the game excells, even beyond the cheaper 'Is this corpse dead will that vast hole start spewing enemies moments. And yes, I know, a lot of people ripped the levels apart for being too samey, but I found them exceptionally realistic. This is a decades old mining ship, built to tear apart planets and process the minerals. It's going to be as basic as humanly possible in the working areas. The crew quarters we get to see are a bit better, although not much, and the bridge and officers areas are, not shockingly, the nicest part of the whole boat.

The reason RE4 and RE5 weren't scary was because, partially at least, you never felt out of control. You rarely ran seriously low on ammo and if you did in RE5 you can pop back and farm some at an earlier stage. In Leon, Chris and Sheva were all clearly superior to the enemies they were facing...smarter, better armed, better trained. Chris and Sheva get a slight edge in that they seemed genuinely concerned by the enemies they faced, if not afraid. Leon seemed like he might be more worried about forgetting to have his deliveries postponed.

But that's me. And I don't meant to infer that your imagination is sub-par or anything like that, simply very different to my own.

[Corrin]

I'm both happy and sad to hear this.

Happy because there is now the slight chance that when i become a games designer i can make my own RE games! (OMG FUCK YEAH!!). And ill definitely bring it back to the classic style complete with the most awesome camera angles ever.

Sad because it'll probably go to someone like EA and have a game released every year and have like two different teams making separate games so they can do that.

RE is the next Call of Duty.

What makes you think EA has/ever will have anything to do with Resident Evil? Capcom develops and publishes Resident Evil. EA is a different company.

[Alexia_Ashford]

Dead Space honestly bored the hell out of me. Half way through I found myself wanting the game to end because it was so painstakingly repetitive, it became intolerable. It only felt vaguely fresh towards the end where you actually got OFF a ship which always seemed to look exactly the same and you were doing exactly the same thing throughout the entire damn game. Going to a part of a ship to repair it. Even though I was scraping for ammo, I didn't find it scary, just extremely boring; which was a shame because I was really expecting to like it and for it to be a great horror title for me. It was about as scary as RE5; not very. RE5 was just action-packed, great fun, intense with a great story and varying environments. Dead Space imo = survival horror, but the story is very dull and the environments are extremely dull and repetitive. The only part which I did find scary was with the big monster who didn't die no matter what you shot him with. It was reminiscent of Nemesis. Other than that, I found it an overall unenjoyable experience.

I actually gave my copy away because I knew for a fact I wouldn't want to replay it again, and I've not.

Perhaps a Western developed RE will be a bit better than that, but I still don't think it's very likely. RE is one of Capcom's biggest money makers, and it's Chris Kramer who said it's possible. He also said Sherry wasn't in RE2. Until someone from Japan says it's possible, I'll take it with a pinch of salt. Capcom Japan call the shots, not Capcom US.

[aris13]

Great timing I just bought Dead Space.

[A-J]

remember to play it with the lights off, and with some good headphones or a surround sound system.

[Mr_Zombie]

Hey, but Chris is right - western developers can develop a RE game... and they actually did - RE: Gaiden was made by M4 Limited, a British studio (I think they are biritish; their official site, which is now dead, was http://www.m4.co.uk/).

[aris13]

I'll keep that in mind AJ.

[Carnivol]

Not sure why I've even dignifying such a childish retort with a response ...

Woah-hoh! Who pissed in your bed last night?

I think you might've missed what I was trying to get at there

A lot of people complain about so called "horror" games not working as intended, when they (the players) set the difficulty to a lower level than what matches their own gaming skills. Playing them as some people play FPS games by loading the same quicksave over and over again to shoot the same guy in the face over and over again to see him ragdoll away.


Anyway; it easily takes a lot away from the gaming experience when there's no real reason to "worry" about anything. Some (if not possibly all) of your points against Dead Space are truly valid, but when if you play the game on easy vs hard on your first go, you quickly see a huge difference in the amount of ammo you have, the way the enemy behaves, how important it is to make "most" shots count, etc...

This stuff is very apparent if you start on Hard, without having the benefit of some past hands-on experience to get the basics down already.

(Also, A-J's right; A mighty sound solution, a nicely calibrated display and stuff like that too also greatly helps on enhancing the experience in a lot of stuff. It's kinda hard to make a gaming experience scary if the volume is turned down, brightness all the way up, the room nextdoor is playing loud music, and you and the guys are talking loud, cracking jokes and drinking beer.)


Also, Darkmoon's got some good points about being able to more or less empathize with the characters and somewhat put yourself into their shoes. (Also, reading the logs/diary in Dead Space was something I completely missed out on on my first go... I really wish I had paid more attention to them.)

[Neoblast]

a western RE?
It would be the UTTER CRAP, just imagine a script like the resident evil films ( milla bitchovich ones... ).
Lol They might even put alice starring the game... it would suck, besides if the series comes back to its roots let the japanese teams do it, they are better at making horror stuff.

[The John Doe]

I agree with Darkmoon that a person would need a very good imagination to find a game scary. But I add that a person needs an imagination to find a game intertaining too.

Also. You cain't just start playing a game for the first time, with a bad outlook.
You do that and they'll all suck.

[missvalentine]

I agree with the imagination thing too.

I loved how in Dead Space there would be weird scraping sounds and loud bangs that would echo all around you, my imagination went wild imagining the things that could possibly be up ahead. That's why i think the game was so scary for me.

Also i really liked the level design in Dead Space, i think it fit perfectly for the mood.

[Archelon]

Well, in my case the reason I tend to find certain things scary is because I have a very, very good imagination. Not just a powerful one but one that allows me to emphasis with characters (which is also part of why I dislike Leon so much in RE4...why should I be afraid if he isn't?) and the situation they're in. I can feel the terror of the situation from the characters situation in a good game, and that makes the game enjoyable.

This is essentially the same argument as "if you're not scared, you're playing it wrong," which is why I took issue with Carn's post. You shouldn't have to imagine anything while playing a game, because the point of horror games (and I would say horror movies, by extension) is for the developers, or filmmakers, to scare you with their imaginations. And if their imaginations can't scare you, then I don't think you should have to use your own imagination to make it scary.

The flip side to this, of course, are movies where you only catch glimpses of whatever force or creature is causing whatever is going on in movies. In this case, it is up to your imagination to be scared, because you don't actually see whatever is responsible until maybe the end of the movie. However, this doesn't work as well in games, because you eventually have to encounter whatever it is that is causing this stuff to happen, and if the developers waited until the very end of the game to reveal it, then it would likely have to be a really short game. It's much easier to do with a 2-hour movie than a 10-15 hour game.

So this tactic may work for the first opening moments of the game, but it's not something you can do for the whole game, because eventually, even if you still haven't seen the cause, you're going to grow bored of it, because you'll expect it. You'll know, "Oh, that shadow just now was caused by whatever creature is in here, but they're not going to show it, so I'm good to go." But then when they do actually show it, it takes all the mystery away.

Looking at Dead Space Isaac is alone, on a strange ship that has been infested with the reactivated corpses of the crew. As a technician he knows how many people Ishimura holds, and worse, knows all the things that can wrong with a ship that size left unchecked by humans. How long can the computers keep the ship alive while the remains of the crew destroy it from the inside out?

This goes back to what you said about Leon in RE4. You don't see why you should be scared if he isn't. I could argue that you should really be saying this about all of the RE characters, since none of them have ever acted scared (save for Ashley, Rebecca, and Sherry). It's the same for Isaac, except with him, he literally shows no emotion whatsoever. I understand you're supposed to project your own emotions onto him, but it gets a little ridiculous when (spoiler ahead for anyone who hasn't beaten Dead Space) Spoiler:

show spoiler

he finds out that his girlfriend is already dead, and yet he just stands there and goes into his idle animation like nothing is happening. If he doesn't even care that she's dead, then why should you or I?

Then you have the knowledge that if you die you may well become one of these creatures, and the idea must run through your mind...how much of the person that was is still inside the body, mutating under an alien influence and screaming to be set free in a body driven by another force entirely? And the situation is quite possible, given that Isaac is no soldier, and the enemies often have plenty of advantages over him, such as access to areas he can't and the ability to function despite heavy damage.

Then, you have friends and a loved one aboard the ship. How are you going to help them? Can you help them? What happens if you screw up and someone else suffers for it?

Again, it shouldn't be the player's responsibility to have to keep all of this stuff in mind while playing the game in order to be scared. I'm not saying the developers should continually beat you over the head with it via long-winded monologues or endless cutscenes, but the game should be able to scare you independently of these factors. In my eyes, it all goes back to whose responsibility it is to make the game scary: the developers or the players?

The reason RE4 and RE5 weren't scary was because, partially at least, you never felt out of control. You rarely ran seriously low on ammo and if you did in RE5 you can pop back and farm some at an earlier stage. In Leon, Chris and Sheva were all clearly superior to the enemies they were facing...smarter, better armed, better trained. Chris and Sheva get a slight edge in that they seemed genuinely concerned by the enemies they faced, if not afraid. Leon seemed like he might be more worried about forgetting to have his deliveries postponed.

This goes back to my point about not finding the previous RE games scary. One criticism I have always held about survival horror games in general is that many of the techniques used to make the game "scarier" are, in my opinion, superficial at best. Limiting ammunition, healing items, only providing the player with the weakest of weapons possible, control restrictions, etc, basically whatever has become a cliche in survival horror games at this point.

I feel that a truly scary game will be able to scare the player without having to rely on these "mechanics." Maybe it's just me, but I just don't consider limiting ammunition a legitimate way of instilling fear in the player, especially when in most survival horror games' cases, you can just as easily run from the enemies instead of standing your ground and fighting. I'm not running from the enemy because I'm scared of it, I'm running from it because I don't have enough ammo to kill it, and the fact that I don't have enough ammo doesn't cause any fear for me, because I know I can just run from the enemy instead without any penalty.

It just always felt like a cheap way of trying to scare the player, like having a dog jump through a window, instead of actually putting some genuine thought into creating an atmosphere or encounter that will still instill fear in the player even if they are armed to the teeth. Granted, I don't know how exactly a developer might pull that off, but I'd love to see someone manage to do it someday.

The way I see it, a survival horror game should be scary even on the easiest difficulty setting, because then that means it's not relying on such cheap tactics to try and "scare" the player. Having more ammo and health items shouldn't prevent the game from being scary. Again, as I said, I don't know how a developer could manage to do that, though.

Woah-hoh! Who pissed in your bed last night?

I think you might've missed what I was trying to get at there

I apologize. It was a kneejerk reaction, and I realize I should have gone back and edited it out, but I just had a hard time accepting the idea that if a person isn't scared by a survival horror game, that just means they're playing it wrong.

A lot of people complain about so called "horror" games not working as intended, when they (the players) set the difficulty to a lower level than what matches their own gaming skills.

I understand this, but as I said in my response to Darkmoon, I believe that if a survival horror game is truly scary, then it won't matter what difficulty one is playing on, because things like ammo and health item availability should not be factors in determining whether or not a game scares you. It might make the game more tense, but I don't consider tension and fear the same thing. If I did, then I'd say RE4 and RE5 were far scarier than any of the previous RE games.

Anyway; it easily takes a lot away from the gaming experience when there's no real reason to "worry" about anything.

Here's another area where I guess I'm just different from other gamers. I never "worry" about anything when I'm playing a game. Maybe I'm just more detached from the experience than other players are whenever they play a game, but even when I'm really into it, in the back of my mind I know it's still just a game. There has never been a point where I would be playing a game and completely forget that I'm playing a game.

The fact alone that I'm playing a game takes away any real sense of urgency or danger for me, because even if I die in the game, I can always just start over. I probably wouldn't want to play this type of game were one like it actually made, but I think the only way a developer could actually make me feel concerned in any way while playing a game would be if, upon dying in the game, all of my save data was completely erased. That would probably make me feel fear (and extreme frustration, too, I imagine, ha ha).

I don't think game developers should do that, mind you. I just think it would take something that drastic to make me actually feel any sense of dread while playing any kind of game, not just survival horror games.

Dead Space honestly bored the hell out of me. Half way through I found myself wanting the game to end because it was so painstakingly repetitive, it became intolerable. It only felt vaguely fresh towards the end where you actually got OFF a ship which always seemed to look exactly the same and you were doing exactly the same thing throughout the entire damn game. Going to a part of a ship to repair it. Even though I was scraping for ammo, I didn't find it scary, just extremely boring; which was a shame because I was really expecting to like it and for it to be a great horror title for me. It was about as scary as RE5; not very. RE5 was just action-packed, great fun, intense with a great story and varying environments. Dead Space imo = survival horror, but the story is very dull and the environments are extremely dull and repetitive. The only part which I did find scary was with the big monster who didn't die no matter what you shot him with. It was reminiscent of Nemesis. Other than that, I found it an overall unenjoyable experience.

Pretty much agree with everything you said.

[Darkmoon]

I disagree slightly. If you can't put yourself in the place of the character to get a feeling for what is happening to them, regardless of whether that is in a movie or a game or a book, then you won't be scared because there won't be any investment in something bad happening to the character, and through the character yourself. The thing can be the greatest horror fest in all exsitence, but if fiction can't scare you then it makes no real diffence.

The reason why RE4 Leon doesn't work is because, essentially, his actions and his skills destroy any sense of fear. The characters in RE do rarely shows fear, it's true, and say silly one liners...whereas Leon seems to actively go out of his way to make silly comments you can't imagine a guy whose actually afraid would make. I mean, if you've just been mobed by people capable of eating several handgun rounds and getting up again is your first instinct to make a bingo joke, or find a fresh pair of pants? I know what mine would be. And we all know which Leon's was. Yes, it can be explained in several ways why he isn't afraid, but at the end of the day if he felt he could easily handle the situation with the limited supplies he had then why should I be afraid as I gather more and more firepower?

Of course, Resident Evil is not that scary a series, and never has been, especially compared to Fatal Frame, Siren or Silent Hill. This is, as you point out, the somewhat plastic characters being hard to bond with and there lack of fear, as well as there. As you also point out, Isaac also has issues, because you can't see him or his reaction. That's both a postive, in that you can implant more of yourself on the character and a neagative in that you rarely have much of a reaction to work with. In the example you give, he does, at the end show some dispair but does spend the majority of the time idling as you say.

Which is why I found the stuff around him more scary. It's a simple enough to believe Isaac is at the edge of panic half the time, in a similar way to the nold RE characters, because they rarely or never break the illusion. He doesn't start cracking jokes like, 'What the matter, big guy, you're falling apart just because I hit with an enery cutter! Oh, I'm cracking up...and so are you!'

But it's difficult not to find the ship itself a dark and scary place, and the monsters themselves quite frightening. The Ishimura is an extremely hostile enviroment that, at the same time, you find yourself completely reliant on. I know people find it samey but, oddly enough, I felt there was just enough variety to tell the various parts of the ship apart and give each there own flavour while establashing that it was a working ship, not a luxury liner.

And the Necromorphs, bar the slightly silly name, are pretty nasty. They may be essentially tooled up zombies but they're done pretty well and, honestly, I never found something like the assault rifle just pumping into them a terribly efficient way of killing them. That and the ambushes makes them a pretty potent enemy. There were usually enough of them, comming from enough different places, to keep me on my toes without making things impossible.

The thing is, though...this is all just me. I know some people find RE5 scary, and I don't mind it at all. I know some people find Forbidden Siren fine but the game terrifies me. Each person is unique and the things that scare them are as well. For example, the game you mention that could scare you no matter what...I bet if we both wrote out an idea for it we'd have two very different games that may not scare the other because we are, very clearly, two very different people.

[missvalentine]

I understand you're supposed to project your own emotions onto him, but it gets a little ridiculous when (spoiler ahead for anyone who hasn't beaten Dead Space) Spoiler:

show spoiler

he finds out that his girlfriend is already dead, and yet he just stands there and goes into his idle animation like nothing is happening. If he doesn't even care that she's dead, then why should you or I?

Actually he does do a little animation, he looks a little sad and buries his face in his hands if i remember correctly.

I know people find it samey but, oddly enough, I felt there was just enough variety to tell the various parts of the ship apart and give each there own flavour while establashing that it was a working ship, not a luxury liner.

I agree with that completely. All of the levels had slight difference so you could tell them apart, and i really liked that. I didn't get bored of Dead Spaces environments at all.