If Re4 had come later down the line...

[TheBatMan]

Its quite clear that as a fan base we were all heading in the same direction until RE4 was released, the dramatic change in gameplay, story and indeed, console, split the community right down the middle. RE4 is regarded as one of the greatest games of all time yet many hard core resi fans hate it.

The main reason seems to be the two minute prologue telling us Umbrella had been destroyed and the game and indeed the franchise was leaning towards a brand new storyline with only the protagonist character the link to previous games. RE4 was released in 2005 and the last core game in the series was code veronica, released in 2000. That five year gap was hard to take, filler titles such as Dead Aim and Outbreak kept a few people happy and when we finally arrived at RE4 after many false starts, we were given no answers and basically told to accept the change. This has frustrated many fans even up until today. This was my own personal gripe with this otherwise fine game. I had waited five years and i was being robbed of the answers to the many questions i had/ What happened to chris and the others? did they have a role in umbrella's downfall etc.

But would you have approached RE4 with a different attitude if the games had come out in chronological story order? For example, we got darkside chronicles in 2002 rather than 2009, so we all knew what happened in Operation Javier and whatever else it has in store. Then a year later in 2003 we got Umbrella Chronicles and we got to take down Umbrella ourselves.

This would lead us to RE4, at a point where we knew exactly how and when Umbrella had been destroyed, we knew that Leon was a government agent and had changed since RE2, we knew what the other primary characters had been up to since the six year gap when we had last seen them. In my view this would lead the approach to RE4's 'story' in a lot more optimistic manner.

Would we still be mad there would be no Umbrella?
Would we still be outraged they had replaced zombies with ganados?
Would we still be upset by the switch to over the shoulder viewpoints and no static camera?

If this indeed had been the case, i fully believe 90% of us at least would be willing to embrace these dramatic changes in RE lore.
We would be right up to date in the story with no gaps and nowhere near as many unanswered questions. We would be heading into a brand new adventure with Leon, Ada and of course Krauser who instead of being a somewhat forced filler character, would be an established character from a previous title. These forums would be full of discussions such as how did he survive after we all saw him die in the ending to darkside chronicles? Is he still a good guy etc etc.

Anyone any thoughts? Do you believe this would have made any difference to much of RE4's mostly unfair criticism?

[Agent_Wong]

Myself, I don't think that it would have made much of a difference to the community at large. They still would have the same gripes and complaints as they do now. If it were in chronological order it would've made more sense, instead of bouncing back and forth like "Back to the future". But to me I like it te way it is, sure I have my gripes with things here and there, but inevitably you have to change the formula to stay competitive. It's the nature of the beast.

[Yzak]

You make a good point. I know the points you made in this post are all relevant to what people say when they talk about RE4. But I think another really big problem people had with it (in my case, too. Though I disclaimer that I LIKED RE4 even though I thought it was pretty weak-ish) was the general disconnect of the actual story. Not the leadup and background behind it. More the random cult kidnapping president's daughter onoes Leon has to save her! kind of disconnect. The whole Illuminados thing just wasn't very interesting to me, personally. The addition of Ada and Wesker (and Krauser by proxy) just seemed more tossed in than an actual real plot point.

Because really, if there were zombies instead of Ganados that would already change the story, because of how the Illuminados thing was set up. If there were just zombies, there would be no real point for that particular story at all. Since the Ganados/Las Plagas is a different thing entirely, and they wanted to use the Las Plagas because of its features. You wouldn't have been able to control the actions of zombies.

[Anders]

Short answer: For me; no.

I didn't mind the jump too much. The problem I had with RE4 was how crappy and retarded the new story was, and the crappy and retarded characters. Gameplay = 10/10, but I haven't watched any cut-scene since the first playthrough (except for those with Ada).

Of course, I would have been slightly upset if that prologue would have been the end of the old storyline, and later games followed the RE4 storyline entirely. But I was pretty sure that wouldn't happen, so I didn't mind it much back in 2005.

[Rock it.]

It wouldn't change anything for me as well. I really liked RE4 (and now 5)'s dumb aproach to storytelling: it's simple and entertaining, it's not out there to make sense: the game knows it's not, say, Legacy of Kain, and it makes no attempt at pretending to do so. It's Capcom's dumbness at its best! The jump only made everything feel fresh, and I think that's the whole point of the game: being fresh. I mean, how formulatic had the series been before RE4? Just look at 0. It's just plain boring.

[Darkmoon]

The main problems I had were the story was awful (At least RE5 tried...oh, it had problems and fuck ups and retcons, but it's Resident Evil. I expect those), but also that far too much was sacraficed to make the game mainstream. RE4's just a shooter with some horror tacked on when it won't affect your chance to shoot shit. RE5 is even worse about that. Fortunately, the fact that just about everyone bitched that just having giant monsters does not a scary game make seems to have sunk into Capcom's tiny minds and they've started making an effort...

Although I was certainly annoyed that the whole climax and goal of all the previous games was wrapped up in, 'And then Umbrella fell. And it was awesome! But not awesome enough to let you see how it happened any time soon.' I was especially annoyed since there were rumours early on that the whole game was going to be set in an Umbrella facility attacked by a rival trying to bring the company down. I even remember some fake covers and such. And then we saw 3.5, which looked intruiging. And then we got RE4 which was...meh. A brilliant game, gameplay wise, but with a bad story, characters I could not personally stand due to there poor behaviour in the situation and no real attempt at horror. Oven Man was the high point of the game.

[TheBatMan]

Hmm, looks like i was wrong then. I just would have thought that if we were more up to date story wise, then perhaps people would have been a little more willing to accept the changes more.
I for one cud have forgiven the plot for RE4 {but only once!} if we were right up to speed on the overall story thanks to previous games. The whole T-Virus story cud be finished, no real need for more zombies anymore, i reckon some people wud be willing to look at a change in the basic enemy with a bit of optimism rather than horror.

Of course many preferred the look of RE 3.5 to what we eventually ended up with. But If this alternate release list had occured, umbrella wud already be destroyed and theoretically RE 3.5 would never have existed in the first place, so no one wud ever know about it essentially meaning there wud be even less RE4 haters!

[Mr_Zombie]

Releasing RE4 after UC and DSC would help, because hearing about Umbrella's bankruptcy in a 2 minutes long intro definitely wasn't what all fans wished to see after all those "it's time to finish Umbrella, once and for all" moments. However, that wasn't RE4 main problem.

RE4 not only threw the story from previous games out of the window, it completely changed the style of RE. The new story and all characters are so much over the top that they look like something taken out from a James Bond movie rather than a horror movie. Also, instead of being a game about surviving, RE4 became a game about hunting; you no longer need to scrutinize ammo and herbs, you no longer need to run away from enemies - Leon in RE4 (as well as Chris and Sheva in RE5) is so overpowered that killing waves of Ganados and other monsters isn't a big deal for him; moreover, it's the essence of fun in the game and you are rewarded for killing enemies (additional ammo, treasures, money to buy butter guns).

[DanKnyphausen]

I'll honestly say "I'm not sure."

For me, I adore Bond films, and Action films, and while I think Resident Evil became Dino Crisis (Shinji Mikami once said, roughly, that Resident Evil was a "slow, chilling horror" and Dino Crisis was a "sudden, abrupt horror"), there isn't anything essentially wrong with that. It made Resident Evil fun in a different way.

My actual, biggest bitch was Leon's Infinite Suitcase of Infinity. I would have preferred 1.5's "apparent" upgrade to the traditional Item Slot Engine - the ability to have a weapon (or two!) permanently equipped, then ration space for the other stuff. I understand the gameplay made this necessary, and in a way, it was fitting (no mo' Item Boxes) and felt more "survivalish." But still, I would have done it a bit differently.

Essentially, the title is still about scary stuff. And it is scary to think that someone was powerful enough (good intel, agent on the inside, sufficient support forces, etc.) to pull off the kidnapping of the daughter of the POTUS. I mean, if they can get her out without raising a massive media stink, what are they truly capable of? Having your own Guided Missile Frigate speaks volumes, too. Where did they get it? How?

All in all, RE4 felt good, to me. Forget Umbrella (don't pelt me with cheese!). They're scary bastages, sure, but they had the viral genie "fairly well" controlled. They understood it better than anyone, they knew they needed countermeasues, safety protocols, things like that. It's like, back during the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviets had nukes very tightly controlled (the Soviets would never have let North Korea or Iran get anywhere NEAR developing them). But.. when that "controlling entity" is destroyed.. you end up with some very scary weapons in the hands of morons that don't know what to do with them, how to handle them, or who truly take their threat seriously (see Degeneration in RE, North Korea and Iran in real life). It's the *ghost* of Umbrella, its legacy, that, to me, gave the "future" (as seen when I first watched the RE4 intro) the real horror. The fact that Las Plagas turned out to be "something else" didn't change matters. If Umbrella hadn't been there in the first place, there's a damned good chance Saddler wouldn't have had any basis of an idea of what to do with them.

Had DSC and UC been released first, I think it would have given us a new set of problems. Instead of pulling out the brand new story, we would have been guessing at it already. "Hey, Umbrella's gone! It's over! Oh, but wait! Wesker's still out there! Oh, RE4's gonna be released soon, huh? Plagas, eh? I'll bet Wesker will have his hands in this. The next game, for sure, he'll be monkeying around with them."
Any smart RE Fan would have been able to read the future as easy as a candy wrapper. So, instead of bitching about the new controls and the new story, we'd bitch about the new controls and a *lack of* a new story - it'd be one that seems to so naturally, so predictably progress, we'd complain over a lack of surprises. Then again, we're all human, we complain no matter what.