Losing interest in the series

[BrionIrons]

Plagas wasn't a virus; it was a parasite. But I agree - the Uroboros virus was by far the least interesting virus in the series. And yes, we had seen similar before in RE0 and RE Outbreak.

Although I liked the parasite, I honestly don't know why they brought plaga-based enemies back in RE5. RE4 tried something new with them, and the game had a eerie, almost alien-like atmosphere to it. The plagas were dormant for a long time but inhaled in spore form by the villagers underground, which to me is really creepy. I realize why plaga-based enemies were brought back for story purposes (Ada stealing the plagas sample), but while actually playing RE5 it just felt like more of the same. For some reason in the old games, zombies appearing in every title just never got old for me. Plagas did, real fast.

Can't agree with you more.

[killer7ITA]

From some years, i'm just looking to the past.
For me, Resident Evil series, is death.

Proud to be a fan of Resident Evil 1,2,3,Zero and Rebirth.

P.S. Also, Resident Evil 1.5 and Resident Evil 3.5 (Hiroshi Shibata lives)... U_U'

[TheMedic]

I, also am getting tired of the series. It's getting ridiculous to say the least. Its like the people at Capcom have Alzheimers and keep forgetting about the characters/storyline or anything that has to do with where the series WAS going.

Although I'm probably one of the only people not looking forward to a reboot of the series,its probably the only way the game will ever be any good again. I'm really gonna miss a lot of the old characters who's storylines were never finished. Once they reboot it, all of my favorite characters will be in limbo

I'll still play RE to till the end though, even if RE6 consists of fighting off humanoid robots and Dora the explorer.

[Upaluppa]

There was such an inconsistency to the direction the storyline in the series had taken and that is probably the main reason why my interest in RE is slowly reaching it's absolute minimum...
Capcom loves to thrash old ideas and come up with something different (which isn't always for the better, I'd say).

To me Resident Evil went down the river with the release of RE4, but it wasn't as much the change in gameplay that bothered me as it was that the game broke with the old canon! The thing which disappointed me was that the fancy plot that was set up by RE Zero (Progenitor virus, anyone?) was thrown out of the window with RE4.

The original promise (when Leon was still going to explore ancient castles in Europe) was that RE4 would delve deeper into the storyline aspects which RE Zero introduced us to. However, when RE4 was redesigned the promise of continuing Zero's exploration of "the roots of Umbrella" was thrown out of the window and the Plagas story was brought into context instead.

To me that whole Plagas and president's daughter thing seemed out of place as it had absolutely nothing to do with Resident Evil's usual terrain of Zombies, Umbrella and the like. I guess Capcom purposely wrote a "completely unrelated to old RE events story" to make the feeling that RE4 was going to be a reboot of the series even stronger, but let's focus on different things for now...

I guess you can tell, that I am a huge fan of RE Zero and it's storyline, so you might say, that I should stop whining and play RE5 instead as it tells us more about the Progenitor virus and Spencer's plans, right? I know, Capcom did pick up the Progenitor, Spencer etc. story for RE5, but it wasn't the same (to what I was expecting from RE4).
It was an unexpected turn of events to say so...

In my own subjective opinion (feel free to disagree, but that's how I think about it) Capcom messed it all up in RE5, particularly thanks to the "Wesker Program" or whatever it's called. When I heard about this ridiculousness reached a whole new level, I really did think I must be in the wrong film or something like that.

Oh, Uroboros and the whole Tribal African mumbo jumbo background given to the Progenitor virus didn't help saving this story for me either...
It was too far fetched and seemed unrealistic and unbelievable to me.

So while Capcom did what they promised and gave us answers to the questions raised by RE Zero they just did it in a way I did not like.
Thus I stopped caring for the future RE games because it's obvious that they will continue to follow the same canon that was introduced with R4 and RE5 with every new RE game they throw at us in the near future.

I guess some of you feel the same about this, I honestly liked the RE's storyline better when it was nice and simple with Umbrella as the dubious pharmaceutical industry giant (which it wasn't in RE1, that's another inconsistency), Spencer as the evil mind and driving force behind it and Wesker the power hungry ex Umbrella scientist...
Speaking of Wesker, CV's revival of "Super" Wesker was another thing I did not like at all, but it was still within my acceptance range, unlike the "fanatic fanfic" started by RE4 and 5.

My post is getting too long, so I'll come to an end.
I'd say not all hope is lost if Capcom does a good thing for once and really pushes of a reboot of the story with RE6.
Anything will be better than RE5's story, I guess...

Phew, I am exhausted now...
After writing this wall of text I will take a break and enjoy a good, nostalgic 15th anniversary of this poor, but still beloved series with my new friends, the BH1 Sample builds!

[News Bot]

Oh, Uroboros and the whole Tribal African mumbo jumbo background given to the Progenitor virus didn't help saving this story for me either...

The Progenitor virus origins in Africa were written by Noboru Sugimura and FLAGSHIP longggg before Biohazard 5, as early as CODE: Veronica (first materializing in Zero, then Dead Aim). Uroboros was also originally a biohazard 4 concept (ever compared the "fog" to Uroboros? Virtually the same and its effects on the body are similar)

The storyline was always consistent up until biohazard 4. It was mostly handled by the same people (Sugimura, FLAGSHIP).

And believe it or not, there is nothing wrong with the Wesker Project. It contradicts nothing, though it doesn't really add much either except making the connection between Wesker and Spencer deeper. Wesker's revival itself was also not really a contradiction, as Shinji Mikami deliberately left his "death" open. FLAGSHIP brought him back shortly after (maybe before...) the release of Biohazard 2.

[Upaluppa]

The Progenitor virus origins in Africa were written by Noboru Sugimura and FLAGSHIP longggg before Biohazard 5, as early as CODE: Veronica (first materializing in Zero, then Dead Aim). Uroboros was also originally a biohazard 4 concept (ever compared the "fog" to Uroboros? Virtually the same and its effects on the body are similar)

The storyline was always consistent up until biohazard 4. It was mostly handled by the same people (Sugimura, FLAGSHIP).

And believe it or not, there is nothing wrong with the Wesker Project. It contradicts nothing, though it doesn't really add much either except making the connection between Wesker and Spencer deeper. Wesker's revival itself was also not really a contradiction, as Shinji Mikami deliberately left his "death" open. FLAGSHIP brought him back shortly after (maybe before...) the release of Biohazard 2.

I did not know that...
I was always thinking that the Progenitor virus storyline was going to take a different direction during the days of Zero and early BH4 development.

I guess it was just plain wishful thinking that made me believe that the scrapped storylines for RE4 must have been better than what we got, but they really might have been just as bad as the final story was (in my opinion). You can't make everyone happy, that's what pretty much all sequels to videogames prove when they introduce something new that is not in the original game. There are always people who like the new additions, and those who hate them...

You are a trustful source when it comes to Resident Evil canon, I apologize for any misinformation I've spread and thank you for this quite interesting piece of info you provided!

Well, I still don't like the direction the story has taken, but knowing that the Progenitor virus backgrounds were planned the way they are depicted in RE5 ever since the virus was introduced in Zero makes me feel a little better. At least I can stop blaming Resident Evil 4 (which I liked as a game of its own, but disliked as an RE title) for my unhappiness with the storyline now!

Edit:
As for Wesker's revival and the Wesker Project, I didn't think that they "broke" with the canon, I know that they fit seamlessly into the storyline started by the previous RE titles. I just did not like that the developers brought these aspects into storyline, to me Wesker should have stayed death, that's all...
But like I said, this is of course just my own opinion on this subject and I am not trying to make anyone else think the same, I really just wanted to express my reasons for loosing interest in the series.

[News Bot]

You can still blame BH4 for the direction the series went, though to be honest, I don't think many people would have liked the direction of any of the other versions of the game either. They were scrapped for reasons, like BH 1.5. I personally hated how Mikami (who wrote the summation of nothing for the series thus far) decided to completely drop a long-standing plot in favour of something only barely related (it had to be saved by Murata with Separate Ways to make it even remotely interesting) and provided no answers to any questions which the series had. That was a big mistake, I think. On the bright side, they haven't done a bad job since. Just not everyone will be happy with the direction the series has taken since it's no longer in the hands of the people who started it and kept it going from 1996 to, say, 2003?

[DarkMemories]

RE4 was the best direction they could have gone with the series plot-wise at that time. By completely ignoring the old games outside of name-dropping, it was fresh and new and didn't reek of "we're going to stop Umbrella!....some other time" like Code Veronica did (as well as RE3 and RE2 to an extent). And by Krauser's "slip-up" we knew that the Umbrella plot hadn't been completely abandoned, so it gave you something to expect on that in the future.

The only people who were pissed off were the people who fully expected to storm Umbrella's headquarters in some big moment of glory. It just wasn't going to happen and I knew that going in, so I had no qualms with RE4's lack of connection to the main plot.

[Spera01]

I also went though a phase where my interest for the series seemed like it just went down the drain. With the announcements of Mercenaries and Revelations, and after RE5, I felt like I was barely hanging on to what was left of RE.

My life has also just been hectic lately; been trying to deal with college stuff/working, and not having much time for anything else... Still didn't stop me from checking this site every day for news however.

My interest seems to be slowly coming back, here and there. With the recent announcement of Raccoon City, it may determine my fate with the series. I planned on picking up Mercs and possibly Revelations regardless since I plan on getting a 3ds down the road, and I do love my mercs, but still, its not the old RE..

I feel like in terms of survival horror, Dead Space is my new RE, but even then, the series doesn't really scare me much. However, the lore and back story it has seems to catch my attention, a lot like RE used to.

[Barringer]

Eh, I've got Dead Space 1 and 2, and beat the first 1, but it's not nearly as good as RE1 was when I first played it.

I suppose I'm just nostalgic for the survival horror set in an American midwestern town. I really liked the Raccoon City and Arklay mountains setting, and enjoyed exploring it in 0-3 and the Outbreak games.

Perhaps it's the out of the ordinary environments of Code Veronica, 4, and 5 that turn me off to them as much as anything else.

[Grem]

Wesker's revival itself was also not really a contradiction, as Shinji Mikami deliberately left his "death" open.

How do we know that?
Are you talking about the old 1.5 interview where Mikami said it was unclear if Wesker was dead or not?

[News Bot]

How do we know that?
Are you talking about the old 1.5 interview where Mikami said it was unclear if Wesker was dead or not?

Yes.

[aris13]

^Whoa whoa, so Wesker's return has been planned since RE2? Didn't know about that.

[Carnivol]

To be honest, going by interviews about Resident Evil 1's development... I don't even think anyone (internally) had any clue what was what and who was what by its release. That game's story was a living entity of its own until they finally sealed it off and put a price tag on it.

[News Bot]

^Whoa whoa, so Wesker's return has been planned since RE2? Didn't know about that.

Give or take a few months. The scenario for CODE: Veronica was written before this concept art, too. So he was around for quite a while.