Some cool 1.5 exclusive screenshots (**As seen on TV!**)

[Carnivol]

One thing I can't understand however is how 1.5 is too similar to the orginal Biohazard. So much had changed from Biohazard to the prototype, such as the way someone saves, the way someone picks up an item, the amount of enemies one encounters, the abilities the enemies have, the weapons a person can use, the upgrades a person can acquire, and so forth. If anything Capcom made RE2 more like the original by reintroducing type writers, scaling back on the enemy AI, making things a little easier to manage, reducing the amount of upgrades and unique items a person can use (grenades, etc). The only thing that was truely unique about RE2 was the alternate scenario system, having each character on a separate disc and having multiple scenarios for both, that was the one big change that separated them and every single one of those things could have worked with 1.5's design, absolutely.

I wrote a little piece on this sometime ago.

1. Graphics. Graphics in 1.5 aren't really a step up from 1. More like a side-step and one foot being put back. They're not an evolution. They're just "same level" (and in some cases also a step back, with most of the rooms of the RPD being empty concrete and personality lacking concrete corridors, while the Mansion had character. Mansion sported vintage furniture, art, tapestries and interesting architecture.)

2. Similarities to the original. Yes. The game pumped out a gazillion more zombies at a time, but the gameplay and functionality itself was still RE1 at its core and ... well ... it's really not fit for many enemies. More does not equal better, as some fans seem to firmly believe RE4-6+ORC are evidence of.

3. The little things. Yeah. Save computers vs type writers, first aid medicine vs herbs, etc.. These aren't differences, these are unnecessary changes. They serve the same purpose and were parts of what gave the original game its memorable style. Changing them for the sake of changing them is silly. How do you continue from that? Code: Veronica using VMUs and changing it to anachronistic MagicGate compliant cards in the PS2 port? RE6 using dropbox?

4. The setting and references. RE1's mansion was, as said before, pretty iconic. Haunted house. RE1.5's RPD wasn't exactly iconic, unless you were trying to ape 80s action flicks in the form of Robocop and Terminator or something ... which were both better referenced in the form of Mr. X and NEMESIS in RE2-3. Bringing back the haunted mansion-esque touch to RE2 was a good idea. The lobby area in the RE2 RPD is quite possibly one of the greatest sequel moments out there. The moment you walked in there and you basically realized the game had let you play an interactive spin on the dog chase from RE1's intro ... it was an "Oh fuck ..." moment. (Remember the first time you saw T2 and T-1000 and Arnold finally clashed, revealing who was actually the good guy and who was not? That's the type of "Of fuck" this was - when you were there.)

5. The puzzles. The whole puzzle thing in a modern day setting is just silly. You hear talks of the shooting range supposedly being a "good place" for a puzzle ... What kind of puzzle? The game doesn't have unlimited ammo and why the heck would anyone ADD something like that to their shooting range? (And what on earth would that something be anyway and what perfectly logical explenation would that carry?) Yes. Fuzes and more keys and light switches ... boooooooring.

6. The left overs. We see talks of grenades, C4, armors, and whatever, but we've seen none of it in action. Why? Well ... never finished. The nr.1 reason why games often don't get announced/planned features is because they simply can't find a perfectly good reason for implementing them or a proper execution. Sure, RE games give you grenade launchers, but they are always pretty low profile riot control-ish gimped stuff it seems. You also get the end-game "kill the final boss" rocket launchers. But grenades? First of all, who the heck stocks up on grenades? ('Merica!) They're a silly indoor weapon. Especially in closed/sealed off areas. RE4 was "fortunately" outdoor and croud control based; so they managed to cram in grenades without it being as stupid. Armors? Armors for what? Main cause of death amongst "non-retard" characters in zombie media is fatigue. Combat armor does not combine well with that. Zombies always chew your legs or neck it seems, so what good would a bullet proof west do? RE5 and out put it to better use when piercing weapons and such became a threat. C4? What? Pretty moronic as a combat weapon, possibly a story item to deal with something. Remove a blockade or seal an area.


Anyway, at the end of the day, 1.5 and 2 really appears to be hilariously more similar to one another than people want to admit. I still generally feel that RE2 is basically just the REmake treatment of 1.5.

Arguments can be made for and against a lot of stuff in the franchise, but 1.5 getting put back on the drawing table was more than justified and it was most likely the right thing to do. It needed to be changed one way or another and Capcom would have never released the game the way it was going. Just as they kept bringing RE4 back to the drawing table for a gazillion redesigns.

[shanemurphy]

The RPD having a history as a museum added much more character then that boring 1.5 station. Without those crazy designs in the final RPD the game would have been to boring with very little character.

[yurieu]

i think retail RPD is fine, it has all the rooms we expect for a police station, if there is a room lacking, maybe its just in some other building along the city.

1.5 cant be better than 2. those poor mechanics and poor variation of zombie's moans could not make RE2 so epic.

It probably would've ended with some dignity.

about dignity, the only dignity here is the one stolen from players. they use the fan love for Resident evil, and release crap after crap, and players buy it.

[Deus Flux]

Sorry Carnivol, shanemurphy & yurieu but I disagree with what you've said. I agree with everything Geluda has said, however.

The RE2 mansion is bland, boring and flat-out fugly colors, uncreative/repetitive. I've already played the game in a much better and interesting mansion - the original RE1. Why would I want to play a less interesting take on it? What I think with the released RE2: 1.5 was very different so Capcom got cold feet and wanted a 'sure thing' to make money.. so they went back and rehashed what was successful before it - the original game. This happens all the time, especially with movies.

1.5 RPD: Does it's own thing; has its own identity and doesn't live in the shadow of the original. It's creative, moody, cold.. and has a macabre yet beautiful quality.

Retail RE2 - 'That' RE1 clone with generic zombies and environments.
1.5 - Unique and refreshing; the real RE2. Even unfinished, it's still the more appealing of the two. Even just looking at the screen shots and watching the videos available of 1.5 are a better gameplay experience to me than actually playing the retail RE2. I go to RE1 or REmake for that experience.

[Sly]

All these elements were also lost and whether they were good or bad is down to personal interpretation, rewriting the script based on the same locations doesn't require the sacrifice of these elements and could have easilly worked with them intact.

I think a rewritten script could have easilly worked with small modifications to the RPD design much like they did with the labs, as opposed to binning absolutely everything and starting over from scratch.

Irons going from a good guy to a bad guy was quite a big change, in fact. The "art museum" treatment of the RPD was made, partly, to reflect Irons' twisted tastes and mind. Irons without his secret dungeon, disgusting art pieces and taxidermy hobby, would not be as creepy.

[shanemurphy]

Sly nailed it on the head.

[Darkness]

if you have to remake half the game's backgrounds for one character...maybe irons should have stayed a good guy.

You need to check out some images of SH1 buried on the US Demo disc, there is even a picture of some japanese girls showing some tits...

pics, or it didnt happen lul

[shanemurphy]

But that character determined the look and atmosphere of the biggest location in the game, so it's not just Irons background.

[RetroRain]

3. The little things. Yeah. Save computers vs type writers, first aid medicine vs herbs, etc.. These aren't differences, these are unnecessary changes. They serve the same purpose and were parts of what gave the original game its memorable style. Changing them for the sake of changing them is silly. How do you continue from that? Code: Veronica using VMUs and changing it to anachronistic MagicGate compliant cards in the PS2 port? RE6 using dropbox?

I have to disagree with you there.

They weren't unnecessary changes. In the first game, the type writers made sense because you were in a luxury setting like the mansion and the other areas that were attached to it. The green herbs made sense too because they were clearly growing them around there.

But for 1.5, where you are all around the city, computers made more sense. Medicine made more sense instead of Green Herbs. You used the Green Herbs in the first game as a substitue for medicine, because you didn't have medicine, you relied on your special S.T.A.R.S. survival training to use the Green Herbs as medicine. In 1.5, the sequel, you are around the city, lots of varied places, so it made sense that you would bound to find pharmaceutical medicine lying around. So it made more sense to have medicine that was already made.

Yes, these are "little" things, but I liked them because they were "realistic" things. The best part of RE1 is that it felt like you were playing a movie. They showed you the movies, the blood type of the characters on the FMV, and it just felt very realistic. 1.5 felt very realistic because of it's modern setting. And with it's modern setting, it had great lighting and atmosphere, which honestly is absent from the retail version. There is no atmosphere at all in RE2. It's just very detailed and polished backgrounds.

The quality of RE2 is great, but the atmosphere and realism are completely absent. That is what made me so interested in 1.5 to begin with. The realism, and the atmosphere looked so great.

And they say it like it is a bad thing, that 1.5 played too much like RE1, which is so fucking stupid, since RE1 was a hit game. That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing. You don't have to like how the zombies moved like they did in RE1. I happen to like the way they moved. They seemed more creepy that way to me. It's much better than in RE2, you shoot a zombie, and three shots is enough to push the zombie back and fall to the ground. The zombies are pushovers in retail RE2, which made the game too fucking easy. Why you'd want to play the game on Easy mode is beyond me. They needed to add a hard mode.

[Carnivol]

And they say it like it is a bad thing, that 1.5 played too much like RE1, which is so fucking stupid, since RE1 was a hit game. That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.

Try applying that approach to a sequel to a hit game and you'll see a million fans moan about how the sequel's just a reskin of the original, without anything new to offer and so forth. Like how people moan about every form of shooter ;D

In the creative process, this is clearly why stuff like Mr. X gets thrown in, the lickers (enemies with special/abnormal properties), A/B scenario structure, more "uncontrolled" Birkin mutations, etc. - whilst at the same time preserving the parts of the original that made it "iconic" and making better ties to the original for future planning - ie. Haunted House, but which sadly blew up ... so ... new Haunted House, family ties, some corruption, inner conflicts, etc..)

[Rick Hunter]

@RetroRain:

Man I wanted to quote the same thing and post the same reply.

BH1 was in a house located in a forest, thus the typewriters and the herbs. 1.5 being in a modern settings, it was natural that we'd use computers and "lotions". It's part of the little things that made BH2 different from the first one, while still being similar in the core gameplay. They didn't want to reuse the same things, they did their best to propose a different experience, really.

And the final version of BH2 backtracks on that, and goes back to an old fashioned setting with typewriters and herbs that don't make sense. 1.5 got it right, I don't know why they scrapped those good ideas with BH2 and transformed in into a less innovative sequel.

[Deus Flux]

1.5 being in a modern settings, it was natural that we'd use computers and "lotions".

I think I understand why Capcom really scrapped this game now -- 1.5 got hosed because it didn't rub its lotion on its skin!

[Darkness]

A police station in a big populated town wouldnt have typewriters, nor green plants laying around on the ground in a pot everywhere.

[Carnivol]

For the realism mumbo-jumbo;
-We still don't know where you actually save in 1.5 (in fact, we've never even seen a save screen nor a save point), all we know is that you apparently would use PS1 memory cards instead of ink ribbons and assuming saving worked like in RE1 ... they'd be strangely expendable with limited usage ... worst memory cards ever.
-RE1 Mansion has typewriters, but so does the laboratories beneath it too ... thus a massive science fiction laboratory manufacturing bio-organic weapons can have TypeWriters, but it's completely unthinkable that a police station still has them in what's arguable still a transition period for adoption digital medium? (Also; Raccoon City is NOT a large city, its population was barely above that of a village.)
-The aloe vera-esque properties of (green) herbs is pretty basic and common knowledge to people. Don't even need to've been part of the boyscouts to know that sort of shit. (Of course, the green herbs aren't aloe vera plants, but the general idea is the same.) After their also proven usage and handyness during the Mansion Incident, surely those involved in the Mansion Incident (S.T.A.R.S.) would've ensured that seemingly "off the shelf" herbal medicine were readily available for everyone. Kinda easy to leave a pot plant behind somewhere, compared to stocking up on the world's "unlabeled medicine" supplies and scatter that all over the place; hoping for people to know how to properly apply it.
-The concept of "Medicine Bottles" is confusing and I'm fairly certain Leon and Elza aren't exactly a couple doctors when it comes to dosage and mixing. The mixing of herbs is a much more "safe" and "make shift" solution to the problem and also comes with a simpler thought process in terms of mixing (either you just experiment with the colors or you find a manual.)
-When proper "medicine" was finally introduced in a retail game in the franchise, it was all handled by people who'd specialized in that field.
-It's a video game. Certain things are certain ways because "Video games."

[Guest]

I've read in more then one place that you used computers to save.