Resident Evil 4 has never felt so influential

In 1996, the original resident evil arrived on PlayStation – tank controls, fixed camera angles, campy one-liners and all. It was a stark rejection of game design modes, emphasizing action and platforming in favor of puzzles, scarcity and jump scares. While it wasn’t the first to do so (it had several ancestors), it was certainly the most popular. But even then it was clear that the developers at Capcom were toying with ideas too ambitious for the hardware of the time to express. They refined their survival-horror philosophy over the next nine years, updating a control scheme here, softening a jagged pixel there, until 2005, when they came out Resident Evil 4 on the Nintendo GameCube. And last week, Capcom opened a window back to that moment when the series and video games as a whole changed irrevocably.

I imagine the prospect of remaking Resident Evil 4 gave Capcom a break. Unlike the first three numbered games in the series, which before their remakes featured clunky control schemes and many counter-intuitive puzzles (which range from phenomenal to aggressively fine), Resident Evil 4 didn’t need an update. It’s available on most modern platforms, it handles better than many new releases, and aside from an uneven third act, the pacing is impeccable. The fact that the remake managed to improve many aspects that did not really need to be improved is the crowning glory. (That third act is still weak, though.)

Reading through Capcom’s reinterpretation today, it’s easy to take the fluid gameplay loop for granted: exploration, scavenging, crafting, item management, and third-person combat all flow gracefully into each other over the course of the game, which encourages some backtracking, but it’s largely a linear adventure through semi-open areas and sandboxes. In 2005, this structure flew in the face of previous Resident Evils, which mainly took place in Metroidvania-esque confined environments – a mansion, a police station, or the back alleys of a Midwestern town.

That gameplay loop is at the heart of it Resident Evil 4the pristine pace. When you’re not battling hordes of zombie-like enemies in blood-curdling brawls, you’re scouring areas for crucial items. You can then encounter a puzzle, or a jump scare, or a miniboss, or join in a few minutes of meditative inventory management, before continuing. The moments between fights are calm enough to help you catch your breath, but engaged enough to keep you in that ever-elusive flow state.

Good pace, the old saying goes, is at its best when you don’t notice it. But as with most design touchstones, people slowly started to take notice Resident Evil 4the right pace. Bill Gardner noticed it when he worked as the lead-level designer BioShock. Cliff Bleszinski then drew on it Making Gears of War. Cory Barlog studied it while directing God of War’s massive overhaul in 2018.

Image: Motive Studio/Electronic Arts via Polygon

The intricacies of the game had not escaped the developers of EA Redwood Shores either. In 2005, they were in the ideation stage for a potential System shock 3but played Capcom’s survival horror game and decided to “Resident Evil 4 in space.” Their version would lean towards sci-fi horror, taking tone cues Alien, event HorizonAnd Sunshine. It would feature an average engineer whose primary combat skills depended on his skill with welding tools. It would focus on scavenging, crafting, light puzzle solving and close quarters combat with zombie-like enemies, and 15 years after its initial release, it would get its own remake, just two months before that of Resident Evil 4.

Empty spacewith his tight over-the-shoulder perspective and obsession with laser sights, maybe Resident Evil 4the most obvious student. Renamed Visceral Games, the creators even included Capcom in its sequels: dead space 2 And 3like it Resident Evil 5 And 6, indicated a gradual evolution from survival horror to survival action. Creeping fear gave way to intense adrenaline rushes. The Dead Space Sequels worked (Resident Evil’s didn’t, ushering in yet another franchise reinvention Resident Evil 7: Biohazard), but by time dead space 3 was released, it was a veneer-only third-person shooter of horror and gore.

Just a few months after the Dead Space trilogy ended, developer Naughty Dog came out The last of usyet another third-person survival horror game that owes its existence to Resident Evil 4. With its flow from environmental puzzles to cleanup to inventory management to intense close quarters combat, much of which is spent traveling with a younger, more vulnerable companion, it’s not hard to call it Resident Evil 4 reimagined as a road trip by Cormac McCarthyan. Clearly, game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann were drinking from the same well as the Visceral Games designers.

Image: Naughty Dog/Sony Interactive Entertainment

In yet another momentary coincidence (or perhaps as a result of whatever attunement in the collective subconscious gave us Empty space And Resident Evil 4 remakes within two months of each other) The last of us re-emerged in the Zeitgeist in January with its long-awaited HBO adaptation. In many ways a one-to-one retelling of the 2013 video game’s story (save for several location changes and one episode’s backstory for a previously minor character), The last of us follows Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) west across America, a pseudo father/daughter relationship that builds over a Picaresque series of depressing encounters.

When returning to The last of us part 1, Resident Evil 4And Empty space in such rapid succession in 2023, I’m struck with a newfound appreciation for their particular brand of survival horror. The Resident Evil 4 remake, like so many games in recent years, hints that the creators have gathered at the altar of The sopranoswith narrative adaptations to the story by Leon S. Kennedy, Luis Sera, and Ada Wong that highlight the question of whether humans can ever Real change. It’s an idea that has been heavily explored in Empty space, The last of us, God of warand the sequel, Ragnarokat.

Why? Because it works: The structure of these games invites and emphasizes occasional, revealing dialogue, often between a janitor and their department, during long sections of meticulous tidying or environmental puzzles. The sudden moments of fear are all the more powerful for the contemplative, almost meditative sequences that act as bookends.

Image: Capcom

For all his good qualities, The last of us on HBO, the landing doesn’t stick nearly as well as the video game source material, notably because we didn’t spend hours at a time observing these characters during the in-between moments – the ones the showrunners, understandably, perhaps, left lying on the cutting room floor. The end of the adaptation is a clear reminder that video games can work wonders in those moments.

Resident Evil’s story is one of constant reinvention, as if, like the infected humans who populate its narrow corridors, the series is always mutating under its skin, eager to become something completely different. Resident Evil 4 did just that in 2005. And though Capcom slaughtered the formula Resident Evil 5 And 6other studios ran with it: Visceral Games, Naughty Dog, and even Sony Santa Monica wanted some of the lightning off Resident Evil 4.

That the 2005 game has returned with a shiny new shine shortly after Empty space And The last of us reappearing is more than a little bit surreal. In his review of the remake, and considering both the success and dwindling returns of Capcom’s recent first-person Resident Evil entries, Michael McWhertor wondered, “Where do they go from here?” When playing Resident Evil 4 again, and as I see the products of his influence back in the spotlight in 2023, I’m struck by the same question. But I also wonder: Who will Resident Evil influence next?