Resident Evil

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

Resident Evil is a series of zombie-focused Survival Horror games (the first big-name franchise of that type, and the first to make the genre at all "mainstream") produced by Capcom from the mid-1990s on. Its longtime rival is Silent Hill and it spawned a short-lived (three games) rival/spin-off, Dino Crisis, which was basically "Resident Evil on an island with timetraveling dinosaurs instead of bio-engineered zombies!"

As might be guessed, the basic plotline of Resident Evil is simple: the pharmaceutical megacorporation Umbrella has its fingers in some very sticky pies, namely secret divisions working on genetically tailoring viruses and mutant monsters to make illicit millions in the bio-weaponry underground. Naturally, these things keep getting out of their control, and a bunch of innocent schmucks need to try and survive in the resultant monster-filled hellholes. Add in lots of creepy background lore, apocalyptic logs, bizarre traps and puzzles, and enjoy yourself some fun.

Though a video game series, Resident Evil is a perfect source of inspiration and ideas for a DM of D20 Modern, especially if the game being run is at all focused on horror or intrigue. Indeed, Resident Evil 1 has been likened to a horror-themed dungeon crawl in a modern environment. Naturally, the game series would mesh perfectly with All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but since there's no official writeups, that requires a lot of ZM setup.

Resident Evil 1

The first game of the series, probably best remembered for its incredibly narmy dialogue and voice acting - what a lot of people don't know is it was actually created in English. An elite force of police officers, known as the Special Tactics And Rescue Squad (S.T.A.R.S for short - see! Clever!) are sent into the Arklay Mountains in response to gruesomely violent attacks on hikers and campers in the area. Bravo Team goes first, then vanishes. Several hours later, Alpha Team goes to investigate. They are attacked by a pack of diseased, decaying, bloodthirsty dobermans, and their chickenshit pilot promptly flies off in terror. The survivors flee for a mysterious mansion, only to find it crawling with zombies and other engineered freaks. As either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, you need to explore the mansion and find a way to safely escape. And thus a series was born...

The original English version of this game is also famous for its hilariously bad voice acting, to the point where some people were disappointed with it getting fixed in the remake.

Resident Evil REMake

Also called RE0 and in terms of story, is the canonical one over RE1. In the early 2000s, Capcom signed a deal with Nintendo, and brought Resident Evil to the Nintendo Gamecube. One of their first efforts was this game, a remade version of the original game with a new horrible beastie, more horror in general, and a dramatically less narmful script. REmake was done to allow the mansion incident to be canon with later installments, as Shinji Mikami did not really factor in the T-virus or most of the later RE themes in the game's plot.

They then later decided to re-re-release it for the PC and PS4.

Resident Evil 2

After the disaster of RE1, Umbrella inadvertently caused the biggest biohazard disaster in history when they tried to violently take a prototype super-virus, the G-virus, from one of their top researchers named William Birkin in his lab under Raccoon City, who was intending to sell his research off to the US government. A commando team from Umberlla's paramilitary forces attempted to steal it from William, but things went not as planned, William was accidentally maimed, and he injected himself with a G-virus sample out of spite, mutating him into a powerful bioweapon (which mutates even further as time passes, each form more and more horrid than the last). In his rage, he hunted down the commando team in the city sewers and slew all but one of them. In the ensuring struggle; virus containers broke, was spread by rats, and this eventually caused the T-virus outbreak to develop a few days later.

Into the chaos comes Claire Redfield, younger sister of Chris Redfield above. Sherry Birkin, the daughter of William Birkin. Leon S. Kennedy, a rookie cop on his first day in the force. Lastly Ada Wong, a mysterious woman working as a spy for a rival organization.

These four must now forge alliances and find a way to get out of the city. Opposing them are the various legions of undead and mutated creatures, most of whom evolve to be deadlier as time passes. William Birkin, who is now too fargone and has devolved into a strong but cunning Bio-organic weapon. And Mr.X, a humanoid bio-weapon (called a T-103 "Tyrant") deployed by Umbrella to tie up loose ends in the RPD.

The Tyrant is particularly unique in that he doesn't look like an abomination against nature. Instead he's a tall, trenchcoat-clad giant of a man that silently lumbers towards you, akin to something like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers, only with more violent punching. He's also a total trooper as after getting downed; he'll dust himself off and continue his chase towards you at a later time, also imitating the two horror stated icons previously. That is until you dunk him into a smelting pot, where he stops being cool as a cucumber and simply decides to tear you apart with extreme prejudice.

An official remake was announced in late 2015 and is slated for release on December 2018.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Set a few days before the events RE2, this story charts Jill Valentine's attempts to survive and escape the zombie-infested hellhole of infected Raccoon City. Umbrella realizes that this entire incident basically proves the S.T.A.R.S team's claims against them after they escaped the mansion incident, and so sends in one of their newest bio-engineered weapons against the team's survivors: The Nemesis T-Type, an even angrier and scarier T-103 Tyrant whose ability to tank any firepower reminds many of the Plague Marines. Additionally unlike the T-103, he isn't a silent giant, he'll roar his arrival and relentlessly chase you down to beat you into a bloody pulp like a punchy, muscular, and more relentless version of Leatherface, minus the chainsaw as he's also equipped with a rocket launcher.

Aiding her in this ordeal is Carlos Olivera, one of the many Umbrella mercenaries contracted to assist evacuation of the city, but he and his unit were overwhelmed and largely decimated. Now, the two of them search for a way out of the city before it's too late, while also evading the Nemesis' tireless pursuit with either brutal cunning or cunning brutality.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica

Claire gets herself caught by Umbrella and ends up on a private prison island run by the incredibly psychotic Ashford family. When a zombie outbreak occurs, she can escape, but then has to escape from the zombies.

Oh and Albert Wesker, the bad guy the team in the original who seemed unimportant in the long term, comes back and gave himself superpowers. Not everything goes according to his plan since he ended up picking a fight a mutant even stronger than he is, with no gun, so he gets Chris to kill her and escapes with a sample of the game's Veronica Virus from an easier target.

Resident Evil 4

Leon Kennedy, now a governmental agent, is sent to a backwater European country that totally isn't Spain to rescue the kidnapped president's daughter.

Probably the least involved with the malarkey of Umbrella, as that corporation has finally crumbled, so we finally get some progress in the form of a psychotic cult that worships parasites, led by an angry bald dude, Napoleon, and a creepy old man. All three of them become tentacle monsters. Predictably, this isn't taken seriously in the slightest.

Resident Evil: Revelations

Chris and Jill end up stranded on ships that have been overrun by a new breed of zombie, and a terrorist cell threatening to infect the entire oceans with their new virus called the T-Abyss virus. Except that the terrorist treat isn't real and it ends up with more plot twists that kind of make sense, and are also kind of dumb.

The most remarkable thing about this game is a spelling error on the box for the Nintendo 3DS version of the game. Otherwise it literally has no bearing on the plot of later games.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2

Unlike previous games, this plays in two scenarios: one for Claire and one for Barry Burton, a former STARS member.

Claire Redfield and Moira Burton, Barry's daughter, are kidnapped by a mysterious figure, thrown into not-Russia, and infected with the T-Phobos virus, a virus that only triggers with fear. The mysterious figure is later revealed to be Alex Wesker, a survivor of the Wesker children. Claire and Moira must now venture through not-Russia to find a way out.

Barry comes in a few months later after learning of the island and the two's plot to investigate and rescue his daughter. He's aided by Natalia, a young girl who has somehow survived the craziness of the island.

This game is notable for going back to the genre's survival-horror roots and foreboding dark atmosphere. Also comes in with several plot-holes, like how Claire or Moira are dealing with the fact that they might have been rescued, but still suffering from T-Phobos infection. But that isn't an issue since Revelations games do not make any impact to the overall plot of the series.

Resident Evil 5

Chris finally puts a stop to the big bad of the series, Albert Wesker, as he attempts to infect the entire world.

Probably the start of the downfall of the franchise, as it shifts from any amount of survival horror (Even 4 had that one segment as the President's daughter to fill it out), as well as being marred by an undercurrent of racism (But what did you expect from fighting a bunch of black people throwing spears in Africa? zombies in previous games were either Americans or Europeans, having Africans as zombies doesn't make the game racist, plus the Big Bad is white) and an even less helpful partner (among other controversial changes to the game system). The only factor that people can salvage from it is that zombies can be punched in martial arts combo moves, and the big bad has a very sexy voice along the likes of DC Eliphas.

Resident Evil 6

A highly controversial addition to the series, as it jumps from too many different perspectives to make any sense. The plots are as follows:

• Leon and a girl supposedly tied to the outbreaks have to hunt down a long-time wildcard Ada Wong.
• Chris and his military dudebro have to go do tacticool dudebro stuff. Chris is also a major asshole.
• Sherry Birkin (whose dad is responsible for the RE2 outbreak) grabs Jake, a new guy who's supposedly Wesker's son, whose blood might be the cure for the zombie fuckups. She has to deliver him to the UN for cash and salvation.
• Ada, who's playing sides while doing mysterious stuff.

Resident Evil 7

The most recent addition to the game line, RE7, subtitled "Biohazard", was released in January of 2017. Breaking from the traditions of previous games, it features a complete newcomer to the series; Ethan Winters, a man whose wife Mia was presumably lost at sea on a boating trip 3 years ago. When he receives an email claiming to be from her and telling him to come and get her off of some farm belonging to a family called the Bakers in the backwoods of Louisiana, he immediately rushes off to her rescue. And that's when things go wrong... see, the Bakers, they're like Mia's family. And they're just dying to welcome somebody new to the clan...

RE7 was the most controversial newcomer, as whilst it promised a hard return to the survival horror in contrast to the more action-horror b-movie feel of the previous numbered games, it did so whilst stating the game would be in a first-person perspective. This had been used before (in fact, it was originally considered for the first Resident Evil, but the Playstation's graphics just couldn't hack it), but only on the Gun Survivor spin-offs.

However, when it came out, it swiftly won fans over with a genuinely dank, creepy mansion to explore, and horrific new foes to fight. The only real complaints was that its blend of combat and stealth made it feel a little like Alien: Isolation and the lack of variety in enemies to fight. Most people don't care, considering it a throwback to all that was good about the 1st game, helped by an awesomely catchy theme song and incredibly quotable enemies who manage to hit that right niche between hilariously narmy and downright fucking spooky.

Seriously, one of your boss-fights involves grabbing a chainsaw and duking it out with a laughing, mutated psycho cannibal hillbilly wielding chainsaw-shears. Who earlier may have hacked off your leg with a common garden shovel for giggles. Batshit insane does not do this game justice.

Following in the footsteps of Silent Hill, RE7 made use of a playable teaser called the Beginning Hour. Unlike Silent Hills, RE7 actually came to fruition, because Capcom isn't quite as fucked up as Konami.

Resident Evil: Outbreak

A short-lived MMO game, in which you play as a bunch of civilians trying to survive the initial outbreak of Raccoon City.

Movies

Yeah, there are movies.

The first was a set of live-action films, but like pretty much all attempts at a live-action adaptation of a videogame, they fucking sucked like all shit. These are the atrocities that unleashed Alice upon the world, and for that they shall never be forgiven.

Mercifully, Capcom got off their asses and have given us some real Resident Evil movies; three so far, they are all fully animated CGI affairs that are actually set in the actual universe of Resident Evil and use regular characters.

Degeneration, the first film, brings back fan-favorite characters Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy. Set between Code Veronica and 4, it involves their efforts to stop an attempt by a madman to unleash the deadly G-virus and T-virus upon America.

Damnation is a post-4 Leon fest involving Leon fighting ganados and lickers in some made-up Eastern European country.

Vendetta is a London has fallen ripoff about Chris and Leon fighting a weapons dealer who got his hands on some Umbrella leftovers. Notable for some impressive John Wick-style gun battles and for finally bringing back Rebecca Chambers.

4D-Executer is the very early CGI movie in the Resident Evil franchise and most disturbing one to boot. The plot of this 45 minute-long movie is centered around a group of mercenaries coming to Raccoon City, before being wiped out, in order to escort a mrs. scientist and her data on a new viral form. Everything goes south when they are attacked by a unknown B.O.W., defeat it, only to realize that the darn monstrosity has a truly scary ability...not to mention the plot twist will horrify you.

/tg/ Stuff

You can find material for running RE games under All Flesh Must Be Eaten here: http://thegraveyard.xtreemhost.com/resievilselect.html?ckattempt=1

This loser here has a half-completed attempt at creating a splatbook for running RE games under the 2nd edition New World of Darkness rules, in the form of Resident Evil: Chronicles of Darkness.