Safety's Off

Resident Evil has always been a critically-acclaimed franchise, and has built up quite a following in its time in the gaming industry. For me, Resident Evil became a part of my gaming career when RE4 was released, and I instantly fell in love with the feel and control scheme of the game. Everything worked just as it should’ve, but with the upcoming release of Resident Evil 5 and my recent playtime with Dead Space, I can’t help but feel that the controls that I was so easily smitten by during the GameCube years have worn out their welcome in the next-generation of gaming. Not only that, but with the fairly recent release of Dead Space, it’s time that Capcom reconsider what makes its series tick.

Let’s start with the control scheme. For starters, RE4 controlled great for its time. It was a game that both revolutionized the survival horror genre and put an adrenaline shot in the Resident Evil franchise. A few years later, and now we’ve got RE5 on our hands, with little to no progress made in the control scheme or the gameplay, as it were. To be perfectly honest, the game is RE4 with a fresh story and beautiful new coat of paint. While this is in no way a bad thing, it begs the question of what the game could be with a Dead Space-esque control scheme and presentation. Dead Space is one of the most fluid and easy to control third-person survival horror games out there, and it still manages to be scary. The most important difference between Dead Space and RE5 is that in Dead Space, you can actually move around while you shoot and reload. RE5 continues the use of the RE4 control scheme, which in today’s gaming generation, feels archaic and tank-like. While the addition of a strafe is nice, the game still feels awkward, not fluid, as it should. Purists will argue that it heightens the tension and the terror of combat, but personally I feel that it just makes the gameplay very frustrating at times, especially in close quarters. With the recent announcement that RE5 would not feature a “run ‘n gun” control scheme, I couldn’t help but sigh sadly. While I don’t think having a Gears of War style control scheme where the player is running through zombies blasting them away is a good idea, I think loosening up the player’s movement would do the Resident Evil series a whole lot of good. A few people have mentioned in the comments section of the news post on Joystiq that having a walk-while-aiming system would work well and give Capcom a chance to flex their horror muscles a little more. The control scheme shouldn’t bring tension, the story, environments, and enemies should do that. When a developer relies on the inherent limitations of its input options to generate scares, something is very, very wrong. Check out this quote from user Ihavepants in response to the Joystiq post:

“So am I to understand that people actually believe that, standing still while shooting=scary?
Why don't the developers actually put some effort into the horror so it doesn't rely on how uncoordinated your character is.”

In retrospect, the control scheme that RE features actually makes the game LESS immersive and LESS engaging because of how ridiculously unrealistic it is. In RE5, this fact is only exacerbated by how insanely muscular and agile Chris Redfield appears to be. That entire mentality is shot once you get a controller in your hands, however.

Now with Dead Space, you have a game that holds almost nothing back in terms of controls. The one control limitation is something that is done purposefully (and implemented correctly) to increase the feeling of vulnerability, and that is the omission of any kind of quick turn maneuver. While normally I would say that this is a flaw, it makes sense in Dead Space’s gameplay. Since the controls are so easy and intuitive, turning around isn’t excessively difficult, and as such doesn’t warrant any kind of quick turn ability. If Resident Evil 5 were to implement a Dead Space-like control scheme, there wouldn’t be any removal of tension, and I’d even argue that the tension would get that much stronger with a control scheme that allowed freedom of motion. How so, you ask? Simply because of the immersion factor. You don’t feel like you’re playing a game so much as you feel like you are Chris Redfield. This, of course, is where RE5 could take another cue from Dead Space.

Dead Space understands the importance of presentation and environment, and it does so with such panache and skill, that it’s almost impossible to overlook. The whole game is delivered in such a great fashion that it makes everything that much more immersive when you pop the disc in the tray. This is one place where RE suffers. The environments (especially in the new Africa setting) just aren’t scary. While the move away from horror into a more action-packed gameplay style isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that there are some things that feel misplaced in Resident Evil’s particular breed. With the poor control scheme comes contrived and extremely linear environments. While Dead Space was about as linear as they come, at least the game embraced this fact and helped you find your way through the complex environments, so as not to frustrate the player and take away from the immersion. This is where RE5 stumbles (or at least in the demo). It’s hard to really fathom just how small the environments are until you play a game like Dead Space and then go back to RE. Think carefully about how big the demo levels are. It’s almost no wonder why they can make the game look so damn good, as there’s barely anything at all to render! You get some zombies, throw in a few houses and breakable barrels, and bingo, you’ve got a Resident Evil level. Things just don’t seem to click as well for this scenario in this gaming generation.

In conclusion, I don’t think that RE5 will be a bad game. On the contrary, I think it will be a fantastic game. The only problem is, I don’t think it will be nearly as good as RE4, simply because of just how incredibly different the times are today. If Capcom widens up the environments and allows more freedom of motion in the next iteration (following RE5, as it is way too late to make any big changes at this point) of the Resident Evil franchise, you can bet that the game will garner a much broader audience and will begin to be taken as a serious action game, as opposed to a somewhat broken one.