CAPCOM’s biggest release of 2018, Resident Evil 2, was a hit with critics and fans, myself included. The game is a remake of the original but not in a traditional “remake” sense. With the exception of the Orphanage level and a few extra scenes (or scene rewrites), the overall plot was the same along with the stories of the game’s two main heroes Claire and Leon.
The major changes to RE2 obviously were the graphics and art making it more detailed to a real-world scenario, and the adoption of the third-person over-the-shoulder view for players, the first time this was seen in the “Resident Evil” game series was the 4th installment of the game, Resident Evil 4.
There’s been some rumbling around the internet from fans wanting to see the RE2 remake magic happen again but with Resident Evil 4. The 2005 game took players out of Raccoon City and to a fictional location in Spain (where the locals spoke in the Mexican dialect of the Spanish language) as Leon who’s now in the Secret Service and not fighting zombies.
As cool as the idea sounds… I think it’s a bad idea. Before you curse me and fight in the comments hear me out! One reason I feel this game should be left alone, it was given the title (at the time of its release) of one of the greatest video games of all time. I know, I know the original RE2 was in the same category too but if you ever played it, you would agree that the remake was much needed as the original was way too cartoonish given the subject manner.
The second reason, this game birthed the unique perspective of seeing over the character’s shoulders almost giving the first-person feel while staying in third-person and if I’m not mistaken this game was the first to do it revolutionizing the genre of third-person shooters even within the “Resident Evil” franchise itself with RE6 and both “Resident Evil: Revelations” games.
Finally, my last argument is, they kind of already did a remake of it in 2014 with the Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition where they improved the original graphics A LOT and updated some of the controls and overall performance. My final verdict is that RE4 has already set the bar high, if we try to set it any higher we’re going to fall hard if it doesn’t meet our expectations.
Not all’s lost; there are two more “Resident Evil” games that can be remade (and deserve it too!), Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil: Code Veronica. In Nemesis the story takes place around the middle/end of the events of RE2 where you play as Jill from the first RE game as she’s being stalked by Nemesis, a hulking creature, known as a Tyrant in the series, whose mission is to kill all members of S.T.A.R.S. that are still in Raccoon City.
Code Veronica follows Claire who was captured by Umbrella and is on a prison island where, you guessed it, a zombie outbreak occurs. Both games are legendary in the series but both still have that “cartoonish” look to them and some “meh” story moments that go against the gritty grain of the “Resident Evil” lore.
Will we see a remake of these games? Who knows? We can’t ignore that CAPCOM really changed the series with the first-person masterpiece Resident Evil 7: Biohazard leaving us in a cliffhanger in which we don’t know which direction the series is going to go but one thing is for certain…let’s hope there’s plenty of zombies!
