Resident Evil 4 has been voted game of the year 2005 twice by GameFaqs reader. That alone earns it the right to a complete analysis. But what is most interesting is how it is presented. On the back of the pack, the word new is used no less than seven times, along with eight comparatives (quicker, deeper, scarier, etc.). I haven’t read a press article about the game that didn’t hail this as a complete revolution. But is it really? If it were, not much could be learned about the game. In my book, Resident Evil 4 (RE4) is rather an intelligent and well-executed evolution, based on both the best parts of older, often underrated Capcom games such as Dino Crisis 2, Resident Evil 3, Onimusha and Devil May Cry, and on answers to recurring problems to which the action/adventure genre is confronted since its inception.

As a result, RE4 is organised around a very strong, consistent proposition. There is no doubt that technically, the game is extremely well done. This is not what makes RE4 a good game. It is technically brilliant because it is a great game, not the other way. Why? Because the vision that drives RE4 is so clear, so are the development priorities. The talent of the artists and coders can then be unleashed.

The purpose of this article is to study how the RE4 concept has emerged, and what are its implications in the game.

What should RE4 be? A reasoned answer to a well-defined problem

Capcom here had a problem. Resident Evil has been a major franchise for the last 10 years, but how long could it last? Attempts to reinvent the game (Resident Evil Gun Survivor, Resident Evil Outbreak) have been disappointing. Meanwhile, Capcom had launched good action/adventure titles, but they lacked the appeal of the Resident Evil brand.

As a result, the franchise was underused. The risk was that it could lose its value if the subsequent games were viewed as mere sequels, and not as landmark titles.

So, everything should be done so that the next main Resident Evil title would be regarded as a great game, without losing touch with the spirit of the series. Every frustration associated with the series, as well as every relevant technical or gameplay advance, should be included in the next game.

Adventure games have undergone major changes since the early 90s, when point-and-click was the king of genres. It was games like the first Resident Evil or Tomb Raider that made it obsolete, and since then, action/adventure titles are much more popular. Although players may not confess to it, the action part of such games has taken precedence over the adventure side. This is because players do not like being stuck, and because action games are usually fairer. As a result, the modern action/adventure game should be action-oriented, with a lighter adventure component, rather than full of obscure riddles with a minimal action side. RE4 should therefore be more action-oriented than its predecessor.

But what kind of action? Should it include a greater diversity of actions (platform, infiltration, driving, FPS, hack and slash)? If the genre was to be diluted, many historical fans of the franchise will be sorely disappointed. So, it shouldn’t rely on things that traditional RE players may not like to do. And to the core of the series, in every RE, players have fought monsters using ranged weapons. A new RE should therefore make that "zombie combat" part as great as possible.

What were the problems with combat in the previous episode? RE opponents were mostly zombies: tough, yes, but slow and predictable. They were dumb (after all, they were brain-dead) and unsophisticated: their attacks would stay the same throughout the game and they couldn’t elaborate any strategy. And because earlier Resident Evil games were split up into small levels (rooms) separated by loading times, it was notorious that zombies couldn’t open doors. How to address that? The door part is easy. Thanks to the more generous RAM of next-gen systems, levels don’t have to be that small and can include several rooms or buildings (like the village, found early in the game. No loading time there). Within one level, there could be doors, stairs, ladders, that the player or their opponents could open without changing levels. In order to improve on the game interest of opponents, that is, to make them faster and smarter, it was difficult to carry on with zombies. Fortunately, enemies in RE are infected by some kind of virus, which is known to change from one episode to the next. So no one said that opponents had to be zombies! Capcom would then use the parasite-infected local population as foot soldiers. They retain some form of collective intelligence, so they can wield weapons, have conservation instinct and can devise strategies, such as surrounding or circling the hero.

It would have been difficult to convey that change to the player with the current combat system, based on auto-aiming in pre-rendered environments (3rd-person view). That raised two inconsistencies:

 what’s the point of enabling opponents to dodge attacks if the hero has auto-aim?
 pre-rendered environments may well be cheap in terms of computing power requirements, but they are expensive to make.

So, with a given amount of resources to create the levels, a game based on pre-rendered environments would have to be much shorter than a game in real-time 3D environments. Since the length of RE games have always been criticized, and since next-gen machines could handle complex real-time levels much better than, say, the original playstation, this was clearly the way to go.

Having real-time levels gave the developers more freedom in terms of viewpoint. Pre-rendered scenes made 3rd-person view mandatory, and this was no longer the case. The idea was to come up with a view that would work well with the concept of those new opponents, more agile, more organized, a view that would enable the hero to dodge attacks, and be dodged by opponents. A true first-person view would have been a great concession: the hero’s animations would not be seen, it would be more difficult to explain to the player why one enemy attack does damage, while another one doesn’t. Besides, it would associate the game with the "Resident Evil gun survivor" sub-franchise, which is not flattering. This is why Capcom settled for a dynamic 3rd-person view: the camera is always behind the player and can be oriented, but not too much, with the stick. Kudos to Capcom for implementing this without the clipping issues traditionally associated with the technique.

The final touch to the combat system is the aiming mechanism. In early 3D action games with guns, before the convention of auto-aiming, displaying the line of sight of the weapon of a character would certainly have been considered cheating. But ten years after, it’s no longer the case. Capcom added two little twists that work extremely well: the aim of the characters is not steady, and a discernable red dot appears whenever the player points their weapon on something shootable.

A common problem with ranged combat is how to make it fair. That is, the player should never die, or even get hurt, without a fair possibility to avoid this. In RE4, most combats pit the hero, equipped with firearms, and enemies which have melee weapons. So, the character must shoot opponents before they can reach them, and avoid being surrounded. In close quarters, the character can thus move to avoid an attack. While this proposition reduces the scope of the problem, restricting the opponents to slow, easily avoidable melee weapons would be very limiting. Thus, some enemies throw weapons that can easily be deflected with a well-placed bullet (the game is, fortunately, very tolerant in that respect), while others are equipped with crossbows and flame bolts: the fire at the tip of the bolt can be seen from a distance (i.e. the shooters can be sniped) and the bolt can still be avoided. Some enemies, especially sub-bosses, also come with devastating, lightning-quick attacks: those must be avoided with a special move, that is triggered with a special combination of buttons when prompted (more on that later).

Players love accumulating weapons and increase their firepower in every possible way. Then again, firearms are rather cheap to add into the game: in terms of code, two shotguns will basically work the same, even if one hurts more than the other, and they’re not terribly different from a handgun. This is quite different from melee weapons: adding a new sword in a DMC-like game requires a whole new set of complex animations that answer the questions - how will the player use the sword and how will monsters react when hit with the sword?, special effects, etc. So, one should add as many weapons as possible in RE-type games. Why wasn’t it done before? It’s difficult to place individual weapons items in levels without a justification. In previous games, getting the shotgun or the magnum was an accomplishment, which usually required puzzles to be solved. While this is ok to design this for 4 weapons, it gets complicated for 20+ weapons and hundreds of power-ups. This is solved through the merchant trick. In action games, it’s logical that vanquishing an enemy has a payoff - orbs in Onimusha or DMC, points in Dino Crisis 2 - that can later be exchanged with greater abilities. Adding a "merchant" enables Capcom to propose almost 20 weapons in the main game, which can be upgraded approximately 10 times each. Increasing the weapon diversity is not just good because it is fun and because it increases the game depth, but because weapons are very much correlated with freedom. More firepower means that the player has a better grasp on the game situation, and the versatility of the arsenal lets them chose the best way to overcome their opponents. To close this parenthesis on freedom, it is also enhanced by the possibility to play as the villains who have super-natural powers (Krauser, Wesker).

The switch from a slow-paced and cruel adventure game with action scenes (the spirit of the original RE1 and its predecessors, such as the early Alone in the Dark episodes) to a smooth and fair action game with a storyline must have other consequences on the proportion of the RE heritage that must be carried over in this episode. The inventory no longer serves the same purpose: in the first RE episodes, ammunition was scarce, and as players needed now and again to carry puzzle items, they had to arbitrate and decide how many precious inventory slots could be allocated to ammo, to healing items and to key items. In an action-oriented game, however, ammo should be plentiful, so the inventory can no longer be that restrictive. Capcom decided to separate weapons and healing items, which are limited, albeit much less than in the previous version, and key items and treasures, which are not limited - the player can carry as many of them as they wish. Likewise, money is completely immaterial and weightless. Other traditional elements of the game, such as poisoning and the need to collect "ink ribbons" which exist in limited numbers in the game, are considered as hindrances in the new context.

The action of the game is focused on fighting hordes of infected enemies, and the occasional boss. In the previous games - and that would include early RE titles as well as "cousin" games - the player often had the feeling that their character couldn’t do much. They can’t jump or swim or run really fast or do something right now that makes sense in the specific context even if it is not part of the standard controls. How many times have we wished that the heroes of the previous RE titles could crouch right on time to avoid being beheaded by hunters? The problem is that adding actions makes the game more complex to manage, and makes it lose focus. Having a greater arsenal of moves and abilities at the player’s fingertips can therefore hurt the game, rather than enhance it. (

Ultima VIII, PC, 1994

Platform gaming and old mice don’t go together well.

See for instance Ultima VIII, where the hero had to jump from one moving platform to the next... in a mouse-controlled game, and in an isometric view. Instead of "adding" gameplay, this just added gratuitous frustration). So while being able to jump when needed is nice, having to control exactly how isn’t. Capcom therefore chose to add a variety of contextual actions. Contextual means that they can be launched either in a specific location (in front of doors it is possible to "open", in front of a hole, to "jump", in front of a window to "jump out", above a ladder to "knock [it] down", etc.), at a specific time (in the fashion of Shenmue’s Quick Time Events - QTE - this can happen in the middle of a cutscene: the player is prompted with a button combination that they must press immediately, or else...), or both (if the player stands at the right distance of a staggering foe, they can "kick" it, they can "dodge" some deadly attacks aimed at them, etc.). In order to address the added complexity of the game (i.e. what to do if the hero is hit while jumping? ) time stops when such an action is performed, the camera changes angles so that there is no continuity issues and that the hero can be placed in a "playable" position after the action as opposed to a "realistic" position.

On top of having to adapt the Resident Evil spirit to an action game, Capcom also had the challenge of making a good game - that means respecting modern gaming conventions and managing resources as efficiently as possible.

One very pleasant surprise is the change of paradigm in the interface. As we discussed before, nothing justifies hiding critical information from the player, in this case ammunition and health. Let’s hope that this will definitely settle the case and that no game maker will ever imagine that immersion is hurt by displaying a well-done interface.

The game goes deeper than that. In an action game, it wasn’t relevant to hide the map of the totality of the level from the player. That is now solved. The game also displays big cues for contextual actions. Again, few will argue that this prevents immersion. In earlier action-adventure games, items were typically used in a specific location that the player had to guess. One pixel to the left, one degree to the right: if their character was not more or less exactly in the right position, the item couldn’t be used - that confused players who would assume that what they thought could be done was impossible. Now, with contextual actions appearing on screen, the player no longer wonders. If it can be done, it says so (rather elegantly). We’ve also seen the aiming process and the red dot: if something can be shot (and that doesn’t only apply to enemies) a contextual red dot will appear.

Loading screens...

... are now useful!

The loading screens are also used as scoreboards, to display relevant information, rather than as mere annoyances.

Resource optimisation

Just like every game, RE4 could rely on (generous, but) limited resources that had to be used in the most efficient way. The idea is that if an asset has to be created for the game, it might as well be as useful and visible as possible. Let’s see how this was done.

Animations: we’ve seen that the paradigm of the game - ranged combat, rather than hand-to-hand - greatly simplifies the need for character interactions, and, therefore, for complex animations. By complex, I mean, animations that have to comply to numerous constraints such as timing, placement, continuity. There are many detailed animations in the game, but which come in the cut scene format - the game mechanics let the animation play and nothing can interrupt it.

In RE4, opponents can hit or shoot you while the hero is standing, walking, running or aiming, which interrupts what you are doing. Some can grab you, too, which branches to a mini-game phase during which you must shake the joystick - fast enough and you break free, hurting the enemy (cut scene), too slow and the enemy hurts you more (another cut scene). The hero can interrupt the animation of enemies by hurting them in their body, in their legs or in their head (different reaction), by setting them on fire, shocking them with a flash grenade, blasting them off with different exploding devices, making them fall off ladders or ledges, hitting them while they are on the ground and that’s about it.

While the hero is performing any special action such as jumping, climbing, dodging, kicking, etc. the animation plays to the end, no matter what - the hero cannot be interrupted. Benefits: these animations can be extremely detailed (the hero jumps out of a window and performs two summersaults to show off) and no transition animation has to be written (ex: to show the hero shot while jumping). Note that this would have been completely impossible in a multi-player mode.

Many have complained that the hero cannot attack while moving, strafing, rolling, etc. - moves which are common in action games, especially in FPS. But would it bring to the game? One can also notice that the hero can only change weapons in the inventory - no real-time transition required. Adding those animations would not be profitable.

El Gigante’s first appearance

This giant may be a pushover, this introduction scene will leave a powerful impression on the player.

Finally, there are many scripted cut scenes featuring custom-made, motion-captured animations (i.e. not seen elsewhere in the game). Not only are they very well animated but many of them are also very well directed. See for instance the first encounter with El Gigante. The camera shows the foot of the monster from below as it is crushing a villager.

Villagers attacking!

a memorable scene in the spirit of ancient vampire B-movies

Or when the Leon frees Ashley - as they leave the church, they are surrounded by a horde of torch-bearing villagers - the scene is very dramatic.

The levels, in the game, are not overly detailed - the polygon budget is rather spent on the hero and the creatures. Some parts of the levels are visibly blocky: walls are flat, there are some architectural inconsistencies. But textures and lighting are absolutely excellent. Very detailed textures perfectly convey the atmosphere of the game, and this is subtly reinforced by lighting. Some scenes look just as good, for instance, late in the afternoon (chapter 1) or at night (chapter 2).

Some of the level design and part of the story is influenced by the replay options. The mini-game "the Mercenaries" takes place in locations which exist in the main game - they are only slightly altered to make them look more like "arenas". It’s interesting to see that places that can only be accessed in this subgame (such as a barn in the village) do appear in the main game, and could puzzle gamers who play for the first time. If it’s there, it’s meant to be entered, right? Likewise, some holes in the story are filled during another minigame, "Separate Ways". It is then clear that what looked like inconsistencies in the story line (like why do villagers leave the Pueblo when the bell rings or what happened to Leon’s jacket) have been thought well in advance. Many assets have been developed specifically for these mini-games, such as the waterworld arena for the mercenaries, the battleship in Separate Ways, and the special weapons and abilities of the unlockable characters.

How about RE5?

Although not much has filtered on RE5, the project is largely underway and Capcom allegedly aims to release the X360 and PS3 versions simultaneously, that is, somewhere in 2006. What could be done better and what can we expect?

There is little chance that the game will be more similar to RE3 and earlier RE games. RE5 will probably be as action-oriented as its predecessor. It made sense to make RE4 an action game, but it was a bet. The outcome is clear.

Likewise, there is little doubt that the game will not take advantage of the next gen’s added power, to improve the frame rate to 60 per second, which will allow for more dynamic, but also more subtle action scenes. A more generous polygon "budget" could be used to make more elaborate environments: more detailed models, more possibilities to interact.

Chances are that combat will be built on the same rules as RE4. They would probably become more complex: a shoot in the arm could disarm an enemy, there could be some advantage to attack an enemy from behind (more damage, assassination moves or the possibility to knock them out). More special killing techniques could be made available: an enemy on the floor could be eliminated with the knife instead of just slashed, for instance. Some enemies could also be more vulnerable to one type of weapon. I don’t think the hand-to-hand combat will be more sophisticated though (it adds too much complexity).

A classic feature of RE (RE1, RE2, and, to some extent, RE0) is dual heroes. The original games proposed a choice of two heroes, each having a slightly different story and a different perspective about the game. The PS2 mini-game, Separate ways, can be seen as an aborted attemot to propose the same feature for RE4, with Ada Wong as prominent as Leon S. Kennedy. While Separate ways was very interesting, the original concept worked well and gave us two games for the price of one.

This game proved that enemies can be updated without losing what makes Resident Evil special. I imagine that the next episode won’t have zombies, ganados, or plagas, but a new form of evil, in which Wesker and Umbrella will be involved in a way or another.

A logical step would be to allow the hero to level up, too. In RE4, Leon can tune up his weapons and can increase its maximum health. It would make sense if he (or his likely successor) could also upgrade various abilities, like move faster, have a steadier aim, have special melee attacks (kick) upgraded... During most of RE4, Leon is infected by a parasite. While this gives Krauser cool super-human abilities, there is no ingame consequence for Leon. The only change is that Saddler can manipulate him whenever he shows up: big deal. If the RE5 hero is contaminated too, this might has well come up with a few cool advantages.

While it is not a good idea to mix new gameplay genres in RE (driving vehicles, jumping around...) I imagine the game could benefit from well-executed infiltration phases. We had an embryo of that in RE4, when the player controls Ashley.

The integration of mini-games in the main game should be done in a continuous, rather than discreet fashion. In order to unlock the legendary hand-cannon, one must finish the mercenaries mini-game with all characters with a score of 60000 or more on every level. Each new game of the mercernaries doesn’t contribute to that goal (as opposed to the RE3 mercenaries minigame, where every game was an opportunity to earn money, which could then be spent on power-ups).

Finally, the inventory is probably under-used in RE4. In previous episodes, some riddles were solved by examining and combining items. Items could also be powered-up that way. There would probably be a way to do that in the next episode.