When you approach a video game with exceedingly high expectations you often end up disappointed.
We've all been there.
The bar is just so high that it’s next to impossible not to land somewhere below it.
Now, when Resident Evil 7 came out 2 years ago, I started my video on it by saying:
[Old radio voice] Resident Evil 7 took me by surprise!
Now even though, before Resident Evil 2’s remake came out, I already released a video
speculating how this game might actually turn out to be really fucking good, judging from all the info we got before launch...
after finally playing it, and finishing its campaign twice and spending something north of 30 hours in its intricate labyrinth,
I can still accurately start this video with exactly the same claim:
Resident Evil 2 took me by surprise!
[Leon, whispering] Oh no!
[Loud explosion, Leon crying out]
Because the cynic in me, despite all the excitement, skeptically dreaded a hype-fueled let-down.
But as you can tell, that didn’t happen -
at least not to me and many other people.
Resident Evil 2 received universal critical acclaim by fans and press alike
and not only surprised me in living up to my expectations... it even drastically exceeded them!
This game ended up being not just gorgeous to look at, fun and exhilarating to play and lovingly faithful to the original,
but it was also so cleverly, so ingeniously crafted and designed,
with meticulous attention to minute details in every nook and cranny and an incredible sense of pacing
that it just had me come back again and again.
And all of that without any compulsive skinner box techniques to keep players artificially glued to the screen.
In a time when the dominant trend in the AAA game industry is to decry the future of single player altogether
and the business models shift more and more towards multiplayer-appendages, coop-experiences,
online progression and perpetuous reward-schemes that pull the player along to, ideally, invest more in the game
Resident Evil 2’s remake almost completely swims against this current.
The game is a decidedly puristic, story-based single player experience only
and with a surprisingly generous helping of free DLCs along the way, too.
And the gameplay it delivers to the solitary player is a refreshingly nostalgic... Nietzschean Gauntlet of attrition
designed to edge players through an ongoing cycle of trial, failure and improvement through the overcoming hardships.
Now, when the HD Remastered version of the first Resident Evil remake came out,
at the time I actually seized the opportunity to enjoy this game in the same way
I experienced the original - Resident Evil 1 - when it came out in 1996:
By rekindling the good old hot-seat tradition.
Just like I played the original at a friend’s house
I revisited the HD Remaster together with my friend and podcast partner Michael Saba,
[Michael] Hey, that's me!
[Ragnar] Yep, hey Michael!
So yeah, we played in the good old hotseat tradition
by regularly switching out the controllers for the single player game
while we planned and strategized each run together, brooding over our inventory and the map together.
We even recorded an episode of our podcast, Blast from the Past, right after we finished the game.
You can find a link in the description if you’re interested in checking it out!
And it was already quite noteworthy how, even in a joint-playthrough like this,
we displayed distinctly different strategic approaches and playstyles:
Michael had a far more meticulous approach in, as I called it, sweeping the floor,
fastidiously keeping house with supplies to always have kerosene to burn corpses;
making sure the road is as clean and clear as possible.
While my own playstyle was far more... "dodgeball"
trying to avoid the use of supplies wherever possible while attempting to evade enemies wherever I could...
hoarding supplies as much as possible.
[Michael] And we found that both of these playstyles are completely enabled and encouraged by the game
mechanically, the first REmake never really nudges you towards avoiding enemies instead of engaging them in combat, or vice-versa
[Ragnar] Yeah, so with this experience in the back of my... or our minds
when the Resident Evil 2 Remake approached, since we were both positively hysterical about finally getting our hands on it,
we decided to play the game... as close to a hotseat as it’s possible while living across the atlantic ocean.
[Michael] We documented the entirety of both our A- and B- playthroughs, and our attempts at the bonus survivor modes,
and compared our thoughts and experiences along the way.
But to make the experience as different as possible for each of us, we even opted for different input devices:
I went with a gamepad, and Ragnar chose keyboard and mouse.
[Ragnar] And because I found the results pretty fascinating in so many ways,
the further I got into writing this video, the more I thought:
we’ve bounced off so many experiences, thoughts and ideas in discovering Resident Evil 2 that... he should totally join me on this one!
This is a joint experience, so Michael’s gonna be my guest for this little experimental podcast video-essay hybrid!
[Michael] You’re the Leon to my Claire, Ragnar.
[Michael] Although truthfully, she’s way more of a flirt in this game than I am in real life...
[Ragnar] Aw, come on [chuckles]
[Michael] Aaaanyway [claps]
Just like when we played the first REmake, we could see that we took very different play-styles in the early hours of the game.
Ragnar takes more of a puzzle-solving approach, so he tried to avoid as many enemies as he could and conserve resources.
And I started out thinking I'd play the same way and keep the gunplay to a minimum.
But then I got my hands on the grenade launcher early on, and after it helped me pull through some tense moments
[Loud explosion, licker snarling]
I was firmly in an action-game mindset for the rest of the playthrough.
I always had *just* enough ammo to clear most of the major rooms,
and it was really gratifying to carve out those little pockets of safety, y'know, rooms where you know that you can breathe easy when you enter them.
But interestingly we both found -- the further we got into this game and the more we mastered its systems and mechanics
the more our playstyles had begun to, kinda, overlap.
I came to find that sometimes, it was just way more efficient to avoid or stagger enemies than to spend the resources to eliminate them.
And Ragnar found that sometimes, and especially in areas where you’ll be backtracking frequently,
it’s better to strategically clear out enemies and just be done with it.
So without us even realizing it, the game had subtly nudged both of us towards a far more optimal way to play
a near-perfect blend of action and puzzle-solving.
So in this video, we’re going to discuss how Resident Evil 2 managed to pull this off... for us.
This is neither going to be a story and lore analysis,
nor do we plan to dryly and academically dissect this game into its atoms.
I’d rather consider this a somewhat informal but analytical commentary,
a battle-debriefing from two veterans who grew up with the series,
sharing our personal thoughts and experiences with the Resident Evil 2 remake after a good 30 hours of playtime,
with a particular emphasis on structural aspects, game design, pacing and overall direction.
And I think at this point it’s already come across that we both had a subjectively great time with this game.
So today, we’re going to try and objectively narrow down exactly *why* this experience resonated so well with us.
So what we’re looking for is constructive post-play discussion, with analytical observation of subjective experiences -
and we’d love for you to share your personal thoughts and feelings on the game with us in the comments as well,
either if your experience was similar or completely different to ours.
It's all interesting, so let us know!
But yeah... to me, after playing it, I was happy to find my hype satisfied for once.
as I was really ever so close to actually dubbing Resident Evil 2... a perfect Remake...
[Know-it-all voice] even though true perfection is... objectively unattainable in a work of art, isn’t it?
[Michael] Would you call it an... Über-Remake?
[Inception horn]
[Ragnar] Yes, thus spoke Mr. X
[Song: XZibit "X to the Z and we all in the family"]
Now, a little spoiler warning:
this video will primarily focus on game design and structural aspects of Resident Evil 2,
but in the process we’re naturally gonna discuss and show large part of the game’s story campaign, too.
So spoilers will unavoidably be leaking through here and there -
so, keep that in mind in case you haven’t played and finished the game yet and want to avoid being spoiled.
[Michael] Because especially for a game like this, it’s not just story spoilers that matter,
but also the gameplay and mechanical spoilers.
The entire experience is designed around organically showing unaware players the ropes
through very meticulous and clever game design.
So, watching us take those systems apart might spoil this experience for you, we’re just saying...
[Ragnar] Exactly! So... consider yourself spoiler-warned!
Resident Evil 2 2019 is probably one of the longest tutorials I’ve ever played.
And by that I don’t mean that it takes long to... teach you which button opens a door via popups in the beginning.
What I’m talking about is that Resident Evil 2 is in many ways a never-ending “tutorial”
- as it never stops to subtly, invisibly teach, drill and hone the player’s skills -
long after you reach the ending for the first time.
Resident Evil 2 has many individual parts that are designed and crafted meticulously already:
graphics, setting, story, controls, enemy design, weapon and item design, puzzle design,
music, sound design, and an incredible attention to detail.
But the bigger picture shines through the game’s organic and well-balanced interplay of all of these elements.
Turning it into something more than the sum of its parts.
But the one aspect that struck me above all else is how Capcom succeeded in combining all of these elements
to create an unrivaled sense of pacing that felt... as I've said earlier, poetically Nietzschean to me.
An eternally recurrent gauntlet-run designed to continuously grind the players towards greatness and excellence.
I’m gonna get into what I mean by that precisely step by step throughout our rundown of the game.
For now, let’s just start... well, let’s be boring: Let’s start at the beginning!
Now, no matter if you choose Leon or Claire for your first playthrough --
and the existence of a slightly altered B-Playthrough is something very crucial to the point I want to make with this video, so we’ll get to that later --
the story begins with Leon and Claire’s fateful meeting at the gas station outside of Raccoon City.
[Michael] Ragnar chose Leon, and me, I’m a sucker for badass women from 90s action movies,
so I knew right away I’d be doing my first playthrough as Claire.
[Arnold Schwarzenegger] I come from the physical fitness world where you reshape and re-sculpt your body
but that what I saw there... was extraordinary!
(...) and I said, look at how RIPPED you are in your deltoids, I said, that looks fanTASTIC!
[Leon] No one's around...
[Ragnar] The gas station appears recently, hectically abandoned,
with a police car parked in a hurry in front of the entrance door, with the headlights still on and all...
[Leon] That's weird...
[Ragnar] An eerie, foreboding atmosphere.
Now, Resident Evil 2 doesn’t fuck around for long.
For one, it’s the second entry in a series about a zombie apocalypse.
So, everybody knows we’re gonna deal with zombies, so it takes about a minute,
maybe 2 at max until we’re confronted with the first one.
Now, here’s the part where RE2 already starts subverting people’s expectations:
Before the game’s release, the developers and producers talked a lot about
how one of their biggest challenges for this game was to make the slow zombie scary again.
We’ve had decades of zombification in media that it’s become something established pop-culture truism
that “the slow zombie” is not really frightening at all.
It’s an easily predictable obstacle and therefore mostly condemned to being cannon fodder;
only really intimidating through sheer mass.
[Michael] Yeah, I think at this point, pop-culture has made pretty much all of us hyper-aware of the most basic zombie, uh, “biothruths”.
You can ear off whatever appendage or limb you want and they keep coming,
but a well placed shot or stab in the head will keep ‘em down for good.
[Nerdy voice] Although... [Snorts] ACTUALLY, uh, those infected with the T-Virus aren’t dead
and are simply in a state where their cardiovascular and respiratory systems have, uh, shut down.
[Chuckles] See, according to well-established series LORE the T-Virus can’t technically reanimate dead tissue
[Ragnar] Dab dab dab dab....OK OK OK!
[Ragnar] So long story short, here we are - playing Resident Evil 2 once again in 2019
with all our zombie-knowledge from decades of pop culture boot camp
suddenly face to face with a single walker straight ahead
and a fully loaded pistol in our hands...
We've been trained for this.. this is... kindergarten!
[Zombie groans] [Leon] Aw, what the hell?! [Gunshot]
[Zombie groans] [Gunshot]
[Ragnar] But, well... this is... kinda different?!
No matter how well you aim, this guy takes a good handful of shots straight to the face before he goes down.
But yeah, in the end, what does that mean, right....
maybe it just takes a few shots more in this game, what’s the big deal, right?
But as soon as you come back.... he’s already back at it!
So... you just used up half of your ammo... maybe even your entire magazine if you’re still warming up to the controls
and all of that for putting down a single zombie? And he doesn’t even stay down?!
You can do the math: You haven’t enough ammo to do that again.
So there’s really no other alternative right now than to get the hell out of there, without any means to defend yourself.
Because if you’ve paid attention in the beginning, there’s people turning left and right in the little convenience store already.
So... you’re not equipped for that. It's time to start running!
[Michael] This whole opening sequence is a really nice microcosm or even like a vertical slice of the design philosophy behind Resident Evil 2,
because it expresses of the game’s most important lessons in like, as you've said, in under a minute or two.
If you’re not stocked-up, your best bet is to avoid confrontation whenever you can!
Yeah, and... this intro sequence also serves as a quick and convenient narrative “hello” between our two protagonists
before we get tossed out into the streets, just like in the original Resident Evil 2,
starting with little to no ammo in the middle of a sea of zombies and burning cars!
A lot of people were afraid that the shift to a Resident Evil-4 like over the shoulder 3rd person shooter camera perspective
would turn RE2 into an action-fest as well.
But these first two scenes already hammer home that... guns blazing is not the way to go.
It’s not even an option here.
True to the original, your only option really is to avoid:
sprinting and dodging through the maze of infected like a running back on your way to a rushing touchdown.
[Michael] Now, this is, so far, all in line with the original - and also with the tenets of survival horror in general.
The game has quickly established that you’re outnumbered, outgunned
and your only chance to survive is quick wits and the efficient management of your supplies.
[Ragnar] Yeah - only with a weapon that’s impactful enough to split heads completely, like the Magnum
or the shotgun if you aim high when they’re up close,
you were able to permanently take a zombie out in the originals.
[Michael] With Claire, I found that incendiary grenades were really great at putting zombies down permanently most of the time,
but it’s really best to save ‘em for tougher enemies.
[Ragnar] Yeah.
[Michael] Still, it’s incredibly satisfying when you got a swarm of 'em coming at you
and you take 'em all out with one well-placed blast. Whoof!
[Ragnar] Hell yeah!
[Ragnar] And...that's a cool thing... the remake goes a long way to translate this same initial sense of menace and satisfaction
even in the regular grunt enemy type.
So no, they’re not cannon fodder in this game - rest easy.
[Michael] Or rather.... un-easy!
[Both chuckle]
And the somewhat sluggish controls also add to that:
standard weapons shoot relatively slowly and ammunition is scarce enough
that plastering zombies in bullets until they’re out for good is extremely inefficient
and will have you run out of supplies faster than a Romero protagonist.
[Michael, energetic] That didn’t stop me from trying!
[Ragnar, quiet] Yeah I saw that...
[Claire] Oh no! [Gunshot]
Another thing that I noticed again and again in this game is that those zombies can sometimes be... surprisingly smart.
Like, there were numerous situations in which I wanted to ‘be clever’ and outsmart the zombies in witty ways,
where they showed some surprising situational awareness.
Like in this instance, where I thought I’d be really clever if I lured those two zombies to one side of the podium
and then rushed past them once they’re on one side of the room...
only to find that they actually, sometimes put in some team effort,
anticipating the two exits from my position and trying to block my escape route from both sides.
I barely escaped their little ad-hoc trap here by just rushing past them last second,
but in the heat of the moment, I had completely overlooked the third guy there in the back
who let his buddys do all the hard work, lying in wait for me like a steel trap behind the fucking door.
Like, I’m usually really stoic when games attempt do jumpscare me, but this one -
100% unscripted and arisen as a result of the AI reacting to their surroundings on the fly -
[breathes in] it really made me jump in my seat!
[Michael] Yeah, I also had several moments where I’d try to bait a zombie through the doorway or a choke-point so they’d be an easy target,
but they’d refuse to budge and wait for me to come to them. They’re a lot smarter than they look!
[Ragnar] It's... pretty ironic that the notably smartest AI I’ve come across in a long while is that of a literally braindead adversary, isn’t it?
But yeah, zombie-schmombie, what am I actually getting at?
The zombie is the basic grunt enemy.
And the designers went out of their way to make zombies work in a way that feels both familiar, but at the same time -
because they are such a well-established trope already -
built with enough clever tweaks and changes to put a good handful of surprises up their sleeves
that can make a player doubt the expected serenity in their proximity.
And the designers really put a lot of thoughts into how to set this up cleverly and strategically -
to always gently shape and nudge the player’s playstyle...
[quietly, puzzled] is that a repetition? Ah whatever...
the player’s playstyle in the direction they want them to go.
If you came expecting to mow down zombies in waves, your playstyle will be quickly but sublimely
routed towards an instinctively far more careful and strategic approach.
You avoid, you observe, learn, plan and strategize over going in guns blazing.
Take it slow, read your environment, plan ahead.
[John McClane] Come out to the coast, we get together, have a few laughs. [Zippo clicks]
You start developing a feeling for where the developers tend to hide zombies
to create a similar sense of “there could be one around every corner”,
similar to how it felt through the fixed camera angles in the original games.
[Michael] Aw man, yeah, this was one of those touches in this remake of Resident Evil 2
that I feel like I could nerd out about endlessly.
The way the camera is positioned right behind the character
combined with, like, this super-limited field of view
created this incredible feeling of claustrophobia while I was playing.
And it's a perfect translation of exactly what you're talking about:
previously you had tension that you got from fixed camera angles that hid the enemies off screen
and now we have something similar, only it's just from a different, kind of, continuously moving camera perspective.
And I think this is a perfect example of how this remake is so great at preserving the DNA of the originals
while still making it super compelling for a modern audience.
[Ragnar] That was the mission statement of the producers... and developers.
The more situations you encounter and overcome in this game, the more you pick up.
You’ll eventually realize that you can deliberately tear off their arms and legs to immobilize them
and render them less of a thread with less resource investment than if you tried to make their heads explode just with your 9mil.
Which... it's just not reliable.
You really need to spam and be a bit lucky for that.
[Leon] Son of a bitch! [Gunshot]
You might trying and use things like the subweapons
and find out how well it works to use a flash grenade to incapacitate an entire mob of zombies to slip through.
Or - if you’re like me, you just put your gun away and learn to avoid fighting with them altogether,
slipping through the cracks like a parcours runner.
And more and more you start getting on top of the situation.
The menace gently starts losing its edge because you... learned the systems.
And that's all it is in the end: systems.
And the more you learn them, the more tools you have at your disposal..
And by tools I not just mean weapons and items,
but things like knowledge of environment, enemies and an ever growing arsenal of strategies and observations
that you can cunningly use to creatively solve the problems the game puts in front of you.
Encounters with zombies... become puzzles.
Dynamically evolving situational puzzles to solve rather than shooting galleries designed to test your trigger finger.
It's very true to how it was in the original, really.
To me, despite the camera and controls being much closer to 4 and 5 -
this feels much more like Resident Evil 2 used to feel at the time than... well, yeah, 4 and 5.
[Michael] Yeah, I think what you're getting at is just how great the Resident Evil 2 remake is at borrowing
kind of all of the best bits from previous games in the series:
You've got the survival horror / inventory management elements of the older games,
the camera perspective and gunplay of 4, the movement of 6 --
and even the subweapons from the first REmake made a comeback, it's great!
[Ragnar] Yeah, and now, if we really start looking at this through the lens of a puzzle game
then the logical next step after exploring a tangential learning mechanic for a while in different situations would be to...
introduce a new mechanic - one that adds a different type of challenge to the game,
and that can be combined with the first mechanic’s challenges to create, again, a completely new challenge altogether.
And that’s exactly what Resident Evil 2 does:
as soon as you start to become somewhat familiar and comfortable around zombies, when it introduces the Lickers.
[Michael] This new enemy operates in a way that deliberately subverts the strategies we’ve just learned about dealing with regular zombies.
More specifically, it introduces a new element that will play an important role for the rest of the game: Sound!
Before you actually face the first licker, you'll find a note that foreshadows how they work:
they’re blind as a bat - so unlike the zombies they can’t see you.
Instead they work exclusively with their acoustic perception.
Now, you might or might not have considered acoustic discipline before,
but with the introduction of the lickers, this element becomes the central challenge of situations involving them
and it... well, it tosses the puzzle around a good bit.
When you face your first lickers, it's in isolation;
the game gives you enough room to familiarize yourself with the new threat.
Now, Lickers are defeatable in combat, but at that point in the game, with just a 9mm,
you’re gonna be ploughing through your ammunition faster than Rambo on the back of a pickup truck.
take almost guaranteed damage against them and end up with the result of having dispatched of only a single enemy at an enormous cost.
You can’t keep going like this, it’s a war of attrition.
And it's one that you would lose, eventually.
But if you have paid attention then you actually try to be quiet...
tread carefully with silken steps and... well, what do you know,
the snarling predator at the ceiling literally won’t notice your presence anymore.
Resident Evil 2 keeps putting you through challenges that appear utterly intimidating and disheartening at first,
but that are, once you put some thinking to it and approach it with a calm mind - they're all just systems.
Systems that you can learn to deal with methodically.
But now, if we toss those two enemies together in a room
their combined mechanics suddenly create a whole new challenge.
All the means of dealing with zombie situations so far
Like shooting off a leg
Giving them a quick headshot to disorient them and then rushing past
Using flash grenades
Shooting them more times in the head until they fall over for a while
Or just running past without using any weapons at all
all of these tactics are noisy - even just plain running.
And if you cannot make a sound because a Licker is in the room
many of your means to deal with zombies that you've been taught so far are nullified.
And vice versa - you also can’t sneak around a licker, because then the zombies will see you and they're faster than your sneaking.
So... there’s your next puzzle. And there are solutions for it. Many!
You just - as always, have to put your mind to it.
And because situations like these keep popping up very organically,
there’s always far more than one way to deal with the problems at hand;
by just using the tools at your disposal creatively.
And that feels really satisfying!
Learning the game’s systems and playing them out in your favor.
That's the loop!
And through that Resident Evil 2 manages to really recreate the same sense of
preparation, exploration, retrieval and eventual evacuation as the original Resident Evils.
And after you’ve done this a couple of times, you naturally grow more familiar with the layout of the RPD,
encountered various situations with all the given enemies
you will start feeling like “you got this... you’re on top of this”... again.
Aside from the original Resident Evils it also takes some great lessons from the recent Resident Evil 7
and also take heavy and open inspiration from other great survival horror games, like the first Dead Space -
creating a perfect survival horror pastiche.
And especially when it comes to the boss design.
After a good 2-3 hours, your skills at this point are developed enough to deal with the various enemy types
and different combinations of adversaries throughout the RPD
once we solve the first overarching puzzle and gain access to the secret tunnel under precinct.
Which is where we’ll encounter the first boss.
The fight against William Birkin here is a deliberate change of pace,
a hi-octane cat and mouse chase that exerts a Dark-Souls meet Dead Space atmosphere.
Here’s an adversary that’s large, grotesque and scary,
he’s extremely aggressive and seems like an impossible odd - all underlined by Leon’s comment that
[Leon] Words won't work on this thing...
[Birking growling]
[Michael] Yeah, there is some superb situational dialogue that plays out in this game,
depending on what you’re aiming at and whether there are any enemies around you.
It was motivating as hell to hear Claire blurt out “Oh, shit!” as a zombie staggers back to life.
Or to hear Leon mutter to himself “I can do this,” as he’s aiming at the enemies closing in.
The whole game is full of these little flourishes, these little moments of extreme attention to detail,
and all of them combined help make the experience feel genuinely visceral and compelling.
[Claire] The HELL is wrong with you?!
[Gunshot]
There really aren’t enough nice things to say about the game’s sound design, it’s an absolute masterwork.
The guttural moans of the zombies, the sick and squishy sounds they make as they get blasted apart,
or even the way the sound effects change depending on the size of the room you’re in.
If you have a pair of nice headphones, this is an ideal game for them.
[Leon] SonofaBITCH! [Zombies screaming, accompanied by loud gunshot]
[Ragnar] And that's no different in this bossfight:
The sense of menace in this fight draws a lot of its potency from the presentation.
Pompously loud music and sound design gets the heart-rate up and drives you to act like a headless chicken.
The entire encounter is designed to trick you into losing your cool.
But equally - just like in a Soulsborne boss-fight, once you put your mind to it,
once you blend out all the aggressive and scary mise-en-scène and start observing what’s actually going on,
you realize that ... once again, you’re just fighting systems.
In this case you’re trapped in a small maze of pipes and industrial machinery, with Birkin pretty much just chasing after you, straight up.
So take a moment to study the map and avoid the dead-ends where he can corner you.
Observe and learn his attacks and you’ll find that they’re, albeit very powerful,
pretty damn easy to avoid if you keep calm.
So..  just keep aiming for his bulgy pop-eyes growing all over his body and you got this!
Once you apply the same methodology as you did with the zombies and the lickers before to him
you’ll find yourself, once again, on top of a situation that felt aggressively intimidating just a few moments ago.
The standoff with Birkin here solidifies the philosophy behind the game’s pacing:
Toss the player into something intimidating, something larger-than-life that's designed to discourage you, test your resolve.
And then reward the players for overcoming these moral roadblocks the game puts up to test your guts.
For me personally, the first moment that tested my resolve was... well... it was him.
[Gunshots]
[Claire, screaming] WHAT THE FUCK?!
The appearance and realization of Mr. X in the Resident Evil 2 remake is arguably the element of the game that caused the biggest ripples in fan response -
and for good reason: This guy is incredibly meme-able!
[Muffled music]
[Extremely loud] Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight
[XZibit - X Gon' Give it To Ya]
[Michael] Can't resist.
[Ragnar, chuckling] Fucking love it!
[Ragnar] But aside from his meme-potency... he is just *terrifying*!
At least that’s how I felt and how a large part of the audience reacted to Mr.X’s appearanc in this game.
And a lot of what we’re getting at in this video, the central point, really depends on this -
on the fact that this enemy’s existence in the game creates anxiety, stress and terror in the player.
That he makes players act thoughtlessly.
And he’s almost a central junction for propelling the desired, as I call it, Nietzschean experience of Resident Evil 2.
If X doesn’t work for you, chances are that the entire game won’t really work for you.
[Michael] The stakes are high for him: X' gotta deliver to ya!
[Ragnar] His character is also a directly taken from the original - but his role in the gameplay has been expanded upon quite a bit.
Where in the original Resident Evil 2, Mr. X appeared only in the B-Playthrough
- and, this is important, only in certain areas of the game -
in this remake, the developers chose to really unleash him.
From the moment he steps out of the burning helicopter, The Tyrant pretty much follows you around through the entire police precinct.
[Claire] Jesus, STAY BACK! [Explosion]
Now, just to be clear - there are certain safe zones where the game’s programming explicitly prohibits the Tyrant from entering,
but those are, almost exclusively, safe rooms located in the far outer regions of the police station,
meaning that from now on you no longer have a central hub of safety
but you’ll always have to traverse the majority of the building in one go without any refuge from his pursuit on the way.
You can see how this drastically changes the previously established gameplay dynamics, right?
[Michael] Yeah, I think this is another really great example of the game making good use of elements from a previous title in the series.
'cause me personally, I was instantly reminded of that trench-coated bastard from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis,
[Ragnar] Oh yeah
[Michael] he would appear seemingly at random, just droppin' outta the sky and pursue you mercilessly across multiple screens.
Now this REmake has me SO hyped for a potential re-imagining of game #3 now
when I see what they've been able to do with the Tyrant in number 2
like, the thought of an entire game built around that - whoof - amazing!
[Ragnar] I, like, read reports of it being leaked that the third remake is in development, so... hopes are up!
[Michael] Hey, there you go!
Like, the Tyrant's presence - it throws a massive monkey wrench in all you’ve learned so far if you think about it.
Because until now, you’ve been taught to take it slow, to approach situations with a strategic mind,
to plan ahead and take your time in approaching the obstacles in your way with a cool mind.
You’ve adapted the old “retreat to your safe zone and plan your next turn” strategy from previous games.
After playing through the game myself and then watching Michael’s recording, it was incredibly ... sadistically satisfying
to see how he followed the same intuitive line of thinking as I did:
like when Mr.X appeared he'd try to evade him and make his way to the place that had been the safe haven up until now - The precinct’s main hall.
With poor Marvin holding the fort... and having our backs... while we're out and about... exploring..... poor guy!
So that’s the goal: get back to the safe zone - I think everybody did that.
Only to find out that the sacred refuge is being violated by a Film Noir T-1000
stomping right into it with no regards for the sanctity of our invisible ludonarrative barriers.
When I found myself in this situation, this was the first time the game pushed my stress-levels to immense heights.
So far, all the threats were contained within a mostly single room or hallway,
as soon as you enter a new area, you left it behind and approach a new challenge, like, it's isolated.
Mr. X, he doesn’t abide by these constraints and he recklessly just mows through the entire police station in his relentless pursuit.
His behavior is actually quite similar to Jack Baker in Resident Evil 7:
- he’s invincible and can only be temporarily stopped by force
- he also relentlessly follows the player across almost all previously established boundaries and
- we can also often perceive his presence acoustically long before he’s in sight.
Mr.X draws a lot from his audiovisual design, too, and the many flourishes of loving detail that add to his appearance.
His violent footsteps can be heard and precisely pinpointed when he’s even several rooms away from us
and his minimalistic, driven musical theme that announces his proximity -
it all adds to this realization that an unrelenting, literally invincible behemoth is on our tail
whose only purpose is to obliterate us, no matter what’s in his way.
I know a lot of people who complained about his presence being literally too stressful -
some people found him outright annoying because he perverts the previously established gameplay loop.
And I gotta admit that this was the very moment where I found myself disheartened by the realization of how much stress his presence induces
and how much it suddenly changes my outlook on the current situation.
I was really considering to... give in.
[Michael, energetic] Not me man! I LOVE THIS SHIT!
[Loud Punch, Claire gasps in pain]
[Ragnar] That's because you're a masochist!
But... this was when I started feeling the game's ... Nietzschen pull, as I've teased a few times now.
[Old movie projector rattling]
[Distorted radio voice, German accent] In his novel 'Also Sprach Zarathustra'
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduces the idea of the Übermensch,
in which man must be driven to overcome all obstacles and near-impossible hardships
in order to ascend to the status of Übermensch --
translated from German meaning something like Over-Human.
[Michael, reverberating voice] “The rise to the ubermensch is a process where one discovers
the impediment of conventionalism to his own ability to achieve personal greatness…
The individual reaches his potential when he breaks away from convention
and asserts his own personal dominance over prior values and morality”
Now, to make it clear, I’m decidedly not claiming that Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch was an actual consideration --
or used as something like a blueprint for Capcom when making this game. Nah nah nah...
But after I reached this moment where the game made me step away for a bit,
and I took some time to let my experiences sink in
pondered about the new situation for a night...
I couldn’t help but feel this pull to... get back into the fray and stand my ground -- I knew that I could!
and that’s when I began to look at Resident Evil 2 through this lens of the game
being something like a continuous Zarathustran gauntlet towards perfection and greatness by rejecting conventional approaches
and to my amusement, I found that the shoe fits quite perfectly.
And it’s also fun to look at a game from such an angle, so humor me for this one, aight?!
As I’ve said before, Mr.X’s presence throws a wench --
a wench... yeah
[Michael chuckles]
throws a wrench in all your carefully learned and laid-out strategies:
where the game nudged you towards taking it slow when approaching obstacles,
he takes the very time required for this away when he’s constantly in your back.
Before, zombies could often be tricked and lured out of the way and circumvented
and lickers completely avoided by sneaking.
But suddenly that’s not an option anymore when you hear his boots stomping toward you in the next room.
[Michael] There’s also a really wonderful irony in what his presence does to the player:
this new situation forces you to adapt.
Because suddenly, zombies that once posed a serious challenge or threat --
you have to start seeing them as nothing but roadblocks.
Mr. X is your adversary, but he also kind of embodies the mindset that you must now take on.
Because when he's comin' for you finds -- if he finds a zombie in his way,
he just roughly shoves them aside with the back of his hand, without so much as breaking his stride.
And that’s exactly what you have to do if you want to be able to get away from him.
The first time Tyrant stomped into the main hall, it felt like a violation to me!
Because I was conditioned to think of save rooms as 100% safe zones, where I can take a breather.
It’s a shocker moment for just about everyone, and especially so if you’re familiar with the old RE games and how they work.
Yet as you get a better grasp of the game, you start realizing that the main hall is *exactly* where you want the Tyrant to be,
because it’s such a wide an open space. You’re always gonna be able to easily circle around him and avoid him.
This moment of subversion really knocked me on my ass the first time I realized it.
It’s one of those singular, brilliant moments that makes you realize:
“Damn, they really put a great deal of thought into this game!”
So as menacing as the Tyrant is in the beginning,
in the end he’s really just a collection of systems that you can observe, learn from, and adapt to as you pointed out.
And the game puts so much emphasis on him that even when he’s gone,
the experience of fleeing and avoiding him will have taught you, the player, how to be even better at handling zombies and lickers.
Because as Ragnar mentioned earlier, I personally started out as somebody who takes my sweet time to clear my path, front and back --
and to wipe enemies out of the way as much as I can.
But the Tyrant’s presence made this strategy completely obsolete, so what I was forced to do was alter my playstyle
to be more efficient *and* quicker, clearing enemies when I needed but also knowing when to just book it.
[Ragnar] Yeah and the same thing happened to me, too, just from the other way:
like, I was more the kind of player who took as much time as it needed to avoid enemies, and conserving ammo as much as I could
But with the added pressure of a 7-foot-tall Übermensch follow me around,
the game just forced me to adapt my playstyle on the go --
pushing me towards actually using far more of my resources to become more efficient at taking out enemies *fast*.
And the fascinating thing is that once we’ve both been through the first Tyrant part,
our playstyles had changed and we both kinda shifted towards a more ideal middle-ground between our respective strengths and weaknesses.
[Ragnar] And the game keeps doing the same thing for long after this point.
There’s this wonderful moment in Leon’s playthrough when you take control of Ada.
At one point in her short story segment, she gets also chased by the Tyrant, just a short while.
And the game employs a trick that has already been used to great effect in Resident Evil 7
- I've talked a lot about this in my video -
when you suddenly took control of Mia, who turns out to be well-trained and savvy in weaponry and everything as opposed to Ethan, the main protagonist.
And here, in Resident Evil 2, Ada, she too knows a great deal more about the situation,
she's been trained more excessively than Leon and her behavior, and her posture, demeanor, her remarks, her language...
they carry over to the player!
She’s not shocked and appalled and frightened by the Tyrant’s presence but nothing more than a bit... annoyed.
[Ada] Persisten bastard, aren't you?
That’s where you, as the player, are going to get if you keep at it, if you don't give up!
Resident Evil 2 keeps following this progression.
Again and again.
You’re confronted with an obstacle that seems imposing, impassable and often impossible at first.
Challenges that are designed to throw you off.
But it makes it just as clear that all these challenges are, step by step, manageable
and that they’re only systems in the end.
And once you’ve overcome these challenges and look back,
it’s almost hard to see how you ever struggled at any of them.
because you’ve been hardened over the course of the game.
[Michael] And this process doesn’t stop once after the first playthrough.
The entire B-playthrough is designed around this exact loop of progress, struggle, and triumph.
The viewpoint of the other protagonist gives you enough new impressions that it’s interesting from a narrative perspective,
but but the items and puzzles have also been mixed up enough that even familiar areas can suddenly become challenging again.
[Ragnar] Yeah, and one of the, no if not *the* biggest differences is, obviously, that Mr. X is now following you around from the very beginning,
not just in the last part of the RPD.
And I gotta say that, getting there --
I think that was the second time the game brought me to the point where I considered quitting.
[Michael] Yeah I remember you saying “Do I really want to put myself through this?
I think I’m just gonna watch a Let’s Play instead!”
but you couldn't resist man, here you are: Certified Tofu-Survivor!
[Ragnar] Yaaah, expose me!
[both chuckle]
But I’m really glad that I did, honestly, like -
I think it was...
I think it was important to have this moment of contemplating to give up.
Because that made all the more satisfying to get back in - and *then* realize:
the pattern repeats, it just took the will to get back into it for me to realize that honestly - this is actually not that difficult at all. Like, really.
In my B-Playthrough, I noticed how - of course due to the familiarity with the locations and the prior knowledge of the puzzles,
true - memorization helps.
but also due to my familiarity with the enemies and their strengths and weaknesses -
and how I've been trained before and with how my playstyle had been honed ever since I started the game -
that the second time, I actually didn’t have any problems at all. It was... almost casual.
So that at the end of the B-Playthrough there was this uncanny familiarity with how the game and all its systems operate --
how all the enemies behave in every different situation and context,
and how to deal with many different blends of challenges in any kind of environment,
intuitively and efficiently that is almost felt like this game could throw anything at me.
[Repeating Gunshots]
[Claire] Fucking hell!
[Michael] So would it be fair to say that you’ve been drilled to become a battle-hardened specialist, like, oh, uhh... Hunk?!
[Ragnar] Yeah, oh boy!
[Michael] Oh yeah, the 4th Survivor mode is an extra mode that's unlocked
after you beat both, the A and B-playthrough...
[Radio operator] This is Nighthawk, come in Alpha... [static]
Alpha, do you read? [crackle]
[Hunk] Nighthawk, this is Hunk from Alpha Team...
[Michael] ...and it’s kind of a gauntlet run where you have to make it through the sewers, the underground and the entire police department.
All completely littered with every type of enemy the game can throw at you
and you only have-- crucially, you only have a fixed amount of resources in your inventory.
Now this is the mode where all the skills and strats the game taught you over the course of its 2 playthroughs --
now, they're truly put to the test!
It’s an incredible adrenaline-rush thrill-ride. You can see it in this footage:
this is me, getting to the end, after like 6, 7, 8, I don't know how many tries --
and I was getting so excited and jumpy after trying it so often by the end of the run that
that my hands were literally shaking the camera... every which a way!
[Michael] Yeah, the same thing happened to me, my hands were jittering like a motherfucker in that final stretch --
it definitely took me over a dozen tries, so by the time I made it to the finish line, that sense of accomplishment was absolutely palpable!
[Ragnar] Yeah, exactly. But... as with everything - as with all the enemies before - as with the tyrant...
the more you play it, the more familiar you become and the more calm you become
you get better and better and also just more experienced at it.
And, I also noticed that.. just like in... y'know... trick that always worked in Dark Souls...
Turn off the music! That... helps incredibly!
[Michael hums approvingly]
[Michael] And shoutout to all my vegetarians, because the game even brought back the legendary Tofu Survivor mode!
[Radio operator] This is Nighthawk, come in Alpha... [static]
Alpha, do you read? [crackle]
[Tofu] やめろや！(yamero ya): Stop it!
[Michael] which wonderfully accentuates all we’ve talked about in this video.
[Ragnar] Exactly!
This is basically the 4th survivor run all over again, only this time you play as an anthropomorphic block of tofu instead...
[Tofu] あー、やめて！Yamete! (en.: Stop it!)
[Ragnar] I just love him. His little, feisty voice snippets -- Tofu's just absolutely adorkable! [laughs]
[Michael] Yamete!
[Michael] Yeah, you basically only have a few herbs and LOTs of knives in your inventory.
So this is literally running the gauntlet.
You have almost no means of attacking and the only way to get through is by avoiding, avoiding, avoiding.
Everything is about speed, precision and memorization.
This is tough as nails and if you would have cut me loose on this game mode sometime during my first playthrough,
I would have said that this is literally impossible.
[Ragnar] Yeah but after all we’ve been though, like... you can do this. And it’s still fun!
[Michael] Yeahhhh! It's a BLAST!
We started out with completely different playstyles in the beginning but if you can compare how we played the 4th Survivor and Tofu Survivor modes
you can kind of see how our skillset has been gradually drilled into us over the course of the game towards this, kind of like, unified best practice -
where our situational awareness has been optimized to a point where we're able to deal with any kind of situation you can throw us in.
[Two simultaneous shotgun blasts]
So do you remember in the original Doom game for PC, that when you approached the first level for the very first time around --
How much your behavior had changed by the time you had gotten to the end of the game?
[Ragnar] Yeah, Doom's definitely another game that excels by perpetually driving players towards what a appears to a spectator as near über-human skill.
[Michael, approvingly] Heyyy!
[Ragnar] I also want to add that the Resident Evil 2 remake even goes as far as incorporating this philosophy into its achievement-design.
Which is really an aspect that I feel many games miss out on.
I’m personally not a super trophy-hunter  completionist player --
but Resident Evil 2 features a set of achievements that are deliberately added to support this type of "growing-over-your-own-limitations-mindset."
Aside from nudging you towards the hardcore difficulty setting - there are challenges like
Frugalist - Complete the game without using a single health item.
Minimalist - Complete the game without opening an item box.
A Small Carbon Footprint - Take 14000 steps or fewer in one playthrough.
[Michael] Whoaa!
Yeah man, that really seems ridiculous at face value, right? Imposing, impassable, impossible?
But then again...
[Michael] Exactly! It’s really all a matter of knowing the game and its systems and then playing them out.
If you want to complete the game without opening the item box once, you have to soo carefully about planning out what order you do what in --
like over the course of the entire game! You’ll definitely have to walk a lot more -
[Ragnar] Yeah, and that means that you’ll have to come up with a completely different strategy for finishing the game under 14.000 steps, right?
I mean, that one probably even requires you to be super frugal with your movement during boss fights, doesn’t it?
[Michael] Man though, hearing this makes me want to boot the game up all over again and replay the whole thing --
like seeing this whole set of systems from a fresh angle. It's just like you said:
this is all stuff that appears impossible at first but in the end, it's just carefully crafted systems working together almost seamlessly.
[Ragnar] Yeah, exactly!
I think that's a perfect bottom line for this, honestly.
This game is such a carefully crafted set of tightly interwoven systems,
both compact and extensive at the same time that it just doesn’t stop being fun.
Like, at least it didn't for me - I know some people who, y'know, jumped off the train - and that's cool!
Nothing can't be for everybody!
But this experience is super transformative and it has you looking back and thinking:
“Man, just look how far I’ve come...”
[Michael] Like a regular Über-Mensch!
[Gate slams open loudly]
[Ragnar] Über-Tofu!
[Ragnar, high voice, with reverb]
Yamete!
[Radio operator] This is Nighthawk, come in Alpha... [static]
Alpha, do you read? [crackle]
[Flan] 何やねん！(nani yanen!): What the hell!
[Ragnar] Thank you all so much for watching!
I’ve mentioned it earlier and I’ll say it once more:
this video is meant to open discussion about as many individual experiences with the Resident Evil 2 remake as possible.
No matter if it's positive or negative experiences - it all counts!
So if you have thoughts and feelings about the game you’d like to share - please do!
Let’s turn this YouTube comment section into a constructive discussion platform again.
Also, if you aren’t subscribed to Michael’s channel yet, then you should absolutely do so!
If you like video essays on video games and pop culture - you really shouldn't miss out on his content, seriously, go check it out!
For instance, his video on Nier: Automata is, in my humble opinion, among the best content you’re gonna find on YouTube, I'm serious.
So, link’s in the description!
And, lastly but not leastly, a big thank you goes out to my Patreon supporters.
With the current status of YouTube’s continuous demonetization and copyright attacks on my videos,
your support is literally what keeps this channel breathing.
So if you'd like to join in and help out a little, please follow the card in the top right or the link in the description to pitch in.
Thanks a lot! And a special thank you this month goes out to
Link: http://patreon.com/RagnarRoxShow/
Until next time: Ta ta!
[Flan] あー、しんどっ！(aa, shindo!): Ugh, this sucks!
[Radio Operator] I wanted to meet the Grim Reaper!
