This Week in Retro: Code Veronica turns 20 (Patreon)

February 3, 2000: Resident Evil's First Escape

by Diamond Feit

The arrival of Resident Evil on the Sony PlayStation in 1996 brought a true sea change to video games as both a hobby and a medium. Debuting mere months after the system's U.S. launch, Resident Evil presented itself as a proper "adult" story with a frightening, violent tone that set it apart from anything available on the 8- or 16-bit systems that preceded it. For kids who grew up in the 1980s, it was a sign that the future had arrived and our hobby was growing up with us... even if the entire concept had started as an 8-bit RPG. Resident Evil was a critical and commercial smash, and Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis quickly followed to similar acclaim and strong sales. But with sequels comes familiarity and expectations: Each game took place in an increasingly beleaguered Raccoon City with the heroes facing more and more shambling corpses and squirming titans before a nuclear strike at the end of the third game wiped the slate clean.

Enter Code: Veronica, the first Resident Evil title to debut outside of the PlayStation. As the original game had with Sony's machine in 1996, Code: Veronica followed the Sega Dreamcast's American launch by a few months. A new generation of hardware allowed for immediate aesthetic improvements: More polygons meant more details, which meant characters' faces were no longer still images, allowing them to move their mouths and visibly emote during cutscenes. The pre-rendered backgrounds were replaced by full 3D environments, allowing the camera to pan and scroll in different directions, which the action more dynamic.

On its face, Resident Evil Code: Veronica was not as revelatory as the original game had been; it was just a very good-looking version of a game millions had already played. And since far fewer people owned a Dreamcast than a PlayStation, far fewer people played it at the time of its release, which has diminished its legacy. To a casual observer, what difference do improved graphics make if all games from this era pale in visual comparison to a game from 2010, to say nothing of 2020?

I'm here to tell you that Resident Evil Code: Veronica matters because it showed the first real signs of growth that the series (and fans) would soon take for granted. "Survival horror" wasn't just the name of the genre popularized by Resident Evil; those two words were the primary themes of the first three games. They were stories of just scraping by, generally limiting the players to a single space filled with scary monsters: A mansion in the first game, a police station in the second, and the third became a long chase scene in what was left of Raccoon City. Code: Veronica is about Claire and Chris Redfield looking for each other and looking to strike back against the Umbrella Corporation, the secret, silent force behind just about everything evil in Resident Evil. The Redfields are no longer "survivors", they have become the aggressors. Code: Veronica opens with an action sequence of Claire breaking into Umbrella, dodging military fire before shooting a gas tank and killing at least a dozen non-zombie humans, and the game ends with the heroes not waiting for a chopper or fleeing in an underground train but by stealing a harrier jet and vowing to continue their fight.

Code: Veronica stands as a middle chapter between the terrors of the original Resident Evil trilogy and the straight-up action-adventure of the trilogy that followed. Camera angles and tank controls are still present, but the tech upgrade allows for larger arenas. Inventory space is still a premium, but weapons and ammo are plentiful. The Redfields still spend a lot of time gathering odd keys to open odder locks, but by removing Racoon City from the equation there's no longer a need to "explain" any of this. The Redfields are now on Umbrella's turf and that means dealing with all of Umbrella's top weirdos: Identical twins who are actually clones and possibly lovers operating in a top-secret base in Antarctica.

(Quick aside: Can I say how much I adore the leap Code: Veronica makes regarding Resident Evil lore? This is the moment the series stopped being about rogue scientists or corrupt cops and started being about insane aristocrats who conduct experiments on their employees and also themselves. It's fantastic.)

Despite multiple re-releases, including an HD remaster which is available on current-gen consoles, Code: Veronica is now indistinguishable from its peers, its technical improvements rendered moot by decades of growth, its tweaks to the series' canon easily ignored by casual fans. Elements meant to make the game look hip in 2000 are now impossibly dated. It's impossible not to look at Claire's new friend Steve with his Leonardo DiCaprio haircut and guns akimbo without an immediate eyeroll. Code: Veronica took strides to shed some of the baggage of the "survival horror" genre that defined Resident Evil at the time, but it did not take the leaps that Resident Evil 4 would five years later.

Would more people have taken notice if Code: Veronica had been treated like a proper sequel with a number? Did the sagging fortunes of the Dreamcast hinder its reach? Or was it a case of franchise fatigue, given that Code: Veronica was the fourth Resident Evil game in five years (and that’s not even counting spin-offs, ports, or re-releases). For me, Resident Evil Code: Veronica was exactly what I wanted from the series: A brand-new chapter that expanded the story while also delivering surprising moments tied to the original game (Wesker's not dead! And he has superpowers!?). It was no longer so scary that I couldn't play it alone, but it was still scary enough to keep things tense—I won't forget that moment in Antarctica when I first noticed a shadow moving under the ice. Twenty years later, Resident Evil has moved on to bigger and brighter things, but we wouldn't have gotten here without this next-gen detour to the southern hemisphere.