This Week In Retro: Resident Evil Zero (Patreon)

November 12, 2002: Mark it zero

by Diamond Feit

Video game sequels tend to be no-brainers. If a concept works, it works, and the audience won't object to another round of the same exciting gameplay. If a concept didn't quite work but still sold well enough, refining what did click and tweaking the rest just might turn a so-so game into a smash hit. Video game sequels also get to take advantage of material created for previous titles—like art assets and animations—saving studios time and money.

Video game prequels, however, are a lot less common. For decades, games simply lacked any narrative need to turn back the clock; no one walked away from the arcades with any unanswered questions about the origins of Donkey Kong, Ghosts 'n Goblins, or Final Fight. Even as stories came to matter more to game developers and players alike, prequels remained a rarity because sequels would often suffice. Hollywood loves prequels (and reboots) because it empowers executives to keep a franchise going for decades as the original actors either move on to different roles or simply grow old. Yet video game heroes never age and never insist on pursuing new creative projects; why bother telling a story from the past when you can just spin another yarn about saving a princess or killing robots?

20 years ago, Capcom tried the prequel approach by releasing Resident Evil Zero for the Nintendo GameCube. Launching months after the highly successful 2002 remake of the original game, Zero purported to reveal the origins of the Umbrella Corporation, the creator of the infamous T-virus, and just what happened before Jill, Chris, and the rest of S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team arrived in the doomed Spencer Mansion outside Raccoon City.

Resident Evil Zero promotes young medic Rebecca Chambers from her supporting role in the first game to that of lead protagonist, telling the story of her own adventures on the night of July 23, 1998. Since Chris Redfield meets her after getting separated from the rest of Alpha Team, you might think Bravo Team ran into the same mansion after their chopper went down. Yet it turns out Rebecca and several other Bravo team members instead ran onto a nearby passenger train, only to discover the Ecliptic Express overrun with zombies.

Initially trapped on the train by herself, Rebecca meets up with fugitive Billy Coen, a death-row inmate convicted of murder many times over. Word over the radio warns that Billy "wouldn't think twice" before killing a cop, yet despite numerous opportunities to rid himself of a pursuer, Billy doesn't seem interested in harming Rebecca at all. Rather, he proposes the two work together to double their chances of making it off the train alive.

While many Resident Evil games have included a choice of protagonist, Resident Evil Zero was the first to require two people cooperating to complete the story, though the player only controls one character at a time. Whether Rebecca or Billy takes the lead, the other can follow along or stand still until told to move again. Players can swap between the two leads at any time via a function Capcom dubbed the Partner Zapping system; even if the heroes are on opposite sides of the map, the game switches locations nearly instantly.

Resident Evil games already had a reputation for strict limits on inventory slots, so the dual-protagonist approach in Zero doubles the amount of items players may have on hand at any time. It also doubles the available firepower, as both characters may equip weapons and attack together. However, the presence of two characters in the world of survival horror also doubles the risk, as Rebecca and Billy each have their own health meter and any damage must be healed separately. If the two split up, the character on standby remains vulnerable to attack, though they will automatically use their radio to call for help so the player can zap back to deal with the threat.

On the subject of inventory management, Resident Evil Zero makes another departure from series norms by doing away with item boxes, a magical convenience which stores everything the player deposits for later retrieval. Instead, Zero allows players to freely put down items anywhere and pick them up again. While this does enable putting aside a less-essential object in favor of grabbing a crucial first-aid spray or ammunition—an option not found in any of the earlier games—this decentralized approach means half the stuff Rebecca and Billy find will end up scattered across the map. During my first playthrough, I foolishly had Rebecca shove the first pack of ink ribbons she found into her pocket, so when Billy later passed through the same save room, I couldn't record my progress.

Resident Evil Zero began life as a Nintendo 64 game, with Partner Zapping designed to take advantage of that system's cartridge-based software to circumvent load times. The series had always been released on disc-based systems previously, with the now-famous door-opening animations giving the console an opportunity to read new data from the CD into memory. Yet as the development process stretched onward, and the N64's fortunes looked worse and worse, Capcom shifted the project to the GameCube.

These delays meant that, instead of arriving in the wake of Resident Evil 2 or 3, Zero came out in late 2002 after the series had taken several leaps forward. Code Veronica on the Dreamcast abandoned pre-rendered backgrounds, allowing for more extreme camera angles and even camera panning as characters explored larger areas. The very first Resident Evil remake featured zombies capable of reviving themselves after taking seemingly fatal damage, rising again as faster, deadlier enemies. Both titles revised and expanded the story, introducing players to living members of the wealthy Spencer family as well as Lisa Trevor, a new monster born from an early Umbrella viral experiment. None of these well-received changes to the series appear in Resident Evil Zero, and their absence lessens the experience.

As a prequel, Resident Evil Zero simply has nothing to add to the already complex lore of the franchise. We learn about Dr. James Marcus and his role in developing the original T-Virus, the infectious agent responsible for the events of the original trilogy of games. As revelations go, this matters very little; finding out that William Birkin stole Marcus' research doesn't change our perception of him as the villain in Resident Evil 2. The fact that Umbrella eventually betrayed both of these men and left them for dead is completely unshocking, given that the company has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to execute anyone—even employees—as a means to an end.

Despite promoting her to a lead role, Capcom also fails to show us anything of consequence about Rebecca Chambers. We thought she had been trapped in the Spencer Mansion which Alpha Team enters on their mission to rescue Bravo Team, but she actually rode a train to a different creepy research facility, only for that building to self-destruct before she eventually found her way to the other mansion (which self-destructs at the end of the original game). So instead of surviving one night in a zombie-infested Umbrella residence, she survived two. Who cares?

Billy Coen, Rebecca's co-star, fares even worse. Introduced to the player as an alleged mass murderer, he seems an unlikely psychopath as he immediately cooperates with Rebecca. Turns out he was framed, as he tried to prevent the massacre which landed him in jail, kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man. That's not a twist, not when we're expected to trust him the entire game as Rebecca's partner. Revealing the truth changes nothing for Billy, since Rebecca makes no attempt to clear his name. He begins the game and ends the game as a fugitive, never to return to Raccoon City. Again: Who cares?

Resident Evil Zero is not a parade of bad ideas. A well-written prequel could transform Umbrella from a generically evil corporation into something relatable. As a teenage medic on an elite law enforcement team, Rebecca would benefit from having more depth to her personality and backstory. We know for a fact from future Resident Evil games that controlling pairs of protagonists can be both entertaining and tense. Yet just about every element in Resident Evil Zero feels off to the point that there's little reason to play it today, even though the graphics look excellent in Capcom's HD remaster on PC and modern consoles, outshining even those of the Resident Evil remake.

Since Resident Evil Zero was always envisioned as a challenging throwback from its earliest days of development, I find it amusing that 20 years later, an entire genre of horror games exist to do exactly that. Indie creators in the 21st century adore the early-PlayStation aesthetic when they want their three-dimensional environments to look surreal and feel isolating. Many of these projects specifically imitate concepts and characteristics seen in classic Resident Evil games such as low-texture models, limited ammo and inventory, and even tank controls.

As technology advances and 90s kids grow older, we might one day see a crop of indies who seek to recreate the GameCube experience in their low-budget horror creations. Until then, Resident Evil Zero remains an underwhelming entry in a series all about resurrection and reinvention. Perhaps a Zero REmake could repair its reputation, if only Capcom was willing to revisit past works that truly needed a second look.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.