This Week In Retro: Resident Evil 2 (1998) (Patreon)

January 21, 1998: Survival horror takes a licking but keeps on ticking

by Diamond Feit

This may sound sacrilegious in our current media landscape, but no one should plan for a sequel when making art. I'm as selfish as the next person; when I see a movie I love or when a video game stimulates my imagination, of course I want more. Yet I prefer my stories to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I don't need every single plot element wrapped up, but when the credits roll, my sense of satisfaction depends a lot on the denouement.

13 years ago, I thought James Cameron's Avatar completely stuck the landing, and while the final moments of the film left the door open to more stories, Jake Sully's life as a human came to a definite end. Meanwhile, the recent, long-awaited Avatar: The Way of Water reached no such conclusion, because you know at this point Disney wasn't going to foot the bill unless Cameron could guarantee at least a trilogy of Pandora movies. Instead, the story just kind of stops, with neither the heroes nor the villains satisfied by their face-to-face encounter.

27 years ago, my friends and I fell headfirst into the world of survival horror thanks to Capcom's Resident Evil. For weeks, perhaps months, we took Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield into the Spencer Mansion again and again, challenging ourselves to escape faster than our previous attempts. Part of the fun lay in the game's concrete ending: So long as you diligently rescue your S.T.A.R.S. cohorts, the treacherous Albert Wesker ends up dead, the monstrous Tyrant gets blown to bits, and the entire mansion (along with all of Umbrella's secrets and any remaining monsters) vaporizes when the underground laboratory self-destructs. Every chopper ride was a relief as we left Raccoon Forest assured that our mission had succeeded.

Capcom executives must have felt the same way when Resident Evil sold millions of copies and became a financial triumph. The company had already managed to turn a half-dozen hits into ongoing series by 1996, so returning to the well of survival horror made perfect sense. Yet Capcom's efforts to produce a second Resident Evil almost snuffed out the franchise before it could spread, only for a desperate swing during development to save the project and make Resident Evil 2 a highlight of the now-beloved series.

Resident Evil 2 closely follows the framework of Resident Evil 1 but declines to include any of the characters introduced two years earlier. Jill, Chris, Barry, Rebecca, and even the seemingly deceased Wesker would all make their way back to the series in later games, but for this first sequel, none of the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members show up at all. Instead, we meet two brand-new faces as they arrive in Raccoon City looking for answers but finding only disaster.

The story picks up where the first game leaves off, revealing that the weaponized virus which spread throughout Spencer Mansion did not perish in the explosion and has since infected thousands of civilians. The streets of Raccoon City now belong to these lost souls as they feast on everything that crosses their path. Claire Redfield (Chris' sister) and Leon Kennedy meet by chance on the outskirts of town and narrowly survive a fiery car crash on their way to the police station; Claire wants to find her brother and Leon wants to show up for his first day on the job.

Like the original game, Resident Evil 2 offers players their choice of two protagonists, as Claire and Leon have identical goals but get separated during the chaos. The two will periodically rendezvous as they complete their mission, but for the most part they remain out of contact with one another. However, both will end up forging new relationships with other survivors along the way, not all of whom are friendly and even fewer of whom will live to see the sun rise.

Resident Evil 2 puts a spin on the dual character system by layering the two leads' stories atop one another. In the original game, whether you choose Chris or Jill, the other will spend the majority of their evening locked in a cell waiting for your assistance. That's not the case in Resident Evil 2; both Claire and Leon will make their way to the Raccoon City Police Department before finding a hidden Umbrella facility underneath the building. After a number of hostile encounters with the scientist responsible for creating the deadly virus that destroyed the city, Claire and Leon each discover an emergency train tunnel as a last-minute means of escape when the entire laboratory—you guessed it—self-destructs.

What makes this concept extra inviting is that the stories change depending on which character you choose first. On your initial playthrough, you might discover a locker with a powerful weapon or a pouch that boosts your available inventory slots. You can elect to take these items or leave them behind for the other character; they won't respawn once claimed. Likewise, when two sets of emergency window shutters fail in the police station, you have an option to repair one of the control boxes. Should you mend it in time, that area will not be overrun with zombies when the second character passes through.

For all that it gets right, Resident Evil 2 very nearly bit the big one during production. Hideki Kamiya, taking over directing duties from Shinji Mikami, wanted the sequel to wow players with more action, more locations, and more monsters. Yet his first pass at the concept failed to impress his peers or his superiors, as the new characters and scenario lacked any emotional impact or connection to the first game. Capcom went so far as to scrap nearly a year's worth of work, postponing the game from its 1997 release date so the script could be rewritten.

As a key figure in making Resident Evil 2 the classic we know today, noted screenwriter Noboru Sugimura joined production to liven up the material and salvage the project. Amongst the changes Sugimura made, he recommended giving at least one character a relationship to somebody from the first game. This resulted in motorcycle racer Eliza Walker, the original female lead, transforming into Chris Redfield's younger sister.

Sugimura also felt the sequel was "all too realistic," lacking any exotic locations on par with Spencer Mansion. He came up with a brilliant narrative excuse for why the Raccoon City Police Department could occupy a lavish, ornate building instead of a plain, utilitarian space: It once housed an art museum, and the corrupt chief of police continued to accept and display paintings and sculptures which he received as bribes from Umbrella to ignore the company's illegal activities.

The original Resident Evil had been a massive gamble as Capcom had little experience with 3D graphics, horror games, or the new PlayStation hardware for that matter. With its tumultuous development that cost the company well over one million dollars, Resident Evil 2 went from a can't-miss sequel to another risky release in its own right. In both cases, Capcom beat the odds; when Resident Evil 2 finally launched in January of 1998, the game flew off of store shelves and critics lauded it as both a terrifying horror game and an exhilarating action experience.

25 years later, I can easily recommend Resident Evil 2 without any caveats. The semi-overlapping narratives give the player's decisions more weight and also double the replay value, as having two different stories for each character essentially gives Resident Evil 2 four scenarios in total. I love the tension of the first game, but the second adds another layer of despair to the entire situation. At least when Chris or Jill escaped the mansion, they thought they had made a real difference. In Resident Evil 2, the game begins with the knowledge that, even if the player survives, Raccoon City cannot be saved.

If Resident Evil matter-of-factly invented survival horror, Resident Evil 2 elevated and expanded the genre to new heights. It also raised the stakes from the first game, taking a tale of a haunted mansion and turning it into a nail-biting thriller set in a city gone mad. I still prefer Mikami's original vision of a house where danger lurks behind every doorway, but I cannot fault Kamiya for delivering the nascent genre a forceful kick in the ass.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.