I wonder how the staff pitched the rewrites, must've been a pretty great meeting.
Why don't we take Leon from a genuinely nice guy that became a cop out of the mistaken belief that cops are, you know, nice guys, and just make him like an asshole beat cop. Points his gun at everyone, obediently wags his tail when someone just goes "yeah I'm FBI", sees a guy screaming and panicking in a jail cell and goes "I have to talk to the chief" despite, you know, not even knowing if there's even any other cops alive. He's such a massive asshole in this game, they just saw "cop" and made that his whole character, like he's too deep into a LARP.
Also, you can't have both "Leon knows Ada is a spy" and the Ada kiss scene in one scenario. Those were separated in the original for a reason. Ada manipulating Leon is also dumb, even ignoring that her FBI cover seemingly only exists to fool him, a guy who showed up a week after the outbreak started, but Ada is meant to be capable. Pretty sure this game just hates women generally, since Annette went from a caring albeit absent mother to a Rick and Morty type scientist caricature, and we get new scenes of Claire getting tied up by a rapist and needed to be saved by giant monsters, when in the original she was the more capable of the two protagonists. Leon's story is supposed to be coloured by failure and growth, while Claire's is supposed to be coloured by determination and familial love. It's shocking, honestly, how they managed to take a game entirely about love, belief in humanity, so embroiled in standard mecha and toku themes that the Chinese comic had Leon fight God (and that isn't even much of a stretch when you consider his actions in the abstract, just think about him throwing away the G-Virus for a minute), and then the remake has none of that. It's a complete and abject failure in recapturing those ideas.
Maybe it's good at some new ideas, but it doesn't really have any. Well, aside from the rapist I guess, you know Irons was just a regular psychopath before that proposed interesting ideas for the player to chew on. His death in the original contains a lengthy speech about entitlement and has themes relating to desires resulting in inevitable self-destruction, which the player is then allowed to chew on as the next brief section is a jaunt through a few linear, visually interesting areas. But nah, just have him explode in your face after man handling the child, force this weird antagonistic relationship between him and Claire that goes nowhere expressly because he just explodes, and then transform the sewers into RPD2: We Ran Out of Good Ideas So Here's Brown, Green, And Grey! Why does he even want Sherry's pendant?
No, seriously, why? Does he want the G-Virus vaccine? Is Irons, notoriously spiritually weak and selfish man, going to make the long jaunt through the sewers and literal ground zero for the outbreak just to get the G-Virus for uh... uhh.... reasons? What, to sell it? To who? His benefactor just destroyed his town, who is he gonna go to?
It's a long list of unanswered questions in the remake, not even really alluding to answers. Pretty much the ethos of the whole thing, don't question all this stuff, don't think about the characters and motivations, just look at uh... this hamburger! The big one is why is Mr. X even here, where did he come from? You'll never know! Don't even mention that throwaway file Ben has, it's literally nonsense, how the hell would he know? Who told him and why? All he knows is basic conspiracy shit, "You guys have an underground lab!", how'd he find out about the seven foot tall supermodel in a trench coat and its motivations?
If Mr. X's motivations are truly to kill all survivors, why? Why be in the RPD? The RPD isn't connected to the lab entrance anymore, and almost everyone is dead. Before Claire and Leon show up, there is a grand total of 5 people there, with 3 dying for reasons completely unrelated to Mr. X! Its even worse since RE:3, which was written at the same time as this game so there is no excuse, changes the UBCS to actually be there to help, in addition to Umbrella being one of the last votes to nuke Raccoon City. If they wanted all evidence destroyed, they could've done it. Mr. X originally wanted the G-Virus which actually makes sense. Umbrella wanting it is what changed the many micro outbreaks to one big macro outbreak in Raccoon City, so of course they'd send a bunch of shit at the city to get it, especially when there are several competing forces like the Rival Company and the USA government trying to get it as well. Fucking dumb.
I could go on forever- so I will. One day I will update this review to call the game shit again. Because it is. I hate it.
The worst mainline game.
Why don't we take Leon from a genuinely nice guy that became a cop out of the mistaken belief that cops are, you know, nice guys, and just make him like an asshole beat cop. Points his gun at everyone, obediently wags his tail when someone just goes "yeah I'm FBI", sees a guy screaming and panicking in a jail cell and goes "I have to talk to the chief" despite, you know, not even knowing if there's even any other cops alive. He's such a massive asshole in this game, they just saw "cop" and made that his whole character, like he's too deep into a LARP.
Also, you can't have both "Leon knows Ada is a spy" and the Ada kiss scene in one scenario. Those were separated in the original for a reason. Ada manipulating Leon is also dumb, even ignoring that her FBI cover seemingly only exists to fool him, a guy who showed up a week after the outbreak started, but Ada is meant to be capable. Pretty sure this game just hates women generally, since Annette went from a caring albeit absent mother to a Rick and Morty type scientist caricature, and we get new scenes of Claire getting tied up by a rapist and needed to be saved by giant monsters, when in the original she was the more capable of the two protagonists. Leon's story is supposed to be coloured by failure and growth, while Claire's is supposed to be coloured by determination and familial love. It's shocking, honestly, how they managed to take a game entirely about love, belief in humanity, so embroiled in standard mecha and toku themes that the Chinese comic had Leon fight God (and that isn't even much of a stretch when you consider his actions in the abstract, just think about him throwing away the G-Virus for a minute), and then the remake has none of that. It's a complete and abject failure in recapturing those ideas.
Maybe it's good at some new ideas, but it doesn't really have any. Well, aside from the rapist I guess, you know Irons was just a regular psychopath before that proposed interesting ideas for the player to chew on. His death in the original contains a lengthy speech about entitlement and has themes relating to desires resulting in inevitable self-destruction, which the player is then allowed to chew on as the next brief section is a jaunt through a few linear, visually interesting areas. But nah, just have him explode in your face after man handling the child, force this weird antagonistic relationship between him and Claire that goes nowhere expressly because he just explodes, and then transform the sewers into RPD2: We Ran Out of Good Ideas So Here's Brown, Green, And Grey! Why does he even want Sherry's pendant?
No, seriously, why? Does he want the G-Virus vaccine? Is Irons, notoriously spiritually weak and selfish man, going to make the long jaunt through the sewers and literal ground zero for the outbreak just to get the G-Virus for uh... uhh.... reasons? What, to sell it? To who? His benefactor just destroyed his town, who is he gonna go to?
It's a long list of unanswered questions in the remake, not even really alluding to answers. Pretty much the ethos of the whole thing, don't question all this stuff, don't think about the characters and motivations, just look at uh... this hamburger! The big one is why is Mr. X even here, where did he come from? You'll never know! Don't even mention that throwaway file Ben has, it's literally nonsense, how the hell would he know? Who told him and why? All he knows is basic conspiracy shit, "You guys have an underground lab!", how'd he find out about the seven foot tall supermodel in a trench coat and its motivations?
If Mr. X's motivations are truly to kill all survivors, why? Why be in the RPD? The RPD isn't connected to the lab entrance anymore, and almost everyone is dead. Before Claire and Leon show up, there is a grand total of 5 people there, with 3 dying for reasons completely unrelated to Mr. X! Its even worse since RE:3, which was written at the same time as this game so there is no excuse, changes the UBCS to actually be there to help, in addition to Umbrella being one of the last votes to nuke Raccoon City. If they wanted all evidence destroyed, they could've done it. Mr. X originally wanted the G-Virus which actually makes sense. Umbrella wanting it is what changed the many micro outbreaks to one big macro outbreak in Raccoon City, so of course they'd send a bunch of shit at the city to get it, especially when there are several competing forces like the Rival Company and the USA government trying to get it as well. Fucking dumb.
I could go on forever- so I will. One day I will update this review to call the game shit again. Because it is. I hate it.
The worst mainline game.