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Resident Evil 5 Dev Talks Demo Feedback
MTV's Multiplayer blog sat down with Jun Takeuchi, producer for Capcom's Resident Evil 5, about the feedback they've gotten from the game's demo, which has been downloaded over 4 million times. He comments on the changed control scheme, which has generated a lot of discussion and criticism, by suggesting that their decision will become clear once the full game is out. "We understand that there are many people who want to run and shoot at the same time, but it's not the right alignment for the game." He also says the finished game will have shorter loading times, and he briefly discusses the media-fueled race controversy over the fact that Africa's zombies have dark skin. Takeuchi says, "People will be able to play the game and see what it is for themselves." Kotaku recently ran a preview of Resident Evil 5.
In other words, everyone really hated the control scheme, but we don't really care what the customers think. We know better than them. It's not like they've played FPSs or Zombie games before and know what they like.
I played the demo. The controls were horrid. It -acts- like FPS controls, except that you can only turn very slowly, you can't move and shoot, and basically just can't deal with everything that's going on without a lot of grief.
I am by no means King of FPSs, but I know a good control scheme when I use it.
On the other hand, they're following the same tradition that has prevented me from playing every other RE game: Horrid controls.
As for the decision becoming clear once the game's out... It's already clear! Hubris, ignorance and laziness. Period.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The demo was so much fun, playing co-op with a friend was really hard. We had to try the scenerio a good 5 times before we finished it.
The game has a sense of urgency, my heart was pounding during the first invasion of zombies into the house. The game requires a level of strategy I hadn't seen before.
To all these people that are whinging about the controls, it's refreshing that a somewhat different approach to game playing has been released. I'm tired of all the Doom wannabes.
Shame on the media for beating up the story regarding "media-fueled race controversy over the fact that Africa's zombies". Here's News! Its in Africa! If the scene was in New York, then you have got a point, but this is just blatant attempt to stir the pot in order to get reviews.
I'm definitely going to buy this game when it comes out.
Of course, nobody cared that the first 4 games featured white zombies.
Also, I'd imagine that if the game, set in Africa, featured exclusively white zombies, there would be just as much "controversy" surrounding it.
I have not seen the trailer, but if the author is correct then this issue isn't as clear cut and it can't be dismissed as a black guy getting excessively defensive. I also wonder whether the reason the pre-zombie people are shown as dangerous is by intention, not due to racial prejudice but instead because it builds tension, or whether the developers thought showing the player character interacting with nice friendly local children and then soon after blowing their heads off wouldn't be taken well by players (sometimes it is nice to have clear good & evil although perhaps a game like RE5 would actually be better with more grey area to make players think?).
Overall I recommend that people who have skipped the race article link thinking it is a load of bollocks have a read, although the guys style annoys me and it is light on details there is more to it than you might think.
The one thing I still use my Nintendo Wii for is Resident Evil 4. I couldn't believe the difference the motion control scheme made in terms of offering such refreshing game play for a survival-horror style game. I had played RE4 on the PS2 and enjoyed it but the Wii version shames the previous platform releases overwhelmingly.
Literally pointing and shooting at the screen for Resident Evil 4 on the Wii has spoiled my expectations for what Resident Evil 5 was going to be on the PS3/360.
Even if they improve the control scheme (I've played the demo, hate the controls) it's not going to be as fluid and fun (at least in my opinion) as the Wii version of RE4.
Sony and MS need some better wireless guns and controllers for games like this. If fighting games get arcade sticks, racing games get steering wheels, where are the rail gun controllers?
If it plays like RE4, it is perfect.
I am tired of dumbing down games by making every single one of them play like Quake. It is highly unrealistic.
I love RE4, play it all the time, and have never had a problem with the controls, nor have they impacted my performance or enjoyment of the game.
People complained about Silent Hill's control scheme, then they modernized it for SH4 which left the game unplayable for many veterans as you couldn't pick the old, more intuitive scheme.
The control issue is an issue for a very vocal minority.
You have, possibly without realising it, hit upon the real reason there's no Wii port of RE5. And it's far more worrying for Nintendo than any branding/demographic issue.
The Wii can't handle the game from a hardware perspective.
The Gamecube was perfectly competitive with the rest of its generation; more powerful than the PS2 and certainly a reasonable match for an Xbox. The Wii is still closer in its hardware capabilities to a Gamecube than to a PS3 or Xbox 360. Where the Wii does get ports of cross-platform games, these often tend to be co-developed with the PS2 version. Expect to see the Wii cut out of more and more "big news" games as this cycle goes on and developers get more comfortable with the hardware on offer elsewhere. It's not just about graphics - more sophisticated physics modelling and more generally elaborate design philosophies also demand better hardware.
The installed base won't save it, either. The PS2 benefitted from its huge installed base last time around, because most PS2 owners were, to some extent, "gamers". They bought games. The Wii demographic buys, on average, far fewer games (and many Wiis sit unused in cupboards).
There's also the spectre of the old racism debate, hovering the background. That debate is only going to get louder and more urgent once the game is released, and is being covered beyond the cosy world of the specialist gaming press, since there's imagery in here that goes beyond the general air of foreign menace that caused a ruckus in the first trailers.
One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.
Later on, there's a cut-scene of a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men. When you attempt to rescue her, she's been turned and must be killed. If this has any relevance to the story it's not apparent in the first three chapters, and it plays so blatantly into the old clichés of the dangerous "dark continent" and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s. That Sheva neatly fits the approved Hollywood model of the light-skinned black heroine, and talks more like Lara Croft than her thickly-accented foes, merely compounds the problem rather than easing it. There are even more outrageous and outdated images to be found later in the game, stuff that I was honestly surprised to see in 2009, but Capcom has specifically asked that details of these scenes remain under wraps for now, whether for these reasons we don't know.
There will be plenty of people who refuse to see anything untoward in this material. "It wasn't racist when the enemies were Spanish in Resident Evil 4," goes the argument, but then the Spanish don't have the baggage of being stereotyped as subhuman animals for the past two hundred years. It's perfectly possible to use Africa as the setting for a powerful and troubling horror story, but when you're applying the concept of people being turned into savage monsters onto an actual ethnic group that has long been misrepresented as savage monsters, it's hard to see how elements of race weren't going to be a factor.
All it will take is for one mainstream media outlet to show the heroic Chris Redfield stamping on the face of a black woman, splattering her skull, and the controversy over Manhunt 2 will seem quaint by comparison. If we're going to accept this sort of imagery in games then questions are going be asked, these questions will have merit, and we're going to need a more convincing answer than "lol it's just a game."