Extra thoughts on Resident Evil 2 (Patreon)

Hey everybody, so I hope you're enjoying the new video on Resident Evil 2 and its design choices. I figured I'd give you a little insight into my thought process when making these videos.

So with Road to the Rocket Launcher, since I've already played all these games years ago, I generally have residual memories of the basic structure in each title and already have a vague idea of what the arc of the video series is gonna be like. However I'm open to being surprised by things in my replays, especially now that I'm so intricately chronicling their structure with flowcharts and so on. 

Resident Evil 2 was one of the games that surprised me, because while I remember it being action packed and linear towards the end I didn't recall it removing so much of the exploration from the first game to the extent that it did.

There was a point where I thought to myself, "hey the keys may open less doors and you have to get them in a pretty linear order but at least there are optional rooms to mix things up" but then I went.... "is there?" 

No... there really aren't; only a hand full at best. I showed a bunch that were in Resi 1 but that was just scraping the surface of all the optional hide-y holes in that game. For optional content that needn't effect the new action packed angle of Resi 2, especially with the added hand holding on the map screen, I don't see why more rooms couldn't have been included here....

....maybe because they had to restart the whole dev cycle halfway through... oh well.

Again Resi 2 IS atmospheric, HAS the spooks and produces the odd jump scare, but it definitely feels more action heavy, and it's interesting to see the series almost immediately take that turn after the first title.

Comparing the flowcharts here, Resi 2 has more minutia going on in its Police Station act than the Mansion's first visit. But the Mansion has way more branches and stuff you can do out of order:

The diamond key is especially non-flexible, it basically tells you to get the next plug or continue the path to the next key.

I feel like all the extra rooms that didn't lead to anything super important in Resident Evil 1 really added to its sense of exploration and discovery. Once you know where you needed to be the game was way shorter but that first time through you'd have a much harder time than on your first Resi 2 attempt.

I even found an interview where Kamiya confirmed he thought Resi 2 was too easy, and he's the one who leaned towards developing the action side of things!

My finishing scores and time were pretty bad on my first two campaigns in the video, but my Leon B was a lot better time-wise. Score would have been better too without all the saves but I need them in case my capture footage fails, I swear! 

Anyway I haven't played Resident Evil 3 in a long time, and I remember liking it a lot, so it's definitely going to be interesting to revisit and see if it holds up, stay tuned!