T w e n t y S i d e d

Yes, I know the title of this post is a bit clickbait-ish. It promises a provocative and inflammatory article. But this is fitting, because this a provocative position that will unavoidably inflame some people. Resident Evil is an unbelievably popular franchise and Resident Evil 4 is considered the best of the series. It is regularly celebrated as one of the Best Games ever made and is regarded as being incredibly influential. So if this title seems like clickbait then it has more to do with the game itself and less to do with the content of the article. Sometimes people make controversial claims for attention, but sometimes people are simply expressing genuinely-held controversial opinions.

And besides, today is fireworks day, so it seems like an appropriate time to light some fuses.

To soothe the egos of fans: No, I’m not saying the game is worthless or that you’re stupid / wrong / clueless to like it. It’s fine. Like it all you want. I’m not trying to alter the legacy of this game by complaining about it. I just think it’s interesting how this celebrated game seems to have been engineered specifically to nail all of my pet peeves.

Since we’re already in clickbait territory, let’s resort to the crude savagery of a numbered list…

5. Incoherent Tone

If you’ve followed my writing and story deconstructions for any length of time, you know that tone is really important to me. Some people are fans of the Bollywood sampler approach to storytelling where you get a little of everything. They don’t mind if a story goes from slapstick comedy, to gut-wrenching drama, to earnest sappy romance, to bombastic action. But I don’t like mixing my Shaun of the Dead with my Shawshank or finding bits of Bridget Jones in my Terminator. That’s all good stuff, but that’s not the point. I love both Ice Cream and Pizza, but not together.

Tone is important because it establishes the rules and limits of the fictional world you’re trying to take in. I can accept that the world around Scott Pilgrim can drop into slow motion in the middle of a huge fight so he can trade dialog with someone, but I’d never stand for those sorts of reality-bending shenanigans in Star TrekI mean, without some technical explanation for why time slowed down.. I can accept Vin Diesel performing car stunts that mock the realities of physics and automotive engineering in a Fast & Furious movie, while the exact same stunt would be offensive if performed in something like Poirot. In your typical underdog sports movie I can believe (and even expect) the coach to rouse his team to overpowering levels of competence at the finale with a impassioned speech and well-timed musical swells, but that same trick would be implausible if it happened in something like Moneyball or Any Given Sunday.

Tone tells us how much this movie is going to adhere to the rules of the world we live in, and how much it plans to bend them in pursuit of spectacle or drama. For me it’s a key ingredient of suspension of disbelief, and if a story can’t nail down its tone then I can’t immerse myself in its world.

If a movie is going to have an incoherent mess of a story with a bunch of screwball characters, then it had better be a comedy. Some people claim RE4 is a comedy, and I suppose it’s sort of amusing in a “can you believe how stupid this is?” kind of way, like a movie that Mystery Science Theater might tackle. But it’s certainly not a comedy in the sense of being a witty send-up like Shaun of the Dead, Galaxy Quest, or other self-aware genre deconstructions. There isn’t any lampshading, winking at the audience, trope subversions, or even any jokes. It takes a preposterously stupid story and presents it completely straight. You could attempt to argue that the whole thing is just extremely deadpan comedy, but we’ve seen Capcom make twenty-five of these games by this point, and there doesn’t seem to be a big difference in their style between the times when they’re being deadly serious and when they’re supposedly “kidding”. This isn’t a deconstruction of bombastic B-movie action schlock, it is bombastic B-movie action schlock.

In any case, I can’t seem to switch gears the way the game expects. Sometimes the game is trying to scare you and sometimes you’re in these farcical conversations with a undersized ren faire rejectWas Salazar supposed to be short, or a kid? I can’t remember. where characters spout inane dialog that serves as exposition by having the bad guys tell you all their plans.

I have no idea what we’re supposed to feel during the story beats of Resident Evil 4. I get conflicting answers from fans. But for me I feel irritation, boredom, and bewilderment.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Dumb Industry: Why I Hated Resident Evil 4”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.