{"id":53880,"date":"2022-02-22T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53880"},"modified":"2022-03-06T07:17:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-06T12:17:18","slug":"resident-evil-5-4-gone-fishin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53880","title":{"rendered":"Resident Evil 5 #3: Gone Fishin&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode, the main characters finally corner the guy we&#8217;ve been chasing for most of the game. And instead of arresting him, or hitting him, or shooting him, or hurting his feelings, or doing anything else that might somehow advance his goals, Chris Redfield just glares at the guy while asking stupid questions. The bad guy is able to inject himself with stuff and turn into a huge monster and our alleged hero doesn&#8217;t do anything about it.<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.twitch.tv\/?video=1301052043&amp;parent=www.shamusyoung.com&amp;autoplay=false\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" frameborder=\"0\"scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>Have I mentioned that I hate Chris Redfield? He&#8217;s just THE WORST. He&#8217;s a no-nonsense musclebro badass tough guy&#8230; who is completely, <b>hilariously<\/b> passive and impotent in every cutscene.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take the zombies out of the equation. Let&#8217;s just imagine a cop that behaves the way Chris Redfield does&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"script\">INT &#8211; CRAPPY APARTMENT &#8211; DAY<\/p>\n<p>A SHADY CHARACTER sits at a small table, not doing anything in particular. Suddenly the door SLAMS OPEN with great force and a musclebound cop comes charging in. He aims his firearm at the Shady Guy.<\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p>Freeze! Who are you? What are you doing in this room? Have you committed any crimes?<\/p>\n<h4>Shady Guy:<\/h4>\n<p>(Sarcastic) Well, if it isn&#8217;t the great Martin Policegun!<\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p>How do you know who I am?<\/p>\n<p><i>(Shady ignores him and begins shoving tools and weapons into a bulging duffel bag.)<\/i><\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p>Hey! What&#8217;s in the bag? Is it money? Is it stolen? Did you steal it? Hey, where are you going? Why are you opening the window? Why are you taking the bag with you?<\/p>\n<h4>Shady:<\/h4>\n<p>See ya later, loser! I got a boat to catch!<\/p>\n<p><i>(Shady climbs out the window and drops down into an open dumpster. He hops out and hails a cab.)<\/i><\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p><i>(Pokes his head out the window.)<\/i> Hey! What&#8217;s your name? What crimes have you committed? Why are you flipping me off? (Now shouting to be heard.) Where are you going? Are you leaving? Are you going to the airport?<\/p>\n<p>(As the taxi speeds away, Martin comes back inside, dejected. Suddenly the door slams open again. This time it&#8217;s Jennifer Roughhouse, wearing a sleeveless police uniform. She sees he&#8217;s feeling down.)<\/p>\n<h4>Jennifer:<\/h4>\n<p>What&#8217;s wrong, partner?<\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p><i>(Heavy sigh.)<\/i> He got away.<\/p>\n<h4>Jennifer:<\/h4>\n<p><i>(She clomps over to him in her thigh-high police boots and lifts his chin.)<\/i> Hey Martin. It wasn&#8217;t your fault. You did everything you could.<\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p>What else could I do? I was already pointing my gun at him as hard as I could.<\/p>\n<h4>Jennifer:<\/h4>\n<p>Let&#8217;s check the basement for clues.<\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p>Basement? What do you mean?<\/p>\n<h4>Jennifer:<\/h4>\n<p>There&#8217;s like three miles of steam tunnels under this building. They&#8217;re filled with explosive traps, electrical hazards, and dangerous creatures.<\/p>\n<h4>Martin:<\/h4>\n<p>(He nods decisively, then racks the slide on his pistol, ejecting a live bullet.) No time to waste. Let&#8217;s go, partner!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Whenever I talk about how awful the gameplay feels, fans are quick to remind me that the controls are difficult and fiddly on purpose in order to make the game &#8220;more scary&#8221;. Everyone accepts this answer as true, but after watching these cutscenes I have a suggestion:<\/p>\n<p><i>If your goal is to make a terrifying game. then rather than making our protagonist handle like a forklift, you could always try not making the story utterly fucking ridiculous, you know?<\/i> Why not make the <b>story<\/b> scary, before you go and sabotage the <b>gameplay<\/b>?<\/p>\n<h3>Doubting the Benefit of the Doubt<\/h3>\n<p>&#8220;The controls are bad in order to make the game scary.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The designers are riffing on classic B-movie tropes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The story is dumb on purpose because it&#8217;s actually a comedy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>People say these things all the time. And maybe they&#8217;re true. But like&#8230; do we <b>know<\/b> these things are true? Did the designers ever say these things in an interview? Or are these things we&#8217;ve just assumed?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, the story is ludicrous, the dialog is wooden, and our protagonist is a handsome buffoon with no arc and no agency. I guess Capcom is doing a parody of western B-movies!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll admit it&#8217;s possible. But how much exposure does your average Japanese game designer have to American B-cinema?<\/p>\n<p>Most people I know don&#8217;t have any real contact with B-cinema. That stuff doesn&#8217;t get screened in mainstream theaters, and if you want it you kind of have to go looking for it. It&#8217;s a pretty niche genre over here, and I have to assume it would be even more niche on the other side of the Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, once in a while you&#8217;ll find the odd B-fan over there, the way you&#8217;ll find Anime fans over here. But Capcom isn&#8217;t an arthouse indie studio run by an eccentric creative. Are we supposed to believe that this entire game company just happens to be filled with fans of the esoteric world of American B-cinema?<\/p>\n<p>I have a hard time picturing a group of Japanese game developers looking at the flood of high-budget American movies coming their way, and deciding to ignore that stuff in favor of obscure low-quality specialty imports. And then they decide to make a big-budget AAA game that riffs on these obscure movies?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll admit it&#8217;s possible. I can&#8217;t prove anything. I don&#8217;t speak Japanese, I&#8217;ve never been to Japan, and I don&#8217;t understand the country any better than the next gaijin.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing: <b>B-movies aren&#8217;t terrible on purpose<\/b>. The director isn&#8217;t coaching the actors from just off-screen saying, &#8220;No! More wooden! And try to look into the camera once in a while.&#8221; He doesn&#8217;t chase the gaffer away when she shows up with 100k worth of lighting equipment, because shooting the scene with one naked bulb is part of his artistic vision. He doesn&#8217;t perform last-minute rewrites, tearing out crucial scenes of exposition because he wants the story to be badly paced and hard to follow.<\/p>\n<p>B-movies are the result of someone trying to make something good, and failing. Either they lack the budget, or the talent, or (more commonly) both. I think this is one of the things that makes the genre so captivating.<\/p>\n<p>You know what it looks like when someone talented tries to make a B-movie? It looks like a Tarantino movie. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kill_Bill:_Volume_1\">Kill Bill<\/a> has all the tropes, musical cues, dialog, and scene construction of old revenge B-movies, except it&#8217;s been executed by people who know what they&#8217;re doing. The inherent talent of the people involved is what elevates the material above its crass premise. It stops being a B-movie.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s notable that Resident Evil&#8217;s supposedly deliberate attempt to make a B-movie never re-creates any of the visual problems the genre is known for. Cutscenes don&#8217;t feature jarring cuts, bad camera placement, skips in the soundtrack, bad audio, or terrible lighting. In fact, the cutscenes are all incredibly polished and working hard to capture the style of big budget Hollywood films. Isn&#8217;t it at least a little bit suspicious that the problems are mostly to do with the script?<\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t it possible that the reason Capcom&#8217;s stories are absurd is the same reason that B-movies exist in the first place? <b>Maybe<\/b> Resident Evil is the product of talented people imitating bad art, but isn&#8217;t it more likely it&#8217;s just more bad art, and bad for the same reasons?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know. Maybe someone will shut me up by linking to a YouTube video where one of the writers looks at the interviewer and says, &#8220;My name is Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, and I spent months making the story as stupid as possible to show my love and appreciation for America&#8217;s tradition of B-movies.&#8221; But until then, I&#8217;m always going to suspect that this nonsense and camp is unintentional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode, the main characters finally corner the guy we&#8217;ve been chasing for most of the game. And instead of arresting him, or hitting him, or shooting him, or hurting his feelings, or doing anything else that might somehow advance his goals, Chris Redfield just glares at the guy while asking stupid questions. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-streaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53880"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53967,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53880\/revisions\/53967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}