Oh what could have been! People love to rave about what’s missing in REmake 3 but REmake 2 is honestly missing a bunch of locations as well. Raccoon City was a big setting, it shouldn’t have taken speedrunners less than an hour to finish. I like what is there but cmon Capcom… stop rushing the games and give developers more time to add more content!
RE:2 RE:2 Director’s Cut
- Thread starter RipvanX
- Start date
Oh what could have been! People love to rave about what’s missing in REmake 3 but REmake 2 is honestly missing a bunch of locations as well. Raccoon City was a big setting, it shouldn’t have taken speedrunners less than an hour to finish. I like what is there but cmon Capcom… stop rushing the games and give developers more time to add more content!
The environments that are in both reimaginings feel empty due to lack of story being actually told within them when compared to the originals as it is. The helicopter crash simply means nothing other than a surprise T-103 reveal when it consisted of one of the most exciting if silly and over the top cutscenes originally. Reaching the S.T.A.R.S. office felt like a landmark achievement where now it's no different from a trip to the weapon locker or attic. No point where Leon and Sherry meet before the train which makes their minimal interaction at the end feel incredibly hollow. That ending dialogue was also extremely cringey and forced, obviously cobbled together last second; most of the dialogue is but the ending is a particular offender in that regard.
These reimaginings want to show off how new everything is but barely want to show us their characters interacting at all. Some people prefer to just watch the story unfold in cutscenes rather than play their first time through so give them something to watch, a video of just cutscene dialogue and absolutely no gameplay would be 20 minutes long if that even. You don't even need adjoining scenarios to accomplish this, I would have been fine with swapping regularly between characters like we already do but irregularly with Ada, Sherry, Ethan, and Mia even.
Not only should they have had more cutscenes with the cut environments as the characters feel very numb and indifferent to the world around them with almost every new area being discovered with either silence or the same repeating handful of dialogue. I would be drunk if I took a shot every time Leon says some variation of "What the?!" or "What does that mean?" each time the player has a heart attack and dies from Not Surprised in the campaign alone, and I'm not a lightweight so that says it all. They also should have combined the two reimaginings into a single game and simply called it BIOHAZARD Raccoon City or something. BIO3 feels like BIO2 DLC before DLC was a thing as it is. There's no excuse that they didn't do this with the versions of the games we did get short as they are, they had to outsource BIO3's reimagining to four freakin' companies in order to even finish it and it is the shorter of the two.
Sad to say it but more love was put into Operation Raccoon City by Slant Six than was put into either reimagining by CAPCOM. Personally I would have much preferred an entirely new game focusing on most of the same cast including Resistance. If it had to be a prequel, why not finally give us S.T.A.R.S. as a team before the outbreak? There's also no way these games take place in 1998 with flash drives, grenade launchers, and Jill's outfit alone, if anything I believe they're reimaginings in that they're recreation simulations set in Alex's Resistance experiments. Jill does go to NEST2 so it makes sense.
These reimaginings want to show off how new everything is but barely want to show us their characters interacting at all. Some people prefer to just watch the story unfold in cutscenes rather than play their first time through so give them something to watch, a video of just cutscene dialogue and absolutely no gameplay would be 20 minutes long if that even. You don't even need adjoining scenarios to accomplish this, I would have been fine with swapping regularly between characters like we already do but irregularly with Ada, Sherry, Ethan, and Mia even.
Not only should they have had more cutscenes with the cut environments as the characters feel very numb and indifferent to the world around them with almost every new area being discovered with either silence or the same repeating handful of dialogue. I would be drunk if I took a shot every time Leon says some variation of "What the?!" or "What does that mean?" each time the player has a heart attack and dies from Not Surprised in the campaign alone, and I'm not a lightweight so that says it all. They also should have combined the two reimaginings into a single game and simply called it BIOHAZARD Raccoon City or something. BIO3 feels like BIO2 DLC before DLC was a thing as it is. There's no excuse that they didn't do this with the versions of the games we did get short as they are, they had to outsource BIO3's reimagining to four freakin' companies in order to even finish it and it is the shorter of the two.
Sad to say it but more love was put into Operation Raccoon City by Slant Six than was put into either reimagining by CAPCOM. Personally I would have much preferred an entirely new game focusing on most of the same cast including Resistance. If it had to be a prequel, why not finally give us S.T.A.R.S. as a team before the outbreak? There's also no way these games take place in 1998 with flash drives, grenade launchers, and Jill's outfit alone, if anything I believe they're reimaginings in that they're recreation simulations set in Alex's Resistance experiments. Jill does go to NEST2 so it makes sense.
I don't want to say it, but I will say it anyway.
Capcom was asked about doing a remake of RE2 years ago, due to the positive reception they got in 2002. So they had more than enough time to do it right, or to be more specific, to do a fully fledged remake like the first RE, where you basically took the original game's premise, and made it so, so expansive.
I think after RE4 came out, they knew they couldn't fully go back to full on horror anymore. So they disguised the third person aspects by making the zombies harder to drop.
Even RE7, which people considered a return to form, delved back into action once "Redfield" showed up. Even that felt random, for some odd reason. LOL.
Capcom was asked about doing a remake of RE2 years ago, due to the positive reception they got in 2002. So they had more than enough time to do it right, or to be more specific, to do a fully fledged remake like the first RE, where you basically took the original game's premise, and made it so, so expansive.
I think after RE4 came out, they knew they couldn't fully go back to full on horror anymore. So they disguised the third person aspects by making the zombies harder to drop.
Even RE7, which people considered a return to form, delved back into action once "Redfield" showed up. Even that felt random, for some odd reason. LOL.
Capcom will never make another RE that has like 60 hours of content when they can chop it up into multiple games and sell it for more. It’s one thing to say “we care for the fans” then turn around and pull these bad business practices. They are reusing assets more and more as well, when I first saw the yellow duct tape from RE7 in RE:2, I became more aware. It’s only gotten worse since.
I see the ones and zeroes my friends and it’s disturbing to say the least. I don’t know if they are still testing out the RE engine or what but if all they have to rave about is the pretty graphics (which quite frankly all games look good these days) they should just go back to MT Framework.
I see the ones and zeroes my friends and it’s disturbing to say the least. I don’t know if they are still testing out the RE engine or what but if all they have to rave about is the pretty graphics (which quite frankly all games look good these days) they should just go back to MT Framework.
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The remakes are also nothing like the originals. When they pulled off the first remake, this should have been a lesson on how to do pretty much all future remakes. Even the Wii shooters were more faithful in terms of keeping the story as it was. But everything is about third person or first person gameplay nowadays, that they think people have lost their fondness for retro gaming. So they just altered everything to match what the new breed prefers.
Their sequel games are just batty in general. They feel like fantasy games with some bizarre, end of the world type storyline thrown together. It is to the point where they hardly feel like RE games.
Umbrella are mentioned over and over again, just... because they need a leverage over their fans. Say something that is like music to our ears, they know we will be keen on knowing more. But you can tell they do it deliberately, so you keep coming back to receive the same outcome.
Their sequel games are just batty in general. They feel like fantasy games with some bizarre, end of the world type storyline thrown together. It is to the point where they hardly feel like RE games.
Umbrella are mentioned over and over again, just... because they need a leverage over their fans. Say something that is like music to our ears, they know we will be keen on knowing more. But you can tell they do it deliberately, so you keep coming back to receive the same outcome.
They need to bring back these characters, as they are getting older by the year. They're in the RE Engine remakes, but these are not new stories.
Like the censorship and missing scenes?
Yeah, they took that lesson with the RE2 remake as well.
I find it hypocritical that people kept talking as though the RE1 remake "sets the standards" of "what a remake should be" when that game has its own omission, reimagining and censorship.
Maybe to you but as someone who not only played the original back in 1996 and have a good memory of the game, the cuts and changes happened to hit the bullseye on my favorite parts.
The only welcomed change was extending Richard's life and actually giving meaning to delivering the serum but a lot of other things are done worse for me.
Anyone who said that "REmake is amazing because it cuts away nothing and only adds" (or something like that) either did not play the original RE1 or just have a fucking poor memory of the game.
Well, the first RE remake was still way more faithful than the two remakes we got in the RE Engine era. They feel like totally different games, and neither are scary, to boot.
First of all, changes in a remake is to be expected.
"Remakes" of a game have been around since the early 90's or even earlier, except we don't call these "remakes", we simply called them "ports".
When you port a game from one platform to another that has a higher graphical capability, sometimes it's expected for the game to be remade from the ground up with some changes, like Lunar from Mega CD to Saturn or the several Ys ports.
Regarding the RE2 remake itself, I am not "bothered" by the changes at all.
There are some that I disagree with but overall, it did not ruin my enjoyment of the game.
The removal of the A/B scenario is something that I can live without, since it's nothing more than an overrated gimmick.
The idea of "your actions in one campaign affects the other" seemed "innovative" way back when I first played the game in 1998 but after experiencing more "zapping" system in other games, the one implemented in RE2 is simply too gimmicky and out of the way.
RE1 already showed that the outcome of your actions can occur in the exact same campaign you are playing and there's no need to go out of the way to push it to another campaign.
Other games like Siren has a "zapping" system that is not only deeper but is necessary for you to get the true ending.
RE2's "zapping" system feels like they just want different outcomes for the sake of having different outcomes and it doesn't affect the ending or anything.
"Zapping" system works best in a campaign with scripted character change, like in Code: VERONICA.
If you try to mix "zapping" and a "select any character you want", then that makes the A/B thing necessary for balancing.
Such setup is inefficient and I bet nobody can figure a way around it if you try to write your own "zapping" system that also has a "character select" format, without resorting to an out-of-way solution like the "A/B" system.
From a development perspective, this is too wasteful and time-consuming.
Straightforwardly, the remake did a much better job at being a "horror game" than the original.
I had a lot of fun with the original when it was fresh back in 1998 but I'm not the kind of idiot who lets nostalgia dictate my judgement.
Looking back at it now, the original is too clunky, gimmicky and imbalanced.
This is especially when you consider that it's supposed to be a "horror" game (or "Survival Horror" if you will) that has a purpose of keeping the players on their toes.
The "wide hitscan aiming" shooting system in the original means that you can just point your bullet-fed gun in the general direction of the enemy and fire, you'll virtually never miss.
"Limited ammo" is kind of a dumb thing to bring up with such aiming.
And let's not forget the game even gives you an auto lock-on to quickly face an enemy when you draw your weapons.
The lock-on and wide hitscan are two separate things and even if you turn off the lock-on in the menu, you can still automatically hit the enemy but just pointing the gun at their general direction.
The pinpoint shooting in the remake feels much more natural in challenge.
Not only you are manually landing your shots but you also have to make your shots count, as you hit parts to either maximize damage or cripple the enemy.
When you think about those decade-long argument about how horror games are supposed to be "challenging" and "tense", wouldn't a more manual shooting scheme be a suitable choice than a "hit enemies automatically by aiming at their general direction" system?
Wide hitscan shooting also bypasses other factors that comes with firing a gun, like recoil or muzzle rise.
There's a significant difference in how the muzzle rise of Leon's burst-fire handgun causes him to miss two out of his three shots at a zombie and how the aim assist in the original allows Leon to juggle a zombie dog in the air, automatically landing all three hits from the burst-fire.
And speaking of operating a gun, who could forget the convenience of stopping time to reload in the original RE2?
Certain players will always tell you that "running away from zombies is the best strategy".
But that was because zombies can't follow you through rooms, most of the time.
In the original, not only zombies are basically trapped in the rooms they appear, exiting and reentering the room causes them to reset their position back to their starting points, making them predictable.
Simply running away is still possible but now has a much higher risk, due to how zombies can spill out here and there, turning up unpredictably in a corner when you backtrack.
The zombie you left behind in the morgue may turn up when you're trying to dodge zombie dogs.
This is how your "old school" knowledge may fail you.
Killing and crippling at least some of the zombies may increase your survival.
And then you're basically going through some sort of monster-petting zoo, since you virtually have one enemy type per room.
If a room contains zombies, then that's all you need to worry about.
Meanwhile, you can have a hallway with a Licker, zombie and a Tyrant all together at once in the remade version.
Do you move silently to evade the Licker's detection or run away from the Tyrant?
You won't get this type of situation in the classics.
And speaking of the Tyrant, it's laughable in retrospect, when you think about how it gives up going after you the second you leave the room (but with the exception of the conference room).
Having it hunt you around the precinct is a much more tense experience as you won't know exactly where it is.
Regardless of what was "changed", the remake does a much better job at being a "horror" game than the original.
This is also if you consider all those decade-long arguments about the "true meaning" of "Survival Horror", like how such games need to be challenging, tense and keeps players on their toes.
The RE2 remake would qualify much more.
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As much as I liked the gameplay, the story took a major hit and lacked in many areas in RE:2. Ripping into the original for its limitations is an off putting argument when RE:2’s success is built off the foundation of it’s predecessors setting and story beats. Without it, we wouldn’t even be here today and the franchise would of most likely died on the PS1.
RE2 is deeply rooted in many aspects of the lore, which RE:2 went out of its way to severe those connections and make it more friendly to newcomers of the series. It’s a fun game sure, but that’s all it is.
RE2 is deeply rooted in many aspects of the lore, which RE:2 went out of its way to severe those connections and make it more friendly to newcomers of the series. It’s a fun game sure, but that’s all it is.
Which nobody has a valid counterargument against and they try to gloss over this factor as much as possible.
As I mentioned, this is especially when you consider years worth of argument about what "true Survival Horror" means from fans of the older style, implying how the older titles are "superior" to the newer ones due to aspects like "challenge" or "puzzles".
It's hypocritical for them to even try to suggest that "over-the-shoulder/pinpoint aiming will make the game too easy" but forgetting the fact that the original gives you aim assist, auto lock-on and reload while pausing.
It's no surprise that nobody makes these comparison anymore with games like RE7 and RE2:R existing.
That's because if we still follow the same logic, RE2:R will be more "Survival Horror" than any of the classic titles.
First and foremost, Resident Evil 2: Remake is a video game and a "horror" one at that.
If we're still doing comparisons about which is "better", then it's undeniable that the remake is a much more balanced and organic horror experience than the original could ever be.
People can keep sidetracking into miscellaneous aspects like "lore" or "characterization" because nobody has the courage to go head-to-head on how these two games fulfill their purpose as "horror games".
In general, I think a lot of fans just wanted it to be created in a similar style to the first remake, which was mostly the same as the original 1996 game. By changing everything, it didn't have the big impact it could have. However, it was still hugely successful.