Resident Evil 3 Remake Rumored for Playstation 4 Release
Enter The Survival Horror
With less than a month to the release of Resident Evil 2 Remake joining the ranks of the remastered on PlayStation including Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil HD Remake; the only way logically to close out the last generation of games on the PlayStation 4 is to have the very best of RE reworked to modern gaming standards.
Using the RE Engine once again to make the games look amazing, the clips featured from Resident Evil 2 Remake look every bit as creepy as what fans were handed in the newest Resident Evil 7.
Gone is the blocky pixels that vaguely resembled blood and made us use the best of our imagination. These zombies seem to take damage and disintegrate upon impact showing a trailer of blood and sinew falling off the corpses as they are shot.
Truly getting back to its roots after too long a departure into action and shooter style game play, Resident Evil 7 really brought the game back to its roots and looks to serve up something even more scary in its new showcasing of 2.
So what is it about Resident Evil 3 that makes it so worthy of its own remaster?
In the weeks after the events of at the Spencer mansion, what is left of Raccoon City has been overrun by the undead and mutated monsters created by the bio-terrorism of The Umbrella Corporation. The police were not trained for this type of disaster and what remains of the Raccoon City PD is scattered between the events of Resident Evil 2 and 3 roughly taking place in the same time period.
...Somehow, I am Still Alive.
The first character to make a return to a Resident Evil game, Jill Valentine went on to be one of the most important characters and fan favorites, oddly to have no mention since the events of Resident Evil 5 in the mid 2000's.
Jill, a survivor from the mansion and one of the few S.T.A.R.S. team members left in the city, plays most of Resident Evil 3 solo like the events of the first game where she has few cross overs with other characters. Wearing a halter top and mini skirt, so against the first images of Jill where she appeared mousy and rather clumsy despite being the master of lockpicking; Jill kicks butt all over the city while being pursued by zombie hordes and a new creature, Nemesis, a type of Tyrant trained to kill S.T.A.R.S. members.
While taking place in the nearly the same time frame as 2, Leon and Claire's campaigns never cross Jill's but there are Easter eggs planted cross game such as the Kendo truck, or opened doors or smashed barricades suggesting where action had taken place in the sister game.
Jill's game was much harder in my recollection, as she spent more or her time mobile on the streets of Raccoon City trying to carve a path out as she solved puzzles that unlocked more areas of the game, while the majority of the game for Claire and Leon were revolving around the police station and featured a series of repeating rooms and maps to solve puzzles.
Either way, both games were significantly harder than the original.
Given A Choice
Something new to Resident Evil 3 was the precursor to the quick time events that we went on to hate Resident Evil 6 for.
Where these weren't true in the sense of mashing a series of buttons to perform a timed action as modern games, 3 did offer fans a choice of paths throughout the game with pop up choices such a fighting with Nemesis or entering the police station, or jumping down or climbing up an obstacle.
Given new ways to get around the same events defiantly gave Resident Evil 3 replay value in a new way.
Keeping these choices in a remastered game in the way of QTE might not be advisable but perhaps using them to make parts of the game more open world instead might be something Capcom could consider in the alleged remake.
The zombies in the remaster of Resident Evil 2 look amazing in a way that we had dreamed of as children playing the game for the first time in a darkened basement or living room. While we never knew exactly what the shuffling corpse looked like, now they are no longer cookie cutter and there are many model types. Just thinking of what the RE Engine could bring to Nemesis of Resident Evil 3 is enough to send chills down your spine.
So Long Pre-rendered Backgrounds
The first game in the franchise to not use pre-rendered backgrounds in its environments, Jill's weapons could have effect to certain objects and could be blow apart or smashed to create barricades and open new areas. In 1999 that was some cutting edge animation.
Given a chance to make a comeback in Remake 3, an open world Raccoon City where Jill can interact with the environment even more could not only open up more opportunity for the zombies and Nemesis to pounce on Jill from all sides, but it defiantly ups the creepy factor as there is no more "edge of the screen safety" that came from the games of the past.
Remake 2 already promises claustrophobic hallways, blind turns, and shoulder to shoulder zombies in cramped quarters so upping the volume of monsters in the street for Jill should be a given.
Although where 3 really shines was the isolation that matched the feeling of being alone inside the Spencer mansion when Jill went long stretches between seeing any enemy type and even longer without an upgrade to her already limited amount of items she was carrying.
A Tyrant For Times
One of the limitations of the early Resident Evil games came from the early use of polygons on screen and fans never really got a clear look at what any of the enemy types or protagonists really looked like until later adaptions for animated movies and later games.
With the potential of the RE Engine geared up to its gory best, finally seeing what the Nemesis actually looks like is a nightmare worth the remaster of the game. Remembering him as a reddish purple textured kind of thing under the trench coat similar to that of Mr. X, whom we have already seen clips of in Resident Evil 2 Remake, one can only imagine what our first encounter with the remastered Nemesis would be like.
Would this be a monster that Jill could still chose to evade at times rather than fight? I imagine if that is still an aspect of the game it would take more of the stealth game play as seen with Resident Evil 7 when Ethan choose to hide from the Bakers rather than fight.
With an open environment and places Jill can hide when Nemesis is about to attack rather than use up precious inventory would add a new twist on how to play this classic time.
I would really enjoy seeing 3 Remake play out like a long game of cat and mouse through the streets of Raccoon City.
And what other remakes are on the table? While media rumors claim other properties like Dino Crisis might also see a face lift, I hope for at least one of the most enjoyable Resident Evil spin off games, Code Veronica see's its own face lift closing out the story of what happened to Claire in between the events of the main games.
Resident Evil reached a fever pitch for new games and reworkings of the older material after the twentieth birthday of the franchise.
A re imaging of the series is also being discussed as either a movie or which hopes to bring the franchise back to its horror roots once and for all.
