Summary

  • Resident Evil games excel in progression and combat but suffer from shaky writing and voice acting, impacting the serious tone.
  • The series' text logs can be ridiculous, breaking immersion when trying to evoke fear or emotion.

Resident Evil, Capcom's flagship horror series, has many strengths. The games have great progression, satisfying combat, charming characters and stories, and, for the most part, a fantastically terrifying atmosphere. That said, believable writing isn't exactly where Resident Evil shines.

Whether this is actually a problem is debatable and can depend on which era of the series is being discussed. Resident Evil has been around for a while, and the older games are notably different from those released in the franchise's awkward teen years, which are in turn distinct from the current-gen releases. Early Resident Evil seems to make an earnest attempt to tell a dramatic, serious, terrifying story—something that's undermined by unfortunate voice acting and shaky writing. Modern RE games, including the remakes, seem to be once again aiming for a more mature and plausible story but there are still some tropes that make the games hard to take seriously.

resident evil outdoors statue in a snowy park
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Resident Evil's Text Logs Could Use Some Work

Notes, Journals, and E-mails Can Be Hit-or-Miss in Resident Evil

When it comes to survival horror tropes and cliches, few are more enduring than the optional text log. A simple and efficient narrative device, text logs can enhance the unique strengths of video game storytelling if done right. That's a rather big 'if,' though, as these text logs can often have the opposite of their intended effect, breaking immersion and causing confusion.

Resident Evil is a goldmine of ridiculous and illogical text logs. It's not uncommon for the games to present players with unintentionally funny or absurd notes, such as those written mid-zombie attack, or as the author is bleeding out. Of course, a goofy or nonsensical note isn't inherently bad. However, issues arise when Resident Evil is attempting to be scary or evoke similar emotions through these notes and fall flat.

Resident Evil 9 Needs to Get the Balance Right

There are several moments in Resident Evil games, both new and old, where a text log is used to either deliver context or elevate fear in a player. Someone's personal diary, or a letter to a loved one, can help paint a picture of past in-game events while still leaving a bit up to the imagination. Sometimes, these text logs can play a role in Resident Evil's most emotional moments, describing a character's last moments or giving a glimpse into their lives pre-infection.

But these emotional moments don't land when the note in question has no business existing in the first place. The Resident Evil series is littered with hastily written notes or journal entries from people in serious, immediate danger, and for no apparent or easily understandable reason. It can sometimes feel like these characters know they are NPCs in a video game, so instead of trying to survive, they provide very specific context clues or puzzle hints for the sole benefit of the player.

If these notes are intended to be used as diegetic storytelling methods, it's a bit counterintuitive to make them so unnatural; they arguably wind up doing more harm than good. Whether Resident Evil 9 is open-world or not, these sorts of notes will probably be more prominent than ever, so the game has a golden opportunity to make them a wholly valuable weapon in its narrative arsenal.

It can do this by having a better grip on which notes are meant to be comedic and which are meant to evoke emotion while steering clear of those that shouldn't exist in the first place. Indeed, most people would run when faced with a zombie, not write a real-time journal entry about it.