#ethan is actually pretty thin in re7

[ludwigfanfunkoven]

I beat RE8 and I loved it

here’s what I have to say about it. fun fact: spoilers ahead

the game is fucking silly. it’s above silly. from lady D slicing off your hand and you just... slapping it back on and pouring some delicious healing soup onto it(which has an explanation further below!) to chris “absolute abortion” redfield telling you you seriously need to learn to stay out of shit when people ask you to in front of... well, this

(yes that is a wacky killdozer with a supercharged engine hanging off its ass and a recoilless cannon, .50 machine gun, and fucking chainsaw on it)

honestly? I love how wacky it is. I was never in a situation where I was spooked(outside of the babby monster in beneviento’s section, that thing was hilariously morbid and wicked awesome but also unsettling to have chasing you), but I was always interested in more. but let me dump some MASSIVE spoilers by telling you what points were good and what points were great

so, first off, you essentially start off at lady D’s sick castle, which obviously has had the most effort put into it since it feels the longest of all of the sections by far, plus the sheer abundance of lore in regards to lady D and her daughters compared to the almost 0 lore of beneviento and like 3 parcels of lore on moreau, only matching heisenberg in terms of actual fleshing(pun intended. because, spoilers, heisenberg’s schtick is NOT werewolves as you may have thought, but basically just killing floor fleshpounds)

in regards to lady D and her daughters, I feel dimitrescu herself and heisenberg are the only characters to actually have depth to them as well in terms of antagonists, with moreau just kinda playing the sad sack who’s bitter because he knows he’s a failure and beneviento having... nothing, really. her daughters, however, are thin as a fucking board with their only actual depth coming from their voice lines which... depending on how you play, you might not even hear that much of! also I felt they died off way too quick, as well. 

dimitrescu’s boss fight was kinda cool but pretty scripted feeling, beneviento had no bossfight, moreau was definitely a fun one, and heisenberg was a bit boring but still super cool because of you riding around in the TURBO KILLDOZER

also this

(how does he know that?)

the mercenaries is genuinely enjoyable, and ethan’s daughter is p cute when she grows up and I like the implication that....

(XBOX HUEG SPOILERS BELOW)

ready?

are you sure?

well, you asked for it!

...she’s probably going to be the new ethan in re9, considering ethan fucking dies at the end. probably. it WAS offscreen so... maybe. but he’s totally fucking donezo. 

spencer being revealed to have been a student under miranda pre(or post?)-mold-ifying with the name of umbrella and the logo itself actually coming from a symbol that happened to be here in this village in a cave was cool but simultaneously fucking silly. come on now. please stop tying umbrella into goofy shit like this, I beg of you. either let it die or go back to raccoon city!

ethan being revealed to have 100% fucking died when jack baker stomps your skull in at the beginning of re7 and literally being JUST MOLD being the answer to him having these wacky regnerative abilities and being able to literally slap arms/legs on and reattach them with the greatest of ease is cool, but also silly. ironically he goes through 90% of the game with a chunk+2 fingers missing from his left hand and it looks very silly. 

chris being a blue umbrella spook operative complete with NVGs that go down in dark rooms when you briefly play as him is cool, and I like his cool lycan-hunting squad of blue umbrella spook mooks(although unlike mooks I don’t think a single one dies. very good, chris! you’ve achieved the perfect status of not having a single man(or woman) under you meet an untimely demise) but I think the BSAA going rogue and deploying babby tyrants decked out in tactical gear is a bit... silly. 

the village also being the absolute center and origin of the mold is something I can live with, but WHY IS THERE SO MUCH DULVEY BEER IN SOME EASTERN EUROPEAN VILLAGE

anyway, I loved it and I think it’s easily my goty and I seriously hope we get dlc where we play as chris’s group of blue umbrella spooks hunting down lycans, because that shit was cool

[teamhawkeye]

unfiltered and massively spoiler filled thoughts on RE8 below the cut [MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]:

The Good

The first half of the game

The initial village segment and the castle portion and even “the house in the mist” sections were all pretty taut and well put together. i loved exploring the castle - was more than a little disappointed that you get locked out after Alcina’s boss fight, i didn’t explore it fully D: - and the unexpected terror of Donna’s section really pulled me out of the sense of comfort i had started to fall into, right as i was saying to myself “this hasn’t been scary at all”

The return of some series high notes

Revisiting things in previous Resident Evil games is not always a bad thing. I really enjoyed the return of weapon customization and treasures, those were aspects i enjoyed in RE4 and RE5. The return of the Merchant, in the form of the Duke, was welcome as well. The Duke is a G - he’s a good guy and i respected him most

Graphics, scenery, etc.

It’s a pretty game to look at, there’s no getting around that. I liked the set pieces, especially the Castle portion

Ammo crafting

Now this was something i greatly enjoyed. There are often times you get too much ammo for the gun you use least or you run out of ammo in harder difficulty levels. Being able to collect scrap material and make your own ammo was a very nice addition that i greatly appreciated

The Bad

(some of these are going to be personal opinions about the storytelling and narrative choices, so be prepared for that)

Pacing and direction

RE7 was a return to the series’ “roots”: so back to the footnotes of RE1 and RE2. If that was the case with 7, then RE8 did a speed run of RE3, Code Veronica, RE4, RE5, and RE6 all at once.

I know i said earlier revisiting hallmarks from previous games isn’t a bad thing, and it’s not - but while RE7 did it masterfully with sticking to mainly RE1 and RE2 and pulling in just a few old hallmarks, RE8 went absolutely buck wild in trying to cram in as many past enemy types and encounters as possible. A callback to one standout enemy is one thing, ala the Stalker type that is Mr. X, Nemesis, and Ustanak that Lady Dimitrescu also serves as...but then also the giant water monster from RE4, the Executioner of RE5, the “chainsaw” enemies (here, drills instead) of RE4, RE5, and RE6. hell, even the Lycans after a time started to feel very Las Plagas-esque in their ability to use weapons and track and coordinate. And you can’t tell me you didn’t see very similar designs/similarities between Miranda’s boss battle that you did with Alexia’s in Code Veronica...

The pacing started off solid with the initial few segments, but quickly seemed to lose its footing once it oscillated violently between wildly different styles of play and storytelling and didn’t regain its stride the rest of the game. One moment, it’s classic RE. The next, it’s P.T. + Outlast. The next, back to “a mash up of action and horror, leaning more on action” styles of RE4 + RE5. Then the finale straight up started to feel like an entirely different game before you reached that final boss fight - it felt like i was jerked in one direction one minute, and a completely different one the next

There is a lot of exposition and explaining that doesn’t happen until legit the last 45 or so minutes. Not new for the series to withhold information until the back half of the game, but there was legit almost no build up to the very sudden plot bombs that got dropped successively in the last throes of the story. Previous games rewarded you with fragments at a fairly even pace - i felt like all of RE8′s story gets dropped on you in a single monologue and a handful of notes just before the endgame

I’m not even gonna go that deep into how hard it was to keep up with all the different infection methods the mold managed to have - it was just A Lot and i’ve played a lot of Resident Evil in the past, so i know just how many different ways a single pathogen can have on humans and animals...and it still felt excessive

I honestly felt like the third segment with Moreau wasn’t even necessary. they really played up these “four lords” to not have them do a whole lot of anything. and i know there’s always been mini bosses before you actually reach the final Big Bad, but seriously, Moreau’s segment can be blitzed through in a span of 20 minutes or so first playthrough. the castle segment with Dimitrescu was solid, the house segment with Donna was nightmare fuel, lmfao, but still engaging and challenging. by the time you get to the third and sprint right through, you’re left wondering what the point of it even was. you can tell that was the least cared about narrative arc in the whole story

A giant point of note is that a huge chunk of RE8′s story could have been avoided or altered had Chris just actually fucking spoken to Ethan at the start about what the fuck was going on. And for him not to is completely unlike Chris past RE5 and RE6, that made no narrative sense whatsoever. Just another opportunity to pile on some more trauma and guilt onto Chris’ shoulders by making him “responsible” for Ethan being pushed to far and dying as a result

“Ethan actually ‘died’ when first meeting Jack Baker and was completely taken over by mold, it’s a big secret to everyone but Mia. also, he’s gone too far, there’s no saving him, he had to die”

You’re going to tell me that Ethan still being infected or impacted by the mold from RE7 is some big secret??? did the BSAA not run tests on him and Mia to make sure they were back to normal levels??? how do they not know?!? the government was able to figure out that Sherry’s exposure to the G Virus altered her permanently and study her healing capabilities, how the fuck was that not the same with Ethan???

Also, how is it that the mold’s impact on him is so much higher? he was at the Baker estate for like, 2 days max and while, yes, he did sustain some serious damage, he never fell prey to Eveline’s control and showed absolutely no signs of infection outside of being able to heal/use his hand after it was chopped off. and depending on how you played RE7, the only major injury he sustains aside from probable bruising or broken bones is that hand being cut off as mentioned before

You’re also going to tell me of the number of Resident Evil characters who have been infected with viruses and parasites and what have you and have been cured or had the negative effects negated, Ethan was the only one “too far gone” to be saved??? Jill got infected with T Virus, Claire has been infected by two separate viruses, Leon has survived a parasite infection, both Zoe and Mia were exposed to mold for years and seem to be okay...why is it that Ethan was the only one who couldn’t be saved? because he “died”? how in the world did he get infected so fast - he’d been there an hour, max! - that he was able to be revived in the first place and it wasn’t even noticeable that he had changed at all???

“the BSAA can’t be trusted anymore, they’re involved in shady shit, like deploying bioweapons into battle”

we already went through this a bit back in Revelations 1 with the blackmailed director and double agents. but to full on go “well, the entire organization is now dirty” after it was legit founded by Chris, Jill, and Barry to combat bioterrorism really sits wrong with me. all i can think is that they are running out of villains at this point and now are poising the BSAA to be a Big Bad in the future. which, again, doesn’t sit right with me

Retconning

Tying Ozwell E. Spencer back to Miranda wasn’t such a huge dealbreaker for me, but it is a bit obnoxious to now have to go back and amend “he came up with the idea for Umbrella and its pursuits with Marcus and Ashford, its other founding members” to “well, he didn’t actually come up with the idea for Umbrella and its research with Marcus and Ashford, he already had the idea from his time spent with Miranda uwu”

More so, the retconning around Eveline is a bit of a pain in the ass. So she only came about as a result of Miranda crossing paths with the Connections and giving them some of her mold to work with? And Eveline was only a failed experiment to Miranda in her attempt to be able to transfer her daughter’s essence/subconscious/whatever into a living child? And there are pictures of ‘10 year old” Eveline in Miranda’s possession - how come Evie didn’t have any memory of her at all (speaking of Evie, why the fuck did she appear in 8 briefly as a hallucination [?] to explain to Ethan his condition???)

How are you going to try and tell me that some village from prior to the 19th century was using the “Umbrella” symbol and Spencer just snatched it for himself? that was just stupid, honestly - even more stupid how Ethan didn’t recognize the symbol, despite flying off in a Blue UMBRELLA helicopter at the end of RE7

Mocap and cutscenes

Was it just me or did parts of this game look severely unpolished compared to RE7??? some parts looked good - like the Dimitresus all seemed to be rendered very well. It became very noticeable to me in the back half of the game, mainly with Chris and Mia, but a little with Heisenberg too, where their mouths didn’t match up with the dialogue a lot and they looked a lot less put together than previous scenes and characters. Mia in particular, i was struck by how much better her mocap seemed in RE7 compared to RE8. Maybe because there was a bigger ensemble cast in 8 that they spread themselves a little too thin in that regard?