Butchering A Classic - Resident Evil 3 Retrospective (2/2)
A trip back to pandemic gaming
Resident Evil 3 hit different.
This is not because it’s a particularly good remake (or even a particularly well-made game to be honest) but because for the first time ever, everyone on the planet was having a taste of the Raccoon City outbreak. Whether you adhered to restrictions and mask mandates or not, whether you chose to accept the vaccines or oppose them, our lives were all effectively dominated by a creature so small it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye; for the first time since the Second World War, millions of people from nations with disparate ideologies and geopolitical goals were all fighting the same enemy.
For my part, when this game came out, I remember feeling as if I had really needed it. I’m not going to patronise you and whine about how hard pandemic was for me: people died, I did not and it was a hard time for everyone. But I can say that for better or worse, I haven’t felt like the same person I was before those many months indoors.
Resident Evil 3 2020 did not deliver.
Look, this isn’t a game I like all that much and judging by the views on my part 1 of this retrospective, nobody seems to care about RE3; I’m not one of these writers who writes it for their own therapeutic benefit, I write things I think my audience will enjoy and I write things I think Substack will deem to be worth reading, so this will be a bit of a slimmed down episode before I can bask in the warm rays of Code Veronica.
Background
It’s never been confirmed as far as I know but it’s been rumoured for years that Resident Evil 3 was supposed to be included with 2019’s RE2 Remake but that project taking more time than anticipated may have led to their separation; Resident Evil 3 launched a little over a year later in a state that fans of the original would hardly call finished. This is a Triple-A game that clocks in at around 5 hours long if I’m being generous but worse, it’s a game that claims to be a remake while missing 2/3’s of the original game and all of its bonus modes.
Ostensibly this was done to give the game a tighter pace and an increased focus on action and storytelling but it’s pretty clear reading between the lines that Capcom were blowing their load over RE2R’s sales and wanted a glorified expansion out fast, especially when Covid was making continued development a nightmare.
Resident Evil 3 was developed mostly by the same people who created RE2 Remake but some developers from the original way back in the day also lent a hand. Like that game, RE3 aspires to be more photorealistic and grounded which led to the Nemesis’ modern design taking on a more man-made look.
Versions Rundown
Full disclosure: my playthrough of this game last year was so unenjoyable that I decided to strike it off my annual replays of the Resident Evil series altogether but I played the PS4 version at launch and have the most experience with this game on Steam.
As with RE2R, current and last-gen versions of RE3 2020 are pretty identical, only with some higher framerate options, ray-tracing and other graphical bells and whistles thrown in. Ideally, you’d play Resident Evil 3 on a console: the series began on consoles and is clearly made for them first and foremost but if you decide to play on PC like me or worse, don’t use a gamepad then I hear it controls decently with mouse and keyboard, so you’re probably not out of luck.
One of the very few advantages RE3 has over its predecessor, in my experience, is that this is a slightly better running, more stable PC port.
A New Focus
Resident Evil 3 opens with a news reel that, as I mentioned in the intro… felt a little too real back in 2020.
A better name for Resident Evil 3 would have been ‘Jill Versus Nemesis’ because that’s really all this game cares about.
Nemesis is introduced about 5 minutes into the game whereas in the original, you got a full 30 minute build-up to his reveal, every boss fight is a version of Nemesis, the creature gets his own moments to aura farm and the touted tighter pacing and ‘improved’ narrative actually just completely remove the melancholic atmosphere and Jill’s introspection, replacing it with angst and “Isn’t Nemesis cool?”
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, ironically, was a game all about Jill Valentine. Resident Evil 3 2020 is a game all about bashing the Jill and Nemesis action figures together while Capcom provides crude sound effects.
As an aside, Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid grew up around the same time and started to cross pollinate a little bit as the two series matured and this whole sequence was ripped straight from 2015’s MGS5: The Phantom Pain. Funnily enough… the Man On Fire was also a really lame version of a historically great villain.
The biggest casualty of Resident Evil 3’s ‘improved’ narrative and pacing is Jill herself and the relationship she has with the UBCS Mercs that aren’t Carlos.
The last time Jill played a prominent role in a mainline entry in the series was 2009’s Resident Evil 5 and REmake didn’t sell anywhere near RE2 2019’s numbers, so for a whole new generation of Resident Evil fans, this was their first encounter with a beloved fan-favourite… and I’d have to imagine most were turned off.
To me, Jill Valentine was always a little naïve in the original game, then the events of the mansion hardened her, so in Resident Evil 3, we got a Jill that was somewhat emotionally vulnerable and melancholy but held on to higher ideals of justice; Claire Redfield was more of the action-girl and even then, her portrayal was more big sister-like. Furthermore, Jill in the original RE3 is sceptical of the UBCS Umbrella mercs but she comes to view them as comrades as it becomes clear they’ve been sent in blind as disposable grunts, in the Remake, Jill is intensely hostile and then about halfway through she just sort of… gets over it.
Resident Evil 3 2020 disregards all of the old character development and turns Jill into a sweary action girl. Come to think of it, the whole cast is a little too macho considering the streets are full of man-eating corpses and horrors beyond reasonable comprehension.
Another ‘highlight’ of the RE3 Remake. How are we supposed to take the monster seriously when he fails constantly and gets called bitch and fuck face by our heroes?
I understand they wanted this game to feel a lot different from Resident Evil 2 2019, since that title included a lot of the original RE3’s innovations like a stalker but this remake deviates so far from the original that it feels disingenuous to slap that name on it.
An Image In Reflection
Resident Evil 3 is a bit of a strange case in terms of its presentation because at a glance, very little has changed, however as you begin to sink in a few hours the creeping suspicion that the game just doesn’t look or sound quite as good starts to set in.
Starting with the positives: this is still an amazing looking picture on a macro level and I feel the PC port holds up a little better this time around. Facial animations are very slightly better than RE2 2019 and Jill’s face model: Russian model Sasha Zotova was the perfect choice for the character; Zotova, being from an East Slavic background too, even bears a slight resemblance to Mila Jovovich who played Alice in the films, it feels like something of an intentional tribute.
Resident Evil 3 features more complex environments than the previous remake with most of this game taking place outdoors among billowing fires and smashed up streets, so while it’s not quite as detailed, it does make for what is arguably a more visually interesting experience.
I love how the vibrant shop signs and oversaturated greens are used to inject some colour into what could have been very dull urban sprawl, the original did this as well with its static backgrounds. In general, I find Western Triple-A games to be allergic to colour while Japanese games aren’t afraid to deviate from brown and muddy green.
On the other hand… Resident Evil 3 fumbles its presentation in some key areas which can be really immersion breaking and makes playing this straight after Resident Evil 2 2019 to be a bit of a disappointing follow-up.
To begin with, the gore system from Resident Evil 2 is entirely absent. While it wouldn’t have been an expedient inclusion from a gameplay perspective it would have been nice to see zombies lose some limbs and suffer some bodily damage; when you make a video game where firearms are the primary means of attack, injuries, enemy reactions, sound design, recoil: these are all things that need to be there that help the player’s attacks feel impactful and satisfying, RE3 2020’s shooting feels limp as a result of their absence.
A bigger flaw is Resident Evil 3’s use of low-FPS, jittery looking models to bulk out large crowds, chances are that you might not notice it in one playthrough but come on, this is Resident Evil: the games are designed from the ground up to be re-ran and eventually, you won’t be able to ignore these weird mannequins.
(Timestamp)
I can’t seem to find a video showing these off specifically, but they are very noticeable in the hospital section and here, when you look at the zombies gathering around the metal fence in the distance.
Once again, there is next to no music in this game and the almost entirely outdoor setting means you don’t get to enjoy quite as rich an ambient soundscape either. All of this combined makes Resident Evil 3 a less pleasing experience to the eyes and ears. (Well, apart from Sasha Zotova as Jill, I’m a 25 year old man, don’t you judge me.)
Old Tricks, New Dog
As flawed as this remake is, let’s not pretend that the original was a flawless paragon of game design either; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis from 1999 was easily the worst designed game of the classic trilogy with the most missteps, even if I do thoroughly enjoy it.
At the very least, RE3 2020 does rectify a few of these errors and cut down some of the tedium.
For one, that finnicky, often times hardly functioning dodge mechanic from the original has been made much more consistent… almost too consistent. Using this dodge now, you can avoid enemy attacks and even automatically aim straight at their head, lining up a quick kill, thanks to this, if it wasn’t for the boss fights and some more dangerous any types then I would have said RE3 is significantly easier.
Another improvement is with the tools you get to play with in Resident Evil 3. The previous RE2 remake had a fairly bland arsenal of weapons as far as Resident Evil goes: shotgun, handgun, grenade launcher, the expected shell types and a few more but Resident Evil 3 includes the more unorthodox Mine Thrower (which is much more fun to use in the modern over-the-shoulder perspective) and you can unlock all sorts replaying the game.
But I can’t just end this section without throwing another cheap shot into the gut of the Resident Evil 3 remake, so here it goes: RE3 2020’S Nemesis is the lamest stalker enemy in the series’ history.
No I’m serious. Nemesis in the remake is easily avoided, shows up only in a few scripted sequences and can’t really follow the player anywhere, he’s a big useless dummy.
Best Left Forgotten
Resident Evil 3’s worst sin is that above else, the game just feels lazy.
It wears the name of its predecessor without doing any justice to that game’s narrative or gameplay innovations and neither does it provide a satisfying expansion to the gameplay and design present in RE2 2019, it really just feels like a box being ticked, like Capcom had to get 3 out of the way so they could go and get another egg from the golden goose that is Resident Evil 4.
This is not a game I intend to revisit any time soon, if ever and I implore you to seek out the original instead.
Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.
Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.
Maybe it's because I didn't play Nemesis back when it first came out, but I quite enjoyed the remake - so much so that I started another playthrough as soon as I finished my first run.
Unenjoyable” is probably the best way to describe RE3R. So much of it just felt soulless, which is a stark contrast to what was achieved with RE2R.
Part of the problem was the writing. It was somehow campier than the original, and, as you noted, everyone essentially had the same “action hero” personality. At no point did I feel like anyone was responding to the hell that hit Raccoon. They were all just trying to one-up each other with quips.
You can feel the rushed development, and it really detracted from the experience.