Players

Squidge

Jay

Nomad

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Content Warning

There are a few swears in this episode, but none which should be too offensive.

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Show Notes

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

From active time battling to zombie slaying, waffling Taylors covers video games and beyond.

In this episode, we are joined by Nomad from Retro Wildlands to talk about the anniversary of the Resident Evil 2 remake. Five years, people. We chat about all manner of things, up to and including pitfalls of modding, remake versus remaster, and the fedora wearing elephant in the room.

So without further ado, sit back, grab some snacks, and get ready for this episode entitled "Resident Evil 2 Remake with Nomad - The Spirit Is Strong, But The Ammo Is Scarce."

Take it away guys.

All that set up and Jay fumbled at the 10 yard line:

Jay's Avatar Jay:

You have once again stepped into the world of survival, horror, et cetera, et cetera, because I can’t think of anything funny to say

This time, the lads were joined by Nomad of The Retro Wildlands—someone who seems to be on the show talking about Resident Evil a lot, and he is loved very much for it.

But before the show could start properly, Jay asked Nomad to introduce his show:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

So, for those of you listening, I have my own podcast, and I call it The Retro Wildlands.

And the whole premise: I’m going back and playing some older video games that maybe I played when I was a kid, or maybe I missed out on them and I’m playing them for the first time as an adult. So my show is kind of me talking about those games and my experiences.

But as I’ve evolved over time, my show has kind of turned into I’m taking the listener through the game itself, maybe the opening level, let’s say, and I’ll try to bring back some of those nostalgic tinglies, if you will, using music and sound effects and things like that.

But if you’ve never played that game before, this is a great way to learn about a game that maybe you want to dabble in and don’t want to dive in headfirst. You want someone to tell you kind of how it is, and that’s what I do.

So the Retro Wildlands is available on all the major pod platforms. I made a link tree. linktr.ee/retrowildlands will get you to all our social links.

I say "our," but it’s just me. Me and my dog Dee Dee’s.

Initial Thoughts on The Remake

Before any deep dive conversation, it’s always a good idea to get a starting position, and that’s what Jay wanted to know:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

I originally played it as soon as it came out. I don’t pre-order games very often, but I pre-ordered the remake. I was enamoured with it. I played the original a ton when I was a kid. Probably shouldn’t have if mom had her way. But, it was an amazing experience, and I knew the remake, for better or worse, was something I wanted. But I was very pleasantly surprised with how amazing that game was. And we’re certainly going to get into it today.

But I replayed the game start to finish twice when I knew that we were going to get together and talk about the game. And I was very excited to dive back into that world, and I was very happy with how everything stood the test of time. Granted, it was only five years, but "fresh" is probably the best word, I think so. I think people, even though this game is five years old at this point, if you go into this experience now, it’s going to be just like when it first launched.

Fresh, new, exciting. Mwah. Chef’s kiss.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

All I can say about it is: I played it on release. But I played it, I think I had the day off when it was coming out and I finished preloading it at midnight, because it was on Steam. And I played it in the dark on hardcore mode. That was a big mistake.

Ever since that night, I still stand by this. What I’m about to say is, "Mr. X, you’re a prick." That sums up Resident Evil two pretty nicely: dude’s a prick.

For those wanting to check out MonoMemory’s Resident Evil remixes, here’s an embedded player with one of Jay’s favourites:

Because Squidge had brought up Mr. X, and how he’d modded the original model out for both the Goose from Untitled Goose Game and the Macho Man Randy Savage, it was only right that Jay brought up the short series of episodes which were recorded as Squidge made his way through the game. Those episodes are:

Jay goes on to talk about how the RE Engine (“Reach for the Moon Engine”) hasn’t just been used for the Resident Evil remakes, it’s also been used on several other titles like DmC: Devil May Cry. And for those who are interested in finding out about the (deeply) technical (as in programming) details of the engine, Jay brought up a talk from one of devs the team about what upgrading to C# (“See Sharp”) 8:

For those who don’t know, Jay produces and hosts The Modern .NET Show, so he’s always looking into things relating to both C# and .NET. Because of this, the video not only piqued his interest but blew him away.

The video is entirely in Japanese, but there are English subtitles so you can follow along if you’d like.

Jay's Avatar Jay:

(quoting the video) "We moved to this version of the tooling, which is a later version, to build the engine and it’s become a whole bunch faster and stuff."

Which means they’ve released patches for Devil May Cry remake, Resident Evil 2 remake, Resident Evil 3, that makes it use less power or is more efficient, things like that. So they haven’t actually done anything. They’ve just updated the tools that they use, which is pretty damn cool.

And, of course, Jay brings up the question that’s on everyone’s minds:

Jay's Avatar Jay:

Dino Crisis remake in RE Engine when?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

I’ll bet you [Dino Crisis] is sitting in the RE engine just it’s marinating and they’re waiting for the right time. Or at least that’s me being hopeful because my brown trousers are ready to go. They’re right off camera over there. So anytime, Capcom, let’s go.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

Well, for me, hopefully by then I’ll have got a steam deck, so I won’t have to wear the trousers. I’ll just sit on the toilet and play. I don’t care.

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Jay's Avatar Jay:

All I’m going to say real quick about Dino Crisis, right. Is we’re on the 25th anniversary this year, so that seems like a nice round number.

Announcement Feelings?

Jay's Avatar Jay:

How did y’all feel about it when the announcement was made? Because I remember there being like, they were teasing, teasing, teasing, and then it was like, "watch this video." And then it was like they’re all wearing we did it t shirts or something.

And they were like, "guess what? It’s happening."

How did you all react to that?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

To me, it was my favourite game growing up, or one of my favourite games growing up. And I was excited to see a modern spin on it.

I think what [the t-shirts] were actually saying was, "we do it." And fun fact, they actually put that phrase as an Easter egg somewhere in the remake. I’ll let listeners figure out where that’s hidden.

…

I was really excited just because at that point I was really curious as to how they were going to put a modern spin on an older PlayStation game like that. And make it something that’s going to appeal to not just old gamers like us three, but a new audience and reach a new group of people. And the screenshots and things that I saw and the different interviews that I allowed myself to see because I got to a point where I wanted to just go in blind at that point.

But I found that there was still a lot of passion for the original through the development team. And knowing that that was their big driving force is they wanted to remain as true to the original, but give it that nice fresh breath of fresh air. It made me very confident as a consumer, but more so as a fan. So I was all in.

And that’s when I picked up the phone and called my local game store and said, "just set one aside for me, please. That would be swell."

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

I had a really strange reaction when I heard it was confirmed, to be honest. My brain went, "let’s see how this goes." Because when you remake something, there’s a very fine line. You either modernize it to a point where it looks nothing like the original apart from the name, or it’s all fan service. So I was intrigued.

But I completely wanted nothing to do with any of the news. Nothing at all. If there’s something that I want to play, I just, like boycott reading about anything to a point where for maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month, maybe two months before and before it releases, I don’t even go on social media. I mean, I barely do anyway. But I refused to at that point because I just thought, "no, someone’s going to spoil it. Someone’s going to ruin it. I don’t want to hear anything behind the scenes. I want to go in blind."

And the strangest reaction I had was… I just thought, "right, I’m going to prepare for Resident Evil 2 remake. How am I going to do this?"

And you might think, I don’t know, play the original so you can get some good points to it. No, I just played Resident Evil 0 over and over and over again until it finished downloading. Then I started playing it.

I don’t know why. For about a month beforehand, I couldn’t get myself off of Resident Evil 0. I have no idea why.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Jay's Avatar Jay:

So what are the game mechanics that made the remake work really well for you? And were all of the mechanics that were added good or were there a few that was like, "I don’t really like that one?" Like the sneaky, stealthy missions that slow the game down, or the thing that Ada has where she can scan things to solve puzzles that way?

Did it all add greatness or was it like, I could have done without this bit? What do you all think?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

The first one that I thought was probably the best addition: subweapons.

So subweapons are weapons that you can find like knives, grenades, flash grenades, that kind of thing. And while they’re useful on their own, like if you come across a knife, you can equip it, use it, slash your enemies with it, that kind of thing. But when you’re grabbed by a zombie, and trust me, you’ll be grabbed a lot, you’re going to take damage. You can’t smash your buttons to throw the zombie off and try to prevent yourself from getting hurt.

Now, if you happen to have a subweapon on you, a prompt will come up on screen. The L1 button, I think. And if you smash that, your character will use whatever subweapon they have equipped at that point and shove the enemy away.

And it doesn’t just work for zombies, it could work for some of the bigger nasties as well. And there’s one particular nasty in the end of the game that if you don’t have a subweapon and it grabs you, you’re just done. But I’ll complain about that later. Which one that is exactly. If you’ve been killed by it, you’d know.

But it’s a great mechanic because it offers you a way to escape and it’s yet another resource that you have to manage.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

One of them was it was the over-the-shoulder third-person was very well done.

I was concerned about it because I played Resident Evil 5 and 6. And that was co-op, over-the-shoulder. And sometimes it was a bit, I don’t want to say gimmicky, but it was definitely over-the-top. And to say that some things in a Resident Evil game [are] over-the-top is… to say Resident Evil is over-the-top is a statement, but to say that some things in the game’s over the top, I don’t know.

I think the horror atmosphere made it. The fact that there’s not much music. It’s all just the area you’re in. There’s very little music to say, like, "you’re in trouble." Apart from, obviously, Mr. X. And we’ll go get back to that prick in a second. But it’s all very atmospheric. So you are realistically and genuinely alone. That’s it. It’s just you against everything.

And obviously, Claire’s coming from out of town looking for a brother. It’s Leon’s first day. What a hell of a first day for him. So it’s like fresh faced going to the situation, and [you’re given a] pat you on the backside and [they] go, "right off you pop"

But what about the changes that folks didn’t enjoy?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

And for the record, this will be the only time I talk negative about this game because it’s so amazing. But I think they really dropped the ball when it came to the first and the second scenarios in this game.

In the first one, it was very cut and dry: Claire and Leon had their own discs. When you play your first scenario, things would be very different in your second scenario, you wouldn’t have repeat events or repeat boss battles or anything like that. Or if you did interact with a boss, like William Birkin, for instance, he’s actually slightly more mutated in your second form than your first. So the developers made a conscious effort to really discern the difference between the two. And as a player, it felt like it was a different, new experience.

But when I replayed it again recently, I played Claire on my first scenario and went through the whole thing. And the. When I replayed the "second run," as they call it, as Leon, it started different. Sure, I was in a different spot in the police station, but the cutscenes and the boss encounters, they are all exactly the same, and they’re not different in any way. And the only thing that was really different about the runs is some of the puzzle solutions and item locations were different. So I think that was a huge missed opportunity.

Fixed-Camera vs Over-The-Shoulder

Jay's Avatar Jay:

If somebody released a mod or they changed the game slightly to add a new feature where it was fixed camera angles rather than over the shoulder. Right.

So my vision with this, because I’ve been playing loads of the original Resident Evil—just, like, when I have an hour"I just throw that on my pc running around with the Apple of Eden Classic REbirth mod on there to make it run on modern Windows, but give it a little bit of upscaling and stuff.

But how would you feel if they took the remake for Resident Evil 2 and put the fixed camera angles back, right. They’ve still got the auto aim, they’ve still got everything else. Just like, you never know what’s around the corner rather than like, you kind of know because the camera is behind the character just enough that you can peek around the corner as you get close. Right.

How would each of you feel about that?.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

So for me, this is one of these questions that I’ve got an instant answer to. And it’d be: fix camera angles, yes. But take off auto aim.

I played that much of Resident Evil 2 on the pc back in the day where auto aim wasn’t a thing. So I learned to aim out of where the enemies were out of the screen. I learned to aim and hit them and failed a lot until I got used to it.

So I would say fixed camera angles, yes, but rip auto aim off it. Yeah

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

I would wholeheartedly agree.

I love the idea of fixed camera angles. And from a horror perspective, it’s that whole, "you know, something’s in the room with you, you can’t quite see it." And while auto aim is a fantastic quality of life feature, all you have to do is pull your gun up and you’ll see your character point towards something. There it is, the tension is gone. You fire your weapon, you take the thread out.

So I agree. I think it would be a great addition. Take off the auto aim.

The only thing that I do worry about it, though, is if we were to do something like that today, 2024, that kind of thing, how well received that would be by audiences today. Just because I don’t feel this way, certainly, but I wonder if there would be a little tension or trepidation rather to have a game that way, because the third person over the shoulder thing was done so well. And since the original Resident Evil 4, it’s become kind of a staple in a lot of different action games. So I think gamers nowadays are more used to that. So I don’t know how well received it would be really well.

But I think it could be done very well. Take off the auto aim. It could really ratchet up the tension really well. So yeah, I’m in.

Elephant in the Room Time

Jay's Avatar Jay:

I’m going to ask the elephant in the room question, and I feel like this applies to the reaction that the Resident Evil 3 remake got. We did talk about the Resident Evil 3 remake a little bit in another episode with Nomad, so definitely go check that out. I’ve got that in the show notes.

But not just based on the reaction to the Resident Evil 3 remake, do you think that the Resident Evil 2 remake has perhaps set the standard a little too high? Right, because we’ve got the Tomb Raider HD remasters coming out later this year. We’ve got a couple of other, like the The Last of Us Part 4892 Remastered Twice HyperX Alpha Edition is out soon. And all the Skyrims. Right.

Do you think that other remakes of similarly loved titles, like I’m hearing rumblings about a Metal Gear solid remake, is that going to be anywhere near as good as what Capcom were able to produce for the Resident evil two? If all things were made equal? How do you feel?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad:

In my opinion, I don’t think the Resident Evil 2 remake has set the standard too high, actually. Well, I think they have set the standard high, and it needs to be high. And the reason for that is it’s very easy to fall into this trap of just reskinning an old property.

Now, we live in a world right now where there’s two different things going on. There’s remastering and then there’s remaking. The Tomb Raider remaster that you mentioned, that’s very clear as to what that is: it’s taking those original games, making them nice and polished up and shiny, and then re releasing them, maybe with a quality of life improvement here and there, and that’s fine.

The Super Mario RPG remake, which I thought was a fantastic game to replay compared to what it was on the Super Nintendo;, that was exactly what it set out to be: a reskin of the original, added some quality of life stuff, and it was fantastic, and you knew what you were getting when you were going into it.

But if developers are going to throw around the moniker of "remake," we can’t fall into the trap of just giving the player or the consumer just a little bit more and the that’s it. It’s almost like right clicking save as a new file type, and that’s really all there is. But what the Resident Evil 2 remake has done is it has shown that developers can take an existing property, especially an older one… and really not really remake it per se, but refresh it and make it a new experience while keeping the spirit of the old.

…

So yeah, I’m happy the remake did what it did, because now when remakes come out, I have a certain level of expectation when it comes to what I’m spending my money on.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

Best way to say it is you keep the spirit of the original like Nomad said, but you bring your A-game because, especially with the increase in prices and everything that’s going on to do with people playing games nowadays, new consoles, the prices of it, people be a bit more strapped for cash. We’re going to be very selective about games. And it’s not a case of we expect too much, it’s a case of we want value for money.

And if all you’re doing is sticking on a few curves, getting rid of some pixels and giving us the same stuff as we did years ago, yes, we’ve got a modern way of playing it, like the new Tomb Raider remasters. I’m going to play that because I know for a fact that they’ve added 3d controls to it, and I’m intrigued to see how that’s going to work in the original, while being a very much love letter/homage to the original with a new hd graphic. So I’m really looking forward to that.

But if all you’re going to do is tweak a few things and give us the same thing that in some cases we could emulate, and I’m not going to go down that route with the legality of that. If you’re going to slap $70, $80 on top of that and say, "here’s your new game," you’re going to get backlash. So when it comes to remakes, bring your A-game.

..

But you’ve got to bring your A-game because especially nowadays, people aren’t going to settle for anything less than the bar that’s been set, especially with remakes. Because other than that, it’s a remaster. And I don’t think you should charge full whack AAA price for remaster unless you put a lot more into it. So you’ve just got to bring your A-ame because people will settle for it, unfortunately

Favourite Lines of Dialogue From The Remake

Jay's Avatar Jay:

I thought we could end the episode in a little bit of funny, a little bit of silly, because we all need an injection of silly every now and again.

So I wonder if you guys have your favourite line or two lines that are specifically in the remake of Resident Evil 2. Maybe you could give me an impression of the person delivering the line, or just do the line in your own style, or whatever it is. And then we’ll have a bit of a discussion about the line itself and why it’s so great. And then. How’s that sound?

We’re going to leave the quotes out of the show notes, but you can trust that they were a ton of fun to listen to.

And with that, the episode on Resident Evil 2 remake 5th anniversary came to a close. Did you play the Resident Evil 2 remake, have you played the original, or have you never played either? Do you have a favourite line of dialogue, and are you willing to share your reading of it? Get in touch with us on our Discord and let us know.

Music

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Games Covered

We mentioned 33 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: