If you enjoyed Resident Evil's characters and have an attachment to them and the story they are in, I would never try to rob you of that. And I'm not saying Resident Evil is incapable of producing entertainment. Barry Burton is one of the most entertaining characters in gaming. Wesker is also a very shallow, but very entertaining character.
But Resident Evil's characters and story, when analyzed with anything resembling objectivity, simply don't hold up. Character motivations are overtly simple and cookie-cutter. Emotional depth in the characters is virtually nonexistent. Resident Evil, as a series, almost epitomizes style over substance, and there is very, very little substance to be had there. Can the characters be entertaining? Sure. Does that make them good from a writing standpoint? No. No not really.
Try not to take what I say so personally. It is not as though I am without things I enjoy that are objectively sort of bad. I love the Chronicles of Riddick. I am also very ****ing well-aware that it isn't a good movie.
Yes, we can attempt to view storylines objectively but they aren't objective. There are standards and those exhibited in Resident Evil are not bad. They are good, from a writing standpoint. Do I think they're great? No. Do I think they're bad? No. Are they average? Perhaps. Some are a little below that and a little higher. However, they are not bad. Not even close.
Play games like "Rogue Warrior" or "Ride to Hell: Retribution." These are games with LEGITIMATELY bad/awful characters. As much as RE emphasizes style and atmosphere over character development, this isn't enough to claim these are bad characters, by any means, nor would I make that distinction.
You don't need to sit here and attempt to educate me on the objective/subjective differences of video games and/or media in general. It's needless. Also, the Chronicles of Riddick was technically good. Not storyline or character wise but technically so, which is the only thing we can actually focus on that contains objectivity in a film, it was.
Don't presume that I'm taking anything here "personally" because I'm genuinely apathetic about your "B-movie" assessment. I will address it, yes, because I care about the argument but the assessment is practically worthless because it's limited.
NemeBro actually agrees with me on the topic of RE having trashy writing and characters.
I haven't played RDR, but Bioshock was pretty good, Bioshock 2 was pretty meh, Infinite was sub-par. With the exception of the first game, hardly worth a mention.
Human Revolution is a good example of a story that tries too hard, attempts some shallow, half-assed takes on social issues, and has a perfectly bland protagonist to top it all off. Sure, it's a good game and certainly has better writing than, say, Diablo 3, but that's not an achievement of any note.
Well, Bioware's focus is writing and story, and it usually does it better than most. Blizzard's focus is gameplay and mechanics, and it usually does it better than most. Hardly surprising.
__________________ And from the ashes he rose, like a black cloud. The Sin of one became the Sin of many.
If you notice, I said "Bioshock", not "Bioshock 2" or "Bioshock Infinite" or "The Bioshock series". Now I understand that you are disadvantaged in this topic of discussion, but please refrain from constructing my arguments for me in an attempt to knock them down.
Bioshock's writing is better than any game Blizzard has ever put out, especially because it is woven into the gameplay so seamlessly.
Such as?
I think the words you were looking for were "And isn't an over the top caricature". Because that would make him a Blizzard or RE character.
It has better writing than any game Blizzard has ever put out.
Diablo has always had a frankly sub-par storyline, even if it could be somewhat entertaining.
Its gameplay and mechanics are okay. I mean, nothing truly note-worthy in the vein of Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma. They're designed to be accessible, for a more casual sort of gamer.
The writing is just pretty bad, though. Like Resident Evil's.
My bad, whenever somebody mentions Bioshock I think of the entire series. And yes, Bioshock had better writing than anything Blizzard has put out, but by no means by a large margin. And even then it still suffered from a bland protagonist.
Such as... the entire game? But if you want an example: the mission where some guy murders his girlfriend and then you expose him through some recording. Felt like it was written by some 15 year-old who thinks he's got shit figured out. [SPOILER - highlight to read]: He doesn't.
There's a fine, fat line between a caricature and someone who's as interesting and riveting as a toilet lid. So anyway, which Blizzard protagonist do you think is an "over the top caricature"?
Arguably. I didn't think it was good at all. A plot that's less ambitious, but tighter will, to me, always win out over one whose reach exceeds its grasp.
Well, yes, Diablo never had a great plot, but it was kept minimalistic enough and the general atmosphere more than made up for it. The writers of Diablo 3 unfortunately did not do their homework.
No, the gameplay and mechanics aren't "okay", they're excellent. There's a damn good reason why Starcraft revolutionized the RTS genre and Diablo practically all but invented a genre of its own. Starcraft's "Aeon of Strife" also gave birth to the MOBA genre and I don't think I have to tell you what WoW did to MMOs, or what Starcraft/Starcraft 2 did for e-sports. So no, the word you're looking for isn't "casual", but rather the phrase "easy to learn, difficult to master" which has always been the credo of Blizzard. For example, Starcraft is definitely easier to get into than DS, but has a significantly higher skill ceiling. Dragon's Dogma and DS are ****ing footnotes at best next to Blizzard games.
__________________ And from the ashes he rose, like a black cloud. The Sin of one became the Sin of many.
Also, B-Grade writing is good. That's the point. It's not horrible or great but is good. I don't understand why this is SO confusing for people.
If you're a bit of an elitist with your taste and dismiss good? That's a preference, fair enough, but don't say good = bad. It doesn't. It never will, no matter how badly you want it to.
__________________
"Evil will hold."
Last edited by The Gravelord on May 6th, 2014 at 09:11 PM
The only Blizzard ones I'm intimately familiar with are the characters in Warcraft 3, and from StarCraft 2 WOL onwards. I think Blizzard did a fine job for the most part with them, and while I don't consider it to be Bioware-level, it got the job done, and I at least, ended up caring about Kerrigan and Raynor's dynamic.
Resident Evil has always been very b-movie, but I'd honestly never seen that as a negative until 5 and 6, tbh. They hammed it up when it was necessary, and had clichés coming out of their ears, but it was so well done that I really didn't mind. Even the horrific acting in the first game is more laugh out loud funny than cringe-worthy for me.
6, as I've said before... Just put me off. Sure, it was more than just the writing, but the writing wasn't exactly a stand-out feature for me.
True, B-Grade writing can be pretty good, but RE isn't it. Frankly, I consider RE to be even below B-Grade stuff. It's C-Grade most of the time with quite a few instances of Z-Grade.
__________________ And from the ashes he rose, like a black cloud. The Sin of one became the Sin of many.
Let's say you believe that. Even then, C is considered satisfactory or even average, not bad. Albeit sharp exaggerations, saying it's bad is out of place.
Most of the RE games are basically somewhere around lower end of B-grade or C-grade. The Z-grade stuff was mainly in the earlier installments(RE1 especially so). So I guess you're pretty much right when you say that the writing value has gone up. As for the entertainment value, well, when RE went from 'survival horror' to 'action with horror elements', it's become increasingly subjective. Someone who is a die-hard fan of survival horror will find much more entertainment value in the earlier installments than somebody who doesn't care much either way or actually prefers action. Personally, I think that the later installments do indeed have more entertainment value, but they don't scratch my survival horror itch very well.
__________________ And from the ashes he rose, like a black cloud. The Sin of one became the Sin of many.
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