Welcome to our second episode examining 1996's survival horror classic Resident Evil. We discuss the tight resource management of the game and the spatial logic of the place, amongst other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Sections played:
Up to the tunnels (in theory)
Podcast breakdown:
0:33 Segment 1: Resources (saves) and Spaces
50:27 Break
51:00 Segment 2: Feedback, next time, links
Issues covered: save system, Tim and min-maxing OCD, clearing the map, differences between easy and normal, difficulty settings in games then and now, difficulty for developers and QA, punishing the player, controller difficulty, memorizing spaces, frustration and fighting the controls, fear response on lower difficulty, popping heads, running into other characters and having the space stop making sense, story choices, lack of story logic, "gaminess" of the design, crate teleportation, inventory systems in RE, realism fighting sensibility, localization, house structure as a real place not holding up, finding the balance of game needs and realism in level design, deliberately breaking spatial sense, surreal spatial design, Aetherium design, negative-space editing, exploiting engines, piecing together bits of story in journals, the wrong Moonlight Sonata, referring to the lighter, passive storytelling, VATS and more tactical options for added depth.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Batman, Justice League, Alone in the Dark, Apple ][, Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, SNES, Metroid series, Fear Effect series, Dead Rising series, Hideo Kojima, Resident Evil 4, GameCube, Biohazard, Shinji Mikami, The Evil Within, Psycho Break, Silent Hill 2, Winchester Mystery House, Robert Venturi, This American Life, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Starfighter, Hal Barwood, N64, Reed Knight, Bethesda Game Studios, Skyrim, GamaSutra, Troy Mashburn, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Beric Holt, Fallout series, Soldier of Fortune, Oblivion.
Next time:
Really play up and into the tunnels. No, really this time.
Links:
Brett on GamaSutra playing and talking Skyrim
Brett on recognizing a designer's work
Old post in which I mention The Aetherium from Infernal Machine
Old post about difficulty settings
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