Over-analyzing Resident Evil

**Spoiler warning- This editorial contains spoilers for Resident Evil.**

Hello dear readers, welcome back to the game room and a happy Halloween to you all. I thought it would be appropriate today to once again step into the world of survival horror, so I'm going back to the subject of one of my favorite games ever.

Have you ever played a single game so many times that you just start to notice weird little things every time you play through it again? We all have at least one game we can always pick up no matter what and give it a run from start to finish while enjoying every second. The original Resident Evil is one such title for me, and even though it hasn't aged all that well compared to it's quite superior sequels, it's still a classic that I get the urge to play every once in a while. However, every time I do I feel like I notice a little something about the game that I never noticed before. Be it something in the background or a weird quirk in the story, Resident Evil is just one of those games I have endlessly scaled inch by inch and over-analyzed to death in the 20 years since it's release. So, I present to you a few amusing little things I've noticed by playing through the game at least a thousand times in my life.

The gap at the box puzzle. So if you've played Resident Evil, you surely remember the part where you have to push the boxes into the water-filled gap so you can safely cross into the flooded basement area of the guardhouse. Have you ever stopped to think though- how did anyone get across this gap when the basement wasn't flooded? Obviously, yeah, this was just meant to be a short puzzle and most likely there was not much other thought put into it. From an in-game point of view though, imagine the Umbrella scientists filling up the gap with water every time they needed to look at the Neptune tank, then pushing a bunch of crates into the gap (because they couldn't jump across it or anything, either). How would they get the crates out afterward? Would they even want to? Why is there even a gap in the first place? Why not build a little bridge over it? What kind of architectural design was this? And why is the water still there when you drain the basement? I have to ask myself these things every time I'm sitting and waiting as I slowly push those boxes over.

Fairly early in the game, you can make your way to the 2nd floor balcony area where you'll find the corpse of our dear Bravo team comrade Forest Speyer. Depending on who you're playing as, you can pick up either a bazooka or a few clips here and you'll get attacked by a few zombified crows. But something always bothered me about this area: it's supposed to be the dead of night, but doesn't it look a bit like daytime out there? I always liked that shot of Raccoon forest, but at the same time I've felt like it should've been a bit darker. I don't know, you be the judge.

Let's talk about another oft forgotten member of the team: Brad Vickers. So we all know the opening to Resident Evil pretty well: The S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team goes searching for the missing Bravo team in the Raccoon Forest, they get attacked by mutant killer dogs and their helicopter pilot Brad "chickenheart" Vickers flies away, leaving them stranded. They run to a nearby seemingly abandoned mansion and search for a way out, all while the pilot desperately tries to contact them over the radio. At the end of the game, the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members launch a flare early the next morning that signals him to their position, and he flies in the pick them up as the Spencer mansion explodes behind them, the end. Here's the thing though- what was he doing the entire time while they were running around in the mansion? Flying around in circles repeatedly trying to contact his team without any answers (whom he totally abandoned and left for dead, by the way)? Didn't he see the heliport? Don't tell me it wasn't noticeable- it totally was, as evidenced by these two pictures:

Why didn't he land there and then look for them? Or, better yet, why didn't he go back to the Raccoon Police Department building for backup? I also find it pretty funny that he just immediately dropped in as soon as the signal flares were launched, indicating that he had to be at least just hovering around the vicinity of the mansion most of the night. Or maybe he just took the helicopter to a Dunkin' Donuts and picked up some coffee, then came back later when he remembered that his friends were probably torn to pieces because of him. And all this brings me another point-

Rocket launcher madness. First of all, what's with that thing? It's straight out of the movie Commando, showcased by good old Arnie in the picture below:

Did the S.T.A.R.S. team really need that kind of firepower? I know they're supposed to be an anti-terrorist police squad, and maybe I just don't know enough about tactical police weaponry but I'm having a hard time believing that they really needed to be packing that kind of heat, especially on what was a search and rescue mission. But forget about all that. Let's talk about the real issue here- how the hell did Brad manage to toss this thing out of the helicopter at the end?

So in Resident Evil's climactic finale, Brad drops the player a rocket launcher which allows them to obliterate the previously unkillable final boss, the Tyrant. But I've always had a hard time wrapping my mind around just how Brad managed to do so. I imagine that thing would've probably been secured pretty tightly, lest the team just had a loaded rocket launcher sliding around on the floor of the helicopter at all times. But he couldn't have gotten up to take it out and then throw it out the window, could he? Do helicopters have some kind of autopilot function I'm unaware of? I'm no expert, but I'm gonna say they don't. So until I'm proven otherwise, I'm gonna have to say that the launcher was just sitting on the floor and he had to tilt the helicopter mid-air in order to slide it out. Also, how durable are those things? I always laugh at the thought of the rocket launcher falling out but then just shattering to pieces the second it hit the concrete. Or better yet, unintentionally going off when it hit and then blowing up Jill or Chris by accident.

How about the secret entrance to the Umbrella laboratory? This was a pretty memorable part of the game- upon collecting both the Eagle and Wolf medals and escaping the deadly underground tunnels, you emerge into a mundane looking outdoor area with a large fountain standing before you. However, when you place the medals in their appropriate east and west positions, the fountain drains and opens up to reveal a hidden elevator, leading to the secret Umbrella laboratory. Sounds pretty simple, and this was easily one of the coolest moments of the entire game (complete with a short CGI sequence where the water parts and reveals the secret entrance that made it even cooler). However, I have a few issues here.

Firstly, in the little courtyard area where the fountain is there's a large metal door. If you approach it and try to use it, a text box will appear telling you that it's been tightly welded shut. That's the end of that, but I've always wanted to know- where the hell does that door lead? It's not connected to the mansion anywhere on the map, yet there is a large building behind it. What is it? A little pool house for the fountain where they kept a skimmer and chlorine?

Second, let's talk about the fountain itself. So you're telling me that every time one of the many Umbrella scientists and workers who slaved away in the lab making the T-Virus had to enter the lab, they needed to insert two medals and drain an entire fountain just to use an elevator? I mean, there's an entire network of underground tunnels right before it! Couldn't they just have connected the lab entrance to that? And who refilled the fountain every time they drained it? What would happen if someone was exiting the lab and there was still water on top of it? Would they just get drenched? Maybe the scientists just slept in the labs all the time- as someone who actually works at a real lab myself, I can tell you that it definitely does happen from time to time. But where would they sleep? In that break room on the 3rd basement level? And why would there be all those bedrooms in the mansion and guardhouse then if no one was using them?

 The fountain opens up in this nifty little sequence that was always one of my favorite moments in the game. However...

...did they really need to do that every time they entered the lab?

And lastly, not a humorous moment but just something I always found very cool- the music change upon re-entering the mansion. So you start out by exploring the Spencer estate mansion from top to bottom, but there are still a few locked doors that you don't have the key for. You then leave the mansion for a bit to explore the courtyard and the guardhouse, where you eventually find the final key that will unlock the last doors. However, upon return to the mansion you'll find things are quite a bit different- it's now filled with the extremely dangerous hunter enemies that stalk every corner. Something else is also a tad different- the background music that plays on the 1st & 2nd floors of the mansion. Nothing too strange, but if you listen closely you might hear something interesting: the music is now a rearranged version of the original theme. Give the original music a listen, then listen to the revisit music- you'll notice it's almost the same, yet there's something far more sinister about the rearranged version, conveying that everything has changed in the mansion since you've been gone. It almost does feel like a complete different place, since it's filled with terrifying enemies you haven't seen to that point and new rooms to explore. It's just another nice little touch to an already great game.

Now I know what you're probably thinking- it's just a video game from the 90s, shut up with all the scrutiny. And you're right, it is just a game. A great game. One of my favorites ever. And I wouldn't be over-analzying it so much if I didn't love it and have played it so many damn times in my life to even notice these things. Such is the nature of games that we grew up with that have become timeless classics in our eyes. Thanks for reading.