The Second Trailer

In July of last year, our prayers and heathen sacrifices were finally answered: The second trailer was released and our hunger for Resident Evil 5 information was sated. At least, for the moment.

From watching it, you can really see that the new Resident Evil is based a lot around extremes of contrast: lights and darks, calms and white-knuckle battles. The trailer opens with some slow shots of a quiet African village. The inhabitants go about their business, but you get the feeling that there something isn’t quite right as it continues, showing riots and sinister-looking faces. Our main character begins narrating as he makes his uncomfortably well-muscled appearance, looking just a little out of place here. After a moment he is blinded by a flaring of the sun, and when he takes his arm down from shielding his eyes, the camera pulls out and we realize that he is suddenly, eerily alone on the now-deserted street, a classic Resident Evil sort of moment. He enters a nearby house that is oppressively dark inside, to witness a man thrashing around before his body relaxes and his eyes start bleeding. It becomes clear that he has been infected with the parasite as he leaps on Redfield and tries to strangle him.

Without the whole trying-to-kill-you thing, this place looks kinda peaceful. 

From here the trailer really kicks off, quickly cutting between what we can safely assume is actual gameplay footage. And man, what gameplay it is! We see the main character get tackled and slashed in really painful looking ways before he opens fire, toppling a running enemy by hitting him in the legs. The crowd hurls knives and sickles through the air at him and Redfield mows down groups of them with a shotgun and assault rifle, both of which look like they pack a nice punch. At one point he climbs up on a bus to get away from the crowd so they throw up a grappling hook and start to pull the whole thing over. You then see glimpses of a larger enemy with an enormous axe or hammer, which he proceeds to use on a support beam, toppling a large section of the staircase that the protagonist is trying to use. The trailer ends with the protagonist leaping off a building, the 5 logo, and a glance at a spooky looking girl in a tank of liquid.

After watching the trailer, there are some important conclusions that can be drawn. First off, the core RE4 control scheme (complete with laser sight) is back and looks relatively unchanged—definitely a good sign. Second, the AI that gave RE4 enemies their nasty sense of cunning looks to be back. We are given hints of this in the trailer as enemies hit him from the sides while he is occupied with their comrades. As well, we can see that more specific gameplay devices are being brought over and beefed up. For example, shooting an enemy in certain areas will have different effects: shooting a running enemy in the legs will send him falling on his face, and in other cases allow for context sensitive melee moves (we see Redfield give one enemy a nasty punch to the jaw that sends him flying backward into his buddies). It seems that the bad guys will also have moves of their own—strangling, tackling, twisting your arm behind your back—and that each of these will have counters just as they did in RE4.

    

Chris Redfield is not having a very nice day. 
   

You can also pick out some general elements that are reminiscent of the previous game. One of these is the mob element that you face, the idea that the enemies really hate you and that their shear numbers will overwhelm you if you are ever caught. This looks like it will be significantly improved in the new game: the next-gen consoles will be able to handle even bigger crowds than before, as is demonstrated nicely in the trailer. There is also the concept of the “siege”. The main character makes use of something in the environment to gain an advantage over the mob, such as barricading yourself in a house (or climbing on top of a bus), and so the mob enacts a partially scripted response to counter this (bringing out ladders and chainsaws or tipping over the bus). This creates the state of mind of being under siege, quite effectively making you feel trapped and evoking all of the claustrophobia and desperation that accompany that. Another such element is the idea that the player character is an outsider. The trailer really fills you with the feeling that you do not belong and that you are not wanted, an essential piece of the atmosphere in most survival horror games.
   

So we know that elements of Resident Evil 4 will be returning, but what will be different? The developers have actually cited Blackhawk Down as a big inspiration in the creation of the new game. It is a movie in which an American military helicopter crashes in a war-torn Somalian city and the local people are whipped up into a murderous frenzy, storming the crash site and taking the surviving crew members hostage. As well as the African setting, the developers were captivated by the central themes of the movie. Takeuchi discussed it in a recent interview, saying that they were working hard on capturing the atmosphere of madness that is so memorable in Blackhawk Down. You can really see that this approach paid off after watching the second trailer.

Blackhawk Down + Not-Zombies? Hell yeah. 

The graphical quality in the trailer is also simply stunning—even more so if you share my belief that the whole trailer is rendered in-game by the console, rather than pre-rendered. In other words, this is not another Killzone 2, this is the real deal. The character models shown in the trailer are highly detailed and well animated, coming to life so that they might creep you out even more than in the past. The environments have been given no less attention, with the settings really giving you the feeling that people have been living there. Of particular note in the graphics departments is the lighting. The sunlight really feels hot as it glares down at you and casts dark shadows everywhere, setting up a nice contrast. It is also this intense lighting that really sets it apart from the drearily lit settings of previous games in the series; and yet the developers managed to keep the atmosphere just as creepy as in the past, if not more so.