Resident Evil

From the moment we are born until the end of our existence, it accompanies us by the hand step by step, allowing us to create a granite shield with which to defend ourselves, a double-edged sword sharpened if we do not learn to handle it.

When Shinji Mikami had the idea for a video game about Fear, Evil, and the human being’s will to survive at all costs, he molded all these elements into an amalgam that could work commercially and, above all, entertain the video game player in search of strong emotions.

Correvano the Nineties, the Super Nintendo was wildly popular all over the world with its adrenaline-fueled and adventurous games, but after iconic titles like Alone in the Dark and, going a few steps back on the timeline, the beautiful and dark SplatterHouse, a power vacuum had been created, to put it Game of Thrones style, as far as horror on consoles and PCs was concerned.

Mikami and Tokuro Fujiwara, a historic programmer who worked not only for Capcom but also lent his creativity to Konami, giving rise to a certain Mega Man, decided to lay a new milestone for the video game horror genre: Resident Evil was born this way, based on the founding mantra of a conception of Fear centered on the growing terror toward the unknown, toward what we cannot see, not yet, but our senses perceive well beforehand, giving us goose bumps and building a palpable and increasingly unmanageable tension, in the heart and in the body.

Inspired by Romero's films (does Night of the Living Dead mean anything to you? If the answer is no, hurry up and get informed!) and with notable influences drawn from Infogrames' Alone in the Dark, 'Resident Evil' quickly climbed to the top of the sales charts and into the hearts of fans who could not wait to experience the thrill of playing a Survival Horror game, a term officially coined in those very years and one that aptly described the type of experience: limited weapons and ammunition, resources to be found while often risking your life, a claustrophobic game environment strewn with monsters and traps.

The protagonist of the first game, Chris Redfield, must deal with an emergency situation much bigger than him, as he will later discover, ending up entangled in the constricting web of a global conspiracy: pharmaceutical multinationals playing God, seductive spies hiding secrets and guns, and villains who are increasingly monstrous and have fewer and fewer moral qualms.

The Resident Evil universe expands right from the start, driven by the success of the first title, and when Resident Evil 2 is released in 1998, the broad narrative concept that Mikami wanted to give the world begins to emerge: Leon and Claire, Chris’s sister, immediately become indispensable protagonists over the years, both in the main series and in the various spin-offs, where they are included as special characters or making special cameo appearances.

The action shifts from the haunted mansion cleaned up by Chris Redfield to the rest of the city where the mansion stood, Raccoon City, an American city ravaged by the G Virus where the Umbrella Corporation caused a viral outbreak, turning the unfortunate citizens into zombies.

Con this chapter, the gameplay is significantly improved, the animations and movements of our characters are less jagged, and the sense of danger we feel when picking up the controller is amplified many times over, thanks to the introduction of new iconic and creepy creatures.

Resident Evil 3, released in 1999, is at the same time a prequel, a spin-off, and a sequel to the previous game, as it is set the day before and the day after the zombie invasion of Raccon City. Moving through the same locations where Leon and Claire had just passed, or would soon pass, the protagonist Jill Valentine, a S.T.A.R.S. agent of which Chris Redfield is a member, wanders through an apocalyptic city in flames to uncover the truth about what happened and escape from her nemesis, in every sense: Nemesis is indeed the name of the creature that will pursue our heroine with the fury of a Terminator and the relentlessness of the Matrix’s Agent Smith, with fewer philosophical flourishes and almost indestructible.

Questo continuous duel between Jill and Nemesis pays homage to a lot of genre cinema from the Eighties, and the reference to Terminator is not only obvious, but also intentional: the cover of the first Resident Evil, just to give an example, shows an armed Chris Redfield cornered by a threat that only he can see. The hero in a trap, but still willing to fight for his life, is a theme very dear to the creators of Resident Evil and Jill, in RE3, perfectly embodies this figure.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica, initially released for the DreamCast and then arrived on the 'usual' PlayStation 2, sets a new incredible standard for survival horror: Raccon City is now a tragic memory for the whole world, but the threats are not over and the Virus, with its mutations born from experiments still being conducted by the evil pharmaceutical industry, continue on an island where Claire will find herself imprisoned and forced to fight for her life.

In this chapter, which is perhaps my favorite, we see the ever-present Chris Redfield again and Albert Wesker makes his return, S.T.A.R.S. commander who will in fact serve as the main villain until the sixth chapter of Mikami's saga.

After an interesting Resident Evil Zero from 2002 for GameCube, in which we guide Rebecca Chambers, a young S.T.A.R.S. agent in pursuit of a fugitive through the Arkay mountains, where, among other things, stands the mansion in which Redfield and Wesker will take refuge, giving rise to the first chapter of the saga, Capcom takes a break from the franchise.

The main trilogy seems to put an end to the Raccoon City saga and the sprawling dominion of the Umbrella Corporation, but the release of Resident Evil 4 in 2005 revitalizes the saga and puts the reins back in the hands of the character who, together with Chris and Claire, represents Resident Evil more than anyone else: Leon Kennedy, after his first unfortunate day on the job as a police officer in Racoon City, returns to save Ashley Graham, who has fallen into the hands of a cult that will turn out to be linked to the Virus and to Umbrella in ways he could never have suspected.

Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, respectively released in 2009 and 2012, in fact conclude the saga dedicated to all these great characters who have entertained several generations of players: from Brazil to China, Leon and company fight to the last breath to definitively erase Umbrella's misdeeds, well aware that, perhaps, evil never truly dies.

In recent years, with the seventh and eighth installments, Capcom has forcefully steered toward a new narrative direction for its main saga, focusing on atmospheres that are a bit more atmospheric and psychological horror, also nodding to Gothic and folklore, without failing to provide its fans with rivers of blood and indescribable horrors.

Si racconta che Shinji Mikami, alla domanda su cosa fosse per lui la paura, rispose che è quella cosa che provi sapendo che accasciato al di là della porta della stanza in cui vi trovate, apparentemente al sicuro, ci sia il cadavere di una persona.

Rationally, you know very well that it cannot hurt you, that it is an inanimate body deprived of the breath of life, but the mind is a biological computer that is very difficult to rein in when suggestion and imagination come into play.