Full disclosure: I love the Resident Evil 2 remake. It is a fantastic game everyone should play. It excels in gameplay, sound, and level design while also being an absolute joy to look at, a reminder that we have come a long way from the blocky pixelated characters from 1998. My gripe with the game isn't what every reviewer has praised about it, but the one thing they all neglected to acknowledge.
The original Resident Evil 2 was revolutionary and one of the best games of its generation, enhancing everything good about the original while fixing most of its problems. Claire and Leon would go on to become mainstay characters and the game is still considered by many as the greatest in the series. It is therefore a no-brainer that the announcement of a remake would be met with a lot of hype. The first trailers we got of the game only fanned the flames of an already rabid fanbase, and the game ended up being an enormous success garnering acclaim from both critics and fans.
However, my problem is that people refer to this game as a perfect remake of the greatest remake of all time. There are a few noteworthy flaws in this game, one of which being the audio design; although fantastic, it lost the charm of the original. You could play with the original score, but it didn’t translate so well in the remake. The Tyrant's impact on gameplay can range from tense to annoying, and there are parts of the game that have been changed to fit a more realistic tone while others were removed entirely. This is not something that really hurts the game, even though it deviates from the source material.
So, what is the big problem with Resident Evil 2 Remake? The answer is simple. There are no different scenarios. Playing the original was just incredible as you had your choice to play a character and finish the rest of the tale with the other. The stories would unfold completely differently depending on which character you chose for scenarios A and B. Endings and intros were different for Leon and Claire and they would interact in very different ways during their stories. As an example of this: Claire had to blow away a wall with C4 and if this is done in the first scenario, she calls Leon to inform him of this event. In the second scenario, Leon heads to that area to get a particular item. This made the game that much more immersive, with the exception of putting out the helicopter fire which was the same in both for gameplay purposes.
In the remake, this is simply not the case. Now I know what you are all thinking and yes, the remake has its own scenarios. Yes, it does and at the same time, it doesn’t. You never get those mid-game interactions or alternate paths in RE2 Remake’s scenarios since they want to follow the traditional canon story from the original which was Clarie A and Leon B. While that’s fine, the problem is that the game is exactly the same in scenarios A and B other than weapon changes and item pickups. This felt like a massive oversight and it prevents the game from surpassing the Resident Evil 1 remake. One of the most infuriating moments in fighting Birkin as Claire; he bursts through the ceiling for an incredible boss battle
only to have the exact same scene play out with Leon. I had to suspend my disbelief that Annette is unaware she is going through the same events twice.
This one aspect took so much away from this game in a major way and it shocks me no one else was bothered by it. Yes, it’s a great game, but we should always demand more when it comes to remakes. Remakes should make the game better in all of its aspects or it will come across as lazy. While I can’t wait to see what is next for Capcom, I just hope that any remakes in the future are done in a way that fully honors the originals.
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