Survival Romantic Horror

My date with Resident Evil 2 Remake

A Budding Romance?

I really enjoyed my time with Resident Evil 2, but I did notice a few moments that made me think about the place of romance in a horror setting.

Spoilers all the way down by the way.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played a survival horror game like Resident Evil 2. I mentioned previously that I loved Resident Evil 4, but I never played Resident Evil 2, back in the day. The only thing I knew going into RE2, was that it stars Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield. I had heard of the first character, he’s also the protagonist in RE4, but had no idea who Claire was. I still don’t. To be fair, you have the choice of whose story to play as right from the start screen.

I picked the one that I had heard of before and played as Leon. Perhaps also due to a bit of unintentional sexism? Leon was the first option as well. Why not lead with Claire’s story if it’s just as important? I always pick the male option when it’s there, because I am a male, but maybe it’s also something to do with the misogynistic culture around me that makes me feel strange for playing a woman unless it’s unavoidable? Though not entirely true, as I did pick the female character in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, though I would wager that’s more to do with everyone saying her voice acting was better than the male counterpart’s was. Something to digest and think about.

I assumed, incorrectly, that their stories would intertwine and I would at least have touchstone moments between the two of them, especially because that’s how the first hour or so of the game is.

You meet up at a gas station outside the soon to be infamous Raccoon City and make your way into the city towards the police station. It’s supposed to be Leon’s new home precinct as a rookie cop and Claire is looking for her brother, who just so happens to also be a cop. While riding along in the police car that you’ve stolen from the gas station, don’t worry it’s okay Leon’s a cop, there is a palpable, sexual tension between the pair and having known one another for about 30 seconds I soon feel as though they are going to kiss by the end of the car ride. They don’t, but I noted the feeling because I found it a bit strange in a horror game. Shenanigans ensue by a truck driver and they are soon separated and agree to meet up at the police station.

Gatekeeping them apart

The next time you see Claire is after a helicopter crashes into the police station around the corner from where Leon is standing. If you’re wondering Leon’s reaction to this, it’s absolutely nothing. He makes grunts and says random remarks every time a zombie starts walking after shooting it in the head earlier on in the playthrough where they’ve found a third life, but when he witnesses a helicopter crashing into the building he makes nary a peep. I digress. After the helicopter crashes, you go down some fire escape stairs to a back courtyard where you see Claire. Leon is very happy to see her, and she him, as though two lost lovers have been reunited after weeks apart, but not enough to try and open the gate. Somehow this gate is locked from the inside but also requires a key, despite not looking like that. He doesn’t even try to open it. Neither of them do. They just stand there and make a comment about not having a key, but I didn’t see a keyhole. Their hands never go anywhere near the latch, so I’m not entirely sure how they know it’s locked, but they do. Anyway, she is unable to get in and promises she’ll find a way, so I suspect I will see her inside the station at some point.

This part of the game, I believe, took me maybe two hours to get to. Then, you don’t see her again until the literal end of the game, five or so hours later. You might be thinking then, why set up the chemistry in the cop car and have them see each other outside in the courtyard? I have no real idea. Perhaps it’s just a nod to show there’s another story to play later, or to set up future games where Claire and Leon have some romantic relations? Hard to say though, but I would surmise that it’s the former.

Enter Forced Romance Number Two

At some point later, you find yourself in the car garage attached to the Police Station and meet the mysterious sunglasses in the dark, trench-coat wearing, FBI agent Ada. She shoots a zombie dog that has you pinned. Which to me is not a great way to be introduced because even killing a zombified dog is wrong, what did that dog do to you Ada? Just let it kill you Leon.

Again, with this meeting, there is a palpable chemistry in the air. Leon is clearly taken by this mysterious woman who doesn’t tell him anything more than that he should leave and that she’s FBI, before Ada disappears through a door. Some number of puzzles, zombie-killing, Tyrant avoiding (he looks a bit like Frankenstein’s monster but with a snazzy hat you get an achievement for knocking off) later you find yourself able to open the parking garage gate to get to the outside. To get here, you run through some zombie-filled prison rooms while also being chased by Tyrant. You make your way into this parking garage where Tyrant smashes his way through the wall nearby and grabs Leon by the throat. Ada responds by slamming Tyrant with a swat van and blowing it up with some kind of explosive. Pretty cool.

You then follow her out into the greater Raccoon City and into the sewers below. During this sequence Ada has a think about killing a nearly zombified daughter and her father. Clearly there’s something not quite right with this “FBI” agent Leon. His words don’t say it, but the framing of the scene paints an odd picture, with Leon still wanting to prove himself to her and maybe even fuck her? He’s clearly mad that she wanted to kill the man and his daughter, which you hear the man do anyway after he goes behind closed doors, at least you hear him fire a shot, maybe he only killed himself. But, Leon clearly wants permission from Ada to work together officially and also to dominate him in the bedroom. Could be that I was reading too deeply into the scene, but that’s how it felt to me.

A Bullet to Love

Shortly thereafter, you run into Dr. Annette, who clearly has a history with Ada. This sequence culminates in Leon getting shot in the shoulder and passing out. Ada takes off her sunglasses, finally, and covers Leon in her trench coat, revealing a staggeringly tight red dress, as she continues the chase for Annette. Strange choice for someone who knew they were investigating the weird goings on in this city and would likely have to outrun/outmaneuver a villainous scientist and/or the undead.

With Leon out of commission, you take control of Ada for this sequence. By the end of it, she has fallen into a pit and has a piece of metal thrust into her thigh. She tries to pull it out, which if you’ve seen one of the recent episodes of The Pitt or any medical drama really, you’ll know that’s a terrible idea. Don’t worry, she doesn’t succeed.

Here we are then, really the start to when I noticed that they were going to force a romance into this horror game. Just before we leave Ada to take back over a newly conscious Leon, she says “Where’s Leon when I need him?”. I found the phrasing to be really strange in that moment.

Here’s a very competent, badass woman that has saved your life twice. The developers put her in a sexy dress, injure her, and the second she’s inconvenienced by a little wound, she needs, and wants, the man she’s known for all of twenty minutes to save her, instead of trying to find her own way out. It’s possible that they just wanted to say his name before transitioning back to playing as him, but it made Ada, who had been this character with some mystique to her, into a damsel in distress.

I know this is Leon’s story, so he has to be the hero, but I can’t get behind this switch. We already established that Leon passed out from being shot in the shoulder, rehab on that is gonna be a bitch once his adrenaline wears off by the way. Why not just make Ada pass out too, without the weird line, so that she can be rescued unwillingly? Instead they made the choice to turn this cool woman into another standard woman that needs a man to save her. I doubt Claire’s story has her waiting for Leon or some other man to play the rescuer. Despite that Ada isn’t one of the main protagonists, she’s still an important part of the story, so they shouldn’t have taken the easy way out by making her boilerplate.

Manipulation All Along?

Inevitably, as Leon, you find Ada again and rescue her, just as she hoped. Though I do find it funny that by the time you find her, you can just immediately watch a VHS tape of a security recording, and then you have like four puzzles to solve before you can actually get to her. Like genuinely it was probably an hour, hour and a half, of me solving puzzles and killing zombies before I was able to actually get to her. She makes you pull out the metal fragment, just a terrible idea, but of course it’s fine after Leon wraps it up. You make your way to a train that is going to take you out of the sewers and into the Umbrella lab where the G virus is stored. During the cutscene in the train car, Ada tells Leon that he needs to get the G virus and bring it to her because she can’t keep up with her injury.

During this scene, she kisses him and places her hand on his thigh, close enough to show she means business. Leon acquiesces of course, and makes his way through the lab, finds the virus, and a self-destruct sequence begins to shake the foundations of the lab. Again, the developers took the easy route by making Ada use her sexuality and feigned vulnerability, to convince Leon to help her, instead of doing something interesting.

Tangent.

Why is it that every single self-destruct sequence causes the facility it’s about to destroy to shake uncontrollably, thus making it nearly impossible for anyone to actually get to safety? Isn’t the entire point of the warning so that those in the building can evacuate in time, and then it explodes? Why all the micro explosions and stuff? Just an observation I had while trying not to get my head crushed by Tyrant.

Back to it

Once you find the virus, you team up with Dr. Anette to defeat a different recurring character that you find out is Dr. William Birkin, Annette’s husband and fellow creator of the G virus that caused this entire mess. Annette is injured, and tells you that Ada isn’t FBI, but instead she’s a mercenary who is going to sell the virus to the highest bidder.

You confront her about this when you run into her on your way to escape. She pulls her gun on you, you pull your gun on her, and then put yours away and Leon says something like “you’re not gonna shoot me” and then Ada lowers her gun and promptly gets shot by a dying Annette.

The way they’re acting here is as though they have been lovers for years and they have a history with one another. Not that they just met a few hours ago and shared a single kiss. At this stage, I started to think that perhaps it was all a deception, but then I thought back to the segment in which you play as Ada, and that dumb phrase. If you didn’t play Ada, and just woke up as Leon, with her gone and you track her down to save her life, I think the deception angle would have worked better. Playing as Ada, and hearing her mutter those words of needing Leon, deflates the deception. Maybe she was using him initially, but by this point, she has grown attached to Leon and knows she will have to rely on him to succeed. She also, once Leon rescues her, just needs him to listen to her, which wouldn’t require a seduction, because at that point in time, he still believes that she’s an FBI agent, so why not just continue with that lie instead of resorting to her femininity?

Anyway, when Ada is shot, the bridge you’re on is slowly crumbling around you, which knocks her off her feet. Naturally, Leon the hero catches her non-injured arm and tries to pull her up. After a few failed attempts, the bridge collapses further every time he applies pressure to get leverage to reel her in, Ada says she’s not worth it and lets go of Leon’s grasp, plummeting into the void below.

At this point, I was thinking, maybe Ada was using her feminine wiles to convince Leon to help her achieve her goal of getting the virus because she couldn’t lie to him anymore. She didn’t want to disappoint him when he finds out that she’s not actually with the FBI. I was starting to think that maybe the forced romance actually worked, after all, bonding through trauma is pretty powerful. Then Leon had to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “Can’t believe I actually miss her”.

There’s a different train that you are trying to get to in order to finally escape, and after Leon jumps up onto it and is seated, he says that verbatim. So you tell me, reader, what do you think? Do you think the damsel in distress switch was warranted and worked? Do you think that Ada was always planning on kissing Leon to get her way or was it a last resort because Leon was starting to falter? I’m not convinced that it wokrked as well as they had wanted it to, but nonetheless, it was a fun game, with mostly solid puzzles, decent combat, a cool story, albeit with some oddities thrown in like I mentioned, and overall a pleasant way to spend 7.5 hours.

Next week it’s my date with the president’s daughter. No, not the Disney channel movie starring Will Friedle, Leon is literally tasked with rescuing the president’s daughter and escorts her throughout Resident Evil 4.