I'm playing all the Resident Evils for the first time in release order

HueyFreeman said:

How the fuck have I missed this thread? Pixel Grotto this is the most epic LTTP ive ever read, well done.

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Drain You said:

Haven't even read through all of this yet but I have to say great write up's OP. As a bog resident evil fan it's fun being able to almost go along with you as you play these games for the first time.

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• My impressions thus far are positive - the game certainly seems more refined and impressive than its predecessor, probably because it wasn't beholden to the handheld hardware of the 3DS. The menus look better, the button prompts appear way more natural on screen than they did in Revelations 1 (and in all of the action REs, for that matter) and the general vibe is much tenser than the last several games. (I like how the main menu theme manages to sound more frightening than its relaxing Revelations 1 counterpart with just a few discordant note changes.) It's such a difference coming to this from the over-the-top antics of RE6 and really hits home the plan that Capcom was stressing a few years back to keep the mainline games action-orientated while the Revelations series would play to the wants of longterm fans and emphasize suspense. (Whether this is still their plan now, especially with REmake 2 in the midst, I have no idea.)
• Good to see Claire Redfield again as well! It's been a long time since we crossed paths (go look up how much I bitched about Code Veronica a few months ago to see what my last experience with Claire was like) and her position at Terra Save is something that I knew about thanks to reading the RE manga. Still need to watch the CG movie that stars her. The little Terra Save infomercial that begins the game is amusing.
• Moira reminds me of the Life is Strange girl just from a character design standpoint. I like her! Wanna know why she dislikes her pops.

• For the second time in this series, Claire starts out one of her games...in prison! There's a good dynamic between her and Moira which seems reminiscent of the big sister relationship that Claire had with Sherry. I could be wrong because I've only played one chapter, but one of the themes of this game - aside from referencing Kafka wherever possible - seems to be family or protecting those close to you, and it seems apt that Claire and Barry (both the most maternal and paternal members of the franchise, IMO, in that they often are seen taking care of younger characters) are the stars.

• There's some creepy shit in the opening prison level, and I could think of as I was meandering my way through it was "Man, I can't believe this and Resident Evil 6 are part of the same franchise." There's such a clear difference, lol.

• I believe it was Dusk Golem who mentioned that Moira and Natalie had simple but OP weapons. Can confirm that Moira's crowbar is kinda beastly and came in handy during the segment where she gets briefly separated from Claire in the trash compacter, as well as the finale where you need to escape the prison and move the fire-spitting cage to block the exit. That was a nice sequence which reminded me of the similar gimmicks in the catacombs of Leon's RE6 campaign, except it was much tenser here.
• Also, I'm glad that scanning rooms from Revelations 1 is gone and replaced with Moira's flashlight (or in the case of Barry's campaign, Natalia's ability to spot hidden items). I didn't mind the scanning as much as some GameFAQs posters but it felt like something that was shoehorned in to give people a reason to move their 3DS units around.

• The light crafting elements in this game, by the way, strike me as an extension of the natural herb mixing that RE has been doing in every game, along with the gunpowder mixing that RE3 has. I like it, since it's something the series apparently forgot about when they decided to move in a more action direction.
• Funny how we've had so many games in this franchise but this feels like the first time we've been in an outdoorsy forest setting before. (Resident Evil 4's Spanish countryside counts a little, but not really.) Either way, dark forests are frightening! The sunset is nice though.

• FINALLY, the best dad in Resident Evil (aside from Parker) is back! Real good to see Barry again, smoldering with middle-aged determination, trying to get his little girl back. By the way, there are some real funny one-liners that the game pulls referencing Barry's classic lines from RE1 - Claire: "I almost became a Claire sandwich." Moire: "Ugh, does he tell that story to everyone?" And then later at the end of Barry's chapter: Barry: "Hah! Who's the MASTER OF UNLOCKING NOW!" I was cracking up.

• I wasn't sure what to think of Natalia at first, but her presence was immediately validated by the stealth sequences that her sixth sense creates. And the stealth is actually pretty good, as opposed to RE6's hamfisted attempts! Finally, a RE game has decent sneaky sections...and they achieved it by adding a character with DETECTIVE VISION! Or BOW Vision, I guess it could be called.

• For me, the highlight of the chapter was creeping through the woods and cabins at the end with Barry and Natalia, trying to avoid these guys who jumped down from the trees. There's an especially tense moment where you're entering a seemingly deserted cabin and looking around for an enemy that can't be spotted. Natalia brings your attention to a spot of blood on the floor that appears to be dripping from the ceiling, and as you shine your flashlight upwards...the BOW drops down from above. It was a good scare, and there were several of those in this brief but effective forest trek. This was one of my favorite set pieces in a long while, maybe in the whole series.

• I've also fooled around with Raid mode a little. These extra modes have never really been my thing but this one definitely has higher production values. Also, cowgirl Claire. But LOL at the microtransactions. What was up with 2015 and microtransactions, man? Rise of the Tomb Raider came out that year too and also had equally dumb microtransactions shoved into its bleh multiplayer mode.

CaptainKashup said:

Nice, a new post !

I was thinking, Pixel Grotto , what would be your favorite game for now ?

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• Whenever I see an extended cast of NPCs in a Resident Evil game that aren't playable, I sorta always assume that they'll all bit the bullet, and Claire's chapter two was no surprise! It could perhaps be alternately called "the one where the ethnic guys die and the dude with the drill gets turned into an enemy officially named Mutant Pedro." But seriously, what's up with the black and Hispanic dude serving as enemy fodder! Resident Evil pulling from the not-so-great habits of older horror movies here.

• I continue to like Moira, not only because her crowbar is decent enough to let me save ammo but also because she's good with kids, as shown in the scene where her and Claire meet Natalia. Ties in well with the whole backstory of Moira being an older sister, though it seems odd that Claire wouldn't be as good around kids seeing as how Claire was basically Sherry's big sis in RE2.

• Speaking of Moira and Natalia, I usually don't do the whole "Tumblr crowd headcanon" thing but Natalia mysterious has a little jacket on in chapter 2 and since the game never explains where she got it, I like to think that Barry just brought along extra clothes for Moira in that big brown backpack of his, cuz Barry is a TRU DAD and that is what TRU DADS do

• Barry's stealth sections continue to be good and I found the invisible insect enemies that Natalia can see but Barry can't to be clever enemy design. Barry summed up my feelings on them with his "Invisible Monsters? This is gonna be fun" line.
• Barry is now the master of unlocking AND the master of drilling thanks to putting Mutant Pedro outta his misery!

• So Alex Wesker - who I believe I first heard of in one of the RE mangas that I covered a while ago - is sorta Wesker's sister, yeah? Or rather, another one of the artificially created humans that Spencer whipped up? I feel like this plot thread of there being several Wesker children was only briefly mentioned in RE5 - mostly in the unlockable lore books - but never fully developed. Am I wrong?

• Claire's chapter 3 really feels like a natural extension of the gameplay in the old RE games translated to the modern over-the-shoulder view. If the series had never gone in the action direction with RE4 but stuck to puzzle solving - perhaps if that infamous "Hook Man" prototype of RE4 had been the one they'd gone with - it feels like we would've gotten something like this. Especially after RE6, this style of gameplay really feels like it came from an alternate universe where the franchise never dabbled with gonzo action.
• These are solid puzzles, too. Breaking open the bird statue with the spiked ceiling to get the key, following the footsteps in the laser room and shooting pig carcasses into the butchery machine to get the liver were all neat solutions. The whole idea of a Prometheus statue lying shackled to a door and the players having to run around collecting two livers to open it is so OG Spencer Mansion that it feels almost foreign to the franchise after so many games which had practically zero puzzles.

• I missed a puzzle in the room where you see all the graves - the one that has a book which makes reference to "the first, the second, the third [and] the fourth." It appears that you get a new gun if you figure it out. I took down notes (the not-so-triumphant return of the Resident Evil playthrough's physical notebook, which I have not used since, oh…a tiny scene in RE4 months ago) but ended up walking too far ahead and triggering the next cutscene. Ah, well.
• The transformation of that TerraSave dude Neil into what looks like a thiccer version of Tyrant did not surprise me all that much, because like I said before - I automatically assume that all NPCs in these games that aren't playable die! The fight against him kinda sucked for me, since I ran out of ammo (didn't aim well enough) and had to rely on my knife and rare ammo drops that appear around the arena at sparse intervals.

• So on that QTE which y'all warned me about - I was wondering when it would pop up in this chapter (this is a very long chapter for Claire and Moira, it seems), and as I was fighting Neil I suddenly thought "hey, I bet Claire is gonna have to pick up her gun and shoot him at one point but you'll be able to switch to Moira instead." Turns out I was right! It's an interesting moment and I can understand why some people would think that switching to her is the natural option to take if you've been paying attention to the story so far. But I can also see how others are inclined to press a QTE as soon as they see it, and how locking themselves into the bad ending during this one small moment could be a massive downer. For me personally, I was wondering what Moira's hangup over firearms was and if she'd get a chance to subvert that over the course of the game, and I think the way it was done - with her witnessing flashbacks of the incident with Polly as she leans towards the gun - was very good. But I don't know if I would've automatically known to go ahead and switch to her during this point if you guys hadn't told me in advance, since you know, a shitload of QTEs in the last several games have brainwashed me.

• I noticed that if you don't immediately press the button then the game will actually tell you to switch characters! But once again, this is useless if you've been mentally trained to adopt a "press the button as soon as I see it because that's how it was in the last three games" mindset. The whole thing actually reminds me a lot of old point 'n click adventure games, like King's Quest, where you could find yourself in an unwinnable situation at the end of the game if you didn't pick up a crucial item or examine something during a key point in the beginning. I don't think this is great game design (it's kinda unfair, yeah) but seeing as how the earlier Resident Evil games were little more than point 'n click adventures with guns, then it feels oddly appropriate that Revelations 2 featured such a controversial QTE in its midst.
• Barry's chapter 3 features some revelations from Hag Female Wesker (calling her that from now on), a cute piggyback scene and finally the reason why Moira and her father split apart. Gotta keep that gun safe locked, Barry! (Funnily enough the Barry Burton in the RE novels is described as a massive gun nut, so I could totally see something like this happening.)

• The partner mechanics in Barry's section were really good, with Natalia opening sluices and Barry taking out enemies. Also I noticed some only-found-in-the-journal storytelling here, mainly about Evgeny and his daughter, which is also a form of immersive gameplay that the Resident Evils moved away from around RE5.

• That said, the culmination of Barry's chapter, where you need to move a single box around via conveyer belts for what feels like forever, got old. It's a well-designed block pushing puzzle, for sure, but at the end of the day, a block pushing puzzle is still a block pushing puzzle.

• Final boss (is that Evgeny's daughter?) was also a little cheap, because it can one-shot you if you get too close. Tedium and cheapness aside though, good closing with Barry going flying off a cliff.

• Well, Claire's chapter 4 is not much to speak of - mostly just a face-to-face encounter with Alex Wesker that ends with a bullet to the head and then a climatic escape from the tower. This escape was kind of a pain for me since I was seriously low on health, had to deal with red portions of the screen obscuring my vision and there were those two darn invisible insects to deal with. I died a few times due to the timer, and because the game auto-saves I kept ending up in the same spot with my health in severe levels.

• Barry's chapter 4 is really something, though! I hadn't anticipated that he arrived on the island six months after Claire and Moira, though it makes a lot of sense now that I consider it.

• We go through a heck of a lot of challenges in Barry's final chapter - a partner-swapping bridge area (there was one body near the end that I couldn't figure out how to get to), underground tunnels filled with gas and then yet ANOTHER throwback to Spencer Mansion! How many Spencer throwbacks do we have now? I remember one in Code Veronica, and you could easily say that RE Zero, RE5 and the first Revelations all intentionally try to channel the vibe of the original mansion, which I feel is something that this series does to try to remind us that before all the BSAA shenanigans, it was just a small group of cops stuck in a spooky house. Lol, at least this version of Spencer Mansion is relatively short.

• The first stage of the battle against Monster Alex was good. Generally I don't think final boss fights (and bosses in general) are Resident Evil's forte, but this one forces you to utilize some of the kills that you've learned over the course of the game, like relying on Natalia's senses when Alex squeezes through the vents. (Kinda reminiscent of the Mr. Freeze battle in Arkham City, IMO, which is funny because Natalia's gimmick is basically Detective Vision.) Thank goodness I got the good ending and Moira came back - I watched the bad ending on YouTube and that's some depressing shit. (Though memorable as far as bad endings in games go.)

• The second part of the fight, when Claire appears in the chopper, was GREAT. Finally Resident Evil delivers a tag team battle that actually seems to know what it's doing and isn't something that was obviously designed for multiplayer. Having control over Barry in the caves as Monster Alex chases him down and then switching to Claire in the chopper when they're visible outdoors is such a simple design choice that one has to wonder why Capcom never came up with it earlier and made us endure so many cruddy Time Crisis-style shooting sections in previous games, the first Revelations included. Also I fucking love Barry's badassery as he grabs his Magnum and prepares to defend his family. And Claire's sniper outfit is 100x better than her regular design in this game.

• That final shot, too! Alex Wesker goes boom and her dreams of being just as evil as her brother (and referencing Kafka at all times) go up in a glorious explosion.

• A lot of moments in the good ending are awesome. Seeing the ladies cheer as Barry strides out into the sunset, learning that Natalia's going to get another chance at having a family and being a little girl again, seeing all the references to the upcoming events in RE6, etc. (Amused that Claire is just like, "Oh, Chris is in China? OK, tell Piers to babysit him for me." POOR PIERS...also wasn't Chris missing in Europe for a while and becoming an alcoholic? One would think that Claire would be a little more worried about him, though I suppose you can chalk it up to her and her brother not having the time to communicate so much these days. Speaking of which, I feel like this game is special because it crosses over a main character from RE1 - Barry Burton - with a main character from RE2 - Claire Redfield. Capcom seems to like to keep the two distinct "sets" of characters that first began developing in RE1 and RE2 separate. For instance, Leon and Chris only met in-game in RE6 and I don't think Jill has ever met Leon or Claire. Just an interesting tidbit I noticed.)

• That said, I'm not crazy about the creepy little epilogue where it's hinted that Alex's consciousness has risen back to the surface and infected Natalia's mind in the end. I hope it's something that Capcom can spin off into a Revelations 3, but it means that Alex kinda won anyway and poor Barry's family is only going to go through more hardship. Then again, knowing Capcom, maybe they'll never capitalize on this nugget and just leave it to drift in the water. Either way, I'm meh when it comes to ambiguous endings, and I kinda like my Resident Evils to finish happily.
• So what about the game's two extra chapters? Well...neither of them are that great, IMO. Of the two, The Struggle is stronger since it shows how Moira survived for six months, which solidified my appreciation of her as a standout character of this game. Her relationship with Evgeny is pretty touching and furthers the father/daughter themes, and it's kind of amusing to see the formerly anti-gun gal start packing firearms on the regular. That said, the survival mechanics and the fact that the game deletes your save if you don't collect enough rations wasn't my cup of tea. The story was fine, in other words, while the gameplay supporting it not so hot.

• Little Miss, on the other hand...was pretty bad. I get that it's supposed to be a representation of Alex fighting Natalia for control over her body but the all-stealth gameplay was dull and Lottie the Bear became creepier the more I looked at her. The music was okay, which is about all I can say.

• Lastly, I really like some of the concept art unlockables. Moira looks amazing in her pic! I'd love to see another game with her, since I feel like she surpassed my initial impression of a sassy teenage chick who was designed to channel Life is Strange vibes and became something else entirely. I read an article talking about how Capcom doesn't have further plans for her at the moment, but more Moira and Barry please. At least resolve the plot thread with evil Natalia that comes up in the epilogue, por favor.

SirKai said:

Daaaaamn I'm so glad you liked Rev2, and I'm especially relieved you thought highly of Moira as well. I went into Rev2 thrilled to see more of Claire, my favorite RE character, but came out totally blown away by Moira. I'd love a spin off team up game with her and Sheva returning at some point.

By the way, apologies since I'm sure you've addressed it at some point, but since you'll be caught up on RE games very soon, how are you feeling about RE2make next month? Also, will you wait on it or get it at release and play it more promptly?

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RagdollRhino said:

By chance do you have PSVR for RE7? Its the most incredible gaming experience of my life. It went from a decent/good RE game to absolutely mind blowing in VR.

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Kevers said:

I liked Moira in general but this line soured me almost entirely on her after it came up. That's not to say that I eventually got over it but yuck.

Will you be trying out Raid mode at all or moving right on to the next game?

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As a whole, Revelations 2 feels like Capcom doing some course correcting after the mixed reception that RE6 got. While I haven't started Resident Evil 7 yet, it seems that the "return to horror" direction that title emphasized originally started here, and the upcoming remake of Resident Evil 2 also seems to share similarities with Revelations 2, only with a much, much higher budget. As the series continues into the 2020s and re-assesses its identity, I'd wager that Revelations 2 will provide a bigger blueprint for future games than we might expect, which is why despite a few flaws, I'm willing to call it my second favorite over-the-shoulder Resident Evil after RE4.

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• On the initial note of scariness, the first hour of this game is tense, man. It was almost too real for me, lol. The initial shift to an FPS view made me wary and worried of what was lurking around the corner, and I was also cautious because I was afraid that the game was gonna give me motion sickness. (Astute followers of this thread will remember that RE4, of all games, made me dizzy.) Thanks to the ability to turn off camera bob and set the FOV to 90, though, no such problems!

• But yeah, FPS view = a much more intimate sense of terror. Exploring the ruined Old House was a trip, and I had to take my headphones off, bump up the brightness a tad and put subtitles on to somewhat decrease immersion and calm my nerves. I even played the Zootopia soundtrack for a second because I read this one Kotaku article that's entitled something like "How to Play RE7 if You're a Chicken" and they suggest doing that. (It worked). Playing this in VR must be one helluva trip and I understand why people claim it's revolutionary. But I think I'm not ready for that yet, lol.
• Mia going nuts and slicing off Ethan's HAND made me go WTF, and I had to Google "how does Ethan survive losing a hand" right afterwards, which led me to a few light spoilers. Nothing major, thankfully! But damn, that was one visceral moment.
• The Bakers are pulsating with character and I like how they inject my Resident Evil game with a good dose of Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibes. (I actually haven't seen those movies but...I want to now.) I was asking questions during the dinner table like who the heck are these people and why they were just losing limbs left and right. And how they managed to re-attach Ethan's hand via staples and get it working again so quickly!

• Speaking of Ethan, is he something of a dull, generic protagonist? Yeah, but I think he fits the bill here. It seems that the back-to-basics approach (more on this later) that RE7 indulges in, as well as the new first-person viewpoint, required a main character who was "regular" enough to fade into the background in order to acclimate players to the concept that THEY are really living through this adventure in a more direct level than ever experienced before in this franchise. So I see it as a gameplay decision to make him sorta boring, and in that sense he did his job. (That said, after having beaten the game with him, I don't think he should star in a future Resident Evil title, first-person view or not. His - and Mia's - story seems done.)
• One of the few complaints I had about the first hour was this deputy, who seemed promising but only fulfilled this franchise's bad habit (inherited from horror movies) of killing off the non-white dude relatively quickly. He sure did die in style though, with that shovel to the noggin! But I still think it would be nice for one of these games to feature a fully-realized non-white character who doesn't serve as early cannon fodder (ie, Kenneth Sullivan in RE1). Sheva & Josh from RE5, Carlos from RE3 and that jokey Snoop Dog lookalike dude in Revelations are the only ones so far, and the franchise is old enough to start doing better.

• On a happier note, the fight against Jack in the garage was rad, especially the bit where you run him over with the car only to have him hop up alongside you and grab the wheel. "Oh boy, now look what you've done, motherfucker!" As I've said in old posts, boss battles have never been Resident Evil's strong suit in my opinion. Personally, I think RE7 bucks that trend, though I can understand why some people also say that the last few boss fights at the end of the campaign kinda fall apart.

• Some of the articles I've read have pointed out that RE7's most frightening moments are in the very beginning where Ethan is totally helpless without even a pocket knife and you're unsure of what's going to come your way, and after the garage fight things become significantly more "gamey" and less tense. This is true in some ways - the house does open up substantially and things fall into a certain rhythm that's reminiscent of, well, a tried-and-true Resident Evil game! More specifically, the back-to-basics feel of the earlier titles with exploration and item management coming first.
• It was actually comforting to be presented with this formula after an introduction of sheer horror, because now I knew what I needed to do to survive. Collect the doodads! Use those typewriters (tape recorders in this game I guess), figure out a way to replace that shotgun! Solve puzzles by messing with overly complicated objects that no sane person would actually have in their house! Avoid Jack as he comes busting out of the walls just like Nemesis or Mr. X, providing way more "holy shit" moments than the Nemesis-wannabe (forgot his name already) in Jake's RE6 campaign! You know, I'm sure some complaints when this came out must've been along the lines of "it's barely an RE game" but honestly the series' traditional DNA is more present here than say, RE4.

• Aside from the Bakers' regenerative capabilities, we get our first encounter with what I immediately recognized as a new form of BOW - the Molded - in the basement, which was a tricky area to get through that kept killing me until I managed to use those keys to snag the shotgun. After seeing these guys I also began to piece together what the plot might be in my head, thinking that that game's main theme would be to show how a seemingly "regular" family would respond when infected with an advanced virus strand. I turned out to be kinda right in the end. I wonder how people totally unfamiliar with the franchise might react when confronted with all of this stuff, though.

• Climatic battle with Jack in the dissection room? Man, FUCK that guy! With a CHAINSAW! Another great boss battle that manages to be in-your-face, brutal and cinematic...all without a single Quicktime event.

• I'll get into the events with Mrs. Baker and the second half of the game next time, but as an aside, RE Engine is one heck of a thing, and the photo-realistic look the everyone has is something to behold after a string of games that used relatively Japanese character designs. (Revelations 2 did begin the process of bucking this trend, I believe.)

• IMO the increased realism does, however, create an interesting side effect where the more "gamey" aspects of RE7 stick out more and appear slightly jarring - ie, the conveniently-timed phone calls from Zoe that always pop up after you accomplish an objective, the fact that you can "control" the actions of Mia and the other folks you see in the VHS tapes (though this is also a clever modern interpretation of the "partner zapping" mechanic of the games of old), and last but not least Zoe's trailer, which has a supply of power-ups in cages that require antique coins to open! PLUS A BRA. It's mildly amusing signs of "hey, you're playing a game" in an experience that's otherwise so realistic. Still, what a game this is!

Blackbird said:

About the garage fight tho, would 100% recommend to watch some gameplay videos from it. There's two ways you can finish it, and both are absolutely bananas in the best way possible, trust me.

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Dusk Golem said:

Fun fact about the garage boss fight, based on what you do that fight can do down VERY differently.

One such difference:



There's actually a few dynamic things in the game that will or won't happen based on certain scenarios in the game lining up or not.

(back to reading, just wanted to note this based on what you said).

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AdaWong said:

Pixel Grotto You seem like you hate me so much that you made it affect your impressions of my campaign in RE6. It's actually the best one; and this is 100% unbiased!

jk obvi (kinda) XD But I'm actually disheartened you don't find Ada interesting -- she's one of RE's best characters imo. So many of RE characters suffer from being bland and one-dimensional but Ada is one of the few that I personally think have multiple layers to them and are just overall great. However, I do agree she wasn't well-written in RE6 though and they did her wrong there.

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AdaWong said:

Reading this, I actually kinda agree with you on most parts lol. Yeah, she's the Catwoman to Leon's Batman in CAPCOM's universe.
Also, how much have you seen of RE2make (previews and stuff)? There are some super interesting changes that I wanna discuss with you but I don't want to mention anything until I'm sure you're aware of them (or if you're on a media blackout until the game's release, which I think I might be doing soon tbh) XD

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AdaWong said:

There is no official abbreviation! Some people call it RE2make and others REmake 2 (I've seen more as well, but there are the most common).

Okay then, you've opened a can of worms!

CAPCOM is really going for plausibility this time around. Not necessarily 100% realism (it is a game with zombies and giant alligators after all), but they're trying hard to get players immersed in the atmosphere and world of RE2, as well as getting you attached to/relate to the main 4 characters. I won't touch too much on Leon/Claire/Sherry but for example, they made the latter act a little more grown up and more mature to give her an emotional side to make you care about protecting her and acting like her guardian as opposed to thinking of her as an annoying brat you're forced to escort to safety.

The most obvious thing CAPCOM is trying to ensure of this time around with Leon and Ada is that they want their "falling in love" plot to seem, again, plausible. It was ridiculous how they caught feelings for each other so quickly in the original especially with how cold-blooded Ada was, you'd almost think her falling in love with him was just a part of her plan to get him off of her dick so she can escape on her own and accomplish her mission lol.

This remake has the potential to be some of CAPCOM's most remarkable written work yet. Hear me out: they are changing so much about the Ada and Leon dynamic specifically, and fleshing out both of their characters so well IMO.

• Ada no longer has the "I'm looking for my boyfriend" subplot

Instead of introducing her as the "I'm lost and confused" character, she's instead introduced as a very professional, competent and cunning one. Her first appearance to Leon is her saving him from a mutated dog that's about to maul his face off. Right after, she explicitly orders Leon to leave Raccoon City instead of playing-pretend that she has no idea what's going on. Right off the bat this gives us the vibe that this character is competent, daring, blunt and even dominant. Get this: Leon is a police officer who gets saved by a random "normal" person who has the audacity to tell him - an authority figure - to leave the town "before it's too late". This sets the stage up for Ada as a character: she's competent, as showcased by her sharp-shooting skills when saving Leon from the dog. She's daring and confident enough to tell a police officer to "get the hell out of here", and then when Leon plays his authority figure card and presses for more information from her, she further proves that side of her by declining to answer. "Sorry, that information is classified," she says. Mysterious, but bold and cunning; in one scene we already see some of the defining characteristics of hers conveyed perfectly.

• Ada is no longer just a random "civilian" to Leon, but from the get-go Leon is aware she's a highly skilled secret agent

This is a huge change. Later on, after an emotional scene between Leon, Ada and some other characters. Leon vents to Ada about his mission and purpose, Ada is seen to be slightly moved by what she'd just witnessed (and perhaps by Leon's naiveness as well), so she finally decides to disclose her intentions -- or so we think. She tells Leon that she is a secret agent sent by the government and her mission is to eradicate Umbrella and stop Annette, one of the people responsible for the creation of G-Virus. Leon's mission is to help people as much as he can, and Ada's "mission" is to save the world by destroying Umbrella's operations. This is actually pretty smart from her; she says she's a government agent, when in fact she's not (she's an undercover agent, but not for the government). Saying that she is an agent of some sort will help her by not throwing Leon off over any of the gadgets/weapons she possesses, and he won't question her survival abilities thinking she might be lying about who she is had she said she was just a civilian. She does not tell him she's a spy working for Wesker and all, she's acting like a goodie-two-shoes sent by the government to "stop" the bad guys to humor his naive perspective and win him over. When in reality, her objective is to actually just steal a G-Virus sample, and doesn't require "stopping" or killing anyone or anything necessarily.

• Leon and Ada's serious/jokster personalities are perfectly balanced and complimentary of each other in the remake

In the original, Leon and Ada were both serious -- and when they were funny, it was unintentional, as it was never the intent by the creators. When Leon and Ada undergo their ACTION SUPERHERO transformation in later action RE games, they suddenly gain all the sarcasm and one-lines in the world and have that embedded into their dialogue. The remake ties their old personalities with their new personalities flawlessly. Both of them are serious when they need to be and relieving tension by cracking jokes when they need to. This is amazing because in RE6, Leon has become too serious where he lost all of his charm from RE4, and the opposite happens for Ada: she becomes too snarky in RE6 where you don't even feel like there are any stakes at all playing as her -- she acts like a Mary Sue, and if she doesn't care about any situation she's in, why should the player?

Here are a few examples for both characters:
Leon: Serious
After witnessing an emotional event happen, he gets frustrated with how he doesn't feel like he's in control as innocent people's lives are being taken away right before his eyes. He vents to Ada about why he even joined the force to begin with, and his "purpose" in his life, and you can sense the frustration in his tone.

Leon: Serious, Ada: Joking
After fighting the giant alligator:
A: "Can't say I didn't warn you."
L: "You said the virus changed PEOPLE into monsters, not reptiles!"
A: "......fair point."

Leon: Joking, Ada: Serious
After saving Leon from an encounter with Mr. X, Ada shows her annoyance with acting like a guardian angel:
A: "I'm getting tired of saving your ass, that's twice already."
L: *catching his breath after almost being choked to death by Mr. X* "..I didn't know you were counting!"
A: "Look, this is NOT a game!"

Ada: Joking
When Leon is unconscious, and we get to play as Ada. She reveals her hacking gadget, "it's secret weapon time!" And then hacks a control panel and overloads an electric fan until it explodes, "...candy from a baby."

• Symbolism

Last but not least, Ada's trenchoat and glasses represent her having her walls up and being emotionally "guarded". But slowly, as she and Leon rely more and more on each other and they become a team she opens up to him and learns to trust him more -- hence losing the trenchcoat and glasses, symbolizing putting her defenses down and allowing herself to be vulnerable with Leon, until she ultimately catches feelings for him after his acts of selflessness, especially for her.

There is seriously so many more notes that I have, but I think I overstayed my welcome in this post lol and I touched on the main points I wanted to cover. So excited for January 25th!

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• With Jack outta the picture, we venture outside the main house and I feel like the similarities that the game's structure holds with RE1 are especially evident here. We go from house -> outside areas -> back to house again, and you even see some classic item mainstays like ye ever reliable and important CRANK and the flamethrower, which was a favorite weapon of mine just because it added some extra light to the environment. Also, I felt like Barry Burton burning up those wasp nests!

• The quest to get the D-series arm and head and the encounter with Mrs. Baker and her granny panties full of winged insects was well done, and the boss battle against her where you're running between different levels of the house and waiting for her to pop out of the ceiling and walls was another example of this game doing bosses better than most prior REs. Seems like Mrs. Baker reacted quite differently to Eveline's virus than her husband - instead of increased strength she got nasty ass long limbs.

• As a side note, I think the exploration of Eveline's room is where we get the first hints that she's the puppet master controlling everything behind the scenes. We also get an early indication of her obsession with family, which come to think of it, is as much a theme of this game as it was for Revelations 2.

• Then it's back to the house to discover that Molded are all over the place. Like I said, this is that RE1 structure recreated for the modern era. Back then it was Hunters occupying familiar areas and making them unfamiliar all over again, this time it's the Molded. I also kept wondering why the Bakers' creepy grandma was following me around during this section. "Who's moving her wheelchair?" I thought. Hah, little did I know...

• Lucas' Saw-like death house was filled with darn tripwires that kept catching me off guard, but the VHS tape where you can "practice" playing through the birthday cake trap is brilliant. I love the idea of Ethan getting the upper hand on this asshole by being lucky enough to know how to "skip steps" in the puzzle. As I said before, I found the sequences where you're suddenly able to "control" the characters in the VHS tapes to be a little jarring at first, but this was an example of the game using it as an intelligent puzzle mechanic. As I thought about it more, I also realized that the found footage genre of horror films rose to prominence as Resident Evil was also coming of age, and surprisingly, this is the first time that the franchise has borrowed from those works.

• The final boss battle with uber mutated Jack was the first moment that this game reminded me of RE5 or RE6 (the fight with Eveline at the end was the second time), but it controlled much better. I had to play it twice because the first time there was one eye I just couldn't target. Then after he got calcified and there was only one serum left, my first thought was "How am I gunna choose between these two waifus?!"

• Personally I like Zoe more than Mia (it's that short haircut obsession that makes me also find Rebecca Chambers and Sherry Birkin attractive), and after reading Wiki articles and learning about some of the shady stuff that Mia was up to that led to the creation of Eveline, it's easy to see Zoe as the true innocent in this scenario. But I figured that Ethan wouldn't go through hell and high water for his wife only to choose the other chick in the end, so I chose Mia for the good ending. I watched the bad ending on YouTube, and it seems like picking Zoe means you miss out on the huge chunk of flashback gameplay with Mia on the ship. It also seems as if your choice is invalidated immediately afterwards with Zoe getting calcified, so...it's a bit of a fake out in my opinion.

• Picking Mia and getting the parts where you get to run around the ship with her also fulfills Resident Evil's tradition of usually having a male and a female protagonist, which I liked. On the subject of tradition, I enjoyed the eleventh hour revelations that were made on the ship and in the salt mines, explaining Mia's connection with Eveline, the initial opening movie and also successfully tying this game's plot with the rest of the franchise's lore. At first this game seems as unconnected with the rest of the series as RE4 (which still feels relatively unconnected aside from some slapdash references to Wesker and the presence of Leon and Ada, IMO), but in the end it really becomes a Resident Evil, especially when they start flashing stuff I didn't even recognize, like BLUE UMBRELLA. (More on them in a sec!)

• The reveal of the Bakers as sympathetic villains who were merely under the control of Eveline was another last minute revelation, but I liked it. I've seen at least one complaint that it came outta nowhere, but I think it was from a GameFAQs post from before the DLC was released.

• I agree with those who have already posted in this thread calling the salt mines the least interesting area of the game, but by the time I got there I figured that I was already in the finale and just shotgunned and remote bombed my way through.
• Just like the Bakers, I'd go so far as to call Eveline a sympathetic villain too - an artificially-created, hyper-aged little girl who lost her childhood due to bioweapons research and was trying ever since to make up for that. She actually strikes me as quite similar to Natalia in Revelations 2, and I was thinking that it would've been an interesting twist to straight up have her BE Natalia after Alex Wesker's consciousness had taken over, as hinted in the Revelations 2 epilogue. But I suppose that would have required prior knowledge of the series, and Capcom surely wanted to woo newbies with this game's fresh perspective and seeming unconnected nature with the earlier REs.

• I almost felt like it was unnecessary for Eveline to transform into a mutated state, since the climax where you brace yourself against her winds and finally manage to inject her with the serum was good enough. But I guess it's Resident Evil and Resident Evil needs its final boss battles! With the assistance of the ALBERT WESKER GUN, which made me chuckle.

• Aaaand then we have CHRIS REDFIELD making an appearance! I'm amused to learn that a lot of people thought it couldn't be him because his new photo-realistic look is a far cry from steroid-enhanced Chris in RE5 and RE6. To be fair, which I agree that this dude doesn't scream "Redfield" in my eyes, he does bear a resemblance to how he looked in REmake.

• I've gathered that one of the other things that threw people off about Chris was the fact that he's working for Umbrella in this finale! I was confused too, until I realized that it's not the same Umbrella. This is from Umbrella Corps, yeah? I did NOT expect RE7 to pull story bits from a spinoff that got such low reviews, but I assume everything will be explained in the Not a Hero DLC, which I'll be playing soon. For those who did play Umbrella Corps, what were its highs and lows? I've watched videos but can't bring myself to buy it. I'd be interested in hearing impressions though!

• Overall, a very good ending. And I think the the game's alteration of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" as an overarching theme for the plot is fantastic.