1998 video game
Resident Evil 2 is a 1998 survival horror video game developed and published by Capcom for the PlayStation. The player controls rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy and college student Claire Redfield, who must escape Raccoon City after its citizens are transformed into zombies by a biological weapon two months after the events of the original "Resident Evil". The gameplay focuses on exploration, puzzles, and combat; the main difference from its predecessor are the branching paths, with each player character having unique storylines, partners and obstacles.
"Resident Evil 2" was produced by "Resident Evil" director Shinji Mikami, directed by Hideki Kamiya, and developed by a team of approximately 50 across 21 months. The initial version, commonly referred to as "Resident Evil 1.5", differs drastically; it was canceled at approximately two thirds completion because Mikami decided it was inadequate. The final design introduced a more cinematic presentation.
"Resident Evil 2" received acclaim for its atmosphere, setting, graphics, audio, scenarios, overall gameplay, and its improvements over the original game, but with some criticism towards its controls, voice acting, and certain gameplay elements. It is widely listed among the best video games ever made. It is the best-selling "Resident Evil" game for a single platform at more than 6 million copies sold across all platforms. It was ported to Windows, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and GameCube, and a modified 2.5D version was released for the Game.com handheld. The story of "Resident Evil 2" was retold and built upon in several later games, and has been adapted into a variety of licensed works. It was followed by "" in 1999. A remake was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in 2019.
Gameplay.
"Resident Evil 2" is a third-person survival horror game which features the same basic gameplay as its predecessor, "Resident Evil". Set in Raccoon City, a fictional town in the Midwestern Arklay Mountains, the game offers a choice of two protagonists - rookie police officer Leon S. Kennedy or college student Claire Redfield - as they attempt to survive a zombie outbreak in the city. The player explores Raccoon City while fighting monsters and solving puzzles. While the player characters may be equipped with firearms, limited ammunition adds a tactical element to combat, forcing the player to choose between engaging or evading encounters.
The game uses tank controls, meaning that pressing up moves the character forward, down reverses, and left and right rotates, independently of the camera perspective. On the status screen, the player can check the condition of the player character, view a map of the area, re-read obtained files, and equip or combine items. The characters' current health can also be determined by their posture and movement speed. For example, a character will hold their stomach in pain if wounded, and will limp slowly if on the verge of death. The player character will take damage whenever they are caught by an enemy or hazard, and if they take too much damage, they will die, causing a game over. Herbs and first aid spray can be used to heal. Safe rooms scattered throughout the city contain typewriters, where the player may spend ink ribbons to save their progress, and item boxes that can store items, which are necessary because the player characters can only carry a limited number of items with them.
Contrasting with Chris and Jill's different abilities in the previous game, Leon and Claire differ only in their starting key items (a lighter and a lockpick, respectively). The game introduces a "Zapping System" where the two player characters are each confronted with differing puzzles, plot threads, and encounters. After finishing the "A Scenario" as one protagonist, the player will unlock the "B Scenario" for the other, elements of which change to reflect the A Scenario's events, e.g. killed enemies, solved puzzles, and hazards caused by player actions. This results in a total of four unique playthroughs, two for each character, which increases the game's replayability. Each protagonist is joined by a support partner during the game. These characters accompany the protagonist in certain scenes, and are playable during short segments. Like the previous game, there are multiple endings, but unlike the previous game, which ending the player sees is determined solely by which of the four scenarios is being played.
The graphics are composed of real-time generated polygonal characters and item models, superimposed over pre-rendered backgrounds that are viewed from fixed camera angles.
After completing a scenario, the player is given a rank based on their playtime and the number of times they saved or used special healing items. Higher ranks may unlock additional weapons and costumes. "Resident Evil 2" contains two standalone missions: "The 4th Survivor" and "The To-fu Survivor". In both, the player must reach the goal while fighting every enemy along the way with only the default item loadout. The PlayStation version requires the player complete both scenarios with high ranks in order to unlock these missions, while the Dreamcast version has them accessible from the beginning. All later versions, excluding the Nintendo 64 version, have an additional "Extreme Battle" minigame, where the player, either as Leon, Claire, Ada or Chris Redfield from the first game, must plant four antivirus bombs around one of three maps while fighting through a gauntlet of enemies with limited supplies.
Plot.
Depending on which order the scenarios are played in, the player experiences one of two courses of events which mutually contradict each other. This plot summary covers only the path followed by playing the Claire A and Leon B scenarios, which was suggested by Capcom to be the canon version of events.
On September 29, 1998, two months after the events of the first "Resident Evil", most citizens of the Midwestern American mountain community of Raccoon City have been transformed into zombies by the T-virus, a biological weapon secretly developed by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella. Leon S. Kennedy, a Raccoon Police Department officer on his first day of duty, meets Claire Redfield, a college student looking for her brother Chris. After being separated, Leon and Claire each make their own way to the Raccoon Police Station. They discover that most of the RPD has been killed, and that Chris has left town to investigate Umbrella's headquarters in Europe. They split up to look for survivors and find a way out of the city. While searching for an escape route, Claire meets a little girl, Sherry Birkin, who is on the run from an unknown creature, and Leon encounters Ada Wong, who claims to be looking for her boyfriend John, an Umbrella researcher from Chicago.
RPD Chief Brian Irons had been bribed by Umbrella to hide evidence of the company's experiments in the outskirts of the city. He concealed their development of the new G-virus, an agent capable of mutating a human into the ultimate bioweapon. Leon has multiple encounters with a Tyrant, a monster air-dropped into the police station by Umbrella to seek the G-virus. Irons tries to murder Claire but is killed by a G-virus mutant in the police station. Claire and Sherry escape through the sewers and become separated. After splitting up with Leon, Ada finds Sherry and picks up a golden pendant the girl loses while running away. Further into the sewers, Ada reluctantly teams up with Leon again, after he insists on his duty to protect her. They encounter a middle-aged woman who fires at Ada, but Leon jumps between them and takes a bullet himself. Ada ignores the unconscious Leon and follows the woman, who reveals herself to be Sherry's mother Annette and the wife of William Birkin, the Umbrella scientist who created the G-virus. In an attempt to protect his life's work from special agents sent by the Umbrella headquarters, he injected himself with the virus, which turned him into the malformed creature and is now chasing Sherry because of her genetic make-up. Annette recognizes her daughter's pendant and attempts to take it from Ada. A fight ensues, during which Annette is thrown over a railing. Ada learns that the golden locket contains a sample of the G-virus, and later – taken over by her emotions – returns to Leon, tending to his bullet wound.
Meanwhile, Claire is reunited with Sherry and discovers that William has implanted his daughter with an embryo to produce offspring. Leon, Ada, Claire, and Sherry advance through an abandoned factory connected to Umbrella's secret underground research facility. An attack by William leaves Ada heavily wounded, and Leon explores the laboratory to find something to treat her wounds. He is interrupted by a psychotic Annette, who says that Ada's relationship with John was only a means of getting information about Umbrella because Ada is a spy sent to steal the G-virus for an unknown organization. Leon does not believe her, saying he trusts Ada. Just as Annette is about to shoot Leon, the Tyrant appears, and she retreats. Ada returns to save Leon and battles the Tyrant, which falls into a pit of molten metal. Ada is mortally wounded from the fight; she and Leon confess their love for each other before Ada stops breathing. Meanwhile, Annette tries to escape with another sample of the G-virus but is fatally wounded by her mutated husband; before she dies, she tells Claire how to create a vaccine that will stop the mutations caused by the embryo within Sherry. After preparing the cure, Leon and Claire reunite at an emergency escape train and inject Sherry with the vaccine, which saves her life. En route, Leon is assisted in terminating the now-mutated Super Tyrant by an unseen figure; Leon briefly thinks it is Ada, but is unable to positively identify her voice over the noise. Grown to gigantic size, William follows Leon and Claire, but is destroyed when the train self-destructs. After escaping from the city with Sherry, Leon intends to take down Umbrella, while Claire continues to search for Chris. HUNK, one of the surviving special agents sent by Umbrella, completes his G-virus retrieval mission.
Development.
Development of "Resident Evil 2" began one month after the completion of its predecessor in early 1996. "Resident Evil 2" was developed by a group of about 45 people that later became part of Capcom Production Studio 4. Director Hideki Kamiya led the team, which was composed of newer Capcom employees and over half of the staff from the original "Resident Evil". In the initial stages of development, producer Shinji Mikami often had creative disagreements with Kamiya, and tried to influence the team with his own direction. He eventually withdrew into an overseeing role as producer, and only demanded to be shown the latest build once monthly. The game took more than $1 million to create.
"Resident Evil 1.5".
The first footage of "Resident Evil 2" was shown at the V Jump Festival '96 in July. This build, later dubbed "Resident Evil 1.5" by Mikami, differed drastically from the final version. Its plot followed the same basic outline and features a zombie outbreak in Raccoon City two months after the events of the first game. However, Umbrella had already been closed as a consequence of its illegal experiments.
The development team sought to retain the degree of fear from the original game, and introduced two characters without experience of terrifying situations: Leon S. Kennedy, largely identical to his persona in the final build, and Elza Walker, a college student and motorcycle racer vacationing in Raccoon City, her hometown. Unlike the final version, the character paths did not cross, and each character had two support partners instead of one. Leon received help from fellow police officer Marvin Branagh and researcher Linda – an early version of Ada – while Elza was aided by Sherry Birkin and John, who appears in "Resident Evil 2" as gun shop owner Robert Kendo. Mikami also revealed in 1996 that the sequel would have new monsters, and the number of onscreen enemies would be increased to "around seven or more" to produce "the sensation of terror as the monsters swarm around the character".
Real-world examples influenced character designs by artists Isao Ohishi and Ryoji Shimogama. For example, Ohishi based Leon on his bloodhound, and Annette Birkin on actress Jodie Foster. The police station was smaller with a more modern and realistic design. There were more encounters with surviving policemen, such as a superior officer of Leon named Roy. Enemy models used far fewer polygons, allowing many zombies to appear