The Examined Game Special - Resident Evil Movie, Star Wars Zero Company and Assassin's Creed Addiction

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Hi there, my name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the Examined Game. Um you might have noticed the last couple of weeks I haven't actually had a developer interview for the podcast, and I want to apologise for that. I was in a great cadence of getting something done once a week and it just got behind me. Things have been busy, but that's not really an excuse. It's just I don't know what. I'm I'm looking at how I can keep this up. Um don't worry, I'm keeping it up, but uh I just want to work out the way that I need to make sure that I'm in a sort of good um cadence with it. I was thinking about maybe doing the interview once every two weeks because that literally halves the amount of interviews I need to do, but I really enjoyed having this in my life uh on a weekly basis. Um, but anyway, I don't have a guest for this week, and I did a bit of a filler episode last week where I talked about what was going on for me, and today I thought maybe I could just talk about video games um and see if that passes the buck. I'm also experimenting with this type of content. I'm curious uh to see who it interests. I I love talking about this stuff, and I really enjoy the engagement that I get from this show. So yeah, today, right, what should we talk about first? Let's talk about Resident Evil. I want to ask you a question: what makes a Resident Evil? What do you think is the essence of that IP? I recently went and saw the uh new film um with my stepdaughter. She's never played a single Resident Evil game, knows nothing about it, and we both had an absolute blast watching this movie. It just raised a bunch of questions to me like, what is the essence of this series that they've captured and put into this this movie? I I think obviously there's a long history of very bad video game adaptations, and this doesn't even feel like an adaptation to me. It feels like something different where they extracted the tone, the vibe, the pacing, the sort of humor, the darkness, the horror of this beautiful series of video games and put it into a film where it wasn't just trying to be a carbon copy. I mean, for example, like we've we've obviously broken the curse of the video game adaptation with the likes of The Last of Us and Fallout. It brought to mind one of my favourite films, which is the original Silent Hill movie. And I think that film is not well liked for whatever reason, but for me, again, right, we went through decades of the curse of bad video game adaptations. Um, for whatever reason, it's been sort of sorted now, give or take. I gotta say, that film blew me away when I saw it. A huge fan of the Silent Hill series, and I feel like it just captured the essence of the game, right down to the way that it was working with the same sort of camera angles that you'd have seen in the original PS1, well, and Silent Hill 1 and 2. Um, there's just something sort of special about it. I loved the protagonists, I loved the story behind it, it was really creepy, it felt like it had depth and nuance, and if I'm honest, to me, that feels like the first time I ever saw a reliable adaptation of a video game, and that was way back in like mid-2000s, I think, or 2006. I want to say. Again, I get to like watch this with my stepkids and they get to enjoy it. They haven't played the game. You then have something like Fallout, where you know, for me, Fallout, I love the Fallout series one more than two, season one more than two, but it feels like they took every cancelled questline that would have been in Fallout 3 or New Vegas and turned that into a TV series, which I'm not saying I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a really good way to go. Like the Fallout TV series is very Fallouty. Does that make sense? That's why it's such a pleasure to be in that world. It's so vibrant, it's so wacky, it's so violent, it's so sort of silly and funny and all this good stuff. It's like light-hearted TV. Um, it gets it feels like it gets a little bogged down as it tries to pull off the whole faction thing, which is complicated enough in itself in the video game, uh, let alone trying to do that in a series. But again, I think that's a great example of pulling from video games. What I feel like the Resident Evil film did differently was it it pulled the essence of these games, but I couldn't exactly tell you how or why. It's like, yeah, there's things like you see the typewriter or you see the plant or stuff like that, but it went deeper than that. Obviously, it's a great horror movie, and I don't want to give any spoilers, but you know, there's a pretty clear arc with most Resident Evil games where it like starts small, it's like you're poodling around a police uh police station or this house or whatever, and then it just like convolutes and grows and grows and grows into this insane thing, uh, which is what I feel like we got to see with this movie. So it's a funny one because in some ways it was so overtly resident evil, whilst at the same time it wasn't trying to be resident evil. So that's a question I have for you. Like, what makes a resident evil thing? What is the essence of that series? What I've got to stop saying essence. What is the essence of that series? What is the thing that makes it it? There's you know the wacky character that shows up that kind of like breaks the illusion that you're in some sort of serious thing, the humour. Um, I think the lead, the protagonist in this film, the young man that we're spending, he's basically alone for the majority of the film, is brilliant, he kind of carries it. He reminds me of Grace from Resident Evil 9 in the sense that they created this much more grounded human character who's always in a state of panic. Obviously, Grace is a really great counterpart to Leon who's just bumbling around making his quips while he's cutting people's heads off with a chainsaw. But it just there was something about it, and you know what? I actually can't put into words what it was. So I want to hear from you what do you think is the essence of that series? So that's the first thing I want to talk about today. Next up, I have a confession to make. I am a safe scummer and I've been save scumming my whole life. Uh I'm trying to think, what's the first ever game I save scummed on? Because you know, I grew up with consoles, I'm playing Mario, I'm playing uh Sonic, you know, there's no save in that. I'm thinking maybe even like Half-Life, which feels a little bit late, but I'm just like, oh my god, I can just save whenever I want. It's like hit, shoot, save, shoot, save, shoot, save. I'm I'm just the worst type of human being when it comes to save scumming. However, however, however, um, I've been playing Star Wars Zero Company recently. It is such a beautifully put together game. I love it. I am such a huge fan of the XCOM series, but if I'm honest, I can't go back to those games then too. They just wind me up so much, which is weird, right? For a game that I think is so well made, but I just don't have the patience for it. Um, I think the game is perfect, but it's also punishing. And what I feel like I got with Zero Company is a turn-based, you know, XCOM style tactical uh game, which has just shaved the edges off and made it just that little bit easier for me to digest. I can play on hard and that's tricky, but I can get through things. You've got the permadef. But what I found is the levels like why do I save scum? I don't want to go back. I please, please, please, please, just don't please, please don't make me go back. I don't want to go back. I don't want to do it again. That's why I do it. Um, it it's it's out of laziness or fear or something, I don't know. So it's why I really struggle with you know souls likes and things like that, where you know, I have to go on and on and on and on um at the risk of you know losing everything. That said, uh, you know, I've done a video about this uh around playing Mina the Hollower. I have recently gotten into the joy of that peril, and I understand um the kind of hit that comes from putting yourself in unsafe situations and saying, hey, this might not work out, and I'm gonna have to do this again and again and again and again. I'm starting to get that now. And it's something I spoke with Clint Hawking about, the creative director for Far Cry 2. You know, he said that for the console version, there's no save option, it's just checkpoints. So as chaos is unfolding around you, you really, really, really need to get yourself out of this situation because you're gonna be in big trouble if you don't. Whereas and it completely changes the cadence and the pace of the game because where's the peril? You know, where's the worry that you're gonna lose everything or have to start all over again? There is something about that tension that just makes a game so brilliant. Um, in the case of Zero Company, you can save whenever you want, however, it does feel like it's very immersion-breaking for me to just save willy-nilly, and the levels are so well put together, I feel like it's so well balanced and it's very fair on me that I don't mind failing, I don't mind a fail state. Sometimes I'm gonna lose a character and then just gonna abandon them and move on, um, you know, and say, alright, I can't, I can't go back, I can't bring myself to it. Or sometimes, yeah, I'm just gonna risk it. And I love playing through these levels without saving, knowing that it's auto-playful and it changes the way that I play the game. So it's it's a great and it's just a great Star Wars story as well, a bit like with Indiana Jones um game that came out. You just feel like you're enjoying a really nice original bit of IP that you know I've loved for decades and decades since my childhood. So I'd really recommend um Zero Company. And finally, finally, I've been thinking a lot recently about Assassin's Creed. I have a problem. Okay, so I I want to come clean about something. I haven't completed an Assassin's Creed game since Assassin's Creed since Assassin's Creed 2007, the first ever entry in the series. But if you ask me how many Assassin's Creed games I've purchased since then, I would say many, many, many of them. And I have a problem. I always get caught up in the optimistic hope that I'm gonna play an Assassin's Creed game that is gonna recapture the joy uh and immersion that I felt of that original game. And every time that doesn't happen, and most times, if I'm totally honest, I barely make it out of the tutorial area. It would be easy for me to say, Oh, the game disappointed me, or it's not good enough, or it's bad rioting, or it's bad parkour, or it's bad assassining, whatever. Like maybe some of those things are true, but I think the games have changed, and I have changed, and I just think it's a really interesting insight into expectation um and optimism around a game. I love it, I love the build-up to a new Assassin's Creed game because I always think this is gonna be the one, this is gonna be the one that's gonna take me back to that feeling I had before. I remember reading about it in like PlayStation magazine or PC magazine, PC Game or something like that, about the parkour, about the fact that you have to follow people, you can hide in the crowds, you need to piece together information, then commit these assassinations in this like beautiful, vibrant city. And I was blown away by the game. I loved the story, I loved everything about it, and then I followed the series Assassin's Creed 2. Again, I absolutely loved it, but I didn't complete it. Um, and then I was just waiting then for the next in the series to kind of scratch that itch that I got from the original one. Assassin's Creed 3. Um, I didn't love it, and I wanted to. I loved the setting, I loved the idea of it, but there was too much like permanent, there was too many like fell states for being discovered and all this stuff. And since then, you know the weird thing is I actually missed out on Assassin's Creed Black Flag. From what I've heard, it's like one of the best in the series. But then I went on to buy Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed 3, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Assassin's Creed Mirage, and I sort of stopped there because Mirage was the one you know Mirage was the one I thought this is this is gonna be the game, and it it just disappointed me, or I it didn't I don't want to say disappointed, it didn't reach whatever insane standard I had, which is basically give me a game from 2007 that I played when I was like um 21, and give me that again, even though I'm now 40 and my perspective on so many things has completely changed and what it takes to entertain me. Give me that, but now um and it didn't do that, and that's fine, but yeah, it just plays into this idea like I'm always in pursuit of recapturing that moment from Assassin's Creed, or I want to recapture, you know, the leave in the vault in Fallout 3, like it's never gonna happen. I'm never gonna get that again, and I think I spend way too much time being like annoyed at developers for falling short of some standard that I've set. That it's like a company that's like more than you know, it's like 25 years on. Like, maybe things have changed there, maybe their scope has changed, their prerogative, they're appealing to new players, they want a broader demographic, all this stuff. I should probably be spending more time paying attention to the more fledgling studios that are trying to do something new and interesting that in 25 years from now I'll also be peed off about for falling short of my standards. But yeah, it's just a funny one for me. I don't know if anyone else has experienced that. I just can't, I read everything that comes out in the previews and the teasers and everything for Assassin's Creed, and I never learned my lesson. Um, you know, I'll always get it. I mean again, I haven't gotten shadows yet, but I want to. I'm kind of like, well, it's set in Japan and it's ninjas and all this stuff. Like this surely is the one. Um, but it's just not my kind of gameplay anymore. And the whole like tower hunting and all that stuff, I'm sort of done with it. Um, my patience for those sorts of games has completely changed. And I don't want to just put all of the blame on like Ubisoft. I'm trying to take some sort of ownership here. Don't know if that's um a controversial opinion. Um, I think it's okay to have expectations of games, but at some point it's that kind of fool me once, shame on you, for me twice, three times, four times, five times, and onwards, shame on me. And maybe just maybe this isn't the sort of game for me. But you know what? And I'm not buying a lot of physical copies of games anymore, so sometimes the best moment for a game is when you're getting the bus to town, you know, as a kid, you know, or now if you're walking and driving, whatever, to go to the shop to buy the thing and then bringing it home and getting it installed and looking at that menu, and sometimes like all that money was worth it just for that experience. Uh, nowadays it's watching the download bar go along uh on my Xbox and thinking I got a really good feeling about this, and counting the seconds until you know it all comes crashing down, the mirage that I've sort of built for myself, the illusion that it's all gonna be okay, that I'm gonna play a brilliant game. Um, it's it's gone. And I have to accept this franchise for me, it's never coming back to what I want it to be. So, how about I move on? And you know, it's really nice to talk about Zero Company, Star Wars Zero Company, uh, because that's a game that I absolutely loved. And maybe again, as I said, I should be paying more attention to those games because there are some incredible ones out there that I can be paying attention to. Anyway, I just wanted to have a go at this. I just thought I would tell you about my week or the things that I've been thinking about. Let me know what you think. I want to keep up with the weekly dev interviews, I really do, but I'm just trying to work out a process or a workflow within which I can do that. Now, if you're still watching, I really have something very important to say to you. Um, because you are my core demographic, because you've watched this whole video, however many views a video might have, you know, there's the there's this retention thing, right? It tapers off, and and you're you you've you've found the secret level, you found the Easter egg, and this is it. I want to ask you to support me on Patreon, either for free, or you can pay like a very small amount, like $2.99, to become a member. And I'm really gonna have a go at starting something up there. And I would love to have some kind of fledgling members join me to see if, like, hey, yeah, this is something I can do. I'm really excited by the prospect of it, and I want to build up a community here. I love engaging with you all in the comments. Um, I love hearing from you. Please write me. I always find it absolutely amazing to hear what you take away from these episodes. Um, so yeah, this is me being a little bit cheeky and trying to get away with not having a dev interview for this month, this week, but bear with me. I'm just getting grounded while I've got a bunch of other things that have come into my, you know, my my days. But um, yeah, thank you very much.