“But Resident Evil was influential in a final, lamentable way, and this has to do with its phenomenal stupidity. How stupid was Resident Evil? So stupid that stupidity has since become one of the signatures of the Resident Evil series. So stupid, in other words, the stupidity became something not to address or fix but a mast of tonal distinction to which the series lashed itself. (…)
On its surface, Resident Evil is about an evil corporation known as Umbrella and a terrible biotoxin known as the T-Virus. Beneath that surface is a tour de force of thematic nullity. (…)
This brilliantly conceived game of uncompromising stupidity was, in retrospect, a disastrous formal template. Terrible dialogue? It was still a great game. A constant situational ridiculousness that makes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre seem like a restrained portrait of rural dysfunction? It was still a great game, and will be ever thus. […] But the success of the first Resident Evil established the permissibility of a great game that happened to be stupid. This set the tone for half a decade of savagely unintelligent games and helped to create an unnecessary hostility between the greatness of a game and the sophistication of things such as narrative, dialogue, dramatic motivation, and characterization. In accounting for this state of affairs, many game designers have, over the years, claimed that gamers do not much think about such highfaluting matters. This may or may not be largely true. But most gamers do not care because they have been trained by game designers not to care.
Without a doubt, Resident Evil showed how good games could be. Unfortunately, it also showed how bad games could be. Too amazed by the former, gamers neglected to question the latter. It rang a bell to which too many of us still, stupidly, salivate.”
ZA Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter Tom Bissell
