The first Resident Evil game was a smash hit and had players begging to enter the world of Survival Horror one more time. With so much anticipation and pressure, Capcom, the studio producing Resident Evil, had their work cut out for them. 

The developers started putting together a sequel starring Elsa Walker and Leon S. Kennedy surviving the now spreading T-Virus infected in the fictional Raccoon City. It was exciting and action packed with new monsters and locations. It was also cancelled and started from the ground up after a reported 40% to 70% of the game was finished. 

The team looked at the game and decided it wasn’t right as a sequel to the original, so they pulled the plug and began again from the start. This extra time led to what many fans called the perfect Resident Evil game, and still stands at the top of many people’s rankings today. 

Is Resident Evil 2 truly the perfect horror of the older console generation? To answer that question we once again must enter the world of Survival Horror. 

(Spoilers for Resident Evil 2 1998 and 2019)

Horror Both Old and New

Resident Evil 2 retained many of the design choices from the original game. You still have fixed camera angles and tank controls, bringing back the same traversal and combat style from before. This time though, everything looks a little clearer and detailed as the graphics have improved greatly. 

The first Resident Evil looked good for the time, but with two years between them, its sequel was able to boost the graphical capabilities to another level of detail. The backgrounds, while still being pre-rendered, really do a great job at showing a city ruined by a zombie virus in just a few days. 

Item management also makes a grand return to mess up your day. This time both playable characters have the same amount of inventory space with 8, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have an easy time. In the first game, all the items only took up one space, but here in the sequel larger items will take up two spaces. The shotgun may kill zombies and other mutated monsters quickly, but it will take up two item slots instead of one, meaning you hinder your ability to carry other life saving items, bringing back the same infuriating questions you’d ask yourself in the first game. 

City of Horror

Resident Evil 2 escalates things quickly by starting in the middle of an already devastated Raccoon City, a huge change from the claustrophobic Spencer Mansion in the first game. It gives you a taste of what being on the streets must have been like during the outbreak, before ushering you to the relative safety of the Raccoon City Police Department. 

The RPD building is now almost as iconic as the original Spencer Mansion and is where you will spend a majority of the game. It is yet another great location, showing you what a town falling apart would look and feel like. Broken windows, spent bullet casings, and more blood than any mop could hold, litter the halls, letting the RPD tell a clearer story with just the environment than the original could.  

Another big change is in the standard zombie enemies. In the first game all the zombies were male and wore tattered lab coats, but in Resident Evil 2, we get a variety of zombies to fight. Some zombies were police officers, others were just the citizens of Raccoon City, which builds the growing feeling of a city crumbling down. We even get female zombies for the first time. 

In the first Resident Evil your choice of character didn’t have a big impact on the story, only changing the order of events slightly and giving you a different partner character. Resident Evil 2 takes a much different approach. You have the choice between the aforementioned Lion S. Kennedy, a rookie cop on his first day, or Clair Redfield, sister to Chris Redfield searching for her now missing brother. This choice affects almost every part of the game, even leaving sections of the game inaccessible to your character. 

These two characters even have completely different goals and experiences in the game. Clair is looking for her brother and ends up finding a cure for a little girl infected with the newly minted G-Virus, while Leon gets roped into a tense espionage story. Both tales do a fantastic job at characterizing each character along with making you care about them and the partner characters. Having their own complete stories but sharing the same locations, puzzles, and boss battles, means just as in the first game, the unchosen character needed something to do. In Resident Evil the separate character was locked in a cell to be saved, but in Resident Evil 2 you get an entire new campaign. 

What is known as a “B Story” unlocks a second campaign once the main story is completed in an “A Story.” This means that in one game you get four campaigns to play, each showing you what happened to each character during the other’s unique story. This gives a new perspective at what the world looks like after you pass through the game for the first time, showing Clair the aftermath of Leon and his spies, or giving Leon an example of how far Clair will go to save a child. They also get their own complete stories in the “B- Stories,” still giving us a shortened spy adventure or rescue. 

Some Much Story. So Much Horror

With four related yet very different stories, it is hard to determine all of what really happens in Resident Evil 2. Most fans agree that it would most likely be Clair’s “A Story” and Leon’s “B Story,” as it lines up more and works for future events in the series. Capcom has never said conclusively which ending is canonical, giving you the choice of your own. 

The story starts with the two characters heading into Raccoon City. Leon is looking for more information about his new job, having not heard from the RPD in a week. Clair is riding her motorcycle to town in search of her brother, the first game’s Chris Redfield. No matter who you choose to play, you end up meeting the other character in a diner as the zombies begin to attack. Both characters will flee the flesh eating ghouls in an abandoned police cruiser, eventually crashing and being separated with a goal of meeting back up at the RPD building. 

Resident Evil 2 throws you into the action right away, a far cry from the slow build of the first game, and a smart choice to keep the player off balance. The first time you take control, you are next to a crashed police car burning in the street as the undead slowly march toward you, giving you only seconds to find shelter in a nearby gun store. Robert Kendo, the owner of the gun store, offers to help you until the zombie horde breaks through the display window and eats him alive, keeping the mad dash to safety going. 

Finally, you will reach the RPD and can take a moment to collect yourself. The characters thought the RPD would be a safe place to hold out until help comes, you will see that even this last line of hope has crumbled from the inside out. The RPD immediately shows you that the horrors in the streets have slowly seeped in and destroyed the police force from the inside. 

Both characters will have to explore the RPD for a way out, leading to a familiar experience as the first game. The doors of the RPD, just like the Spencer Mansion, are locked, and require a specialized key to open. Each special key will require a puzzle to complete. In this way the game didn’t update that much as the gameplay loop is almost the same. This goes on for most of the game, giving only short cut scenes to progress the plot and open new areas. 

As you continue to open up the RPD, you’ll finally meet your partner character. Clair meets Sherry Birkin, the daughter of William and Annette Birkin, the creators of the new G-Virus. Leon meets Ada Wong, a suspicious spy working to find her boyfriend and take down Umbrella, and also a now fan favorite character. Once you meet these characters, the real changes to the individual stories start to take place, but no matter what happens, the goal is to survive. 

With Leon you will slowly move underground through the sewers to a hidden Umbrella lab, and though it is his first day on the job, he stands tall to every challenge you face. Eventually he will find his way down to the lab for the final set piece. Though you will fight giant sewer gators, skinless Lickers, and countless zombies along the way, Leon will find out the truth about Ada and Raccoon City. 

Clair ends up at the lab for the big finish, but she has a much different experience. Sherry is a child, only living this long by hiding in the RPD vents ducts where no monsters could reach her. Clair instantly decides to keep Sherry safe and find her parents. This is your main goal in her side of the story, leading to you keeping Sherry Birkin safe and finding a cure for her growing infection of the G-Virus.

A new element for both stories is a constant boss monster, slowly evolving and growing more dangerous with every meeting. In the first game, once you fought a boss battle, that boss was dead, but Resident Evil 2 introduces you to William Birkin. Birkin was a genius virologist working for Umbrella creating the new G-Virus. But being betrayed by Umbrella, he injected the pure strain of the virus into himself and became a hulking monstrosity. 

As you continue through the game, William will corner you for a fight. Each of these fights not only changes because of the environment but also because he has mutated to be more dangerous. He could be confused for a mindless monster, but he is really searching for his daughter, showing that some part of the talented scientist is still inside this abomination. He’s not looking for her to protect her though; he needs her matching DNA to continue to spread the G-Virus throughout the world. 

Another highlight of the game is the Chief of Police, Brian Irons. Leon doesn’t get the chance to meet him, but Clair gives you a chance to see first hand the corruption and evil that already infected the town before the virus was ever released. He’s a serial killer. Irons hunts people, with his latest victim laying across his desk when you first meet him. He ends up threatening Sherry and Clair before running into the mutated form of William Birkin, who implants Irons with a G-Virus embryo that explodes out from his chest. 

At the end of the story you will learn that Ada is not trying to bring Umbrella to justice, but is really trying to steal samples of the viruses to sell to a rival company. This betrayal rocks Leon and stays with him through future titles, and leaves Ada seemingly dead. You will also rescue Sherry and cure her of her infection. Both characters will lead you to an underground train to escape the city, and to escape the time honored threat of a self destruction countdown. 

The train is your safety just as the helicopter was in the first game. This is your final relief for surviving the night of horror and tragedy in Raccoon City. This is when Resident Evil 2 plays with the formula yet again. Once you finish a “B-Story” with either character and have found yourself on the train, a new final boss shows itself. For one final fight the mutated form of William Birkin attacks the train, no longer a hulking monster, but now an oozing mass of flesh slowly consuming the train itself. This is your one final battle, the true ending of Resident Evil 2, and your final challenge before exiting the city. 

As Leon, Clair, and Sherry exit the train, you get to see the sun again, a sign of your safety and triumph. Leon and Clair vow to take down Umbrella so that no place can suffer the same undead fate as Raccoon City, and Sherry asks if they will be her new mom and dad. 

The Cementing of Horror

Resident Evil 2 was yet another smash hit for Capcom, and proved that horror gaming was here to stay. The first game inspired many similar titles from other developers, but Resident Evil 2 cemented what a horror game would look like for the foreseeable future. It forever changed the video game landscape and landed the Resident Evil franchise as the king of horror gaming to this day. 

Resident Evil 2 was so popular that it was ported to almost every gaming console of the time, even having its hefty two discs compressed into the much smaller N64 cartridge, an impressive feat at the time. These ports to other consoles made Resident Evil 2 more accessible than the original game, and led to it being the most played and most loved of the early games. 

Resident Evil 2 showed the gaming industry that horror gaming was here to stay, and gave the template to emulate for years to come. Games like Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, and Parasite Eve may have experimented with the formula, but the influence of Resident Evil, and more so the smash success of Resident Evil 2, is clearly there as a major influence.

A Lesson in Horror

Resident Evil 2, like its predecessor, doesn’t have much of an overt moral lesson. The game lets the horror and the surface level story speak for itself, but a few lessons can be found if you dig past the gore and death. The major lesson is perseverance, just like the original. The same trial and error will follow you through your play through. 

As in the first game, we also have the corporate greed haunting the game. Umbrella all but owned Raccoon City and the authorities running the town. The town was infected well before the virus was released through it. The rot and decay started to form before the first zombie took a bite of living flesh. 

The other major lesson you could take from Resident Evil 2 is standing up for people that need help. Clair drops the search for her brother to help Sherry find her parents, while Leon vows to stop Umbrella with Ada because he believes it is the right thing to do. Both of these quests change or even fail throughout the game, but they never give up. Leon especially is affected by the fact that he couldn’t save any of his fellow officers or Ada, even after she betrays him. Clair has a slightly easier time because she is able to save Sherry. 

A Personal Horror is Found

I’ve played Resident Evil 2 more times than I can count and I know almost every line of dialogue, monster placement, and hidden items. I didn’t think I had anything else I could really gain from playing the game. That was before I became a father. 

I have a daughter that is very young and seeing Sherry alone in a zombie city really hit me. It was hard not to identify my daughter with Sherry whenever she was afraid. This feeling brought more determination to rescue her from the horrors of Raccoon City, something I’ve already done countless times. 

It may seem strange to be worried about a character I’ve saved before, but becoming a parent changes the way you see the world. Seeing a child slowly become sick or being chased by a zombie feels different when you have your own child asleep in another room. It gave me a much bigger feeling of accomplishment when I finished the game, and a heightened anxiety until I successfully finished.

Resident Evil 2 was already one of my favorite games, but seeing it through the eyes of a parent  made me appreciate it on a different level. I felt like I had to save Sherry, because I was saving my own daughter. After beating the game, and once her nap time was done, I gave my daughter a big hug and hoped that if the worst happens, she finds someone like Clair to help her. 

Thanks for reading.