Resident Evil 2

It’s a remake in name alone

Reflecting on the past often has a habit of eliciting a mixed emotional response.

The familiar pang of nostalgia drives recollection, leaving you at the mercy of something so utterly impossible to control that it can be difficult to know where you stand with formative memories of the past. The good times come flooding back with the bad, gradually at first, as if a gentle wave were lapping a shore, then more frantically, a hazardous retreat into what has already been written. Nostalgia is often indistinct and untameable.

And yet so often do we find ourselves at its mercy. Is it this that has helped enshrine the return of Resident Evil 2 as a point of conflict in our hearts and minds? We’re overjoyed that a legitimate classic is being presented to a new audience in an aesthetic form it will appreciate, while still disappointed that Capcom isn’t channelling its budget, bandwidth and expertise into bringing about an entirely new experience. What we’re trying to say is that approaching this remake with a clear head is easier said than done – though it’s in your best interest to do so.

As too is retreating from the series’ long and storied history – forgetting all that has transpired across the two decades of subsequent franchise mutation – in an effort to fully appreciate what Capcom is in the process of achieving here. It’s important for us all to do so, mind; Resident Evil 2 deserves to be viewed free of expectation and condemnation born from the past. It deserves to be viewed anew rather than as a relic of the past worth saving or celebrating.