In a recent article in OPM, the awesome PlayStation magazine, we heard that Resident Evil 3 Remake isn’t gong to have multiple endings like the original, and most of the Resident Evil games in general. There are a number of choices to make in Resident Evil 3, from whether to run from Nemesis or fight him, to whether or not certain people live or die at the end of the game. As someone who played these Resident Evil games when I was younger, even though I never played Nemesis, I think that the removal of multiple endings is a bit of a mistake.
Two Types Of Player
Resident Evil games have two types of players. The first is the dedicated player, the one who will scour every inch of every game for secrets and lore just because they love them so much. This is also the player who will strive to unlock every ending, but also look for those secret endings that can only be unlocked through ridiculous criteria being met.
The second type of player is the one who will play Resident Evil 3 Remake through once, and never pick it up again. The fact that the game has multiplayer in the form of Resident Evil: Project Resistance shows that Capcom want people to play more of this game. Resident Evil games are meant to be played over and over, it’s just how we all play them, but without that incentive of a new ending to get, it seems a bit pointless.
Choices
Resident Evil 3 Remake will actively have choices for players to make. There’s no reason that Capcom couldn’t have worked in ways for these choices to influence the game’s ending, but instead they’ve opted for a single narrative experience. Part of me wonders if this is to satisfy the gamers who only play every game through once because they think that they’ve seen everything there is to see. Quite often this is the type of player who will complain that they didn’t see something because they didn’t know it was there, but that’s the beauty of it.
Resident Evil games, and most older games, are filled with secrets that players will only find if they dive in and truly experience everything on offer. Today we have players who want a single experience they can enjoy all of in one go, like a Netflix series binge. For me, that’s not how games work, but it’s clearly what Capcom is going for.
Heritage
Resident Evil 3 Remake is the latest game in a long line of Resident Evil games that have mostly wowed the world. I really do think that those players will be disappointed with a lack of multiple endings, even if it does mean that there’s multiplayer. No one gets into Resident Evil for the multiplayer, it’s always been about the single player story. By removing multiple endings from the game as they’ve remade it, it feels like Capcom has taken something from Resident Evil 3 Nemesis that will never return. I might be getting a bit too emotional about this, but really it is messing with something that fans have a lot of love for.
Yes, Resident Evil 3 Nemesis was probably the least loved of the classic Resident Evil games, but it certainly has its place. The Remake will be an entirely new game, the trailers we’ve seen, and Resident Evil 2 remake, show that much. My hope is that this is so much of a new game that it comes into its own, and isn’t ruined by the lack of content we know should be there because actually, it’s a brand new game in the franchise.