Resident Evil | 1996
Resident Evil is a third-person survival horror game set in the fictional Arklay Mountains of the Midwest. Players choose either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, members of the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.), to explore an abandoned mansion in the woods on the outskirts of Raccoon City to find their missing teammates. The game features real-time 3D polygonal characters overlaid on pre-rendered backgrounds with fixed camera angles.
Players use tank controls to move characters back and forth and rotate them left and right. While exploring the mansion, players can run, observe the environment, pick up items, pass through doors (which involves transitioning between rooms), interact with certain non-playable characters, equip and use weapons, and push specific environmental objects. Each character has different abilities and slightly different campaigns. Chris has more health, uses weapons more efficiently, and starts with a lighter to solve certain puzzles early. In contrast, Jill has eight inventory slots, more than Chris's six, and starts with a lockpick that allows her to open doors that Chris must unlock with keys. The player's starting key items do not take up inventory space.
Players can pause the game at any time to check their health status and inventory, view the map of the area, and read files they have obtained. Items can be combined to create specific effects, such as reloading guns with new ammunition or crafting key items necessary for progression. The player's health status is displayed via an electrocardiogram (ECG), which decreases when caught by zombies or other dangers. If health runs out, the character dies, resulting in a game over, and players must restart from the last save point. Healing can be done using herbs and first aid sprays. Special safe zones contain typewriters where players can save the game using ink ribbons found in the environment, as well as item boxes for storing extra items.
On July 24, 1998, a series of bizarre murders occur on the outskirts of the fictional Midwestern city of Raccoon City, prompting the S.T.A.R.S. team from the Raccoon City Police Department to investigate. When contact with the Bravo team is lost, the Alpha team is dispatched to investigate their disappearance. The Alpha team discovers the wreckage of the Bravo team's helicopter and lands there, but is suddenly attacked by monstrous dogs. As Alpha team pilot Brad Vickers panics and takes off alone, the remaining team members—Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker, and Barry Burton—must take refuge in a nearby abandoned mansion. Depending on the character chosen by the player (Chris or Jill), Barry or Chris may become separated from the team during the chase and fail to reach the mansion. The team decides to investigate the mansion to find their missing members.
As the team explores the mansion, they encounter dangerous creatures roaming the halls. The player character eventually discovers that a secret research team under the supervision of the Umbrella Corporation was conducting illegal experiments. The creatures roaming the mansion and its surroundings are the result of these experiments, with the mansion's staff and various animals and insects exposed to a highly contagious mutagenic agent known as the T-Virus. The player character also meets several members of the Bravo team, particularly Enrico Marini, who is shot by an unseen assailant before revealing that one of the Alpha team members is a traitor.
Ultimately, the player character discovers a secret underground laboratory where Umbrella's experiments were conducted. In the lab, the player meets Wesker, who reveals he is a double agent working for Umbrella and plans to use a giant humanoid super-soldier known as the Tyrant to kill the remaining S.T.A.R.S. members. After a confrontation, Wesker appears to be dead, and the player character defeats the Tyrant. After activating the lab's self-destruct system, the player character reaches the helipad to call for rescue from Brad, during which the Tyrant may confront them one last time.
The game offers multiple endings based on the player's actions. The best ending occurs when the player character saves their partner (Rebecca Chambers in Chris's campaign, Barry in Jill's) and rescues a team member trapped in the lab (Jill in Chris's campaign, and vice versa). If the partner survives, the Tyrant is defeated, and the mansion is destroyed; however, if the partner or team member dies permanently, the mansion remains intact, leaving the Tyrant in the woods.
Resident Evil was later developed by a team that became part of Capcom Production Studio 4. The inspiration for Resident Evil came from Capcom's earlier horror game Sweet Home (1989), which is a video game adaptation of a Japanese horror film of the same name. Shinji Mikami was tasked with creating a game set in a haunted mansion like Sweet Home, and initially, it was intended to be a remake of that game. This project was proposed by Tokuro Fujiwara, the creator of Sweet Home, who served as the producer and was Mikami's mentor. Fujiwara believed that the basic premise allowed for things that were not included in Sweet Home, particularly in terms of graphics, and he thought horror games could become an independent genre. He entrusted the project to Mikami, who was initially hesitant because he "disliked horror" but understood "what fear was."
Since Capcom no longer held the Sweet Home license, they had to create a new universe, but the game still adopted many elements from Sweet Home.
Resident Evil is based on the game system of Sweet Home, incorporating limited item inventory management, mansion settings, puzzles, an emphasis on survival, door loading screens, the use of notes and diary entries as narrative devices, multiple endings based on character survival, elements requiring players to return to previous locations to solve puzzles, death animations, character-specific items like lockpicks and lighters, health recovery items scattered throughout the mansion, and a complex mansion layout with brutal and horrific imagery.
The inspiration for limited ammunition came from Kenichi Iwao, the scenario writer, who cited the MSX port game Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress. The idea of limited ammunition was inspired by the scarcity of resources in the game's random dungeons. Iwao wanted to add more ways to attack zombies with items but could not realize this due to scheduling constraints.
