Is there any world where remaking Resident Evil 5 is a good idea?

Where should Capcom's survival horror saga go next?

My guest for this issue of Multiplier is Harrison Polites, the former tech-journalist turned comms guy behind the Infinite Lives gaming newsletter. You can find Harrison’s work over at Infinite Lives and follow him on social media via Bluesky.

Fergus: Resident Evil has always been a series in love with its own past but recent times have seen the franchise evolve from having one of the strangest running storylines in video games to something of an ouroboros. Over the past few years, Capcom has steadily revisited the earliest era of the series through lavish remakes that give the polygons of yesteryear a new coat of paint and tweak the gameplay to suit the appetites of more modern audiences.

For the most part, this pivot to necromancy seems to have been a success. Each of these remakes have served as something for longtime fans to chew on between more fully-fledged installments like Resident Evil Village and a more friendly on-ramp for newcomers looking to dip their toes into the series but are turned off by the idea of playing a game that looks and feels old.

However, following the remake of Resident Evil 4 though, it feels like Capcom might have backed themselves into a corner with this strategy. There’s no shortage of older Resident Evil titles it could revive for modern audiences. The problem is that most of them aren’t all that good. At the very least, the likes of Resident Evil Outbreak and Operation Racoon City are not nearly so beloved by fans as the first four games in the series are and those that do play well by modern standards - such as Resident Evil 5 - come with other baggage that may make a remake more trouble than it’s worth.

Capcom’s willingness to revisit and reinvent the past has been a boon for Resident Evil writ large, but is this renaissance coming to an inevitable end?

Source: Capcom

Harrison: That’s a great question. I think even the remake of Resident Evil 4 was a surprise to many as the original game still plays quite well despite its age.

The hot take here is that the next remake may be a side game: Resident Evil: Code Veronica. But even that is somewhat fraught and has plot beats that will need to be handled with care for a modern audience.

Namely: The antagonist for the first half of the game Alfred Ashford cross-dresses as his presumed-dead sister Alexia Ashford. There’s a deeper level of envy and jealousy that’s mixed in with his own sense of failure, it wasn’t just Capcom taking a stab at another controversial trope. But if there’s to be a remake of this game, it needs to give these themes more airtime than just a few random notes scattered around the complex.

But let’s get to the elephant in the room: Resident Evil 5.

Capcom set out with a really fascinating mission of trying to set a Resident Evil game in Africa and in doing so, unearth the origin of the virus that started it all, the Progenitor Virus (which later became Resident Evil’s original T-Virus). They also created an arc that saw the reveal of Albert Wesker’s master-plan — something that the past games had been building towards.

What we got however, was a shooter where a white American man ran through underdeveloped African villages shooting infected natives. This was amplified by sections of the game where enemies were dressed in grass skirts and masks.

What’s worse, Chris’ partner, Sheva — also African — had the lightest skin tone possible. All of this should have been stopped at the pass when it was first released in 2009 and the outrage it triggered was justified. But the bones are there. I reckon with some foundational tweaks — this game could be set anywhere — and some serious, sensible kid gloves, it could be remade.

I kinda look at how the original Final Fantasy VII treated the Honeybee Inn in Remake. I didn’t think that would work, but it did and was a stand out moment in that game. But what do you think Fergus?

Source: Square Enix

Fergus: I’d agree that Code Veronica definitely has its own challenges when it comes to reinterpreting it for modern audiences, but I’m hopeful that it’ll get remixed all the same.

In addition to being one of the only Resident Evil games I’ve never played, the history of Code Veronica itself is super fascinating. Legend goes, the game actually started life as a sequel to the original Resident Evil 2 before losing that title to a spin-off for the PlayStation that ended up becoming Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. If you gave me the option, I’d much rather Capcom inject new life into the Resident Evil game that even avid fans of the series like myself haven’t played before than attempt to wrangle the radioactive legacy of Resident Evil 5.

The funny wrinkle to this hypothetical is that if you asked me to rank my favorite Resident Evil games, the fifth installment would actually end up relatively high on the list. It definitely helps that I played the game when I was a little too young to fully grasp the degree to which it is drenched in racist imagery.

Even so, when I think about Resident Evil 5 I can’t help but think about all the genuinely really fond memories of playing and replaying the game in co-op with various friends and partners over the years. The Honeybee Inn is a good shout but if there’s any path forward for a remake of this particular game, I think it lies in Capcom leaning more on that side of the experience than any of the imagery surrounding it.

Source: Capcom

Harrison: I actually never knew that about Code Veronica! It certainly played like more than a spin-off and if you are into Resident Evil’s mythos, it’s an important part of the overall story. Also, Alexia Ashford is a great villain that could be given a more expanded arc. If there wasn’t a goal to make the game self-contained could have easily been up there with Albert Wesker as a nemesis that operates across a few of the games, given her motivations are similar to Wesker’s.

I think Capcom now has the sensibility and the track record to handle this series with a bit of care. The remake of Nemesis was a little lacklustre by comparison — I wish it was longer and had more puzzles — but both Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 Remakes are great games.

I wanted to chat about the other thorny issue with remaking Resident Evil 5: Should it be a couch co-op? This game was made during a decade where designers were essentially trying to stamp out game trade-ins, so developers bundled multiplayer into all of their games for the sake of it. Resident Evil 5 was one of the unique few games that did a really good job.

I could see a world where Resident Evil 5 is a co-op game, considering the popularity of It Takes Two and the reception of Hazelight Studio’s new game Split Fiction. But I could also see a remake where Chris and Sheva go separate ways, and interact with each other’s path through the game, which could make it a bit more like Resident Evil 2. Where do you think it will land?

Source: Hazelight Studios

Fergus: I think that it’s no great secret which way I’d personally prefer Capcom go with this, but I think the most likely scenario is something closer to what you’d describe. If the remake of Resident Evil 4 offered up a more grounded vision of that action-heavy era of the series, I expect that whatever comes next will follow the same rhythm.

Every Resident Evil remake to date has been something of a remix that blends together the nouns of the series’ past with the verbs of its present. That formula is getting a bit predictable and generic at this point. Still, it’s proved to be a commercially-successful gambit regardless so it's hard to imagine Capcom sours on the strategy anytime soon.

Resident Evil 5 has always been something of an outlier among the rest of the franchise and the same will likely be true of its seemingly-inevitable remake. I expect that a modern Capcom will do its best to steer clear of controversy where it can, but make plenty of its own missteps in the process. It is what it is but then again we are talking about a franchise where half the plot-lines are driven by people who should know better choosing to resurrect something that should have been left well alone.