Code Veronica has turned 20 a couple of months ago, and it’s still the direction many of us would like for Resident Evil. Devoured by the popularity and action of the fourth numbered installment, these are the keys to why the true Resident Evil 4 is so beloved.
The second half of the 90s did not promise idyllic for Capcom. The developer and publisher was the queen of arcade rooms and fighting games and beat’em up in 2D, but the arrival of PSX and Saturn with their brand-new 3D seemed ready to change the paradigm of the video game market. Capcom had to reinvent itself. Who was going to tell him that Shinji Mikami, the director who had been in the company since 1990 in charge of the sweet Disney licenses, was going to give them the bloody Resident Evil, the millionaire horror franchise that was also the basis for other successes of the firm like Onimusha, Dino Crisis or Devil May Cry. And so, not knowing what was going to become of her, Capcom re-emerged as one of the biggest names in the industry, until today.
Shinji Mikami brought survival horror to new generations with Resident Evil, a genre that had already proven its strength with Alone in the Dark and other games before him. But for the director, this label meant something in particular: striking a perfect balance between action and horror without one element overcoming the other, as he declared for Gameinformer in 2014 . After Resident Evil, he stepped away from directing the series to deal with production . To be a producer in the Japanese video game industry is to become an advisor who controls all the tasks that involve it, gives the ok to the processes and manages the teams; in other words, it means being the soul of the franchise.
For its sequel, Hideki Kamiya was enlisted in directing. As Mikami himself acknowledges , Kamiya was tremendously ambitious and a perfectionist . It was he who proposed and forced the game to be developed with two characters who carry out different events in parallel. This was a tremendous challenge for the team, which despite all efforts could not fulfill their vision 100%. Regardless, the game was a success with nearly five million units sold after its release in 1998 . With these numbers, Capcom knew it needed to get a sequel out quickly, and here the trouble began.
The origin of the true third part of Resident Evil
The developer had agreed to release three Resident Evil video games for PSX, but Kamiya needed a more powerful machine to capture the vision of Resident Evil that was impossible on the first Playstation. However, Playstation 2 would not appear in Japan until March 2000. Capcom needed to release more games before the license fever cooled, but would they have to do it without Kamiya? Through a numbered delivery?
Cover of Code Veronica for Dreamcast, the most reputed version of the game.
There was no time to lose. Square ate his heels with Parasite Eve and Konami with Silent Hill. Capcom had the perfect sequel already in the oven ready for the second part, but PSX was not ready for it and PS2 was still just a dream. In this debacle, the Dreamcast appeared in November 1998 , with which Capcom came up with an idea: let’s take advantage of what has already been done with Resident Evil 2 to give Sony its third part and take the one we have planned as the real one in Dreamcast but without a number at the end. This would receive the name of Resident Evil Code: Veronica.
Hideki Kamiya and Shinji Mikami had very different visions of what a horror game had to be like. The former was interested in gore, blood, and action. I wanted to do a kind of violent horror impossible to see in a movie. That passion for interaction and the video game in its purest facet would end up separating him from Capcom to join Atsushi Inaba and found PlatinumGames. Mikami, however, understood that this balance between action and horror could be achieved through cinema, especially through the inspiration of the films that influenced him the most as a child: Zombi, by George A. Romero and the tense Jaws, by Steven Spielberg , as he acknowledged in a 1998 interview.
More cinema, more plot and less monsters
It is in the departure of Kamiya and in the way of understanding the terror of Mikami, the original director of the series, that Code Veronica is so different from Resident Evil 2 and the third, which is nothing more than a fun and timely Frankenstein with the leftovers from its prequel. Resident Evil Code Veronica returns us to the sensations of the original but with a different starting point.
As Yoshiki Sakamoto, Capcom Executive Producer, explained for Electronic Gaming Monthly: “Mikami got people hooked on the Code Veronica story and not in anticipation of seeing a new monster appear.” In the same interview, Sakamoto said: “Code Veronica is actually, Resident Evil 3” . And that is the great strength of Code Veronica, the reason why it is such a valued game: because of how the focus changes from that new monster to kill, from Tyrant or Nemesis, to the main characters and villains of the series in order to to cement the plot background of the series and to build the tension around them.
But none of this would have been possible without Resident Evil 2 and without Kamiya’s commitment to doing those two scenarios in which Leon and Claire went through the same adventure at the same time , because that was what made them understand that the characters and their relationships were relevant. They were much more than avatars to be bitten by zombies.
A new graphics engine to better focus the action
Directing Code Veronica, with Shinki Mikami back in production, was put on by Hiroki Kato, who would later join Clover Studio. One of the most important points to return to that balance between action and terror that Mikami wanted, cement a good lore and obtain a more cinematic development to achieve it was in the new possibilities of Dreamcast compared to PSX.
Video scenes were more abundant and could be played without much waitingFrom the pre-rendered scenarios of the first one, we went to three-dimensional scenarios with elements and a mobile camera; not by the player but by the stage manager. That managed to deliver sensational shots and an accompaniment to the action in which light also played a very important role. In PSX this was not dynamic, but now it is. In addition, video scenes were now more abundant and could be played without so many waiting times, which gave the video game a lot of fluidity.
The title began with his sister’s search for Chris Redfield. Not long after, Claire ended up in a zombie-infested jail from which she had to escape. In the wake of the events in the prison, we met the so-called Ashford siblings : a boy and a girl, Umbrella’s wealthy main investors. And I say ‘assumptions’ because in reality they were both the same person but with a personality disorder. Anyone would say that Shinji Mikami wanted to laugh at Kamiya’s plan to have two characters of the opposite sex follow parallel paths in Resident Evil 2.
The return of Chris, Wesker and the war against Umbrella
Resident Evil Code Veronica managed to connect all the characters in the franchiseBut we were not only playing with Claire, but also with Chris who was looking for her guided by the information supplied from a distance by Leon. On his mission, Chris arrived at the same jail and met Wesker, who revealed that he had special powers thanks to the virus obtained in the Spencer mansion. This is how Resident Evil Code Veronica managed to connect all the characters in the franchise to focus on the fight against Umbrella , even Wesker, who ends up fighting the Ashfords. Finally, Chris and Claire get on a plane and make a promise: destroy Umbrella.
In addition to this intense plot between characters, Resident Evil: Code Veronica once again gives importance to puzzles and keys. Resident Evil 2, and especially 3, had been founded on Kamiya’s need for action to rule over terror, but Code Veronica once again uses the search for puzzle pieces to give us powerful backtracking and exploration. The new handling of the cameras and the possibility of finally following the character as he advances manages to create new situations. Zombies, dogs and other creatures are once again terror-provoking elements, not just sponges for our bullets.
If it’s so good, why wasn’t it more successful?
Resident Evil: Code Veronica was praised by critics and very well received. It is easy to find it in the list of the best video games in history. It manages to be classic but with a modern narrative and what counts works very well . However, it had very tepid sales. It didn’t even hit two million on the Dreamcast. Capcom continued to make deals to get its video games out on other platforms. In March 2002 he released Resident Evil Remake and in November 2002 Resident Evil Zero appeared , with also very discreet sales. Despite this, Mikami continued to support Game Cube, but as he declared in 2013: the low sales of these two titles forced him to reconsider his understanding of horror games .
Code Veronica was associated for life with the commercial failure of Resident Evil ZeroMaybe Kamiya was right, maybe a greater amount of action was what his audience wanted, he must have thought. Based on his taste for cinema, he considered new ways of approaching the action until he placed the camera on the shoulder of Leon, the character whose story remained to be told in Code Veronica . The decision was a success. Counting the multiple versions that came out of the game, it sold more than 7 million units .
The rest is history. Code Veronica was associated for life with the commercial failure of Resident Evil Zero and its Remake. These three titles were the reason why Mikami decided to change the course of his franchise. But even if all this is true, there are many of us who continue to fondly remember that prison on Rockfort Island, the base in Antarctica, the crazy Ashford brothers and the promise of the Redfields to end Umbrella forever . And we do it because we know that one day we will be given what we ask for: the remake of the authentic third part of Resident Evil.
