In the same vain of why do all the good guys have to be white, why do all the leading bad guys have to be white too? Can't black people be arch-villains? I'm not going to get too hung up on that because it seems a lot of the nemeses are people from previous games (don't know the series well so I can only speculate) and those had a lot of white characters. Also, as much as it is racist to say that Africans are taken advantage of for the benefit of some white guy, elitists dicks do that all the time, no matter any color. Maybe we can pin all the racism on this one douche of a baddie exploiting Africa like so many Europeans and Americans have done before.
However this is a trailer in the right direction for Capcom. Its a lot more obvious that there's a zombie process going on, with the visible red eyes changing. I can imagine it's hard making people who are dark look undead, so you have to go with whatever is available and realistic enough. Does this mean I'm not offended by the images described in my last blog post about this stuff? No. It just means I can see that Capcom is just ignorant, and the racism isn't intentional. Or at least it seems that way. Capcom should probably learn from this and be a bit more sensitive if they don't want to make such a faux pas again. Although, for all I know they did it just to get attention to the game. Marketing executives sometimes have horrible ideas.
One last thing to worry about: cutscenes seem to be all over the place. I did see some game play, and I hope that's the majority of the game. But the majority of that trailer was cutscenes of the story. It just makes me wary where we are going to have an MGS4 situation where you play Snake for 5 minutes tops and then CUT SCENE. You play for another 5 minutes and then a LONGER CUTSCENE. You sneesze, CUTSCENE FOR DAYS! Don't believe me, watch it here. I just don't want Resident Evil, which is a good franchise on it's own, to fall into that trap.
2/15/09: EDIT
If some of you feel that I'm not expressing my ideas eloquently enough (haven't gotten complaints, but still) I found an interview here that I think explains my concerns well. Read it if you don't understand how this game is offensive to some and would like to know why.
I'm hopeful that the game doesn't get too big into cutscenes. The series managed to avoid that trap throughout its history - the first installments were heavy on exploration and puzzle-solving, so it always felt like cinematics were widely-spaced, and when they occurred they weren't of excessive length.
ReplyDeleteIn RE4, there were more cinematics, but there was so much gameplay in between them (and the gameplay was often exciting and exhausting) that you felt glad to have a little break.
I played a little bit of the RE5 demo on PS3 and I was disappointed that the controls haven't improved all that much, but who knows if there will be significant differences once the game comes out?
As for white guys exploiting Africa to nefarious ends - can you criticize a game for mirroring history :-) ?