repeat it in helvetica

starting off with basic bitches who just buy the REGULAR 20 FLAVORS bc they don’t care much

𖥔 william birkin buys it for sherry then ends up eating it, gets extra packs and goes through them while working, he doesn’t even notice different flavors, just likes to chew on them one by one then the whole pack is gone. likes watermelon bc it stands out

𖥔 when it comes to leon kennedy he grabs a handful and eats several in one go, flinches if his handful ends up consisting of more sour ones than sweet, but doesn’t change the tactic. doesn’t purposefully crave it, but sometimes sees a pack as he’s checking out in the store and grabs it. likes green apple bc its less sweet but not too sour

𖥔 carlos oliveira is so normal about jellybeans. he likes sizzling cinnamon. hold that thought.

SOURS mix

𖥔 jill valentine loves sour candy, doesn’t even flinch. she loves mixing sour cherry with sour lemon. tastes like straight up domestos, but she loves it

𖥔 ashley graham loves sour orange, she’s mad she can’t get a pack of single sour orange ones and swears other brands don’t taste the same

𖥔 well krauser only buys it for the sour cherry, doesn’t care about the rest

FRUIT MIX

𖥔 piers nivans loves grape and red apple the most, he leaves top banana for last because it’s nasty mixed with other flavors, but eats it on its own later because it’s ok once you single it out

𖥔 pomegranate is not THE favorite flavor of claire redfield, she’s not particularly crazy about it outside of jellybeans but she can get other flavors in most other candy and this one just hits right. and she likes other fruit flavors as well so it’s her mix of choice

single flavor VERY CHERRY

𖥔 it’s not that ada wong loves cherry, but she knows that in other mixes she will get something she doesn’t like and why waste time on that when cherry is perfectly okay? so she just doesn’t gamble and sticks to it.

𖥔 jack krauser knows what he likes and he likes the tart sweetness of cherries. he always gets what he wants, stop trying to sell him things, he has a choice and he will exercise free will.

single flavor LICORICE

𖥔 albert wesker is a fucking pervert.

𖥔 but when it comes to luis serra, he doesn’t like it, but it reminds him of how he was chewing on palo de regaliz (plain licorice root sticks) during his childhood in the valdelobos, so he occasionally dabbles out of bittersweet nostalgia (literally)

COCKTAIL CLASSICS

𖥔 jill once got it for chris redfield as a joke when they first got close and he found it funny, actually liked the moscow mule one. when he thought that jill died, would drink moscow mule and think about this gift and wallow in sorrow thinking how no one ever will do something like this for him ever again. buys them regularly nowadays

single flavor BUBBLE GUM

𖥔 jake muller. what? it’s bubblegum. it tastes good. it’s like sweet fruit mixed up.

𖥔 luis serra chews mint gum to mask the smell of cigarettes, but he loves the taste of regular bubblegum, loves the smell of it as well

𖥔 and sherry birkin likes them because classic flavors remind her of her father and she gets sad, bubblegum ones still remind her of him, but it’s less overwhelming and jake keeps swearing that he buys pink ones for her anyway

BEAN BOOZLED with nasty flavors

𖥔 carlos oliveira was dared to play the game where you gamble on eating one of the nasty flavors once and actually liked the wet dog one. he would never come clean about it, but has several packs of the bean boozled mixes and the wet dog flavor is missing from all of them. he washes off the dog food smell out with water afterwards, but the aftertaste lingers and he hates it, but still eats it from time to time. carlos why?

wanted to write a proper post, but have no time so I’ll go quick

starting off with things I liked:

𖥔 you can climb more things now. climbing cars was great

𖥔 badass melee animations

𖥔 picking up chainsaws + requiem is a cool gun

𖥔 grace as a character was a highlight

𖥔 the bsaa zombie fights were immaculate

𖥔 i don’t get scared while playing but i believe The Girl’s parts might be fantastic for people who play for the thrill of horror

𖥔 all the tiny moments with marvin and his daughter were THE highlight of the game. that was done

𖥔 chloe’s story is the only story that has weight

𖥔 hard to remember since i’m mostly going to talk about the…

…things I disliked:

a quick list won’t do because there’s too much and it’s all interconnected, but I’ll try to separate it in few most important sections

𖥔 the re-7nisation of resident evil and silent hill insecurity

when capcom were making re4, they realized that they enjoyed going astray way too much and created devil may cry instead, while keeping re4 more grounded to the RE franchise, even though stylistically the game was different due to lore and settings. it still made sense.

but after re6, a heavily RE game in its core got negative reviews, they decided to go the other way and made re7 vastly different. it’s no longer urban despair, hospitals, laboratories, evil scientists, big pharma, politics and corruption at its core, it’s some neo-gothic romantic dark fairytale insect and mould invested silent hill adjacent lullaby. and after “re7 saved the franchise” they refuse to back down. this is the path they choose, and RE9 exists to lure “og fans” into this reality because they are aware that re7-8 stand alone from the rest of the games.

they wanted to include old locations, characters and storyline, while bringing the new first person pov, new aesthetic and new perspective. to make this transition universal for all fans.

and in my opinion, they did so at the expense of original lore, heart of the game and principles (more on that later)

bonus point to this bullet point: i believe that both grace’s and leon’s parts work as a “it’s all in their heads” trope, where the care center and raccoon city is the allegory to their guilt. but as a linear story, it works way less and has no punch.

𖥔 the composition of plot based on reactionary output

connected to the previous topic, the whole game felt like a badly connected dotted line of moments devs KNEW fans wanted to see

it’s like they researched the internet, wrote down scenes and moments people would be glad to see (leon almost crying, leon worn down by guilt, leon being cool, leon taking care of little girls, evil characters being predatory, children in distress, wesker etc.) and then came up with poorly made plot to justify all of it happening while sacrificing consistency. even if you excuse plot holes and come up with explanations, it was not enough pay off to justify coming up with it.

it’s giving shape to the digested content. it’s wanted, but it’s not stimulating. it’s repackaging and reselling. it’s been a week and there’s already nothing left to discuss. it’s something that’s obviously welcomed, but not just expected, but already ran through.

𖥔 they didn’t want to write themselves into a corner

this is a phrase that capcom always uses and it’s very noticeable with everything. another point that is connected to the previous one. at some point you have to think… maybe you’re not trying to write yourself into a corner too hard to the point of where corners is the only thing you write without any filling. is this storytelling or it’s just you providing everyone with characters and vibes so we can make up our own stories? we’ll manage regardless. give us stories.

then people get mad at fans for speculating about the only couple things they added in a 20 year time skip… and as frustrating these discussions are to me, respectfully, not much was given besides these so can we even blame the fans

and every single thing that actually happened in RE9 and had consequences, they took back. even as ridiculous as bringing back emily who we saw change on a cellular level and mutate, later is sleeping soundly inside a monster. she wasn’t a monster y’all! leon didn’t hit any vitals (wtf) it’s not that bad don’t worry! (wtf2.0)

𖥔 capcom’s treatment of women

once again connected to every point above. I already made this post and this post and i don’t feel like talking about it anymore. i’m not as passionate about this issue, just tired. i’ve been a fan for decades now and everything has already said many times.

raccoon city without its women is soulless. and leon on his own did not manage to make it meaningful.

the way grace’s character was used as a stand in for planned things to happen harmed her. if it was made with her character in mind instead of focusing on “what situation we want to put her in” approach, the game could’ve still been relatively the same, but much better. her character is great, the treatment of her character isn’t.

she could’ve been scared and went to investigate on her own because investigating makes her tunnel vision suppress awareness in the moment of hyperfixation. she could’ve had a field agent with her in the beginning, who’d die. there’s a lot of possibilities to make all the things ppl point out make more sense.

and if they didn’t feel like wasting too much time on establishing her before she gets into situations, her character could’ve easily been replaced with sherry. in a story where sherry goes to look for the cure for leon&claire since they saved her life and leon feels crushed because sherry was one person he saved in raccoon city and to think that she will die there is catalytic and catastrophic for him. as if the universe is telling him that after all he could not save anyone.

without that, his soul-crushing guilt about not being able to save anyone while understandable, feels less penetrating. he’s nearly 50, he spent 30 years saving people. he did save sherry and claire and ada in raccoon city (and they saved him), he saved countless of people afterwards. it’s understandable that he still suffers from survivals guilt, but it’s branded, not explored.

more women =/= a win for women, it’s the opposite, where it feels like they are single-use vessels for events (that being said, I like grace and hope she does not suffer the fate of other re women and we see more of her)

now to the biggest problem i have with RE:9…

𖥔 substitution of core principles

resident evil is a game about corruption and greed, about unethical experimentation and loss of humanity in pursuit of power. we are shown devastating things. every time we kill zombies, we are then forced to read their diaries and notes and look at their photographs and sit with the understanding that those people were innocent

now we have a game… a japanese game, most importantly, trying to tell us that there is redemption because a magical cure against all was created out of all these unethical experimentations! it cured our favorite hero!!

we also have grace use blood of infected tortured victims to CREATE ITEMS. the game mechanic is literally forcing us to view deaths of these tortured bodies as something useful!!!

we can use experiments (tortured people) as BOWs against enemies!

in order to take off a bracelet off a corpse we have to insert a heart and lungs into a person’s dead body (a person whose face we see on a monitor) just to brutally kill him seconds later.

the conveyer belt of tortured and discarded corpses is also being treated as camp as we have to drop a certain amount of bodies into a pool to unlock the final puzzle.

and so much more things that give you a feel of the attitude change.

all these little things made me very uncomfortable with the direction of thought and general perspective of the game. very very uncomfortable and with japan’s history around unethical human experimentation, i see this as something disturbing.

All in all, Requiem feels like an amalgamation of where the franchise is dragged and what they are willing to let go with breadcrumbs of previously adored moments. Bringing Raccoon City back for this feels cheap.