u/oasis_nadrama

So I'm doing a complete Resident Evil retrospective with my little server of horror fans and artists.

We're going through EVERY Resident Evil story - and I mean EVERY, like, we're skipping nothing, we're doing the mainline games, the spin-offs, the decanonized Gaiden, the S.D. Perry novelizations, the Anderson movies, the Anderson movie novelizations, the comic books, the mangas etc.

In addition to that, I was thinking of dedicating some time to viewing/playing/reading/discussing various Biohazard-related materials. That's what I call the "extra credits".

Here what I got for now:

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MAIN INSPIRATIONS

- Alone in the Dark

- Sweet Home

- Alien (movie)

- The Thing (movie)

'

EARLY/SCRAPPED VERSIONS

- Resident Evil 1 prototype (there's a rough playable build assembled together by a fan, giving a good sense of the identity the game was heading for at the start)

- Resident Evil 1.5

(Only mentioning the ones I can play here, the other ones will be quickly discussed through reviewing of concept arts and documents.)

'

OFFSHOOTS FRANCHISES

- Dino Crisis

- Devil May Cry

'

DIRECTLY INFLUENCED/BROUGHT ABOUT BY BIOHAZARD

- Silent Hill

- Dead Space

- Tormented Souls

(For the "directly influenced" category, I'm limiting myself to these three, I think, since Resident Evil had such an enormous impact on modern pop culture.)

'

Would you have other suggestions? Am I forgetting anything FUNDAMENTAL?

[Image description: a screencap of Resident Evil 1 (2002 remake) showing Jill and Barry looking at a document in a library, looking worried.]

So I'm doing a complete Resident Evil retrospective with my little server of horror fans and artists.

We're going through EVERY Resident Evil story - and I mean EVERY, like, we're skipping nothing, we're doing the mainline games, the spin-offs, the decanonized Gaiden, the S.D. Perry novelizations, the Anderson movies, the Anderson movie novelizations, the comic books, the mangas etc.

In addition to that, I was thinking of dedicating some time to viewing/playing/reading/discussing various Biohazard-related materials. That's what I call the "extra credits".

Here what I got for now:

'

MAIN INSPIRATIONS

- Alone in the Dark

- Sweet Home

- Alien (movie)

- The Thing (movie)

'

EARLY/SCRAPPED VERSIONS

- Resident Evil 1 prototype (there's a rough playable build assembled together by a fan, giving a good sense of the identity the game was heading for at the start)

- Resident Evil 1.5

(Only mentioning the ones I can play here, the other ones will be quickly discussed through reviewing of concept arts and documents.)

'

OFFSHOOTS FRANCHISES

- Dino Crisis

- Devil May Cry

'

DIRECTLY INFLUENCED/BROUGHT ABOUT BY BIOHAZARD

- Silent Hill

- Dead Space

- Tormented Souls

(For the "directly influenced" category, I'm limiting myself to these three, I think, since Resident Evil had such an enormous impact on modern pop culture.)

'

Would you have other suggestions? Am I forgetting anything FUNDAMENTAL?

[Image description: a screencap of Resident Evil 1 (2002 remake) showing Jill and Barry looking at a document in a library, looking worried.]

I discovered the original Final Fantasy VII the year it came out, 1997, as a little kid, and it quickly became my favourite game of all times. I replayed it enough times to stop counting (I certainly went beyond 50 playthroughts) and it became an important work of art for me, a huge creative, philosophical and political aspiration.

I was never this interested in the extended universe, though, the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Advent Children disappointed me to no end: it is the textbook example of a terrible sequel, that brings about nothing new to the table except the bright technical demonstration it started as. Last Order was quite mediocre, Dirge of Cerberus looked like a joke, etc etc. Only Crisis Core I was pleasantly surprised by, and that was despite its flaws (which were mostly, again, flaws of repetition).

So when Final Fantasy VII Remake started approaching, I didn't have high hopes. The hopes fell down a few more stories when I saw all of the characters and places maintained their 1997 designs with just a few tweaks (I'm not a fan of 1:1 remakes and consider a lot of stuff should have been revised in these characters designs, starting with Avalanche working "undercover" with big Anime Protagonist looks). My hopes plummeted when I learned that it would shoehorn significant elements of the Compilation. By the point I saw Cloud still wore his sword without a sheath in the subway and every secondary element of the 1997 work had been inflated and bloated into a gigantic event (hello Demon House), I was running as far away from the remake trilogy as possible.

But some friends talked to me about the game, told me it was worth playing.

I was never this glad of being this wrong.

It's true the remake trilogy is a work without subtlety. Of course. It's the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, it's shamelessly maximalist, colorful, explosive, it sticks Sephiroth everywhere, turns every fight into a half-divine battle, it unfolds every gigantic landscape and architecture possible and cranks everything up to eleven overnine thousand. It would be hard to find a heavier game in existence.

It's true some new elements tend to pollute the rest. I was most disappointed by the Whispers, that offer nothing of value and make a few scenes confusing. I'm also not a big fan of both Remake and Rebirth ending with a gigantic, hours-long, multi-stages Sephiroth fight. And the second sewer visit and Drum subquests are asinine, they assassinate the pacing.

HOWEVER.

Beyond all of these flaws, Final Fantasy VII Remake + INTERmission + Rebirth is a fantastic work. A beautiful, stunning, powerful story. Using a very provocative mix of tones, never hesitating to become completely ridiculous and campy as fuck in some parts, and then to dive into deep depression, mental torture, brainwashing, body horror and themes of extraordinary violence and gen0cide in the next scene. A passionate human work, that breathes new life into old characters.

Conceived by the creators of the original game, the story of the remake trilogy does NOT make the mistake of faithfulness to an ultimately rough and sometimes childish mid-90s plot, and instead takes into account the way the medium matured, and the myriad of new tools to tell stories in the 2020s. It enriches and strengthens its world, themes, characters and then spreads all of it in a way unique to video games.

Regarding the revision of the previous structure, many choices are fantastic it could take entire books to list them all, I'll just mention that the way >!Dyne's death!< and >!Cloud beating up Aerith!< are reworked gives two examples of extreme attention given to the tone and the new impact some scenes could have in way more detailed and realistic visuals than the old polygons; in the case of the second sequence, it's actually split into two new scenes, >!Cloud trying to kill Tifa and Cloud running after Aerith on the Whisper roots!<, which both successfully get rid of the worrying undertones of domestic violence (>!do we really want a male protagonist who beats up his female friend/love interest in full frontal?!<) while amplifying the theme of Cloud's collapsing mental health (and manipulation by the antagonist) and providing powerfully horrific moments. The new progress of the journey also makes a lot of sense, with the new quest to follow the Black Capes for their own good, and let's observe how the Black Capes are humanized through the characters of >!Roche!< and >!Broden!<.

Remake, INTERmission and Rebirth are FULL of smart tweaks like that, that solve many ethical, political, geographical, consistency-related and philosophical issues were the 1997 scenes to simply be translated as they are.

Beyond this impeccable reinterpretation of the original, the remake trilogy goes further. It is never afraid of doubling down on its ecological themes (more important than ever in the 2020s, where fighting for our own survival and the survival of ecosystems becomes a matter of... well, survival) and its social criticism, of sculpting new character psychologies and of carving all new scenes and locations everywhere in its sumptuous environment. More than often, you'll start a simple, apparently autonomous and light-hearted subquest only to find it tying into the main plot in the most stunning, heart-shattering way (>!the Cosmo Canyon and Nibelheim Protorelic quests!< being particularly fucked-up example). The Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy is relentless in its desire to always offer the most high quality, detailed and deep experience possible.

A thousand scenes could be talked about, but Aerith's monologue near the end of the Temple illustrates the general mastery of the storytelling. >!She starts a powerful speech about life, about death, about grief, about the inevitability of mortality, the kind of speech that can change lives, the kind of speech that can give everyone the courage to fight. And Cloud, under Sephiroth's influence, just... breaks it. Quick close shot on his mouth, he cuts "Are you finished?". A simple, sober line. But the buildup to it in the speech, in Cloud's behaviour, in the themes of the game makes it brutal. In this moment, we understand this is not Cloud, or we don't know Cloud (or both). And that we are following the path of a ravaged puppet of a man. This scene demonstrates how much the creators understand the strength of modern video game writing mise-en-scène.!<

It all converges with the end of Rebirth. >!The entirety of Remake was built towards the promise that we could change destiny, and the underlying possibility that one of the most known events of video game history, Aerith's death, might be averted. But Rebirth reveals that isn't true. Aerith is still planned to die, will die, and partially expected to die. (This prophecy of death was in fact an obscure lore point of the original game: you can read in the 25 January 1997 Official Establishment File, page 22. The remake trilogy develops directly from the original work.) Finally, Aerith dies, under Cloud's eyes, and Cloud... cannot accept it. His mind already ravaged by previous and repeated losses of everyone dear to him, wrapped in denial and the fantasy of his Soldier persona, he rewrites reality, his inner reality, and finds himself in a mental world where "Aerith is alive". While his companions were grieving, Cloud stood up, and started walking further and further in his delusion. That is the ultimate tragedy of Rebirth, a game whose very title sounds like a horrible lie, a story that plays with your expectation and ultimately revises its most famous moment to better break your heart.!<

I cried more before this game than before any work of art (and FUCK, that includes Pan's Labyrinth or Grave of the Fireflies). What an incredible story. What masterful writing.

If I received a gil every time I saw an Avatar summoning a gigantic ancient turtle from the sea to help them in their quest, I'd have two gils.

Which is not a lot but it's still weird that it happened twice.

(Descriptions:

-Image of the retro video game Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, showing a blonde hero in shining silver armor with a red cap, standing on a pier with his companions, while on the sea a giant turtle, as big as a house, appears.

-Image of the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender with the hero, a young boy named Aang, in stylized and modernized Tibetan style monk clothes, facing a gigantic lion-turtle, a massive creature with the face of a lion, big tusk, spiraling carvings and a lot of trees and vegetation on its ancient shell, coming out of the sea.)

If I received a gil every time I saw an Avatar summoning a gigantic ancient turtle from the sea to help them in their quest, I'd have two gils.

Which is not a lot but it's still weird that it happened twice.

(Descriptions:

-Image of the retro video game Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, showing a blonde hero in shining silver armor with a red cap, standing on a pier with his companions, while on the sea a giant turtle, as big as a house, appears.

-Image of the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender with the hero, a young boy named Aang, in stylized and modernized Tibetan style monk clothes, facing a gigantic lion-turtle, a massive creature with the face of a lion, big tusk, spiraling carvings and a lot of trees and vegetation on its ancient shell, coming out of the sea.)

If I received a gil every time I saw an Avatar summoning a gigantic ancient turtle from the sea to help them in their quest, I'd have two gils.

Which is not a lot but it's still weird that it happened twice.

(Descriptions:

-Image of the retro video game Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, showing a blonde hero in shining silver armor with a red cap, standing on a pier with his companions, while on the sea a giant turtle, as big as a house, appears.

-Image of the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender with the hero, a young boy named Aang, in stylized and modernized Tibetan style monk clothes, facing a gigantic lion-turtle, a massive creature with the face of a lion, big tusk, spiraling carvings and a lot of trees and vegetation on its ancient shell, coming out of the sea.)

If I had a gil every time I saw an Avatar summoning a gigantic ancient turtle from the sea to help them in their quest, I'd have two gils.

Which is not a lot but it's still weird that it happened twice.

(Descriptions:

- Image of the retro video game Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, showing a blonde hero in shining silver armor with a red cap, standing on a pier with his companions, while on the sea a giant turtle, as big as a house, appears.

- Image of the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender with the hero, a young boy named Aang, in stylized and modernized Tibetan style monk clothes, facing a gigantic lion-turtle, a massive creature with the face of a lion, big tusk, spiraling carvings and a lot of trees and vegetation on its ancient shell, coming out of the sea.)

I'm in love with the Legacy of Kain series since I was a little kid! To me, it is simply the BEST vampire story and universe, as well as the BEST time travel story, I have ever seen. I've read a lot, watched a lot, played a lot, but even today, at 40, I cannot get over how GOOD this story is (particularly Soul Reaver 2, which is not only the best story in the series, but maybe the best video game story ever made).

'
BLOOD OMEN

Legacy of Kain is set in the dark, cursed world of Nosgoth, dominated by the Pillars, a monument tied to the various aspects of the universe (Mind, Time, Dimension, Nature, etc). The Pillars of Nosgoth are supposed to provide harmony to the lands, and each of them is also linked to a human thaumaturgist, tasked with protecting their facet of reality.

But one day, the Guardian of Balance, Ariel, is murdered by a Dark Entity, and when her lover, Nupraptor, the Guardian of Mind, discovers Ariel's body, he loses his mind and collapses in utter destructive and self-destructive madness. Lashing out, Nupraptor unleashes psychic shockwaves to the other Guardians, the entire Circle of Nine, symbiotically linked.

Now all of these over-powerful magicians are unable to fill their role, and will instead work towards the damnation of the entire world, turning their skills and specialties against Nosgoth. The Pillars themselves, mystically tied to the Circle, darken and fissure, and the corresponding features of the world erode.

After this chain reaction, everything seems lost. The salvation of the world now lies on the shoulders of a single being, the vampire Kain, entrusted with a grim mission: to kill every corrupted Guardian to restore Balance. But his actions may bring about the complex past and importance of Nosgoth vampires, as well as his own cruel destiny.

This is the starting pitch of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, the story ending up with a choice given the player: >!Kain, revealed to be Ariel's replacement, the new (and already corrupted) Guardian of Balance, can choose to sacrifice himself to restore the Pillars, or refuse the sacrifice and doom the world forever, shattering the Pillars!<.

The canonical ending of Blood Omen? The bad one.

'

SOUL REAVER

In the second game, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, we find the world decaying further, reduced to a dried out shell of its former glory, with no remaining Guardians and utterly broken Pillars. In their midst, Elder Kain, now a majestic statue-like creature with a crown of organic thorns, has set a large throne. The throne of his empire, for he has conquered Nosgoth and all of these lands are now under complete vampire domination... Until his first-born lieutenant, Raziel, grows forbidden wings.

'

Five Legacy of Kain games were released from 1996 to 2003, and I must repeat myself, THEY ARE THE BEST SHIT.

It's like Anne Rice's vampires on steroids and looking like fantastic alien creatures, it's a monsterfucker's dream and a haunting existential themes, it addresses huge philosophical issues, characters are fucked-up and have so many layers, no one is innocent in this tale and most of them are manipulative, murderous (sometimes gen0cidal even) anti-heroes. It's very much a grey kind of morality.

Do you know them? Did you play them? Did you like them?

Hell, if you never got into them, now is the right time! In 2024, the excellent remaster Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered was released (two games with a low price!), and at the start of 2026, Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered followed. You can get the first game, Blood Omen, on GOG, for like 3 euros. Come join us in a dark odyssey!

'

(Image description: four video game images.

The first one is the inventory menu of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (1996). The screen is divided in a way similar to a reliquary or a little chapel, presenting various statues of wizards in hoods, one holding a cristal ball (items menu), one holding a currently levitating sword (equipment menu), one holid a thick grimoire (spells menu). On the right of the picture, Kain, a pale young vampire with long flowing grey hair, stands in a red and black armor, holding a sword.

The second picture is a screencap of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver Remastered (2024), showing the wraith Raziel facing a gigantic monster, a skeletical, insectoid creature with an elongated head and jaws full of long teeth, reminiscent of the Alien Queen creature design. Left and right of the skull, two parts of a chitinous head crest are splitting, bearing the eyes of the creature, as well as large portions of his previous humanoid face. The beast has very long arms ended by large, intricate talons with carapace. The environment around them is entirely organic, body horror, with the walls covered in brown flesh, encasing translucent red cocoons where humanoid, apparently fragmenting bodies float, either being digested, rotting or being reconstructed into monsters.

The third one is a promotional picture of Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered (2026), with five characters ready to fight, or contemplating the events, in a background of gigantic, threatening tentacles adorned with nightmarish large suckers, at least as big as a person's head each. In the foreground, Kain and Raziel, the anti-heroes of the series, brandish their respective weapons: Elder Kain is a humanoid but heavily mutated vampire, looking like a statue of bronze, gold and marble, with a thick veined skin, his brow bones having mutated into horns which, along with his pointy and reinforced ears, form a kind of organic crown above a forehead now entirely covered by a descending hairline, the place where his long mane of white hair starts. Kain's face now looks slightly carved and desiccated, adorned with a lot of veins, some of them concentrating to form deep dark spots where his eyes shine menacingly under his crown-eyebrows. He's wearing tight leather pants descending low on the belly, tightened by leather straps, and he's shirtless but his torso is wrapped in a harness of leather and fabric, affixing a red shoulder cape. In his clawed hands wrapped in more leather and fabric, Kain is holding the Blood Reaver, a sword made of unknown metal, a flamberge with a long undulating blade, looking like a zigzaging tongue because the rain-guard of the hilt is the upper part of a demonic skull (no lower jaw), with four horns-blades and vampiric fangs. Raziel is a wraith, looking like a blue zombie with a particularly ravaged body, annihilated, little more than a few burned muscles on a skeleton, with a scarf covering his absence of jaws, hands reduced to three claws like Elder Kain, and eyes of burning white light under short black disheveled hair. Tied to his arm by tentacles of running spectral energy, the Soul Reaver, the wraith blade, seems just made of white-blue flames, like a mystical lightsaber with raging fire flowing in the air. The Soul Reaver doesn't have any physical element to it, it is a blade of flames. Behind Kain and Raziel, three other characters in the background. Vorador, a vampire looking kinda like a wise and tall gremlin, with green reptilian skin and large bat ears, arms crossed behind his back, in rich, ceremonial-looking red and white clothes. Mortanius, a human necromancer opening a very angry mouth on a silent cry, with white eyes, black hair and goatee, and a war-wizard costume of red fabric and yellow bone whose shoulder pads hold big bony spikes. At the apex of the picture, even farther away than other characters, dignified and confident, the great vampire Janos Audron stands. He has blue skin, black bird-like wings and a white costume evocative of a priest. He's closing a clawed fist.

Fourth picture: Another image of Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered, this time a screencap. Elder Kain in a complex architectural environment, reminiscent of Art Nouveau and traditional Islamic buildings, bathed in the eerie blue light escaping the eyes of the Reaver sword he's holding in his claws, contemplative.)