Exploring Resident Evil After Village: A Brief Retrospective

[@ChrisTheFields]

Waking up to a VZed video in the morning. Very blessed day!

[@VZed]

it's a blessing to be able to bless your morning!

[@Jozeevis]

Awesome video! Well worth the wait. After watching a playthrough of Resident Evil 7 back when that came out I decided to take a risk and try Village out for myself, and absolutely loved it (played through it three times in a week). It also got me really interested in exploring the rest of the series as well, so it's super cool to hear your take as a long-time fan of the series on what Village does with the existing formula and how it differs from its predecessors!

[@VZed]

Glad to be of service! Love this series and love helping people get into it.

[@PerrydactylShow]

While I really enjoyed your discussion on Village itself; I found myself waiting and waiting for you to finally get around to talk about Village. I know you're a verbose dude, and you got a lot to say about anything you're interested in, but I think you could've curbed some of the Resident Evil at large discussion. And I'm saying that knowing how important it is to set up further discussions about Village. Also your live action interjections were really really good little bits of subtle comedy/draw my attention that they were great to see throughout the video!

[@VZed]

Fair enough. It started life as just an RE8 video, but it slowly turned into more of a retrospective. Either way... you should see how much stuff I cut out to get it to where it is, lol.

[@yashmathur2]

The return of the king 👑👑

[@Wolfkaosaun]

Very nice retrospective. Definitely found myself feeling nostalgic towards some of the older games as the video went out. Great job!

[@eleanorsfate445]

I loved your content ever since your "For Better Or Worse" Videos on Donkey Kong Country. And come New Year's, I thought "Hey, let's rewatch some of VZed's stuff!". Imagine how hyped I am to see you're still uploading! Keep up the good work my dude!

[@VZed]

Thanks so much, I'll do my best! It feels good to be back and i'm glad you found your way back too!

[@lucariojet]

Holy crap - I was initially planning on skipping over Village, just cause I've never loved, although I've respected, the franchise. But the way you spoke on the story really invested me in it, as well as the games that will follow. Great Video!

[@VZed]

Well, I hope you enjoy the game. It's a really fun and interesting time.

[@QuestingRefuge]

It's been a long time since I've played a Resident Evil game but adding more stories to them has me really excited to go revisit.

[@VZed]

Honestly, if this series maintains it's big picture approach by telling the small stories like this i'm all in. But then... I have been burned in the past...

[@Letyourheartfly85]

Aaaaa my pal this video was awesome!!! I love how passionate you are about the RE games💝💗 Also I never thought of it takes a village to raise a child but damn that's pure genius!! I look forward to possible more thoughts on RE? *cough*(perhaps if they ever made a remake of Code Veronica) *cough*

[@VZed]

chant it with me now. "CODE! VERONICA! REMAKE! NOW!".

[@Letyourheartfly85]

@@VZed CODE! VERONICA! REMAKE! NOW!

[@LB_]

This game series is way too gory for me to be comfortable even looking at most of the time but I want to compliment your great video essay, it was nice to listen to.

[@VZed]

Stuff like this is a big part of why I still make these videos. Even from the very beginning I had a lot of people tell me they watched them because they didn't or couldn't play those particular games. Glad I could be of service :)

[@FelipeGomes-ek8lf]

Awesome video!

[@michelottens6083]

The big changeup with Ethan, for me, is that he starts off as just an unwitting upper middle class horror movie suburbanite, instead of a cop, a richkid born into genetic dynastics, or a spyguy. Same for all the side characters in RE7 and 8. Ethan's main goal is just to do the shocking discovery about the conspiracy he fell into, facepalm at his wife's job, and then to get the heck out. This feels way more real and relatable, given the RE dystopia of rich corporates playing apocalypse, where all the other copaganda/dynastic characters feel too involved/implicated to really care for. All the other RE protagonists are just good cops trying to do old fashioned cop work, but needing to steel themselves and become the corporate militarized mercs they'd been afraid of all this time. Or they're rich kids who just need daddy Wesker to like them, but then the only true way is to murder daddy. Or they're hopeless lifelong spies who'll never find real love, always tragically but stoically/cynically ending up on another romantic mission elsewhere. Same for how the myceleal family/village stickymonsters and inbreeds in 7 and 8 actually relate to Ethan's big fears in a more relatable way (getting sucked into his wife's weird job and family, raising a kid in that environment...), instead of the monsters being copaganda allegories for manorhouse/cruiseship murder families, for rabid civil masses, or for scary immigrant/foreign masses, etc. Hence why Ethan feels more real and meaningful in terms of his character's responses and growth. And hence why I'm apprehensive and frustrated whenever he gets drawn back into the series' corpo merc cop drama; the very thing that's ravaging the RE world; literally dehumanizing and then culling everyone the corpo's and cops are supposed to reinvest in, to serve and protect, even as those protagonists keep thinking they're saving that world by shooting their way out.

[@rashkavar]

Resident Evil has always been an odd series to me. I find it simultaneously fascinating and repellant. Not in the natural reaction to body horror sense, but in terms of gameplay. Watching it, there's a part of me that's very interested in playing it. And there's the part of me that is just...not willing to consider playing it. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something fairly fundamental about the core gameplay loop of the better games - maybe it's the restrictive inventory space that necessitates backtracking unless you know how many inventory slots to leave open at any given time. But, nevertheless, I will continue to sit on the sidelines, cheering on those who play it for public entertainment.

[@Divector8]

Great video! Very insightful and with good editing. One gripe about the audio though, your voice is louder in the left channel than the right. I used headphones and I thought my right ear was clogged until I tried listening to something I knew was balanced.

[@Charolette21]

Will Rose be the main character in the next day (if there will be next game)?

[@VZed]

Here's hoping. I can't imagine they would end the game that way and now follow up on it in some way.