Sunday 8 February 2009

The resident evil issue


Resident evil series has now reached its 5th edition and is due for release in March. But an interesting issue about this game at the moment isn't anything to do with gameplay, but the politically incorrect points that has been raised by a few critics, that the game is racist. Now just because the game is set in africa and that the protagonist in the game happens to be white does not necessarily mean that the game is racist.


I have managed to play the demo of the game and you do play as the protagonist Chris Redfield having to kill mainly black zombies, however in the demo there are still a variety of different race of zombies to kill. An example of what one critic wrote was that black people in the game were depicted as inhuman savages and that the protagonist was attacking these zombies in military clothing, which implies to me that this critic believes that the whole idea of the game is the slaughter and genocide of an ethnic group.


The funny thing is that issues like this wasn't raised during the production of the 4th Resident evil game when an american is roaming around Europe killing Spanish zombies. If roaming around africa killing zombies is racist then isn't killing spanish zombies just as racist?


Issues have even been raised about Sheva who assists the protagonist through out the game, as even though she is of black origin, the character has been criticised for having a lighter skin tone by another critic.


Its a shame that this has all become a big issue and i hope that the end product of the game is designed exactly how the developers want it to be. Because at the end of the day i wouldn't want the developers to change or cut parts of the game and make the game not as good as it was originally intended. As this game is intended for entertainment purposes so in reality all the designers should worry about is to make the game as most entertaining and realistic as possible.


Critic's links: