Resident Evilof all franchises has gone on long enough now that its traditions and trends are incredibly patternable and formulaic. This has worked in its favor time and time again forResident Evil, allowing Capcom to reuse assets that have all been infused with personality and also bleed debut mechanics into any entries that immediately follow to make the most of them.
Each title’s decided-upon gameplay genre usually helps elicit what formulas Capcom may iterate on for them, such as whether it will be action- or horror-heavy, and one trope from the latter needs to sit the next game on the bench. It is great to see thatResident Evil 4’s remake successfully introduced a parry mechanic, for instance, but it would also do well forResident Evil 9to skip having a pursuer enemy unless it has a superb encounter in mind because a pursuer showing up in every new or remadeResident Evilgame since the remake ofResident Evil 2five years ago has become a tired trend.
Scary Pursuer Enemies Have Fallen Far from Resident Evil’s Fruitful Tree
To be clear,Resident Evilhas always had pursuer or stalker enemies in varying degrees of quality and significance, which is why the trench coat-clad tyrant is such a prominent pursuer inResident Evil 2’s remake in the first place.
However,Resident Evil 2’s remake seemed to have revitalized and repurposed how substantially anxiety-inducing such an enemy type can be in modern horror games and clearly inspiredResident Evil 3’s remake,Resident Evil 7,Resident Evil Village, andResident Evil 4’s remake to double down on it in their own ways. Interestingly, even though no pursuer since theResident Evil 2remake’s Mr. X has been quite as effective or substantial, the trend has continued relentlessly.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis’ titular foe was originally a more iconic pursuer in the series—literally being nicknamed the Pursuer—before theResident Evil 2remake’s Mr. X, but the heavily scripted Nemesis featured in theResident Evil 3remake is arguably not as daunting or intimidating, either. Thus, he’s debatably lost some of the luster he had more than two decades ago.
Resident Evil’s Pursuers Have Lost Their Sheen and Deserve a Break
Castle Dimitrescu’s resident matriarchis never a threat to players’ shoddily devised plans like Mr. X can be and she also isn’t scary from a traditional standpoint. Likewise, Jack and Marguerite Baker are exploitatively circumvented throughout the Baker estate even if their patrol routes are more suspenseful and evocative of persistent pursuers who can intercept players at a narrow hallway or stairwell corner, yet that’s more of a testament to how superbly claustrophobic the estate is than anything.
Resident Evil Village’s Shadows of Rose has one of the franchise’s best and most authentic pursuers asnumerous life-sized Mia dolls stalk Rosemary Wintersand only shamble their mannequin limbs hastily toward her when players have the game’s camera turned away from them.
The sequence that most resembles a pursuer encounter in the remake ofResident Evil 4is when players are trapped in a corridor with a Verdugo, but the remake also added a quick, scripted sequence where Mendez pursues players along with a mob of ganados. This suggests that Capcom has tried to replicate its pursuer trend in nearly everyResident Evilentry sinceResident Evil 2’s remake. Now, especially with not all of them being executed well, it is a performative enemy type the studio can afford to shelve for a bit while it hopefully explores more unique avenues of gameplay inResident Evil 9and onward.
