#re8 is good but not narratively i dont think lmao

[dankovskaya]

ok proper re7 vs re8 post that i should probably make after ive beat the game a second time but im not going to wait that long:

i think re7 definitely beats out re8 in terms of um. having a concise contained and easily understandable narrative in that the entire story can be summarized as “childlike bioweapon desperate for parents escapes containment and forcibly integrates into a louisiana family.”  whereas re8 is definitely a lot more convoluted right from the beginning (i guess you could try to say “deranged cult leader kidnaps ethan’s child in an attempt to ressurrect her own” but even that feels incomplete and doesnt account for 4/5 main antagonists or chris’ role in the story at all or why it had to be rose specifically) and even by the very end there were a lot of questions that went unanswered unless i happened to miss a bunch of notes somehow (why the fuck would ethan and mia get relocated so close to that village in the first place? why didnt chris tell ethan even the most basic information about what was going on? how did miranda even find out about ethan and mia and rose? at what point did miranda switch out with mia? who are the people on chris’ team and is he still working with the reformed umbrella? why didnt mia tell ethan or anyone else that he has been a molded this entire time and why did she have no qualms about having a child with him while having absolutely no idea what that would result in for the potential kid? how did she know that he was one in the first place? why couldnt he have been cured in the same way that mia was? what kind of experiments was miranda performing on mia while she was captive? etc etc etc).

like usually in re games everything sort of falls into place by the end and yeah there’s the part where you go into miranda’s laboratory and get proper explanations of the lords and see her connection to spencer but. i still felt like i wasnt really Getting It by the end i think im still unable to really reconcile why and how the story was even happening lmao. like it was all very “alright, i guess” at every turn.

also i said this before but the bakers are the superior antagonists BY FAR. i like the 4 lords a lot, their concepts and designs are all very cool, but i think they’re a little bit too separated for me. besides the “trial” at the beginning they dont really interact and you barely get a sense for how any of them feel about each other despite referring to each other as siblings, and they dont even react to each others deaths at all if i recall. you just kill them and its over and you move on to the next one. it just cannot beat the deranged familial relationship of the bakers, even if the bakers are less visually compelling. overall the lords were a little unexpectedly shallow to me, i mean its pretty standard for re villains but i think specifically because of re7 i was expecting them to have a little more depth or connection. ESPECIALLY mother miranda given how much build up there is to her, i really could not make myself interested in her at all cause it’s like she’s barely there the whole story and then shes the final boss.

the major area where re8 wins out though is visually. the village is beautiful, castle dimitrescu is GORGEOUSSSS so gorgeous it makes me insane, house beneviento manages to look both cozy and eerie on the upper floors at least, even the reservoir and factory areas which i found more comparatively bland were at least distinct from each other and visually interesting with the windmills and the complex monumental machinery. the variety of very different locations helps the game never feel very monotonous especially with the additional like secret areas and stuff. i also think mechanically switching to a more re4-like style was a very good choice even if it was obviously with the purpose of streamlining re4make LMAO. and clearly the enemy variety is a lot better in re8.

also in terms of like...emotionality like depth of story i guess, re7 is good at making you feel very bad for the antagonists, whereas re8 is very good at making you feel very bad for ethan himself. i still think re7 wins here but the last couple hours of re8 (and the first one for that matter) made me attached to ethan in a way that i definitely was not after re7 LOL. the entire duration of re7 is like Poor bakers :((( but the end of re8 is like EETTHHHAAAANNNNNNNNN 😭😭😭

i have to assume there are going to be at least a couple dlc add ons at some point given how many re7 got so we’ll have to see what those add to the narrative but for now these are my thots

#re8 spoilers #long post #i didnt want to make another billion tiny posts so i tried to fit as much as i could into one long one LOL