TNM Fan Fiction (Sort Of)

[chris the cynic]

So it's not really "TNM fan fiction" unless you add a disclaimer like, "After a fashion." Basically, the idea of Forum City creates a lot of possible places you could go. For example I don't see the PDX population doing a lot of resource extraction, but over at some of the strategy based cities on forum planet I can see resource extraction going on large quantities. So you'd imagine that PDX depends on trade with them to get its raw materials. Or, the mana comes from a Planet Diablo merchant, so there's definitely some contact between the cities. One could imagine immigrant neighborhoods, instead of China Town you get Jedi Town, that sort of thing.

So, anyway, today I wrote a thing that is only very loosely related to The Nameless Mod using as it's jumping off point a tangent as tenuous as either of the above, if not moreso. I'd encourage other people to write some losely connected stuff of their own and post it here, but I've noticed that people tend to ignore such requests.

When I say that this is entirely tangential, know that no character in what follows is based on an actual forum member, living or undead.



TNM: The Alphabet Soup Virus

I had been away awhile when the moderator was kidnapped. I didn't plan my return to coincide with chaos, it just sort of worked out that way. The things IRL that had been preventing me from coming on had finally ended, so I was happy to finally be getting a chance to return to the old neighborhood.

It turned out to be quite a lot of trouble getting there. I had to break into three buildings, bypass two computers, crawl through a sewer, run over six roofs, and bribe one ambulance repair man just to get back home. Once I got there the problems got bigger.

With every district under lockdown news didn't exactly spread from one to another which meant that I had basically no warning about what I'd be getting into. It didn't take all that long to figure out though. When I saw three people eating a forth in the middle of the street I think that gave me a pretty decent idea of what was going on.

I know how it works, you aim for the head and try to stay off the streets.

What followed were two hours of searching through abandoned buildings scavenging for resources and occasionally looting bodies. I finally found out what had happened when I came across an old friend, there were hugs, a nice reunion, and a decent explanation.

Here's how she put it:
“A group of expatriates from PRE moved in a block or two north of here a while back. They mostly kept to themselves.” That's to be expected I think, they can't exactly have something like the Jedi Fest the PJK expats put on every six months. What would they have? Virus Fest? “Then a few days ago they had a shipment brought in, under the radar and not through customs. I don't know what it was, it doesn't matter. It could have been milk and cookies for all the difference it makes.

“What matters is that it looks like some rats stowed away on the shipment. Anyone who's studied the history of 14th century Europe can guess what happened next.”

I haven't and I still could guess, but later on (when I was telling people that this kind of thing has to be expected when PRE people move into town) it came to my attention that not everyone is familiar with PRE. That's to be expected because the P in PRE is really more aspirational than actual. It isn't really a Planet city, it isn't really a city. The truth is that they call themselves that in hopes that if they say it enough one day it will be true. Sort of like the State of Franklin, except that unlike the people of Franklin I expect that one day they'll actually get their wish.

I've put money on it happening by the end of the decade, the odds I got were 60-40 against.

Anyway, they aren't really a city, they're an unincorporated territory inside of 3DAP. That should make sense to most people. Unfortunately a recent survey has shown that many people in Forum City can't name even name the moderators, much less the regions on Forum Planet. So the fact that it should make sense doesn't mean that it will make sense.

Which kicks us back to geography 101: There are four regions on Forum Planet. Where the P goes at the beginning for cities it is placed at the end for regions. The regions are 3DAP, RPGP, StP, and SpP. PDX Forum City lies on the border of 3DAP and RPGP. PRE is more towards the center of 3DAP, in some unclaimed territory with forestland and mountains.

Where the people of PDX all have DX in common, the people of PRE all have RE in common. Hence the zombies resulting from their moving into the neighborhood. I much prefer when people from PJK immigrate because they bring the most fun toys with them. How often does one get the opportunity to use a lightsaber?

Anyway. I said goodbye to my friend, who was working on holding down a fortified restaurant, and pushed deeper into undead territory.

In Deus Ex I always felt bad if I need to kill a dog. When that dog is undead, I really don't mind in the least. The streets were barricaded with burning cars, because that's what one does when the zombies come out to play, so I made my way through the various buildings. It became almost mechanical. Multitool on a keypad lock, up three floors, breach a door, get out on the fire escape, jump to the next building, move on. Break in, move up, move over, move on. Repeat.

I found my next clutch of survivors at what looked like a rec facility.

They'd hunkered down and, after they'd finished boarding up the windows, they'd had to deal with the fact they were bored. On any other day the rescue would have already come, but on this day the city administration had to deal with city wide chaos and word had yet to reach them that an undead problem had arisen. So the people had waited, waited, and waited some more. By the time I reached them it was pretty pathetic.

As proof I offer up this actual conversation that I overheard, presented without any editing:

Male Survivor: Ok, how about JC Denton vs. Five cerberuses?
Female Suriveor: JC Denton. And the term is “Cerberi.”
Male: JC Denton vs a Tyrant?
Female: JC Denton.
Male: JC Denton vs Nemisis?
Female: JC Denton.
Male: JC Denton vs a G-Vir-
Female (by now quite annoyed): JC Denton.
Male: I wasn't finished. JC Denton vs. a G-Virus creature that was originally Walton Simons.
Female: How does the G-virus interact with nano augmentation.
Male: It enhances it.
Female: So on the one side we have a nano augmented nigh unstoppable G-Virus creature, with an aggressive defense aug no less, who was already one of the most bad ass characters in all of history before he got infected, and on the other side we have JC?
Male: Exactly.
Female: I'll have to think about it.

Like I said, you've got to be pretty pathetically bored when you reach that point.

Among the survivors I found someone who could give me more information. A member of the neighborhood planning council. What he told me was that the PRE expats didn't just come to immigrate, they came as part of a business. Setting up a branch office of sorts. He tried to sell it as revitalizing the community and whatnot, but I called bullshit. Especially when I heard the company's name: Parasol Pharmaceuticals

The man was an idiot, and the conversation ended like this:

Me: A bunch of people from PRE show up representing a pharmaceutical business whose name means “Umbrella” and that didn't set off any red flags for you?
Him: I don't know what your problem is.
Me: Let me guess, their representatives were named Wesker267 and BirkinFan17
Him: No. They were represented by a respectable gentleman named Rootbeer.
Face, meet palm. Palm, meet face.
Him: Now what could possibly be-
Me: A and W.
Him: What?
Me: A&W is a brand of rootbeer.
Him: So?
Me: A and W. Albert mother fucking Wesker. If you were going to let a bunch of of PRE expats move in and set up shop the least you could have done, the absolute least, would be to make sure they were fans of the good guys.
Him: Their paperwork all checked out.
Me: You mean their bribes checked out.
Seriously, what's the point of having a neighborhood planning council if they're for sale to the highest bidder.
Him: Yes. Yes I do. And when this is all over I'll use that money to move into a gated community while you're still living in that shithole you call an apartment.
Me: When you're eaten I won't react with glee, that would be juvenile, but I will take some comfort in the knowledge that the universe has at least some sense of justice.

And then I stormed out. I knew what I had to do, to some degree. When an Umbrella knock off sets up shop in your neck of the woods the first thing you have to do is deal with the problem at the source. Ok, maybe that's not the first thing.

The first thing is probably to get seeds and dirt and set up gardens on the roof so that after civilization falls and the lootable food runs out you still have something to eat. This of course assumes that you your town isn't going to be nuked, because if it is then what you want to do is get the hell out as soon as possible.

In fact, the first thing usually isn't going to be dealing with the problem at the source. But it seemed to me like going into their secret facility and kicking ass was just what the situation called for. And I knew they had to have a secret facility. What kind of Resident Evil fan wouldn't?

The real point was, of course, containment.

Only a couple of districts were affected and the district gates were largely holding back the the zombies from spreading. Furthermore the T-virus tends to be an NPC only virus. You can see this in RE2, random trucker NPC gets bitten and before you know it he's a zombie. Leon and Claire spend the whole game as zombie chew toys and don't even pick up a sniffle. Non-NPCs tend to be immune, while they're alive at any rate. As soon as they die all bets are off.

You might think that means there's no problem. A lot of people think that someplace like Forum City doesn't have any NPCs. They're wrong. A great example are all of the rent-a-cops named Jim. They're NPCs. The reason that they're NPCs is that their job is extremely dull and not a lot of actual people will volunteer for it. The same can be said of paper pushers and many of the vendors of boring stuff.

There are definitely some actual users who do those jobs. Some of them are the best in the field. The best security personnel are people so dedicated to the job that they don't mind walking the same damned patrol hour after hour day after day because they are completely dedicated to being prepared in those crucial moments when something finally happens. The best paper pushers are those with the skill and inclination to play bureaucracy the way I play Othello. The best vendors are people who care about their wares or their customers or the art of the deal, or all three. So the best are almost always users. It's not just the best who are users though, sometimes a user will take a job like that because they need the money. You can usually recognize such people because they tend to be bored out of their mind.

But for the most part, if someone is working the cash register at the local how-do-you-stay-in-buisness-when-everyone-seems-to-be-broke selling tooth brushes and toilet cleaning supplies, odds are that he or she is a computer construct.

That person might not sound like a threat, but when they've become resistant to bullets in all areas save the head and they've teamed up with ten or twenty of their closest friends, they can present quite a problem.

And that's who the T-virus gets first.

Of course one would be remiss if they didn't point out that NPCs include karkians. When you imagine a zombie mutant karkian charging at you full speed you can begin to see the size of the problem. But even that image covers up a more disturbing truth. If you're not careful the virus won't just take your life, it will take your dignity with it. Who wants, “Was killed by a diseased pigeon,” written on their tombstone?

Anyway, back to containment. The virus tends to infect NPCs the fastest and I've been told by semi-reliable sources that most of the people in Forum City are real live users. Meaning that before too long the the undead NPCs should run out of non-undead NPCs to infect, at that point the spread of the virus should drop dramatically and the zombie horde could be winnowed into nonexistence through simple attrition tactics.

So I figured that the hide in fortified locations and only kill the zombies that come to them tactics the survivors I had met with should work provided that there was no major shock to the system. What might cause such an unwanted shock to the system? If Parasol's test subjects escaped.

So in light of that sneaking into their base and killing everything inside made a certain amount of pragmatic sense.

That meant sneaking through more blocks of a zombie infested city.

You could tell when you started getting into Parasol territory. All of a sudden things became much less open to interpretation. Every door had only one key and you had to jump through a thousand and one hoops to get it. There were fewer people to talk to and more undead hordes. Streets that should provide a thousand different options became corridors you were herded down.

This was something no Deus Ex fan would make.

I led with my gun, I looted every corpse, sometimes shooting them just to double check that they'd stay dead. I became much more twitchy, more likely to shoot at a moment's notice than to make sure I wasn't shooting the wrong person. It seemed like the whole world just consisted of enemies with no concerns other than killing or dodging the next zombie.

And it was in that state of mind that I rounded the corner and found myself pointing a gun at a young girl, maybe ten or twelve years old, with a serene expression on her face. She was sitting cross legged on a metal crate, seemingly unmoved by any of the chaos that must have surrounded her since the outbreak began.

I pointed my gun elsewhere and said, “Sorry.” I didn't say for what but figured she'd know it was for pointing a gun at her. Then I told her, “I'm Rentin' Renton,” a silly name, I know, “call me Jim,” and asked, “who are you?”

“Hello, Jim,” she said. “I am ChildFemale3 BindName: District23Girl, FamiliarName: Sally.” I didn't know what to say to that. Seriously, how does one respond to that? I considered, 'That's a strange name,' but I didn't really like that. I didn't find any words I liked and ended up just standing there in silence looking perplexed. After a while she explained, “Since very few users wish to take on the roles of children without constructs there would be almost no children in the city. I exist because a city should have small girls and because some users wish to have daughters. My class was created for the purposes of adding realism to Forum City by creating the illusion of a diverse population and humoring users who desire daughters.”

Even in the midst of a zombie outbreak, curiosity still exists. So I asked, “How does telling me this accomplish that?”

“Are you one of my parents?”

Let me just say that that's a very strange question to be asked. Not as creepy as if she had said, 'Are you my mommy?' but strange none the less. “No.”

“Since that is the case I do not exist to humor you. Furthermore, we are not in a school, at a playground or anywhere else where my actions might be dictated by my role. It is neither my job nor my desire to make you think I am a human being.” Writing them, the words sound angry. She didn't say them that way. She spoke with a perfect calm. Her tone was an ordinary conversational one, not confrontational in the least. The way she spoke it was as if we were discussing something like favorite colors or some other light topic people might discuss on a lazy day when not surrounded by zombies.

I did not keep my cool nearly so well, I said, “Ok...” but the way I said it probably indicated more confusion and defensiveness than was either desired or appropriate.

“My awareness that I am a program is considered a bug.” She got off the crate. The way she moved was … strange. I want to say mechanical but that it isn't it. It was as smooth as anyone, but more deliberate than most. It was visibly measured. It was not what I would expect from a young girl.

She walked towards me and stopped when she was a few feet away. Then she looked up at me and made eye contact. She looked up literally, but not figuratively. It is somewhat odd to have a small girl treat you as an equal, but it was perfectly clear that that was how she saw me.

“Do you have additional weapons?”

First I answered without thinking, “Yes,” then I thought about it and asked, “Why?”

“I am unarmed. I require a weapon.”

I know that we just had a conversation about how she wasn't a little girl, she was a self aware AI construct who, being off the clock at the moment, had no need to pretend she was anything else. I know that, given I was standing in Forum City at the time, there was absolutely no reason to doubt that that was the truth. And yet … I was standing there looking at a little girl who was asking me for a weapon.

Think about that.

I asked for more information. I asked if she was any good with a weapon. She pointed out that, as was abundantly clear by this point, the parts of her programming that were intended to make her seem like a little girl were non-functional. Her skill with a weapon was limited only by those limitations inherent in the weapon.

Little girl asked for a gun; she said she was an inhumanly good shot.

I gave her a stealth pistol.

We fought crime.

-

We had a good conversation as we shot through the hordes on our way to the base.

We talked about how the RE characters would have done if they could have played things in a DX style. From big things like there being multiple solutions to problems, to relatively smaller things, like inventory.

Not having to store ammunition or keys in inventory would have freed up so much space. On top of that, the additional inventory Deus Ex has to offer would have been a godsend. One can imagine how much easier their lives would have been if they'd had JC Denton's inventory.

Meanwhile we were adding things to our own inventory. She had grabbed a grenade launcher, I had grabbed a magnum. She had grabbed a bow gun, I had grabbed a PRE shotgun. I will say this for the Parasol folks, it was nice of them to bring their weapons with them from their homeland.

The RE character's biggest handicap, we concluded, was the cut scenes. Claire comes upon a weapons shop and meets her first ally. Then she stands idly by while he is eaten in a cuts scene. If she'd been given a chance rather than being forced to wait and watch, she might have saved him. Leon has just shot his way through hordes of zombies, or sprinted past them, or both. Then he reaches the helipad and is forced to stand still without shooting and watch as a couple of them take out the last healthy cop and a helicopter. If he'd been allowed to intervene he probably could have saved both given the amount of time between when he reached the helipad and when things went pear shaped.

As we were taking out a tyrant we came to the last example. The amount of time that Mr. X holds Ada before he seriously hurts her, time spent with his back to Leon, was longer than it takes Leon to shoot the jerk into unconsciousness, yet Leon never fired a shot. He was trapped in a cutscene and thus rendered incapable of action.

We acted out how it should have gone by shooting the tyrant until he went down without waiting for him to get within striking distance of either of us. Then I used my muscle aug to drag the bastard with us until we found explosive. Which we used to blow the bastard up so he wouldn't come back.

When we kill people they stay dead.

The main facility was inaccessible above ground, so into the sewers we went. Finally we came to a point where the way we clearly had to go was blocked off by a door that I couldn't figure out how to open. Fortunately I wasn't alone.

“The panel to our left indicates that to continue on this path we must insert two metal disks, one etched with a stylized image of a wolf, the other etched with at stylized image of a lion.”

There was a pause, which I used to check the control panel. She was right. I had ignored it because out of the corner of my eye it looked more like a cigaret dispenser than something one would use to open a blast door. (I hadn't really considered why a cigaret machine would be in a sewer.)

Then she added, “We appear to be trapped inside a puzzle game.”

I wanted to dispute that, but I couldn't come up with a good argument.

We backtracked and looked for alternate routes. At one point I scouted ahead while she hacked a computer, what I found was not good. The room, ostensibly a lab, appeared to be a torture chamber and after things went wrong it looked like the stuff in it was turned on it's makers. I was pretty sure we would have to pass through there to find what we needed, but I didn't feel right bringing a child.

Of course, I should have known better than to think like that, but I swear to god when you look at her you can't help but see her as a little girl.

So I asked, “How good is your memory?” wondering if she might be traumatized for years to come.

She said, “My memory is perfect. I am uninhibited by human frailty. I have never forgotten anything,” which completely failed to put my fears to rest.

So I said, “Then you might want to close your eyes or something.”

A few minutes later we're slogging through the blood and she says, “This mutilated corpse contained one of the medals we will require to proceed. Perhaps you should search the other mutilated corpses for the other one.”

Two rooms and five mutilated corpses later, we found the other medal. The blast door opened, we moved on.

-

The walls of the facility had already been breached, probably by the damned tyrant, and it was pretty clear that the test subjects, of which there were many times many, would all eventually escape. Unfortunately the only way to deal with the problem was a long convoluted sequence that, eventually, required shutting the power down.

That's sort of like the moment in AVP2 when you know you shouldn't hack the security system, but you can't proceed unless you do. Or like the beginning of Half Life when you know, even if you've never played the game, that you should not, not, not preform the experiment, but you have no choice.

A facility full of murderous monsters, all of the containment measures depend on power, and the only way forward is to cut the power. Sure, it's only for about thirty seconds, but even so no good could possibly come of it. And my partner pointed out that wasn't the only problem.

“I do not like this place. There isn't enough open space. If BOWs come they will be close enough to kill us before we can fire enough shots to stop them.”

She was right. The corridors were set up so that there was no way we'd be able to hit the undead far enough in advance to stop them from reaching us.

So it was decided that as soon as we finished we'd run as fast as we could until we found a better place to make a stand. Somewhere that wasn't a death trap. We placed the Shogi pieces in the appropriate places, we inserted the fuses and did a sort of lights out puzzle, then the lights dropped and we ran through he darkness. My energy reserves were depleted so no flashlight. We had to hold hands to avoid losing each other. We fired off a few flame rounds for illumination and got in close calls with several zombies.

For the record, the power was down for way more than 30 seconds. I can't prove it, but I'm pretty damned sure.

Then we found it. It seemed like a good place to make a stand. It looked to be a wide open courtyard. Long sightlines meant we'd be able to see anything coming well in advance and be able to take it out before it got to us.

That was the plan. The problem was that the reason for those good sightlines was that it wasn't a courtyard, it was an arena. It was wide open to give the spectators the best possible view. It makes sense when you think about it. All of the research and alphabet soup viruses the PRE people obsess about is driven towards one end. They don't make these things because they're pretty, they make them to be used as weapons. How do you which organism is the best weapon? Have them fight.

Anyway, the practical result of all of this is that the bio weapon monster thingys that escaped, as we had expected them to, were all in places with exits leading into the arena. Those probably weren't the only ways out, it would make sense for them to also have exists into the labs (though with PRE you can never be sure) but they were the only place with the smell of living people. And so they came. All of them.

As the horde of zombies approached from all directions it became clear that we had in fact entered a place that absolutely was a death trap.

“Back to back?” she asked. And so it was that I ended up back to back with a little girl. I had a Deus Ex pistol in my right hand an PRE magnum my left. She had a stealth pistol in her left and a modified PRE pistol in her right. Together we killed zombies. Zombies. Zombie dogs. Zombie greasels. Walking toxic shrubs. Zombie Seagulls. Zombie rats. Zombie cats. Zombie wolves. And one very scary oversized zombie karkian.

We ran out of ammo in our pistols. In her grenade launcher and my PRE shotgun. In her crossbow and my mini crossbow. But in the end, we walked out of that death trap very much alive. And as we stumbled over the pile of bodies we had just created, an alarm sounded telling us that somebody had activated the self destruct mechanism.

Note to all future engineers: Do not create a damned self destruct. When, in all of history, was a self destruct ever a good idea?

There are two kinds of situations in this world, the ones where you take off and nuke the entire site from orbit (it's the only way to be sure) and the ones where you don't need to destroy the facility. In the first outside weapons can be used, in the second a self destruct is not necessary.

Also, the world does not need more viruses that turn people into monsters. It just doesn't.

-

The next day we got to work on taking back the streets, the day after that order had been restored and Deus Diablo personally came to the neighborhood to get rid of the the last of the zombies. The asshole who let Parasol move in? He wasn't eaten. He was banned.

And now I know, if there's ever trouble I just need to team up with ChildFemale3 BindName: District23Girl, FamiliarName: Sally and the trouble doesn't stand a chance.

I love this town.

-
--
-

And that, boys and girls, is why you should probably spend more than one day making a story. Though I support any of you making a story of your own in one day and then sharing it here.

[bobby 55]

Excellent work Chris. I haven't played RE but I think enough of other survivalist horror games to get the connection.

“Are you one of my parents?”

Let me just say that that's a very strange question to be asked. Not as creepy as if she had said, 'Are you my mommy?'

That would make Sally a visitor from PDrW if that was her response.

[Jonas]

Ace, I really liked it. I've never played Resident Evil so I missed a few of the references, but I've read enough about it that I understood most of it. It certainly fits well into the TNM universe, but then if you can't be trusted in that respect, nobody can. I do think it's very narrowly targeted, ie. nobody who hasn't played TNM would understand what the hell is going on, but maybe that's fine.

You could probably do to spell out some of those abbreviated Planets, not even your typical TNM player would necessarily know what 3DAP stands for. It's not strictly necessary to know of course, but in the start when you're listing a dozen of those unexplained acronyms, I think it would be a real slog to get through those paragraphs if you're not familiar with Gamespy's site network.

I enjoyed the contrast between Resident Evil's design patterns and Deus Ex's paradigms. It definitely makes me want to write something similar, but at the moment I feel bad writing anything that isn't a part of my Master's thesis.

In summary, good work and thanks for posting it!

[chris the cynic]

Jonas, if you should ever consider playing a Resident Evil game, be aware that they tend to contain giant spiders.

You could probably do to spell out some of those abbreviated Planets, not even your typical TNM player would necessarily know what 3DAP stands for. It's not strictly necessary to know of course, but in the start when you're listing a dozen of those unexplained acronyms, I think it would be a real slog to get through those paragraphs if you're not familiar with Gamespy's site network.

I was kind of picturing it as a character who didn't really want to explain but realized he should. So he was giving an explanation, but he wasn't putting much effort into giving a particularly good explanation. He's got the basics, it's another settlement on Forum Planet, not really a city, it's in a region PDX Forum City borders, but he's not really done much in the way of informing. (Someone who doesn't know what PRE is likely doesn't know what RE is.)

For anyone who is wondering, taken out of acronymese it reads like this:

I haven't and I still could guess, but later on (when I was telling people that this kind of thing has to be expected when Planet Resident Evil people move into town) it came to my attention that not everyone is familiar with Planet Resident Evil. That's to be expected because the Planet in Planet Resident Evil is really more aspirational than actual. It isn't really a Planet city, it isn't really a city. The truth is that they call themselves that in hopes that if they say it enough one day it will be true. Sort of like the State of Franklin, except that unlike the people of Franklin I expect that one day they'll actually get their wish.

I've put money on it happening by the end of the decade, the odds I got were 60-40 against.

Anyway, they aren't really a city, they're an unincorporated territory inside of 3D Action Planet. That should make sense to most people. Unfortunately a recent survey has shown that many people in Forum City can't name even name the moderators, much less the regions on Forum Planet. So the fact that it should make sense doesn't mean that it will make sense.

Which kicks us back to geography 101: There are four regions on Forum Planet. Where the 'Planet' goes at the beginning for cities it is placed at the end for regions. The regions are 3D Action Planet, RPG Planet, Strategy Planet, and Sports Planet. PDX Forum City lies on the border of 3D Action Planet and RPG Planet. Planet Resident Evil is more towards the center of 3D Action Planet, in some unclaimed territory with forestland and mountains.

Where the people of Planet Deus Ex all have Deus Ex in common, the people of Planet Resident Evil all have Resident Evil in common. Hence the zombies resulting from their moving into the neighborhood. I much prefer when people from Planet Jedi Knight immigrate because they bring the most fun toys with them. How often does one get the opportunity to use a lightsaber?

By the way, Planet Resident Evil does exist now. It didn't when TNM takes place though.

The story really has to be set in a time when the moderators can't step in to fix things, otherwise they could stop the zombie menace with relative ease.

I enjoyed the contrast between Resident Evil's design patterns and Deus Ex's paradigms.

It's quite a difference.

Though I should point out that I've only played a handful of the games. I'm a PC only gamer and they're not PC games. They have been known to port them to PC, just not, you know, either consistently or fast. The fourth game, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, was originally released in 2000, as far as I know it has yet to see a PC release. So basically I know it from games one, two, and three of which two is freshest in my mind. They could have changed their entire paradigm by now.

Unlike Bobby I actually haven't played that many survival horror things, so I don't know how common Resident Evil's way of doing things is. It's basically an adventure game with zombies, shooting, and a limited inventory.

So like pretty much every adventure game I've ever played you've got only one way to do any given thing, and pretty much everything in the game is there because you need to make use of it to finish the game. Sometimes that means things are vaugely non linear, in that from A you can go to B, C, D and E in whatever order you choose, but generally the reason you can reach all of those points is because you need to solve puzzles at C and D that will give you items you can use at B to open a container in which you will find a key to open a locked door a E. And maybe one or two other such things at the same time.

Other times, especially when a section exists only so you can get from one place to another, that means there's absolutely nothing you can do there other than go from one end to the other (and shoot/evade any monsters along the way.)

Where in Deus Ex you had things like the Paris_Metro map. The only purpose for that entire level was to get you from the catacombs map to the club where you meet Nicolette yet it was filled to the brim with stuff to do. Buildings to break into, people to talk to, Jamie (assuming you didn't tell him to follow you to Hong Kong) places to explore.

I had remembered that RE2 was that kind of a game before I replayed it, the inventory and the cutscenes caught me more off guard.

The inventory space is, as I said, small. You have eight slots, each key you have takes up one slot, each type of ammunition you have takes up one slot, each anything you have takes up one slot except for certain types of weapon that take up two. Ammunition, thankfully, stacks. Nothing else does (so each health item takes up a separate slot.) You can't drop anything, instead if you need to free up space you have to locate an item storage crate and put stuff into storage. (The good news is that any item in storage can be picked up from any of the crates.) It can result in a lot of back and forth to transport items to the puzzles they go with, and at least once I had the experience of being totally unprepared for a boss fight because I'd left all of my medical supplies in storage to free up space for moving items.

I remembered that there were cut scenes, the prerendered ones are the best looking part of the game the game by far and would be kind of hard to forget, what I didn't remember is that, with the exception of the beginning and ending ones, your character is useless in them. Of the three I brought up in the story, the first is the only one that might be forgivable. The other two really rub in the fact that if you still had control of your character you'd have no problem preventing the negative outcome shown. That was annoying. I'm not sure whether a cut scene where they take control away so your character is forced to suck is more or less annoying than a cutscene where they take control away so your character can be awesome without you, but neither one is a good thing.

In spite of that, I do have a special fondness of Resident Evil. That said, I'm not sure how much of that is due to the games themselves and how much is due to the fact that I love what I have read of this description of them. The bit on NPC powers is quite nice, for example.

It definitely makes me want to write something similar, but at the moment I feel bad writing anything that isn't a part of my Master's thesis.

Two things. First, you're younger than me and already working on your Master's. You perpetually remind me how little I've been accomplishing in the time I've been alive. Second, I'd love to read such a thing if you wrote it.

In summary, good work and thanks for posting it!

You are welcome.

[Kee715]

Wow, this is great! It's better than what I've written, anyway.





...Heh, speaking of things I've written, I seem to have neglected making an update on my stuff. To the word processor, away!