Capcom has been trying to insert multiplayers into Resident Evil for many years. It is not news to anyone, however, that this has not turned out very well. From at least Operation Raccoon City to the most recent RE: Verse, some formulas have failed, both in terms of fan reception and commercially.
Does that mean Resident Evil has no room at all for action multiplayers? Well, I believe that it does have, and the answer lies in some guys very dear to the franchise: the UBCS (Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service), also known as the Mercenaries.
Who doesn’t remember Resident Evil 3 Nemesis’ remarkable opening? The mercenaries landing, the zombies coming, chaos taking over and the UBCS slowly being decimated? Moreover, how many of us have wished to play those scenes? We had a taste of it in the minigame The Mercenaries: Operation Mad Jackal, the debut of the Mercenaries mode in the series, but in the games, the UBCS was not seen in more depth until Resident Evil 3 Remake.
And how could all of this be incorporated into a Resident Evil action multiplayer?
I believe that the first advantage, in technical and practical terms, is that we already have the models of Carlos, Nicholai, Mikhail, Tyrell and Murphy in the RE: Engine, characters known by old-school fans and by those who entered the franchise in the most recent games. If RE3R did not please the fans of the classics, the reformulations made at the UBCS, especially with Carlos, were very welcome and a lot of people would be happy to see them back.
Additionally, we have already a lot of pre-existing RE2R and RE3R Raccoon City material that could be used, as well as REsistance assets that might be useful for rebuilding Raccoon in chaos.
There’s also a great deal of background material that can inspire the story of this game, which, if thought through with care, could even be canonical, complementing the story of Resident Evil 3 in a way I believe many of us have longed to see.
The original RE3 alone brings plenty of interesting material: the unforgettable opening (if it depended on me, it would be remade just like it is but in the RE: Engine; imagine the beauty!); a lot of files; the places in which we find dead mercenaries whose stories we could learn; and Operation Mad Jackal itself. RE3R brings its own versions of these, as well as its own content.
A little-known material that also brings the UBCS is the film Biohazard 4D-Executer, released only in Japan in 2000. Today it can be watched with subtitles in English here. The short-film tells the story of an UBCS team sent to Raccoon City to rescue an Umbrella researcher. It is not an extraordinarily rich material, but it shows the UBCS on a very particular mission.
We cannot fail to mention the novelization Nemesis by S.D. Perry, which I think would be a wonderful addition to the story, as it not only brings some of the early moments of the UBCS arriving in Raccoon City chaos but also an absolutely flawless psychopathic, coldhearted and calculating Nicholai who stays off-screen. I would love to see certain things he does in the book in a game.
By the way, Nicholai is everywhere, isn’t he? If there was one mercenary who was very well explored in the lore, it was the Russian soldier, for he appears in almost all the games related to the Raccoon City outbreak and is mentioned in many files. This brings us a variety of interesting details, such as Nicholai’s relationship with Sergei Vladimir and even his rivalry with Vector (although the latter is not canonical). Still in the universe of games, we also have the scenario Decisions, Decisions from Resident Evil Outbreak File # 1, in which the UBCS faces the Tyrant Thanatos and Nicholai makes an important appearance.
Raccoon City was like some haunted kingdom where he was the ruler, able to do as he wished – anything he wished. Lie, murder, bathe in the glory of another man’s defeat. It was all his for the taking, and with a payoff at the end.
He felt like himself again. It was time to play.
Nicholai in Nemesis, novelization by S.D. Perry
And how could this all be transformed into a game? Here I see a certain possibility of mixing terror and action, with moments with more of one or more of the other (but without making a mess like RE6), because you can either be on the street in the middle of several B.O.W.s in a frantic action or passing by a dark alley where a licker is casually strolling on the wall. But that would depend exactly on how much the multiplayer factor (and the possibility of playing alone offline) could affect these sensations, so the question remains open.
A feature that I consider essential is that each character has its own ability. Operation Raccoon City and REsistance, despite not having been successful, have as their strong point interesting characters, each with their own ability that can make a difference in the development of the operation. If we think about it, since Resident Evil 1 the factor that made Jill and Chris’s gameplays different was precisely that each of them has a different competence.
Multiple characters (playable or not) also offer the possibility to tell new and good stories about the mercenaries, about anonymous citizens who did not survive and about Raccoon itself. Even the police fight on the streets of Raccoon City could be availed and perhaps even used (and playable) in a special chapter, a highly attractive possibility.
I’m not a multiplayer player, so I honestly wouldn’t know what other gameplay aspects would be right to make a project like this happen. However, as a fan, I have an idea of the type of story the community wants to see, and which characters could take part in it. I believe that the UBCS has great potential to supply this demand satisfyingly to the audiences that Capcom wants to reach, but, as we know, they like to shelve some of their best possibilities. Meanwhile, we can only dream.
