WT Lite

This episode is a slight departure from the normal format, as Squidge wanted to talk about the Resident Evil 4 remake with Nomad.

Players

Squidge

Nomad

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Show Notes

Because he started us off last time (and even though he was the guest for this one), Squidge introduced the episode and the idea behind it:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

Waffling Taylor’s Lite: the pocket size podcast that packs a gaming punch.

In this serving of bite-sized banter with a side of gaming goodness, we catch up with Nomad from the Retro Wildlands gaming podcast about the Resident Evil 4 remake. Spoilers included.

Take it away, guys

The WT Lite series of episodes will be peppered in alongside the “standard” episodes, so keep an eye out for them. These episodes allow us to focus specifically on a specific game or series, and really focus on our guest’s thoughts. But before the episode got bogged down with talk of Resident Evil 4, Squidge wanted to know about Nomad’s podcast:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So I have a podcast that I call the Retro Wildlands, where in said podcast, I explore the gaming Wildlands where I replay a video game that I played when I was growing up. Or I play a new to me video game, especially retro related titles.

In each episode, I’ll review the game, but my show is a lot more than that. I’ll take you, dear listener, into the game experience by combining music and sound effects from the game in such a way that if you’ve never played the game before, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I’m done. Or if you have played the game before, you’ll have a nice trip down nostalgia lane.

And the Retro Wildlands is on all the major pods. Spotify, itunes, PocketCasts, all the podcasting platforms so you can find us with ease if you want to join me on my expedition.

Favourite Resident Evil Protagonist?

Every Resident Evil fan has their favourite protagonist (or good guy), and Squidge wanted to know who is Nomad’s favourite:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

It’s something that I’ve struggled with for a long time, and I think depending on my mood, I’m going to have different answers. But I have to give it to Leon. And it’s not just because we’re talking about the Resident Evil Four remake or any of that right now.

He’s always been a fascinating character for me ever since the original Resident Evil 2, the rookie cop that doesn’t know what he’s getting into, that just he has a sense of justice and duty about him, and he wants to do the right thing, but he can’t seem to save everyone around him.

And as he grows throughout other Resident Evil titles, I like how heartened he can kind of be, but at the same time, he still has this edge of humour behind him. And he’s, to me, one of the more relatable characters out of the series.

How Did You Feel About The Remake Announcement?

Everyone had mixed feelings about the Resident Evil 4 remake, but Squidge wanted to know:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

June 2022: Resident Evil 4 remake is announced. Were you looking forward to it? Was the hype real? Were you feeling it?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

Oddly enough, in the very beginning, I was not feeling it.

My first reaction was, "how can the improve upon perfection?" Resident Evil Four released back on the GameCube way back then, to me at the time, was a perfect game, perfect experience. It was fantastic.

And these trends of remakes, while a lot of them were fantastic, it left me with a little trepidation, like, they’re going to butcher my classic here, and I don’t want any of this.

However, that was until I saw the very first trailer, or at least I think one of the first trailers - where they’re showing Leon in the village with the new RE Engine. And the chainsaw man comes at him - Dr. Salvador - and tries to bring that chainsaw down on Leon. And he puts his knife up and he parries it. At that moment, I knew I wanted to see what this game was about.

…

But then when it finally came out and it came with glowing reviews, and I heard some of the improvements that they made, I was sold. But admittedly Squidge in the beginning, I was a little skeptical.

How Did They Recapture That Lightening?

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

Considering when Resident Evil Four came out on the Game Cube in 2005, which is, by my calculations, about 18 years ago, it can drive a car in Britain; it’s allowed to drink.

So back then, Capcom caught lightning in a bottle… They changed the game. Then 18 years later, they did exactly the same thing: lightning in a bottle. How do you think that happened?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So really what it is, is they stuck with the formula that worked originally. There’s remakes, there’s reimaginings all over the place nowadays. That’s video games, that’s movies, whatever else it may be.

But what tends to work well, at least in my opinion, is when you stay fairly close to the source material, be that story, gameplay, that kind of stuff. But you add to it, you enhance it. You don’t completely overhaul it. And that’s a big key proponent as to why the Resident Evil Four remake did as well as it is doing right now, especially from my perspective as a huge fan of this game, the OG, I played it so much, I think I maxed out how much money you could collect in the game.

…

So that game was, like I said, it’s practically near perfect. So when they went and did the Resident Evil Four remake, they expanded upon what made that game great. So the gun play is still present, but it’s expanded upon it’s more fluid, it’s more weighty. They added a lot more quality of life improvements, but when it comes to the actual gameplay, it’s what they continue to add.

…

All of that combined with what I just mentioned, that’s how Capcom captured lightning in a bottle. And that’s why everyone is gravitating towards this game. They improved upon it in practically every way.

A Quick Fire Round Approaches

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

If you could bring any weapon from any franchise into Resident Evil Four remake or classic as a form of DLC, what would it be?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

Right off the cuff, I think of the Buster sword from Final Fantasy Seven.

Now hear me out. This game has a great emphasis on melee, combat and the parrying system. And I would love for Leon to be able to wield a two handed sword of any type in this game to see what he could do with it.

But the more I thought about the Buster sword, actually, as fun as that would be, semi realistically, I would love to see the lancer from the Gears of War series in this game. Think about it. You’re being chased by all manner of crazed villagers and you’ve got Dr. Salvador coming at you with a chainsaw.

What kind of poetic justice would it be to chainsaw him at the end of your Gears of War style lancer?

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

If you could bring an area to Resident Evil for classic or remake, any area you like as an extra side area, what would it be and who would it be populated with?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So follow me on a journey with this one.

So we’re going to talk the Resident Evil remake, specifically. And the area that I would want to add isn’t technically an area within the game, but I would want to add a nightmare sequence where Leon is back in Raccoon City for a little bit. Maybe after the very first chapter where he’s knocked out by the big cheese.

His character development points him towards the path of he’s still trying to reconcile what he couldn’t do in Raccoon City, but he’s come a long way since then. So I would love to see a nightmare sequence where he’s back in Raccoon City, maybe some spots of the Resident Evil 2 remake. But he has his training and his skills. He can use the knife parry he can move around while he’s shooting, all that sort of stuff, but he’s taking on zombies from the Resident Evil 2 remake, so those enemy types would be present, but he’s in specific scenarios where he’s trying to save the people that he couldn’t save.

So you’re going back to the original Resident Evil Two, and you’re reliving those moments, but no matter what you do, you can’t save the people that you’re trying to save. Leon eventually gets overwhelmed, and he pops out of the nightmare, and you’re back in the Resident Evil Four remake, as it were. I think that’d be great for character development. You could shoot some actual zombies, and I think it would be something that players would not see coming.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

Dance off time! Okay, so your characters that have to have a dance off are as follows Ada from Resident Evil Four classic, and Luis from the remake. So in this dance off, who would win, and what would the winning move be called?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

Now, while you would think Luis might be the obvious choice for a winner, given his natural charms and how he presents himself as a confident person, he strikes me as the type that would have two left feet when it actually came time to dance. He’s got the presentation, the outward flare, but when push comes to shove, I think he’d be like me. And yeah, he’s probably more of a wall fly than anything else.

So Ada from the Resident Evil Four classic would be the clear winner in my eyes. She’s already dressed for the occasion with her long, beautiful red dress. She’s very nimble, doing all manner of backflips and rolls and other acrobatics. And she has an ace in the whole dance move, which I like to call the Grapple Gun Grapevine, because grapevine is an actual dance move and it all rhymes.

So in researching dance moves, the grapevine is kind of a side to side movement that seems to kind of fit Ada, because side to side makes me think of shifty, which she is.

Favourite and Least Favourite Boss Fights

The Resident Evil games area famous for their boss fights, but Squidge wanted to know what Nomad’s favourite and least favourite ones in the original and remake of Resident Evil 4 were:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

Of all of the reincarnations and reimaginings of all the bosses - because a lot of them are slightly different while remaining the same. Which was your favourite boss, and which was your least favourite to fight?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So I’ll start with my least favourite to fight because I’ve got a huge bone to pick with this particular antagonist.

So I did not have hardly any fun when I had to re-fight Salazar after fighting him in the original versus the remake. So in the original, he is attached to the wall. He’s immobile, he’s no less dangerous, and you have to manoeuvre around him and his tentacles and find ways to do damage whilst looking for the weak spot.

However, in the remake, they completely redid him in such a way that the idea behind him is still the same. There’s the weak spot in the center. He’s been absorbed into this big mass, and you can do the most damage to him if you actually shoot him in the middle of this mass. But he is no longer immobile. He is extremely mobile. Now, his design, I will say, is very awesome. I loved his design. And if he happens to kill you with his one hit kill attack, it is very gory. And I found it the first time he did it pretty interesting. However, he kept finding ways to get me because of his extreme mobility and the way that the stage is set up as well.

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So whilst it was a very challenging fight and a very fun fight for what it was, I started to get a little frustrated as we went to the point where I had to stop, take a break for a moment, come back, and eventually I was able to best him. So while I appreciated the redesign, I didn’t have as much fun as I was hoping.

…

my favourite new iteration of a boss in the Resident Evil Four remake was fighting Krauser the first time you come across him. Now, in the original, those that have played remember the QTE, the QuickTime event that you had to go through when you were fighting Krauser for the first time.

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For the time and I still stand by this today, I’m kind of okay with QTEs, just in general. I don’t mind them. But back in the day, that was arguably revolutionary, especially to young Nomad. I love the idea of pressing two buttons quickly to dodge his knife thrusts and to be able to see it come within inches of Leon’s throat. My reflexes were his reflexes in the moment. Sure, that was awesome, but I don’t really think that holds up any more today, or at least not as well. And it seems more like a chore than anything else.

So I was curious how they were going to have that play out in the remake. And not only is the encounter not where I expected story wise, which was very delightful, to kind of have that thrown on me without being cognizant of when it was going to happen, but the fight itself was actually a real time battle. And more than that, all Leon had to use during that fight was his knife. And I really enjoyed the fact that even in the original, the knife play between Leon and Krauser had a weight to it, and there was a connection between the two of them when they fought. Now I got to connect with that as well.

As a player, it allowed me to use my parrying skills that hopefully I’ve been learning to master up to this point. And it really felt good to be able to parry his attacks and thrust my knife into him, land a hit. Every hit felt weighty. It felt like I earned it. But more than that, I loved the interaction between Leon and Krauser while the fight was going on. You knew there was a history between the two, a lot of it’s explained in the game Dark Side Chronicles, I believe; that or Umbrella chronicles - one of the two.

Surprises!

Squidge wasn’t talking jump scares here. He wanted to know whether there were any points of the remake that make Nomad yell out in surprise, or even caught him off guard:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

During the main story of Resident Evil Four remake - you can mention classic if you want - the main story, where there any parts that made you yell in surprise?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So there were a couple moments in this game that made me yell in Surprise.

A couple non-story related moments really quick to kind of throw out the the very first time that you fight the Garrador enemy. This is the big blind enemy with the big metal claws. In the remake, how you’re introduced to it made me almost crap my pants:

Leon falls down into this dark pit. You’ve heard this monster yelling, so you know it’s around. And in a cut scene, he turns around with his flashlight and you realize that Leon is inches away from this creature’s face. The detail, and you see his eyes sewn shut. You see his gnarled teeth and the blood dripping down. And then you realize this is the creature that can come at you based on the sounds you make. And then the game gives you back control. And I’m staring at this thing inches away, and it’s like, “what do I do? Do I press a button? Do I do nothing?”

And then I start slowly backing away and realize there’s chains hanging from the ceiling. And the moment I bump one of those chains, the creature hears me, breaks its bonds and starts running after me. And I remember just, “oh, no!” As I went into the next room to crouch down and make myself quiet again, that made me yell in surprise for sure.

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The second quick one, especially a new change that I liked but also gave me the creepy crawlies, was the very first parasite that you come across, one of the ones that kind of skitter across the ground and they’ll grab one of your enemies. And in the original, I believe they took it over, actually took its head off and tried to control it. And it was still a slow shambler, if it will, albeit dangerous.

But now in the remake, when it’s introduced, Leon’s walking down a long hallway and he sees a cult member at the end of the hall, and one of these parasites comes and skitters across and jumps on top of him, and I’m thinking, “oh, okay, I know what this enemy is.” I get ready to go. But what ends up happening is this enemy gets this unnatural burst of speed, very supernatural looking, and it just starts running at me.

And while Resident Evil Four has the best mechanic in that you can quick change your equipment with the press of the directional pad, I could not hammer my button fast enough to bring out my shotgun to put this thing down. I was mortified by how quick this thing was moving. I yelped out loud. I almost dropped my controller, just like when I dropped my controller in the original Resident Evil when that dog flew through the window, it took me by surprise that much.

Remake or the Original?

And Squidge’s final question dealt with the elephant in the room:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

If you could only play one version of Resident Evil Four from now on, which one would it be?

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

This is definitely a toughie, and I almost think that my answer would change depending on my mood. But if I had to make a decision, I would play…

You think we’re just going to give that one to you? Nope

"Chuck Testa?"Jay

you’re going to have to give the episode a listen to find that one out.

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

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Games Covered

We mentioned 18 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: