Remake Resident Evil 5 hasn’t even been announced yet, but the first problems are already being found in it. Journalist Matt Purslow wrote a column for IGN stating that the game needs a complete rethink, including the plot.
Racism was called Resident Evil 5’s biggest problem. The journalist complained that the players had to shoot the black population, who were deliberately portrayed as second-class citizens.
The game is set in a fictional West African country. The main antagonists of Resident Evil 5 are black people. Yes, technically protagonist Chris Redfield is fighting the Ouroboros virus, but the parasite’s hosts are depicted as a nation of gangs and primitives who are violent even before the infection. Intentionally or not, Resident Evil 5 positions Africa as the “Dark Continent,” an uncivilized world inhabited by a diseased population that must be exterminated by Western intervention in the name of global security.
Parslow hopes that Capcom will abandon the fifth installment remake and re-release another game instead. According to him, the game needs a huge amount of repairs, but in this case it will be a completely different project.
In the 2020s, in a post-Black Lives Matter world, there is only one acceptable response to a white man shooting waves of Africans during a video game: no.
Remakes may be able to reimagine the source material, but if you make too many changes it won’t be a remake, but a completely new game. If you take Africa out of Resident Evil 5, will it still be Resident Evil 5? Even with a vastly improved and grittier take on the continent – perhaps with a black protagonist and a more empathetic take on the viral outbreak – the experience would simply be too different from the original to be called Resident Evil 5.
Many X users responded negatively to the column. In particular, players were confused by the proposal to “improve” the remake by making the main character black.
“IGN blocked comments because Resident Evil 5 has black zombies in Africa… »— @p9cker_girl.
A remake of Resident Evil 5 hasn’t even been confirmed yet, but IGN and those defending Sweet Baby Inc are already working on rewriting it to “modern standards.” IGN naturally blocked comments »— @MeleeGames.
“The white guy from IGN actually said Resident Evil 5 was bad because a white guy killed zombies in Africa. So what about a black man compassionately shooting zombies in Africa as a solution to the problem?” — @ultrapurwater.
“I would like to point out that IGN was okay with Latinos being killed in Resident Evil 4, but black people are now protected, so they want to draw the line at Resident Evil 5.”— @CancelThisPod.
It is still unknown when the remake of Resident Evil 5 will be released. The game will probably be released after that Resident Evil 9, which will probably be released next year.
In a Japanese park, Studio Ghibli built a Howl’s Moving Castle and other locations based on the work of Hayao Miyazaki
Source: VG Times