I didn’t play for as long today, but I got to the substation, got the lockpick, and decided it would be a good time to backtrack and get all the previously inaccessible junk scattered around the ruins of this small town. Where is Raccoon City, anyway? I guess it doesn’t matter since it or the Arklay mountains don’t exist in the real world, but some people on Reddit seem to think it’s in South Dakota, others think it’s in Missouri, and still more folks think it’s in Kentucky. When Jill talked to the Umbrella Corp mercenary leader, Mikhail, earlier, he said the place was isolated, so I guess the sense of placelessness is intentional.
By the way, every actor putting on some kind of vaguely Eastern European accent is bad at their job. My god, I haven’t heard accents this bad since the last time I faked a Russian accent. I’m sorry the director made you do this, but please stop it soon. (Narrator: They would not, in fact, stop it any time soon.)
It’s easy to get lost in the aesthetics of Raccoon City, but somehow that just makes the linearity that much more noticeable. You are really just going in a straight line from point A to point B, and stopping at detours along the way. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been spoiled on open worlds for so long, but it really is weird how constrained I feel here.
I don’t know if it’s the character writing or what, but a lot of the living folks in this game are wildly unlikable. Just absolutely trash people. And even the people you don’t immediately hate turn out to be trash eventually. Like Murphy, an injured UBCS merc who gets tragically shot by his colleague Nicholai as Jill is trying to patch him up – turns out, he’s a convicted serial killer who targeted and killed over 20 gang members before being arrested and sentenced to life in prison. I swear to god, if Carlos turns out to be a shitlord I’m throwing my Xbox into the nearest creek.
This game even manages to make dogs be awful. I had to electroshock two of them to death because they were charging full speed in my direction. Fucking bullshit.
Sigh.
Anyway, I guess I’ll be tackling the goddamn substation maze tomorrow. Apparently it’s covered in meat and smells like death. Love that for me.
