Resident Evil’s lost middle chapter will soon be in the public eye again in 2027 in all of the RE Engine’s remake glow-up glory.
Capcom has beaten the impossible expectations of recapturing the magic of two gaming cornerstones in their highly acclaimed remakes for Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4.
However, Code Veronica is very unlike the rest. It is often considered a forgotten or controversial title, a black sheep even, which brings some interesting challenges and questions to the table for the remake.
Veronica’s Beginnings
Despite not being a numbered title, Code Veronica is a blatantly canon entry. Not only does the game close off major story loose ends of Resident Evil 1 and 2, but it is also the first title to push the series into fully 3D environments.
This pushed the scope of a Resident Evil title to allow more diverse, vibrant locations, from a prison complex to a massive gothic castle and even an Antarctic lab. This technological leap drastically changed Code Veronica’s level design to push the traditional survival design past its limits to much larger maps and longer exploration/backtracking.
Though Resident Evil has always been known for cheesy action movie plots up to this point, this game goes even further beyond. Even from its first cutscene, Claire is running from a helicopter and jumping off of exploding buildings while performing John Woo-style gun kata against a secret cabal of bioterrorist agents. Resident Evil 4 is often considered the series’s pivot from horror to pure action spectacle, but the beginnings truly lie here in what could arguably be the series’s most dated mainline entry.
The Bad and the Ugly
One could point to Resident Evil 1 as being one of the most dated games of all time with its often parodied dialogue and stilted presentation, but it is undeniably memorable and has stuck with modern audiences for so long that even Resident Evil Requiem continues to joke about the “master of unlocking” line.
Code Veronica is the more unspoken, turn-of-the-century, kind of dated one. Alongside a cheesy script are other 2003 tropes such as a cross-dressing villain, superpowered martial arts battles, a soap opera-level scene in which a boy cries out, “FAAATHERRR!”; a puppy crush that has several male-gazy visuals of the female lead; and incredibly annoying voice acting. Much of which is still amusing and hilarious when viewed as a time capsule, but a hard sell for the average modern viewer.
This datedness also spreads to Code Veronica’s game design, which is infamous for being needlessly obtuse for blind runs—having much longer backtracking segments and having several soft lock states. Many of these problems stem from the game’s larger scope conflicting with intimate, classic survivor horror puzzles.
That brings us back to the main question: how will Resident Evil: Veronica adapt the original game? Or more appropriately, how will they modernize the 2003 title?
The Challenge of “Faithfulness”
The tone of the modern remakes couldn’t be more dialectically opposed. Resident Evil’s modern-era games have been going for more grounded, character-driven narratives with understated campy action elements and a more compact level design philosophy. Both of which would risk betraying the identity of the original.
Resident Evil 4’s remake is an interesting comparison piece for this question. The original Resident Evil 4 had been practically synonymous with over-the-top action and campy characters that would be severely changed had it taken a more serious tone. Yet the remake managed to win over many fans by simply retaining most of the silliness of the environments and villains in photorealistic definition while adding an emotionally groundedness to the main leads. You still get roundhouse kicks, suplexes, and shooting explosives while spouting “hasta luego,” while also being a contemplation of Leon’s guilt and hero complex from the previous game.
Resident Evil 4’s remake also had no choice but to overhaul the classic gameplay’s tank controls in favor of modernized traditional third-person shooter controls. Yet, through careful balancing and limitations to Leon’s movement, it still retains the arcade-like enemy swarm gunplay with a heavier emphasis on resource management.
The careful balance RE’s developers took was to create a new “take” on the classic game’s tone and mechanics that respect much of the original’s design but did not functionally replace the original.
A New Path?
It’s easier said than done in the case of Resident Evil: Veronica, considering the original’s numerous design problems and problematic qualities for the modern age. But with much less pressure to stay overly faithful than with Resident Evil 4, the end results of this remake are very much up in the air. Whether the developers are loyal to Code Veronica’s original ambition or not, this is by far the remake that has the potential to be drastically different from everything so far.
It’s an incredibly tricky experiment, but one I have been very excited to see come to fruition for years.
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