A Walk through a Hallway — Why Resident Evil hasn’t been for Tyler John Westhause

I read an article this morning from Twisted Voxel, a gaming site I’m not incredibly familiar with. The general overview of their article focuses on rumors and speculation regarding the upcoming title Resident Evil VILLAGE, or the 8th entry to the mainline Resident Evil saga. I’ve long been fascinated by the Resident Evil franchise, and I’ve attempted to hop in numerous times. Hell, my PlayStation digital games library has about 6 Resident Evil games in there, with the most recent edition being the Resident Evil 2 remake. The graphics to me, are stunning. The gameplay however, perplexing. The first time I played Resident Evil was only a few years ago…

The Summer of 2018 was a blast for me. Who doesn’t want to update their LinkedIn to feel self important? For the first time in my life, I was independent and alone, albeit crammed into a small apartment with numerous roommates. I made a big move out to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue a Partner Marketing internship with PlayStation’s Global Third Party Relations department. Leaving my girlfriend at the time was difficult, as we both felt things were leading to us moving in together. That was planned and discussed several times, but when the PlayStation opportunity was presented, I couldn’t exactly turn it down.

I moved into a small 2-bedroom apartment in San Mateo, California, alongside 4 other interns for the PlayStation Summer Internship program. Stuffing 5 dude 20’s somethings into a 2-bedroom is never advisable, as a Tyler John Westhause pro-tip. We were about 100 yards away from the front of the Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ, and we were excited.

A few weeks after the internship began, E3 2018 had arrived. As a part of the internship program, all interns were to be flown out for a 48 period in Los Angeles in which we’d be able to roam the E3 show floor and participate in a bunch of team building activities. Given the moxy I had at the time, I wanted to do more. I was able to work with my team and extend my trip to about 8 days in Los Angeles, getting the full-E3 experience. I was fortunate enough to go to the con everyday it ran. I participated in a ton of onsite activations. And I met a nice man from Capcom who invited me to the Resident Evil 2 booth. It’s one of the scariest experiences of my life.

The booth was complex, and exciting! In order to get your hands on the actual demo, you had to go through a haunted house/maze stylized from the Resident Evil franchise. You were given a flashlight, and told to walk. I went into the booth with a coworker who clearly was much more familiar with the franchise than I was. As someone who struggles with ADHD, severe anxiety, and as I recently found out, severe bipolar disorder, the constant threat of cosplayers jumping out with the sole goal of scaring the shit out of me was less than ideal.

My coworker led the way, placing himself into a combat-ready stance equipped only with a flashlight. Checking corners and hugging the wall, he rapidly breezed through the maze. I dashed behind him and tried not to panic. When we reached the end of the maze, we walked into a large room, with dozens of game cabinets set-up for play. We were walked over by my new Capcom buddy and sat at a cool little set-up in the corner of the room.

The demo was about 15-minutes, and it quickly became a stressful experience. What I quickly realized was that the cosplayers, dressed up as zombies (or whatever you call them in Resident Evil? I never got that far) would sneak up behind you to scare the hell out of you while you played. I positioned myself in that chair at a 90 degree angle, and arched my neck so I could whip back and forth between the room and the screen where I was expected to play a scary as hell video game.

I didn’t make it far, but I did see something that blew me away. Photorealistic graphics are something I’m still blown away by in games. They’re the work of talented designers, and at times technology that scans objects and created a static asset which can be inserted into a virtual gaming world. A great example would be during a crime-scene investigation in the title, Detroit: Become Human. I could swear a corpse you were investigating was real — I was blown away. Resident Evil 2 has a moment like that, where upon first investigating the dilapidated Police Station, you come across a mangled corpse. When lifting the head of the deceased, his mouth begins to tear. You see the gore of what has been done to him, and you are disgusted. In a presentation I gave later that Summer entitled “Gaming: What isn’t for Tyler Westhause,” I spoke to this moment in particular. I enjoy and am consistently amazed by games as a medium for escape and storytelling.

Resident Evil 2 is an example of one of these incredible gaming experiences.

Immersive.

Exhilarating.

Real.

But Resident Evil isn’t for me.

Tyler Westhause —

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IMDb for some reason?: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5376272/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0