The classic save system iconic to Resident Evil games, the typewriter, will not be used in the newest installment of the series. The newest issue of EGM features an interview with Jun Takeuchi, the producer of Resident Evil 5, where he reveals that the method of saving will be a more modern checkpoint and chapter arrangement.
I'm not sure exactly how to feel about this. In early Resident Evil titles, a good part of the fear for me was derived from the knowledge that I not only had a limited number of saves at my disposal, but that I would have to actively hunt them down. With the fourth game, the need for ribbons was eliminated, but the typewriter remained a shining beacon of hope, a reassurance that the game might just let me complete it.
With the typewriter gone, some of that confidence is lost, which would add to realism and possibly ratchet up the tension a bit. It could also mean that there will be no free will in the matter at all, and the location from where you continue after death is completely subject to whatever cruel whims the game may have.
Are you going to miss the typewriters or do you think that they're an outmoded concept far past their usefulness?
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Contest:
9:03 AM on 10.03.2008
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..what is the game even set in Africa? I don't remember anymore.
BTW, ending a post with a question is a cheap, easy way to secure responses, and I am very susceptible to that.
"These players are dying needlessly just cause there's not a typewriter to save at. That's all we have in offices is typewriters! And you're telling me TYPEWRITERS alone would save lives? That's the easiest thing ever!"
Then: First Aide Spray > Mountain Dew
The point of having the typewriters was so that you could continuously save your efforts after looking for shiny gems or overcoming a scripted enemy event and what not. You could always travel back to the typewriter, it was the safe zone of your zombie outbreak. With that gone, Resident Evil turns more in to a 3rd person action game and less of a survival horror title.
Quick time events, melee attacks, over the shoulder camera view, no real zombies in site, coop mode. I love me some Resident Evil, but this is not Resident Evil. They should have just called the game something else and made up an original story for it.
Im just tired and cranky.
I stopped caring about RE after 4. It was a fun game but it was no longer the survival horror that I craved. I'm still waiting on Eternal darkness 2 to be announced and for the survival horror renaissance to begin.
well resi survived the jump from fixed camera, which was another hallmark of the earlier games and no doubt the new save system will integrate well because capcom will make damn sure it does.
i just hope by the time resi 6 or 7 comes out that it's still recognisable as resident evil and not just another survival horror game.
typewriters are integral. as were the ribbons to keeping to the survival horror aspect
It's not about survival-horror anymore, it's about shooting motherfuckers in the head.
And I love it. More so than any other game, in fact.
Feeling bad about the removal of typewriters is like feeling bad about the removal of Armored Core's terrible old control scheme. Typewriters are how it was, unfortunately how it was happened to be stupid.
I'd like the tension to come from the environment and monsters, not some cheap ass save system.
Every typewriter appearance pretty much ends the "chapter." Just like this system. I never played any of the others, though, so maybe I just don't get what you meant.
It's time Japanese developers started stepping it up in this area. They make great games, but it is really disappointing at how their reluctance to evolve hurts their games. MGS 4 is is a step in the right direction, it show just how good these games could be if they started to rethink things like controls, camera and save systems..