Roleplaying — residentevil

Roleplaying is a reoccurring gameplay element in the Resident Evil franchise. "Roleplaying" in this case is being treated loosely as cases where the player's actions affect the story in the form of stage progression and/or which cutscenes play.

History

The first Resident Evil used roleplaying as a prominent gameplay feature and as a means of adding replay value. Situations where the player's actions have an affect on the story and when results are being playing out are not always explicitly communicated to the player. This allowed for different experiences on repeated play-throughs. Roleplaying continued to be used as a stylistic choice generally to with a lesser degree of prominence throughout the franchise with some games having an additional more formal roleplaying system. Resident Evil 2 did added the "Zapping" system where the results of the players actions in the "A" scenario would all later be experienced in the "B" scenario, and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis instead added "Live Selection".

The titles developed and released between 1998 and 2004 continued to keep transforming the concept; and Resident Evil Survivor simply had a linear route that splits into three paths paired with their own scenes and events that converge back into one path then repeats. Resident Evil CODE:Veronica and Resident Evil 0 retained roleplaying situations but with very little affect on gameplay or depiction of events.

Resident Evil 4 and onward featured almost no roleplaying or reduced them to a few very specific events. Resident Evil 6 notably only features one event that has an "either A or B" cutscene and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has one event late in the game that determines the which of the two endings is reached. Resident Evil: Revelations 2 brought back roleplaying as a prominent feature using a system similar to Zapping but with more switching between "A" and "B" phases.