#manuela alone is more interesting than leon and chris put together

[resizura]

I've seen people on twitter talk about characters and trauma but none of them brought up Sheva, Manuela, Ashley, Steve, Ada, ECT. cause they're "not interesting and just poorly written" and would rather talk about the main characters and even Wesker (yuck)

Sorry for the late answer my computer just literally wasn't working lol!!

EEEEEE this is actually perfect because I've always wanted to talk about this but have never been able to articulate it properly so here we go. First tho I always find it funny when people talk about ANY resi character being poorly written and others not poorly written like.... This is Resident Evil... it's all poorly written (half-joking).

It's actually ironic to me that despite resi fans constantly talking about character trauma they bring up the most boring characters with regards to that. It is absolutely vital to Resident Evil that the main characters (Jill, Chris, and Leon, Claire to a certain extent) do not actually respond or react to their traumatic events.

Those three all respond in the same way which is to become jaded military bioweapon killers. Yes there's some exceptions, like Leon's dialogue in darkside chronicles or Chris and Jill "talking" about what happened in RE5 in Death Island, but for the most part? Nothing. This is because (to me, at least,) Capcom can't figure out what to do with them. I mean, it worked in the past because Resident Evil was not really a character-driven story at all, and they just didn't really dive into the characters' reactions to their circumstances much. Most of it is just "man this is just like Raccoon City."

The remakes definitely are though, trying to go for a more realistic and grounded approach, and that means addressing the characters' traumas more. It's too early to tell if that's done well yet to be honest, but so far I personally think the same problem is happening. The characters all react to the zombie apocalypse, yes, but nothing much comes of it. Even though Leon is explicitly Not Okay after RE2R, he's the perfect bioweapon killing machine in RE4R and it just doesn't quite match up with what I think Capcom is going for. But again, it's too early to tell 100%.

On the other hand, the other characters, side characters like Sheva, Manuela, Ashley, Steve, Ada... they're definitely MUCH more interesting and I actually think its because they're side characters or one-off characters. Because of the likelihood we'll never see them again, there's more of a story behind them. Their stories are contained to the (typically) one game they're in and we can build off of that! IMO they have more to work with because Capcom doesn't go into depth with their main characters! It's infuriating that a lot of the side characters are pushed to the side by fans just because they don't appear in as many games! I feel like a lot of these people too just have a limited understanding of them as well, like barely anyone knows about Manuela, a lot of people write off CVX Steve and only pay attention to DSC Steve, and Ashley, Sheva, and Ada tend to be reduced to caricatures of themselves.

I personally think these side characters are just much more engaging than the same old "we keep fighting zombies and stubborn bioterrorists and this is just our life now" main characters!