‘Resident Evil 4’ and the art of interpreting the same (digital) score

The movie tarone of the most outstanding of this beginning of the year, opens with an auditorium conversation between the orchestra conductor who plays Kate Blanchett so powerfully and a journalist from The New York Times. In it, implicitly, the bases of the way of being and the conflicts that the character will develop throughout the film are sown. But, explicitly, what they talk about is the interpretation of a score.

They talk about Mahler. From his fifth symphony. They talk about the differences between Lydia Tár and her teacher (in fiction), the iconic Leonard Bernstein. From how he lengthened the work, he reveled in the melancholic, while she expresses the enthusiastic dynamism that can also be found in the same notes. It emphasizes that the personality of an orchestra conductor can recreate, recontextualize, reinterpret and update a melody written long ago. Video games, with their infinite eclecticism, with their current creative effervescence, cover almost all corners of art. Also this kind of divergent interpretations of the same score.

In 2005 it was published resident evil 4, and became, in its own right, one of the best games ever. Its mix of action and survival horrorthe perfect balance of its difficulty, its level design and its setting did not leave anyone indifferent (and its location in empty Spain, with its pesetas and its zombie villagers who insulted us in Mexican, neither). The game was so successful that over the years it has experienced fine-tuning. Because video games —most of them— expire; they expire because their visual or playable section becomes obsolete, and distances the current public from the heart of the works. So the game was, over and over again, adapting to technical evolutions. In 2007 the Wii edition was released, which used its motion sensor controls. In 2016 there was a remaster (a graphics-only improvement) for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In 2021 the virtual reality version came to Oculus Quest 2.

Each one of those reinterpretations was like a score played by different interpreters, like a work performed by different conductors. Last Thursday the remake of the game for PS5 and XBox Series, which supposedly squares the circle with all imaginable graphic, technical and mechanical improvements.

For those who sign this is a small disappointment. This reconstruction of the Resident Evil IV knows more than Resident Evil VIII than the first Resident Evil IVa phrase that will obviously sound like a Martian to those who do not know the saga but which means that the infinitely lasting aftertaste left by the original almost 20 years ago is not replicated in this new game, which is content (as if it were a small thing) with being, As the VIII, a great game of action and horror. The reactions have been very mostly, much more enthusiastic than those in this article.

No problem. It has an explanation. Many people, many players and many critics had not seen the work for more than a decade, while the person writing this had been playing most of those versions that had been released. And among all of them, above all, the VR version. There aren’t that many good, really good games in VR. But the ones that are good activate not only the sense of taste, but something more exciting and profound: the feeling that one is facing a new and overwhelming force, a power that can transform the tastes of society.

Resident Evil IV Remake It is undoubtedly one of the best games of this year. And surely it will be, with justice, a candidate for the best game of the year in a year that seems to be exceptional. But the virtual reality version was something else. It was a new form of leisure, a new way of relating to the interactive, narrative and even aesthetic world. They are not words in vain. What happened in 2021 was an evolutionary leap in a budding art. And that, of course, is not something that happens every day. By its side, this new version is just (just!) an excellent game. A game, yes, that everyone should enjoy.

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