I Played Resident Evil’s Worst Prequels So You Don’t Have To
▼ Summary
– The author played the poorly-reviewed multiplayer game *Resident Evil Outbreak* to understand the background of Alyssa Ashcroft, a reporter whose murder is central to the new game *Resident Evil Requiem*.
– *Outbreak* is described as having bland levels, simple puzzles, and unintelligent enemies, with a frustrating communication system that limited cooperative play.
– The game’s survivors, including Alyssa, initially lacked individual storylines or stakes, serving primarily as avatars with no personal connection to the events.
– *Outbreak: File #2* provided Alyssa with a backstory, revealing her friend was murdered by an Umbrella experiment and her memories were suppressed, fueling her quest for justice.
– Alyssa’s later, minor appearance in *Resident Evil 7* confirms her relentless pursuit of Umbrella-related conspiracies, making her a dangerous reporter whom antagonists would want to silence.
For dedicated fans of the Resident Evil series, the announcement of Resident Evil Requiem sparked a deep dive into the franchise’s more obscure corners. The resurgence of interest in Alyssa Ashcroft, a character from the largely forgotten Resident Evil Outbreak games, highlighted a significant gap in the collective lore knowledge. These prequels, often dismissed as low points in the series, hold the key to understanding a tenacious journalist whose fate is now central to the newest chapter. While their gameplay has aged poorly, revisiting them reveals the foundational story of a woman whose relentless pursuit of the truth makes her a uniquely dangerous figure in the world of bio-terror.
My journey began with the original Resident Evil Outbreak. The opening cutscene effectively sets a grim tone, showing the chaos in Raccoon City from a disturbing, ground-level perspective. You witness infected hordes clashing with Umbrella forces and a Super Tyrant wreaking havoc, scenes that contextualize the desperation of the night. The perspective then shifts to a bar where Alyssa and several other survivors are enjoying a normal evening. This normalcy is shattered in a bizarre sequence that leads to a frantic escape.
The core gameplay will feel familiar to series veterans: shooting zombies, finding keys, and solving environmental puzzles. However, the experience is fundamentally shaped by its origins as a multiplayer title. Playing with AI partners, a perpetually sobbing waitress named Cindy and a police officer named Mark with dialogue that leans into unfortunate stereotypes, removes any sense of coordinated tension. Communication was famously handled through a flawed “ad lib system” that generated random, often nonsensical lines of dialogue. Combined with enemies that are painfully unintelligent and an abundance of healing items, the game offers little of the survival horror pressure the series is known for.
Navigation itself became a chore due to clunky mechanics. The same action button used to investigate items could also trigger a lengthy hiding animation, often at the most inopportune moments. I found myself accidentally committing to a ten-second concealment sequence when simply trying to pick up ammunition from a bed in the bar’s inexplicably large staff quarters. Despite these frustrations, I pressed on, hoping to uncover Alyssa’s narrative. I was disappointed to find that, in this first outing, the survivors are essentially blank avatars with no personal stakes or developed backstories. The atmospheric level design couldn’t compensate for the hollow characterizations.
The following year’s Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2 offered a slight reprieve. It functioned similarly but made a clearer, if uneven, attempt at crafting individual storylines. Alyssa received the most attention, to the point where it begs the question of why Capcom didn’t just develop a game centered on her. For most of the campaign, she remains just another selectable character, though players can find scattered documents hinting at her investigative work. One newspaper clipping details a pharmaceutical company dumping chemicals, linked to a mutated corpse, a classic Resident Evil breadcrumb.
Her story truly coalesces in the “Flashback” scenario. Here, we learn a friend of hers was murdered by a zombified test subject in a hospital. An Umbrella researcher named Greg Mueller suppressed Alyssa’s memory of the event. This trauma fuels her resolve, leading to a vow to achieve justice for her friend and expose Umbrella’s crimes. This brief arc, while not deeply explored within the game’s frustrating gameplay loop, provided crucial context. It painted a picture of a driven journalist transformed by personal loss, setting her on a collision course with the shadowy world of bio-weapons.
This context redefines her later, fleeting mention in Resident Evil 7, which is no longer just an Easter egg. A newspaper article by Alyssa about disappearances in Dulvey shows she never stopped digging. Unlike series protagonists who move on from Raccoon City, Alyssa Ashcroft dedicated her life to chasing every lead connected to Umbrella and its successors, likely being dismissed as a conspiracy theorist in the process. In a world where corrupt organizations thrive on secrecy, a reporter with nothing to lose and a personal vendetta is the ultimate threat. Whether Requiem pits her against a resurrected Greg Mueller, the creators of Eveline, or a new enemy entirely, their desire to silence her makes perfect sense. Her entire history, buried in these maligned prequels, establishes her as a persistent thorn in the side of evil, a legacy finally stepping into the spotlight.
(Source: Polygon)
