Resident Evil - Code: Veronica

Although it was mostly outsourced and didn’t get mainline status, Code Veronica vastly outstrips its predecessors in sheer scope. The first and second games set their primary areas up in an iconic orientation: two multi-floor building halves connected by pathways through a center hall. These were dense, with subsequent areas shrinking the scope considerably; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis leaned into the structure of these later areas and transformed their smaller scope into the streets of Raccoon City, with more wiggle room in the connective tissue between rooms. However, in all of these three games, there were distinct chokepoints between sections, with a major puzzle blocking progress to the next section. Code Veronica’s first disc sets up a full map of five of these smaller areas together and, as much as it can, removes chokepoints entirely. After escaping the initial prison area (half of which can only be completed later), Claire gets instant access to both the palace and the military training facility. An item obtained immediately in the palace gives access to the airport, and the residence entrance follows not far behind that. Keys for puzzles span the entire map, making revisiting older areas to discover new rooms or complete half-finished puzzles more common than the original trilogy. Code Veronica heavily relies on its adventure game trappings, emphasizing constant exploration and parallel puzzle chains over resource preservation elements or combat.

The majority of the multi-area interaction comes from finding a key in one area that corresponds to a lock in another. It’s not particularly elegant, and replacing the game’s central bridge hub with more routes between different areas of the maps would have made this more organic. However, by stacking multiple (mainly single-use) keys throughout all of the available areas, separate puzzle quest lines gradually open up and intertwine in a paradigm that departs from the aforementioned chokepoints. In the earlier model, a new main key (such as the armor/shield/sword ones from the first game) opened up a few rooms, with one leading to the next mini-area and the others being dead ends with goodies or another main key. In Code Veronica, the dead ends permeate the entire game yet feel less terminal, as the greater emphasis on single-use keys corresponds with far more keys in general, and virtually every room you explore opens up another place on the map. This would falter if these quest lines were isolated from one another, but accessing a new room from one key often yields items needed for one or more other quest lines, causing each one to seep into each other organically. At its best, sections can be done completely out of order. For example, there are two Eagle Plate “keys” obtained at different times, with one needed in the prison and the other in the training facility. Using a plate for one task will lock the alternative area off until the other plate is obtained, fundamentally rearranging the scenario sequence and changing what tools Claire will have available to deal with obstacles therein. The second disc switches over to self-contained areas as in the latter halves of the first two games, but this first disc presents a much woollier adventure experience with less segmentation than the titles that came before it.¹

Many areas, such as the residence shown above, are rather dim on first entry. The lighter can be equipped to add some clarity in these segments; it has the added effect of dispersing bats as well. [src]

This would not work as well as it does without the strength of its aesthetic cloak covering the fundamental puzzle routing. At a superficial level the actual look and feel of the game is divisive; the round, flat look of Dreamcast titles fell out of style shortly after this game’s release. However, it is the evolution of the environment that truly accentuates the new puzzle design. The training facility, which has some of the longer single-area stretches on both discs, is rapidly decaying over the course of the game, with monsters escaping, chemicals leaking, and multiple rooms blown to bits from heavy artillery. In her section, Claire repeatedly contends with emergency shutdown provisions activating and cutting off areas of the base, which often change between puzzles and make every return trip unique. When Chris arrives on disc two, the destruction has completely changed the layout of the area, making an elevator on the back side now the main conduit between all the rooms and splitting the front section into two separately accessible locations. The entire airport additionally gets woven in through side doors only accessible in Chris’s part of the campaign, making a new super-area in the process. This tactic rhymes with Resident Evil 2’s zapping system, which tied together two very similar campaigns with a few interaction points (the shutters, the weapon cabinet selection, etc.). By comparison, these two campaigns are rigidly sequenced, but they convey a much richer story through time with completely different scenario design between the two characters. This occasionally makes the shared areas confusing in Claire’s section when delineating between her puzzles and Chris’s, but given that the dense puzzle layering bolsters the depth of adventure, the ambiguity works.

Even small reinterpretations of old areas are meaningful: an early section with a typewriter cannot be accessed without crossing a metal detector with nearly all items deposited beforehand, but a return to the prison later on opens an alley behind it that ties the typewriter to an item box. Clearing the door suddenly makes this location the new locus point for the area. The chokepoint in Chris’s training facility section actually requires melting one of Claire’s Eagle Plates to access something inside of it, although as you as you traverse back to where Claire left it, a blast drops it into the sewer far beneath the base. Towards the end the game gets especially precious and throws recreations of rooms from the first Resident Evil at you, complete with twists on the old puzzles to trip you up. This coincides with straight-up area reuse from earlier in the game,² such as a disc one puzzle now intersecting with the famous tiger statue in a way that transforms both.³ If it wasn’t for that particular puzzle the sequence would seem too tacky, but repeatedly the designers manage to subvert expectations on each revisit in a series that had been steadily getting more linear with its environment design.

In Chris’s run through the training facility, this stairwell locks your access to different areas depending on whether it’s up or down, although as you continue to explore you will find ways to circumvent it. Knowing when to bring the staircase down with the SPAS 12 hook switch versus leaving it up to access parts of the sewer behind it heightens the routing, especially if you want to progress to the final area with the versatile weapon in tow. [src]

This framing is needed to enjoy Code Veronica; if you prefer classic Resident Evil combat and mechanics, there’s nothing for you here. Combat regresses from Resident Evil 3, with only the quick turn and the absolute ammo smorgasbord returning from that game. The newly buffed knife, which now hits multiple times in a single swing, opens up a focus on close-quarters combat, but once you’ve looped one zombie, you’ve looped them all, and the game has no problem throwing zombies at you where the other games would have moved on to more interesting enemies. The new “special” enemy of this game, the bandersnatches, exhibit the cartoon-y Dreamcast style the worst, looking like the queso-drenched Clayface equivalent to Resident Evil 1’s Muppet-esque hunters (although these return as well). The bandersnatches also trade the terrifying speed of hunters or lickers for a lumbering walk with an arm-stretch attack, making perhaps their only scary moments those when they can leap up to balconies and other places you wouldn’t expect them to follow you to. In the same vein, the story is silly, offensive, and more baffling than frightening, and it clearly paves the way for the overblown camp mysticism of the 4/5/6 trilogy. Code Veronica shines most when accepted as the total realization of the PC adventure game DNA latent in original Resident Evil. Just be warned that its strengths might not last between multiple playthroughs.