It’s that time of year where the sun is out, those who have a garden have a project to plant some flowers, maybe build a Tiki Bar, or just to sit outside and play classic animalistic fighter Bloody Roar on a PS Vita.
But for me, there’s also this other, more unpleasant aspect to garden life. Spiders are around, waiting to surprise me as I may stumble into a web stretching across the washing line. Even indoors is no safe haven, as I could be greeted with one in the shower.
A year ago I had written a piece on my fear of spiders, and since it was published, I’ve had a lot of replies to it.
Resident Evil 3 was one of the games in that article that brought the fear on with its scuttling monster arachnids, and now that the remake has come out without a spider in sight, I wanted to explain why they should now come back to the Resident Evil franchise, after a decade-long absence.
Survival-Horror was defined by Resident Evil in 1996, and it wasn’t just the jump-scares or the fear of running out of ammo that cemented its place in history; it was the monsters. Some were freakish monstrosities created in a lab, and then there were disturbing super-size variations of regular animals, from moths to snakes, and of course… spiders. My fear was, and still is, found in the classic entries, but there’s a whole other generation of Resident Evil games that have avoided eight-legged freaks – and that’s been both a relief and a disappointment to me.
I remember watching a friend play the original Resident Evil back on the Saturn. Even though the graphics were more basic, the movement was still creepy to me. The original Resident Evil had a remake way back in 2002 on the GameCube that made the crawlies even creepier. In fact, when I decided to give it a spin on Steam for this piece, you, dear reader, can enjoy the fact that when they appeared, I couldn’t have felt more uncomfortable. I had my partner try to finish the section for me, even though she had never heard of a Resident Evil game.
But I came to appreciate just how good they did look. They made the spiders from the clock tower-section of Resident Evil 3 look like joke-shop toys. They crawled and attacked in a more unnervingly realistic manner, and the sounds as well made them even more terrifying. In Resident Evil 0, they mercifully only make a small appearance at the basement entrance to the facility, halfway-through the game.
Resident Evil Code: Veronica, a game that’s begging to be remade, even if Resident Evil 4 is next in line, had its own spin on the oversized arachnid gimmick. A large spindly Black Widow spider makes an appearance in the Antarctica section, alongside its smaller brethren in a couple of rooms in both Claire’s and Chris’ scenarios. Still terrifying, but thankfully they were limited to such a small section. Playing these games for the first time and not knowing if I’d face my fear once again was always an unpleasant, yet thrilling sensation.
When I spotted on Twitter and Reddit that last year’s article was being shared, I discovered there are searches from people who simply ask others if there are any spiders in an entry before they start. I find solace in the fact that it’s not just me, and instead of them looking at wiki’s and asking friends, they seek out like-minded tortured souls to find the answers.
Soon after my article being published early last year, Capcom pushed out an update to Resident Evil 2 that saw spider-webs appear in the sewer sections, further raising the dread/anticipation that they were now appearing in the game as some form as a post-launch surprise. Or perhaps they were hints to the yet-to-be-announced Resident Evil 3.
But alas (with some relief), it was a red herring.
Early previews of the Resident Evil 3 reimagining had said that spiders were definitely around, but after my review and subsequent plays of it, I can confidently say there definitely aren’t any. The confusion could be linked to the Demio enemies that do walk on the walls and appear more spider-like, but they seem more like mutant ants (or, as described on Wiki, flea-like parasites), and much further away than their original appearances as pale-green Lickers. All the same, spiders were one of the many things omitted in the reimagined Resi 3.
But now that we are back in the limbo between new releases in the series until at least next year, it makes me wonder whether it’s now time to have spiders come back in some form. Granted, the power of the RE Engine could make them seem even more realistic and even more terrifying, but that’s not the only reason to do it.
What made the remakes so fun to play, specifically RE2, was the paranoia of what could be round the corner; what could be following you, and the foreshadowing of what could be facing you next. With the remake of Resident Evil 4 well-underway, it would be a great twist to see arachnids in the cave sections a third of the way through the game, to raise that paranoia, and bring something unexpected and unsettling to a well-known game.
I’m not saying to change it for the sake of it, but rather to tap into another side of paranoia and fear; the feeling that your worst nightmare could be around that next corner. Mix that in with all that is loved about the original Resident Evil 4, and it could be another fantastic remake that elevates the survival-horror via another fresh angle in this rebooted-series.
Granted, I may be walking into it sweating profusely and with one eye open, especially after my time with the three games I’ve played for this piece, but when it comes down to it; they’ve been away for too long now; maybe it’s time to bring the arachnids back, to have them be the multi-legged nemesis to Leon in Resident Evil 4 Remake, or reimagined in some terrifying new way for Resident Evil 8.
After all, being scared is what makes horror so enticing…isn’t it?
