Resident Evil 3 Through Rose-Colored Glasses : A Case Study of Nostalgia and Ill-Received Video Game Remakes

Abstract

Remakes have become an increasingly prevalent market for the video game industry in the 21st century, and the popularity of these reiterations of old video game titles among audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with their source material has steadily grown alongside their accelerated production. Several video game companies have released ground-up retellings of titles in their acclaimed franchises, and Capcom, with its long-running series of Resident Evil games, serves as an influential example of this trend. Despite the commercial success of these remade works, however, their critical acclaim has varied. Resident Evil 3 is a case of ill-received video game remakes among players familiar with the original game in particular, its perceived shortcomings having been notably attributed to alterations in comparison with its source work in popular discourses.

This thesis examines Resident Evil 3 through the lens of nostalgia to, firstly, determine ways in which nostalgia informs negative reception of remakes and, secondly, scrutinize the misalignment between nostalgia conveyed by remakes and experienced by players. As its third objective, the case study inspects the relation of Resident Evil 3 to conceptualizations of remake. The methodological approach of the study involves a close reading of Resident Evil 3 as well as a thematic analysis of online reviews of the game to understand the nostalgic implications of the remake as well as the negative interpretations of the game by players harboring nostalgia for the source material. As the theoretical framework for these analyses, cultural theorist Svetlana Boym’s conceptualization of restorative and reflective nostalgia is applied by the player researcher.

The findings of the two analyses indicate that Resident Evil 3 conveys nostalgia via momentary and bittersweet references to the source material. Furthermore, the remake notably creates temporal distance to the source work through its critical allusions to the past as well as reinforcement of contemporary ideologies and values of the industry and its surrounding society. Due to this progressive approach to nostalgia adopted by the game, players’ conservative nostalgic desires for a more accurate reiteration of the original work remain unmet. Moreover, diverse reductions and alterations of Resident Evil 3 in contrast with its source material underline its implied reading as a reimagining rather than a remake, this purposeful rewriting of the source work resulting in a nostalgic mismatch between the game and its players.