Thanks to my inherent laziness, I didn't reply to this right away, when I'd first misread this as the suggestion that the 'original eight characters' returning from the 'first game' were Redfield and Valentine and...were there actually eight different characters back in 1996? Maybe not. And half of those are effectively dead as of Res3 anyway, I suppose.
     One thing I might not mind, thinking about it, would be a game in which Wesker was the primary playable character. It probably wouldn't work as a survival horror game, since Wesker doesn't appear to be afraid of much. But it could be a fun sort of timewaster to play the game from the other perspective. Maybe in a sort of Oddworld way, with the ability to use the lesser villains [zombies and hunters, in this case] as pawns to accomplish things one martyr at a time. That's the sort of game I'd write, anyway.
     Of course, rumour has it that, playing Outbreak online, you have the abiity to play out the level after death, attacking the rest of the players networked into the game. If I ever get round to picking up a PS2 modem [and, probably, a drive], I'll give that a shot. Given the basic immortality of most of Outbreak's zombies, I suppose you'd be able to maim people until the level was completed or the final timer ran out.
     I'm not sure what File Two does to the rumour about downloadable levels. Maybe nothing. Capcom reportedly made about thirty levels, while putting five on the disc itself. And, given the structure of the game, it's probably not impossible to have user-constructed levels, like HalfLife's TeamFortress and CounterStrike have. We'll probably have to wait and see on that.
     Not that I need any of this right away, of course. I'm still playing the first level at the moment. The second one is unlocked, but I've been having too much fun seeing how quickly I can sprint through the first one, and what little surprises there are to find. I wasn't thrilled with the minigame layout at first, but it kinda grows on you after a while--especially given the size of each level: you've pretty much got to run along, picking up nothing but the essentials, without getting bit, to finish the first level in under half an hour. Which is about how long it takes to finish the first three games [or, actually, half of Res2] with the same strategy. As far as I'm concerned, each level is effectively a game on its own. Which isn't bad when you've got five of them, and is even less bad when you've potentially got thirty.
     So I'm really wondering how big Res4 will turn out to be now. That should be a lot of fun....
--Gremlin

Follow Ups: