Though we somehow managed to defeat Nessy, we’re not in the best shape. Coughing up blood is never a good sign. And yet, David Phillips and I still need to get the key to the church, so we can rescue the President’s daughter.
So we best get to work.
One of the things I can’t help but notice as I play through the game is exactly how tightly controlled the drip-feeding of resources is across the campaign. It’s not that ammo or healing is scarce. In truth, there’s plenty of it to go around, but the game does an excellent job of making us feel like we’re always low on ammo despite that.
Though I wasn’t involved with the design of the game, I would guess that the secret lies in the items that enemies drop as they’re killed. If the game sees that we have plenty of ammunition, enemies are more likely to spit out money when they die. However, if we’re running below a certain threshold, it starts to loosen its grip on our ammo count and starts putting ammo, gunpowder, and crafting resources in the loot table.
That fosters an illusion that we’re running low, just barely scraping by, when in truth Resident Evil 4 is holding an almost bottomless supply of resources to the side, waiting until we need them to throw them our way. We’re in much less danger than we actually are, and it’s important to the tone and the tension that it remains that way.
It’s the balance of a horror game. The player needs to feel overwhelmed without actually being overwhelmed. Like any work of art, it’s a well-crafted illusion that elicits a powerful emotional response. The game doesn’t want us to fail, but nor does it want us to think that the adventure is too easy, lest we get bored.
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