When it was announced that Capcom are making a full-on REmake of Resident Evil 4 in the same vein as RE2 and 3, most fans of the series rejoiced. But not all; some felt that Capcom were missing a crucial part of the series' canon in this new REmake saga by skipping Code Veronica.
Despite not having a numbered title, some fans see the 2000 Dreamcast game as the true Resident Evil 3 since it pushes the ongoing narrative further than the actual RE3, which was more-or-less a side story to RE2. Set three months after RE2, Claire Redfield continues her search for her brother Chris in Europe. She's learned a thing or two from Raccoon City, like the epic Matrix moves she displays in the opening cutscene (that can't be done in the actual game) and somehow, how to fly a plane. She's a fast learner if nothing else. Until she gets captured by Umbrella while raiding one of their facilities in Paris and taken to Rockfort Island, a prison complex in the South Pacific Ocean.
Claire gets freed by her captor and discovers *surprise* a T-virus outbreak on the island! She fights through some zombies until encountering another prisoner named Steve Burnside, the son of an Umbrella whisteblower who was also imprisoned on the island. They team up and make their way through the island before encountering the Ashford twins, Alexia and Alfred, whose grandfather was one of the founders of Umbrella. As the wardens of the prison island, the Ashfords are secretly plotting to recreate their powerful ancestor Veronica. But they aren't the only ones plotting...
The big reveal in CV is the return of Albert Wesker, who seemingly died in the first game. Before being built up to the living meme villain he became in 5, here he is with anime superpowers and menacing red glowing eyes behind his signature shades, hamming it up and vowing revenge against his nemesis Chris.
It's later revealed that the Alexia Claire and Steve have been encountering is actually her brother Alfred in drag, Psycho style. The true Alexia has been incubating in her homemade T-Veronica virus, and captures our heroes to imprison them in Antarctica. Luckily, Claire had managed to send an email to Leon in time to get him to contact Chris and inform him of her whereabouts. Why she didn't email him directly, especially when Chris and Leon hadn't even canonically met each other by this point, is a mystery. But logic is in short supply in the world of Resident Evil.
So, the second half of the game has you play as Chris after he somehow climbs up the of Rockfort Island from sea level. In other words, you gotta backtrack through the whole game as a different character, DMC4-style. Then Claire fights a T-Veronica-mutated Steve, Chris defeats Alexia once and for all and runs into Wesker, with whom he has a fight in a cutscene that ends with Wesker vowing he'll get his revenge, again.
Another reason Code Veronica was a big step forward for the series was that it was the first game in the series for sixth-gen consoles, which allowed the devs to experiment a little. It was RE to use real-time 3D backgrounds instead of pre-rendered images, and it also added new mechanics like dual-wielding and a convoluted type of item transfer between Claire and Chris years before RE0 and 5. The map has a confusing layout and the combat is particularly rough, but for those reasons I believe that makes it more qualified for a remake than a game that's already widely hailed as a masterpiece.
What do you guys think? Is Code Veronica an underrated gem that needs remastering or are Capcom right to leave it in the past? Sound off below!
