Resident Evil – Code: Veronica

Claire Redfield firing at zombies. The environments are rendered in real time, unlike previous games which used pre-rendered backgrounds.

Resident Evil – Code: Veronica features survival horror gameplay, similar to previous Resident Evil games.[1] This includes the series signature controls, interface, puzzles, as well as zombies and monsters to battle.[1][2][3] Unlike previous games in the series which used pre-rendered backgrounds, Code: Veronica uses real-time 3D environments. Because of this, the camera is more dynamic than in previous games. The camera will follow, pan, and zoom as the player navigates their character through the environment, similar to Capcom's own Dino Crisis (1999). The story is told through cinematic CGI sequences and in-game cutscenes.[3]

One half of Code: Veronica places the player in control of Claire Redfield while the other half is spent with her brother, Chris.[4] Basic character actions include running, attacking, as well as pushing and climbing objects.[1][5]^:4–5 Items the player collects can be viewed on the status screen. From here, they can be examined to find clues to solve puzzles, and some can also be equipped. Also available in the status screen is a map and file menu. All notes found in the game are saved in game's files and may be essential to solve puzzles. The player can only hold a limited number of items at a given time; other items must be stored in storage boxes located throughout the game.[5]^:8–11

The player character may receive damage, which can be healed with restore items. Herbs, which restore character health, can be combined with other types of herbs to become more effective. Too much damage will result in a game over. At this point, the game must be continued from the last save point. A partner's death will also result in a game over. Some weapons are better suited for battling certain enemies, some of which have weaknesses to elements like fire or acid.[5]^:12–15 Once the game is beaten once, "Battle Mode" is unlocked. This mode gives the player character infinite ammo and places them in random locations with different enemies.[6]

In December 1998, three months after escaping from Raccoon City (seen in Resident Evil 2) prior to its eventual destruction (seen in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis),[7] Claire Redfield raids an Umbrella Corporation facility in Paris, in search of her brother Chris Redfield. Discovered by Umbrella's security forces and eventually captured, Claire is imprisoned on Rockfort Island—a prison complex owned by the corporation, situated in the Southern Ocean. Sometime after her imprisonment, Claire finds herself released by one of the prison staff, and discovers that an outbreak of the T-Virus has occurred. In the resulting chaos, she finds herself teaming up with Steve Burnside, another inmate seeking to escape.

In their efforts to explore the island and find the means to leave, the pair finds themselves confronting the island's commander, Alfred Ashford. Both Claire and Steve find him to be mentally unstable as a result of him switching between two personalities—his own, and that of his twin sister Alexia. Eventually, the pair manages to find a seaplane and use it to escape, only for Alfred to pursue them and switch their plane to autopilot, directing it towards another Umbrella facility in Antarctica. Upon their arrival, the pair finds that the facility had suffered an outbreak, and fight their way through the zombies and monsters within to seek a means of escape, battling with Alfred and fatally wounding him. Before he dies, Alfred frees his sister Alexia, who had been in cryogenic sleep within the facility after injecting herself with the T-Veronica virus—an experimental virus that the Ashford family had developed 15 years ago. Awakened, Alexia manages to recapture Claire and Steve as they attempt to escape.

Meanwhile, Chris Redfield arrives on Rockfort Island in search of Claire, after receiving a message from her via Leon S. Kennedy. Upon learning that she had left, Chris focuses on determining where and begins searching the island. In the process of doing so, he comes across Albert Wesker, an independent agent since the Spencer mansion incident (the events of Resident Evil), who is seeking to retrieve a sample of the T-Veronica virus. After Chris learns of his sister's whereabouts, and Wesker discovers that Alexia is alive and carries what he needs, the two separately find their way to Antarctica. Once there, Chris frees his sister and helps her to search for Steve, only for them to find that he had been experimented with and injected with the T-Veronica virus. After mutating, Steve attempts to kill Claire but fails, regaining control of himself to turn on Alexia, who then inflicts a mortal wound on him. Before Steve dies, he confesses his love for Claire. Meanwhile, Chris and Wesker confront Alexia. In the resulting conflict, Wesker escapes and manages to retrieve Steve's corpse for further experimentation, while Chris manages to defeat Alexia and escape with his sister, before the Antarctic facility self-destructs.

Claire was designed to be tougher than in Resident Evil 2, as is evident by these moments from the John Woo-inspired opening cinematic.

With the success of Resident Evil 2 in 1998, Capcom began more Resident Evil projects across multiple consoles. Code: Veronica originated from an unsuccessful attempt to port Resident Evil 2 to the Sega Saturn. After producer Shinji Mikami and his team learned they would be unable to port the game without making a large sacrifice to quality, Mikami was asked by his leadership to create something else for Sega fans, and so development began on an original game. When Mikami asked for more time to develop the game, he was told it would need to have a better technical quality, making Sega's upcoming Dreamcast more appealing.[8] Around the same time, a side-story game for the PlayStation starring Jill Valentine in the events leading up to Resident Evil 2 was being developed. This title was originally intended to be a spin-off with the Dreamcast title to be the true sequel. According to IGN, Sony bartered for limited exclusivity on the "Resident Evil 3" title, and thus the side-story was branded as Resident Evil 3 and the true sequel was labeled a spin-off and later titled Code: Veronica.[9] This notion is conflicted by interviews at the time, as producer Shinji Mikami and Flagship president Yoshiki Okamoto told journalists they wanted to keep the numbered chronology on the PlayStation systems, and give subtitles to Resident Evil games on all other systems.[10][11] Regardless, the game content remained essentially unchanged.[9]

Code: Veronica's story, setting, and artistic design strayed away from the series standard. While previous games are set in the United States and have a corresponding American feel to them, Code: Veronica is set in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica and carries a European gothic horror inspired design. This is made clear in the environments which feature gothic architecture and art in addition to central European carvings and German-style weaponry. In addition, the gothic feel is emphasized through the story. The horror in Code: Veronica is driven by this story which follows a crazed man and the fate of his noble bloodline. The story is told partly through a lullaby, and this method of storytelling is intended to bring out European operatic undertones. This contrasts to previous games in the series which were driven by the panic elements from American horror films, such as monsters and zombies.[12] With regards to managing the art staff, Mikami split them up depending on their interests. Those interested in guns worked solely on gun designs while those interested in environments were sent to photograph houses and castles for research.[13]

During in-game cutscenes, the polygon count is increased to nearly 2,500 polygons, especially on character faces.[10][14] Capcom added detail to the zombie enemies unprecedented in the series, such as making their jaws move and eyes twitch.[11] Claire was given a tougher appearance in Code: Veronica than in Resident Evil 2, the reason being her experiences in Resident Evil 2 built her toughness and confidence to handle any situation. This characterization is emphasized by her ability to dual wield sub-machine guns, and also by the opening cinematic which features her in a John Woo-inspired action scene.[8][13] Mikami described Code: Veronica as 50 to 60% of his perfect vision for Resident Evil in February 2001, and he cited that future Resident Evil projects may make up the other half.[13]

By the time Resident Evil 3 was released, development on Code: Veronica was nearing completion. Much of Code: Veronica's 70-person development staff was outsourced because Capcom resources had been tied up working on Resident Evil 3.[9][13][15] Shinji Mikami and Yoshiki Okamoto's team at Flagship oversaw the game's scenario and direction, while XAX Entertainment assisted with environments and Nextech handled much of the technical development. Capcom Production Studio 4 still handled art direction and character design.[9][15] By September 1999, Sega was sending some of its own developers to help add final touches to the game.[16] Sega assisted Capcom with the game's programming to help keep a good framerate.[10]

Code: Veronica was confirmed to be in development as early as August 1998.[17] Despite not being a numbered title, they still promoted it as the true sequel to Resident Evil 2.[9] It was officially revealed on October 6, 1998 by Capcom R&D chief Yoshiki Okamoto. Capcom of Japan stated that they were hoping to sell the game to roughly one third of all Dreamcast users, which they estimated would total to around one million copies.[18][19] In July 1999, Capcom of Japan announced their shipment expectations for the Japanese Dreamcast version were at 400,000 copies. Journalists were skeptical if this was only the initial shipment, or evidence that Capcom overestimated sales of the Dreamcast, given their initial sales estimate was one million.[19] Capcom initially planned to have Code: Veronica released around the same time as Resident Evil 3 and, more importantly, the Dreamcast launch in North America in September 9, 1999. However, delays pushed the project back to early 2000.[9] To make up for the game's absence, Capcom announced they would release a port of Resident Evil 2 for the Dreamcast that December.[20] This release, called Biohazard 2: Value Plus, included a demo for Code: Veronica.[21]

Low sales of the Dreamcast negatively impacted sales of Code: Veronica.

Code: Veronica was released in February 2000.[9] Pre-ordered copies came with a unique numbered tag, special red packaging, and a unique title screen.[22] Limited Dreamcast system bundles were also released to commemorate the game's release. The "Claire Version", limited to 1,800 copies, consisted of the Code: Veronica game, a pink system, pink controller, and a VMU. The other bundle, known as the "S.T.A.R.S. Version", has the items except the system is a dark transparent blue and features a "S.T.A.R.S." logo. This bundle was limited to 200 copies. Expecting high demand, Capcom set up a contest for fans to enter to win an opportunity to purchase the systems.[23] A soundtrack was released in February 2000 as well.[24]

Code: Veronica released to critical acclaim; many critics believed it to be the best entry in the Resident Evil series at the time, and a "must-own" for the Dreamcast.[3][4][6][42][36] Derek Williams of AllGame called it the best game for the system along with Soul Calibur (1999).[6] A critic from Game Revolution found it to be the best of all the horror games on the Dreamcast, towering the likes of The House of the Dead 2 (1999), Zombie Revenge (1999), and Carrier (2000).[42] Next Generation dubbed it "the best game yet for Dreamcast—in fact, one of the best games we've seen in the past couple of years."[43]

The game's atmosphere and presentation received high praise.[1][6][36][44] Critics at Edge called it "the closest the series has got to emulating a Hollywood action feature".[37] Most reviewers found the graphics as being some of the very best on the Dreamcast and being a testament to the power of its hardware.[4][6] Along with this, critics pointed out Code: Veronica's use of real-time backgrounds and a dynamic camera as an improvement from the pre-rendered backgrounds of previous series entries.[3][6][37] The CGI sequences were also praised, especially the opening cinematic.[3][6] The use of music and sound was called "top-notch" and "perfect".[1][6] The story received positive reviews. Maura Sutton of Computer and Video Games praised the adult twist on the narrative.[3][6][36] Some critics pointed out that despite improvements, the game is still a Resident Evil title at heart, and therefore inherited the good and bad qualities of previous games.[1][42] The controls were a negative point of criticism between some reviews.[1][4]

Reviews for the PlayStation 2 release of Code: Veronica X were mostly positive. Critics shared similar opinions to the Dreamcast reviews, but some complaints were drawn from it being a mostly unmodified port of an 18-month-old Dreamcast game.[2][46][47][48] GameSpot's Joe Fielder pointed out that Sony's Extermination (2001) and Capcom's own Onimusha: Warlords (2001) had been released during this gap with better controls.[2] The GameCube version garnered average reviews, due to its unaltered, ported status.[49][50] The high definition remaster was released over a decade after the original and was welcomed with mediocre reviews. Critics commonly cited the game's archaic design and controls as making it less appealing compared with contemporary offerings.[51][52][53] The remaster did find some positive reception from Game Informer's Tim Turi who found enjoyment from playing what he called a "challenging classic survival horror game" and "a harrowing but memorable trek through the series' heyday."[54]

Code: Veronica won GameSpot's annual "Best Adventure Game" award among console games, and was a runner-up for the publication's "Best Dreamcast Game", "Best Sound", "Best Graphics, Technical" and overall "Game of the Year" prizes. The editors argued that "Code Veronica is the culmination of everything the developers of the Resident Evil series seemed to be trying to accomplish."[55] The following year, Veronica X was nominated for GameSpot's annual "Best Action/Adventure Game" prize among console games, which went to Grand Theft Auto III.[56]

Game Informer ranked Code: Veronica as 69th in their "Top 100 Games of All Time" in 2001.[61] GamesRadar named it the 14th-best Dreamcast game of all time.[62]

The story in Code: Veronica has been adapted into other works. Resident Evil Survivor 2 – Code: Veronica (2001) for Naomi-based arcades and PlayStation 2 follows the story of Code: Veronica from a first-person view with light gun shooter-style gameplay.[63] Similarly, another light gun game, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (2009) was released for the Wii and features sequences set within Code: Veronica along with Resident Evil 2.[64] As with previous Resident Evil titles, the story was adapted into a novel written by S. D. Perry. Also, a miniseries comic was published by DC Comics.[65]

• Official website via Internet Archive (in Japanese)
• Official website (Kanzenban) via Internet Archive (in Japanese)
• Official website (GameCube) via Internet Archive (in Japanese)
• Creature designs at Satoshi Nakai's personal homepage with commentary via Internet Archive (in Japanese)