A history and analysis of the story of Raccoon City, spanning across Resident Evil 2, 3, Outbreak File #1 and #2, Operation Raccoon City, and more, discussing how this multi-game story speaks to the modern fears of zombies, what makes it special in the context of the larger franchise, and how Raccoon City becomes the modern American Necropolis in pop culture.
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Sources:
https://www.giantbomb.com/raccoon-city/3035-73/games/
https://screenrant.com/resident-evil-every-raccoon-city-setting-ranked/
https://shmuplations.com/residentevil2/
https://www.eurogamer.net/why-resident-evil-2s-city-of-the-dead-scares-us
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-33/
https://www.svg.com/144255/the-untold-truth-of-resident-evil-2/
https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/GameFan_interview_with_Shinji_Mikami_(1998)
https://survivhor.biohazardfrance.net/morbidcreations/re_behind/re2_int_shinji.htm
https://shmuplations.com/residentevil2/
https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Raccoon_City_Destruction_Incident#Immediate_cause
https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Raccoon_City#:~:text=Raccoon%20City%20is%20eradicated%20by,thermobaric%20missile%20at%20the%20city.
https://www.owleyes.org/text/dantes-inferno/read/canto-33#root-422392-1
source
What are your favorite stories or locations in Raccoon City?
Monsters are horrible, that is a fact. But there is no greater monster than the men and women of umbrella and everywhere else umbrella influenced, bribed, threatened
thank you for the early chirstmas gift ❤️
👍Thanks👍👍!
Another excellent video!
Can't wait for more RE videos….amazing 🔥🔥I just wish Residecember would last longer🤣🤣
Instead of REsistance, they should REmake the Outbreak games
I put together what's basically a movie of the Raccoon City Incident last year using cutscenes from the games that take place during it and putting all the events in order with the dates they happen on and stuff if anybody wants to see the actual week-long events play out in order: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6OX_WQ7O04&t=343s
RE 3 is not a "much more heroic" game. Jill's primary objective is to "get out of the city" we see this with how she intends to take the helicopter before Nemesis blows it up. With that possibility gone, she has to find another way. She : fails to convince Dario Rosso to leave, doesnt get Kendo to leave, doesnt save Brad, doesnt save Tyrell, and fails to protect the antigen. I guess she saves Carlos but that was a back and forth throughout the game and she wouldnt have flown out without his team being there. The only person who is a succesful "hero" in Racoon was Claire for looking for her bro and saving Sherry.
Ever since I first played RE2 all those years ago, I have been fairly confident that with the exception of a mountainous region surrounding it, Raccoon City is based on/a stand-in for the place of my birth, in which I live to this day, capital city of Iowa, Des Moines, which is not an hour from REDFIELD, Iowa.
Both are large but not humongous centers of urban population almost overwhelmingly controlled by a single corporate entity, which for the 515 of the 90's was Principal Financial Group.
Nearly any image of our downtown skyline will show a colossal neon light of the logo for Travelers Insurance that's decades old, which for those unaware, is a giant RED UMBRELLA.
It was officially founded at a meeting site of two rivers, one being the Des Moines River and the other? The RACCOON. It started where DM and Raccoon blend into one, which is almost TOO meta.
While this point is obviously just a personal one which I expect no one but myself to find meaningful, the Spencer Mansion incident occurred on July 24, 1998 which was my 14th birthday, I swear to god.
So while it's entirely possible, I have always considered the chances that all of this, save for my last point, is merely a set of coincidences to be long odds indeed.
Mikami based Raccoon City on Des Moines, Iowa, y'all.
You almost lost me when you decided to skip Resident Evil 6. Not because the game is hated by some players means it deserve to be ignored. The game still fit in the horror context of the franchise. Horror about gouvernemental conspirations and secret Illuminati-like organisations who run the world for centuries.
Also Lickers are not the result of Zombies consuming a large amount of flesh but the result of the V-Act. V-ACT is the name attributed for the re-activation of the t-Virus following a period of dormancy. t-Virus variants using the V-ACT process will activate when the human host is incapacitated by either falling into a coma from starvation, or being severely wounded, prompting significant mutations as a last ditch effort to ensure the host's body's survival.
The first case of V-ACT induced by accident took place in some time before the events of Resident Evil 1, when one of the Umbrella researchers overseeing surgery on the T-002 was exposed to the Epsilon strain of the T-virus. The scientists began studying the man closely, ultimately giving the mutant form the name Crimson Head. By September 1998, a mutant strain of Epsilon had been engineered by Umbrella. This strain instead cause Zombies to mutate into Lickers.
So good to see someone doing Resident Evil tubin’ on here for once. Looking forward to the rest of the Re videos!
Great content, brought back my childhood, I played the first resident evil on ps1 on its release day and I was like 12 years old, IL never forget sitting in my room in the dark and watching the intro and that feeling of being so enthusiastic to start playing and watching cut scenes, it was a flawless game to me and it genuinely scared the shit out of me as a kid lol
8:47
"Sorry for the tangent."
Yeah, Matt, you put a tangent in a video that wasn't about wrestling? For shame!
Raccoon city is such fertile ground for content, I'm surprised they left it behind so relatively quickly.
I lived in Beaver, then moved to Beaver Falls… both are in Beaver County. I also went to Moon High School in Moon Twp.
100.000 lives just
So arrogant old men could play at being god……….sadly plausible nowadays.
Hey Matt, do you think you could talk about some underrated slasher franchises? Like Maniac Cop, Pumpkinhead, Re-animator, etc?
Cool
Fantastic video! The fall of Raccoon City is, imo, the pinnacle of Resident Evil. Yes 7 and 8 are good games with interesting stories. To me, RE hit its strides in 2 and 3 by playing on the two fears you touch on here. Nemesis is the ultimate example of this and it's a timeless story. Great job!
The remakes are amazing, but nothing beats the original 3 games for ps1.
I really wanted to enjoy this series, but the protagonists' hollow victories really get me down. I mean, good on Jill for slaying all those zombies, getting Carlos to see the true evil of Umbrella, slaying Nemesis, and escaping the city with her life. But the game should've also ended with the vaccine being recovered, the missile strike being called off, the corrupted officials being exposed and properly punished for their crimes, and the city's survivors being safely evacuated. Why didn't it? Why couldn't there be a good ending/bad ending system in those games, where the hollow victories only come from performing poorly, and doing a better job results in a happier outcome? That's why RE1's remake was the best remake to me. (That and the fact that zombies didn't suddenly gain a burst of speed when you got fairly close to them, and you could actually prevent them from doing any damage to you, if they did get ahold of you.)
Resident Evil is really nothing without Raccoon City. Any other place has been bland and boring from Code Veronica to RE Village. I find RE8 to be the most forgettable game in the series. Theres nothing interesting about a village. Once was enough with RE4. RC is just as much of a character as the ones we've played within the city.
Nice video, but I wish you wouldn’t be so dismissive of 6. It’s not that bad of a game when using co-op, and in relevance to your video, it takes the premise of a small controlled outbreak from 1, to the mass unleashing of 2/3, and finally to the ultimate fear of a world-wide pandemic in 6. I get it. People don’t like 6. But it has important themes and callbacks that take the examples of 2/3 and put them on a larger scale.
It all started all because of one man with a god complex who wants to create a new breed of superhumans and rule over them as a god
I remember when when Outbreak first came out. I wish that internet tech was up to par back then so that the game would have been what it was meant to be, and come on man. Raccoon City was a great name. Trash pandas are cute in their own way😅
Good video, but I believe RE 3: Nemesis ends October 3rd or 4th.
Capcom really hit it with Racoon City. I guess its very relatable to a lot of players since they probabaly live in a city and are given a way to see what a city of the dead looked like
No darecember? 😢
I loved this video! Thanks for making it!
I miss the 90s so much.
I did not like how short re3 remake was. Raccoon City as a setting deserved better, but now, Capcom is obsessed with abandoned buildings and small towns
I love how Resident Evil made humans into just as big of a threat as the zombies… Probably even a bigger threat. Umbrella is one of the most evil video corporations of all time, if not THE most.
Operation raccoon was unfortunately a little bit of a letdown but that tyrant, looks way fucking scarier than the Re2 remake.
Still hating on re6 but not 7 or 8 awesome
Does anyone else think they missed a trick by not having you going after and ending umbrella as a player character instead of it happening offscreen?
I love how this video talks about the sheer variety of nasties in Resident Evil as what truly sets it apart as a zombie game, because it neatly encapsulates both my own feelings as to why I love Resident Evil over any other zombie universe and why I found RE7 to be so disappointing; the sheer monotony of the fights against the Molded. Resident Evils 4 and 5 also dipped close to this problem with the shift from zombies and B.O.Ws to Plaga Infectees, but even they managed to cram in a semblance of variety to the fights with some variety in the monsters you fought. Sadly, the remakes of RE2 and RE3 both also suffer heavily from limited enemy pools, albeit RE2make gets hit worse.
and this trilogy is where it should have stopped ….. a sequals are just a mess ……
Mono memory themes carrying, honestly
How many virus are we making? fuck it, all of them.
I always figured Umbrella was so hell-bent on taking out S.T.A.R.S. because they wanted to eliminate the only organization that had demonstrated the ability to hurt them. They wanted to take out the team, before they could do any more damage to their plans, or expose anything.
I love resident Evil games ever since when I was a kid in '90s my brother taught me how to play Resident Evil 2 game when I was a kid in the 90s I'm the one that made the wish for Resident Evil came to be a movie and my wish came true and I'm a fan of the games and their movies and a fan for life 😊
I love how he said "and RE6…well let's just move on"… Yea probably best to pretend that train wreck of a game never existed…lol
Fun video, but 67 iq take on Boba Fett.
Re2 when you enter the police station for the first time and see the view while playing one of the best RE back ground music ever..
Umbrella: Like make a viral based weapon! What could possibly go wrong!?
People With an IQ Higher Then Room Temperature: Everything.