Resident Evil Masterpiece Theater Ep 2 Shows The Folly Of Escort Missions

As they hinted at in the first episode, Capcom has shared a new episode of the Resident Evil 4 Remake anime parody, and this one was definitely written by the gamers at Nippon Animation.

In Episode 2 of ‘Leon and the Mysterious Village’, titled ‘A Promise Between The Two’, Leon gets Ashley to promise to him that she stays close to him.

And then Ashley keeps getting kidnapped, by increasingly sinister and dangerous enemies. Leon rescues her again and again, but every time he does it, he gets hurt badly. The bandages around his body increase, until he looks like a mummy.

Finally, he faces a creature that looks like a kind of cuddly El Gigante. This El Niño Gigante hits Leon with a tree trunk, and Leon flies off to the heavens, because he just died again.

It’s a simple gag everyone can enjoy, but it’s more meaningful if you’ve played through the original Resident Evil 4, or for that matter, GoldenEye 64, Bioshock Infinite, Metal Gear Solid 2, and any number of classic video games.

Escort missions are mostly a relic of a different time in video game design. Having to escort another NPC through a certain section of a game is supposed to provide a certain challenge, something that will break up the monotony of the usual gameplay that exists in said game.

But as you can imagine, there are so many reasons to dislike escort missions, and that ranges from gameplay to narrative and other elements.

From a gameplay perspective, escort missions don’t work when the AI for the escorts are faulty, and they used to be like that all the time. You couldn’t trust the AI to go to the direction you wanted them to, and sometimes they would get stuck in place, forcing you to start over.

On a narrative level, escort missions can be really annoying. Ashley, Natalya and Emma will repeat their lines over and over until you get sick of them. And when that someone is supposed to be a distressed person like Ashley Graham, you could eventually find her screaming infuriating.

Some games tried to do interest things with escort missions, like Ico, but nowadays developers just don’t like to use the convention. There’s certainly many more interesting things that can make video games more challenging and fun since those times.

Resident Evil 4 Remake will be releasing on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, on March 24, 2023. You can watch Episode 2 of Leon and The Mysterious Village below.