We Need to Stop Rewriting our Reactions to Resident Evil 5

Hi, my name is Gerard and I come before you today to offer an apology. In March of 2009, I got caught up in the hype of the release of Resident Evil 5 – sequel to a game that, to this day, is still one of my favorite video games of all time. In my excitement, I casually ignored the criticisms offered by many journalists of color, and instead read and agreed with what many of the (predominantly white) gamers out there opined: variations on “of course the enemies will be black, the game takes place in Africa”.

With Capcom’s current pace of Resident Evil remakes, we’re about due for an announcement on this divisive sequel any day now, the thought of which makes me apprehensive. With that said, I truly believe it’s worth examining not only what pitfalls the game fell into, but also why we may not exactly be ready to avoid those pitfalls in 2025. To do this, I’d like to start with my own experience.

Resident Evil 4 will always be one of my favorite games, and the recent remake only served as a reminder of what drew me to the franchise in the first place.

But upon a recent playthrough Resident Evil 5, the chorus of the 2009 Internet followed me: They’re zombies, not people. It’s set in Africa, obviously the enemies are black. One of the heroes is an African woman. I’ll admit, the gameplay was just as satisfying as I remembered, and it was easy to disassociate from the messages the game was sending and focus on pushing through the set pieces. But after I had stabbed and shot my way through countless minions, I took a second and thought about the game. And when the dust settled, I said to myself: “Wait…”

In 2019, I was a teacher in Philadelphia, I was engaged to the woman I’m still happily married to today, and I had also begun expanding the media I was engaging with at the nudging of my fiancée. Her experience as a Nigerian-American immigrant going through medical school was very different from mine. She frequently assigned me homework: Things Fall Apart to read, The Best Man Holiday to watch, and a healthy dose of 90s R&B to closely listen to. My wife once said that “education is a form of protest”, and in 2019 I was shocked to learn that expanding my point of view led me to the realization that Resident Evil 5 was, well, racist.

While much of the discourse I’ve seen mostly whispers that Resident Evil 5 had some problematic stereotypes, some of that discussion is coming from outlets who’d like you to forget that they posted articles that decried criticisms of the game in 2009. And even as a white man, I need gaming culture to stop rewriting history to say that the overwhelming reception of Resident Evil 5 in 2009 among white games journalists was negative or even self-reflective. It wasn’t. In fact, it was combative and defensive. And there are four things worth mentioning about this game and the reaction to it that warrant being addressed.

What do we see in Resident Evil 5?

Chris Redfield, our white male protagonist, descends upon an unnamed west African country and proceeds to fight a variety of “Manji” – semi-intelligent local residents who, due to experimentation, are afflicted with some incurable disease, turning them into blood-thirsty killers. Luckily, Chris partners with a light-skinned, straight-haired African woman named Sheva, who is competent, badass, and disappears from the story when Jill shows up (Sheva has not been seen since). Chris and Sheva traverse a variety of locations including factories, market places, a swamp, and an abandoned “tribal” village. They break, loot, and sell many of the items they find while blowing their way through many human-like monsters.

Without restating arguments made by more in-depth research, it’s worth noting that some of these tropes are common in videogames and seem benign at first: Breaking pots to obtain valuables, shooting hordes of monsters, and even switching playable characters are far from unheard of. Compare this to Resident Evil 4 – how come it’s not racist when people were shooting down villagers in an unnamed Spanish-speaking European country? The simple answer: Context. Even the videogame stories that take themselves seriously have to ask the player to suspend disbelief while your playable character nonchalantly mows through a small nation’s worth of human beings with minimal assistance and very little emotional trauma.

However, that context changes when it takes place on a continent whose economic, political, and social structures were ripped apart by European colonizers. When Leon Kennedy, a white American male, shoots his way through an unnamed Spanish-speaking European country, it takes a different context because Spain doesn’t have the same history of colonization – in fact they were on the reverse side of this equation. On the contrary, when Chris shoots his way through “Generic West Africa”, comparisons to colonization are hard to avoid.

What isn’t seen in Resident Evil 5?

To create the Resident Evil 5 vision of Africa, many things are intentionally left out because they contradict the story being told. Believe it or not, West African countries alone have large metropolitan cities, museums, beaches, and a vast number of cultural diasporas. Resident Evil 5’s setting feels more at home in Tarzan than reality.

Africa may have its share of economic disequilibrium, but if you ever watched any of the many movies from across the continent you will quickly understand that there are many diverse stories to be told. The Africa of Resident Evil 5 is blood-soaked, polluted, and dreary. And while Resident Evil is a horror videogame series focused on violence, horror as a genre doesn’t mean that we can’t include social commentary, authenticity, or even brief moments of joy.

While the history of many African countries is tied to political volatility and civil war, it’s unfair to constantly center those stories when war and political unrest have been part of pretty much every country’s history. Additionally, stories from non-African creators rarely acknowledge or depict the fact that much political unrest is rooted in European colonization when invaders destabilized existing systems of government to mold them into something more recognizable. It’s an entirely valid point to say that Resident Evil 5 reflects the reality of a western company testing dangerous chemicals on African people, but Resident Evil 5 doesn’t portray the victims of these experiments before their transformation, nor does it seem particularly interested in how it affects their lives, families, or society. Instead, they are transformed into mindless bullet sponges – no remorse necessary!

Whose voices were heard when making Resident Evil 5?

It’s hard for me to believe that this game was created to be racist. Like most flawed works of art, it seems merely ill-informed. The developers claimed that while making this game none of their “Black” employees complained. I cannot speak for any person of color, but saying “our Black coworkers weren’t offended” feels a lot like: “It’s cool, I have a Black friend.” Even if one employee is truly unoffended, they don’t represent the multitude of others who may be hurt. I’d like to believe that Chris Redfield is an intentional caricature developed by a Japanese game studio satirizing the hyper-masculine stereotypical American Military grunt, but all evidence points to the contrary.

I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the developers at Capcom – a lack of reflection and forethought produced the worst version of an interesting idea. When looking into the articles being written about why this game wasn’t racist, many came from white American and European reviewers (though of course, not all). This game was conceived and defended by people likely in positions of privilege who did not seem eager to listen to others opinions. Popular gaming websites even posted multi-page opinion pieces on how this game clearly wasn’t racist and everyone is overreacting. So where were the contrary opinions?

Who wasn’t heard in the aftermath of Resident Evil 5?

Do you remember the Ta-Nehisi Coates article which includes the line “sometimes it’s just racist”? A journalist, social justice advocate, and gamer, Coates is the author behind some of the most preeminent works on both race and colonization. However, for all the articles I read in 2009, I never saw Coates’ article until I started researching this piece. At the time plenty of game journalists seemed to feel they had a good enough grasp on what was and wasn’t racist to explain away why an American soldier who guns down generic Africans armed with spears was perfectly fine. As a white man, I don’t feel that I can explain how this game is racist better than a person of color, and in case you missed all the links in the article, I’m redirecting you to experts on the subject.

My motive here isn’t to shame you for liking this Resident Evil 5, because if gameplay were the only factor here I would also like this game. My goal is to have an honest conversation about the past. For some, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. I’m writing this because while the discourse around Resident Evil 5 has changed, part of that discourse seems to be people pretending they weren’t fully on board with the story being told over a decade ago.

I think this is understandable, even natural. People don’t want to feel bad about the things they’ve enjoyed because they’re equating it with their value as a person. I’d like to tell you right now to release yourself from trying to justify what you used to like and acknowledge that you, like me, weren’t fully aware. But with the gradual inclusion of more diverse voices in the gaming world, we’re beginning to understand why those stances from fifteen years ago were ill-informed. And that’s OK as long as we take the time and opportunity to listen and learn. But we need to understand whose perspectives are the most informed and be able to not take these criticisms personally. In 2009 I was wrong. Now, I know better and instead of rewriting the past, I can try to change what comes next.

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Gerard Visco is a recovering teacher who now does training and professional development for others in the field of Early Childhood Education. In addition to freelance writing, his insider game information of dubious authenticity can be found at @defrealgameleaks.bsky.social.

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Editor’s note: This piece was edited post-publication to adjust an incorrect assumption about the New York Times reviewer of the Resident Evil 5.