Highlights

  • Resident Evil 5's shift to more action left fans divided, with some seeing it as a natural progression and others feeling it abandoned original elements.
  • Co-op feature in Resident Evil 5 received widespread disdain due to poor AI mechanics, hindering solo players significantly and causing frustration.
  • A potential Resident Evil 5 remake needs to overhaul the co-op AI, avoid technical issues, and add more narrative depth to enhance the overall experience.

Unlike its universally-beloved predecessor, Resident Evil 5 is a tad more divisive among long-time RE fans. Coming four years after Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5 decided to keep the franchise moving toward the more action-focused side of things, drastically reducing the number of puzzles in the sequel, and putting much more of an emphasis on set pieces, boss fights, and frequent combat encounters. To some fans, this felt like a natural progression for the series, but to others, it felt as though Resident Evil 5 was abandoning much of what made the franchise so beloved to begin with.

But regardless of where fans landed on Resident Evil 5 as a whole, there was one feature of the game that was met with disdain pretty much across the board, and that was its co-op. Another key example of the sequel leaning more into its action tone, Resident Evil 5 let fans play through the entirety of the game in 2-player co-op. While this could be a pretty fun experience with a friend, this mechanic had some severe setbacks for solo players, and if the rumored Resident Evil 5 remake is happening, then it needs to correct these issues.

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How Resident Evil 5 Remake Can Improve the Original's Co-Op

Resident Evil 5 Remake Needs to Overhaul the Original's Co-Op AI

Despite its drawbacks, Resident Evil 5's co-op mechanics were core to the experience, and it's imperative they stick around for the potential remake. But while Resident Evil 5's split-screen and online co-op functionality can actually remain largely the same in the original, it's the solo experience that's going to need some real work.

Simply put, Resident Evil 5's co-op mechanics made its single-player experience significantly worse, and it all comes down to the game's AI. Even poor for its time, Resident Evil 5's AI partner's artificial intelligence is laughably bad by today's standards. It's all too often that the player's AI partner will get stuck on walls, fail to interact with a co-op object, and refuse to get out of the way of oncoming enemy attacks, all of which can greatly hinder the player's progress, and thus be a pretty major point of frustration. The rumored Resident Evil 5 remake will need to overhaul the original's AI completely in order to make its solo experience even playable for modern audiences.

Resident Evil 5 's co-op could also be quite laggy in its original iteration, especially on PC. A potential Resident Evil 5 remake would need to avoid any technical issues like this from the get-go.

Resident Evil 5 Remake Should Add More Narrative Depth to its Co-Op

Having a partner constantly at the player's side doesn't need to be a bad thing, and in fact, it could end up being one of the Resident Evil 5 remake's greatest strengths if done right. In the original Resident Evil 5, playable protagonists Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar would barely interact with one another during gameplay, with most of their lines of dialogue only coming during cutscenes. This led to an odd disconnect between the characters' relationship during gameplay and cutscenes, and it's an issue that the Resident Evil 5 remake should rectify.

In the potential remake, Chris and Sheva should be given much more dialogue during gameplay. While the characters can't be expected to shout over Resident Evil 5's frequent combat encounters, there's still time between shootouts for Chris and Sheva to share a bit more about themselves, their history with the BSAA, and react to the action that's constantly happening around them. This would go an incredibly long way in making Chris and Sheva's relationship feel like more of a draw for Resident Evil 5, rather than something that's just been thrown in there for the sake of a co-op mechanic.