Resident Evil 5 Producer Talks About Africa and Racism

The Resident Evil franchise is one of the best ones in the horror survival genre, putting players against hordes of zombies or genetically mutated humans in a wide variety of scenarios and countries. Resident Evil 4 gained critical acclaim by taking the franchise to new heights in terms of gameplay and story, which brought it quite a lot of awards. The next title in the series, RE 5, promises to do much more than the previous one, once it gets released, at the beginning of 2009.

Recently, Masachika Kawata, the lead producer of RE 5, spoke with ComputerAndVideoGames about how this title would change the way players see horror survival games. He said that a lot of improvements had been made in regard to things like the realism of the gameplay, graphics or story, and that this game would follow in the path of success of its predecessor. 

One of the very controversial issues that have plagued the development of this title is the fact that the action takes place in Africa, so players will have to shoot their way through a lot of citizens from that continent. Some anti-racism groups reacted very strongly against Capcom, the developer and publisher of the game, which denied the fact that racism influenced the creative process in this title. Now, Kawata comes in to express his own opinion about the African backdrop of the game and about the critics of this upcoming title.

"We chose Africa because we're extending the storyline logically. Following the tradition of the Resident Evil franchise, you'll remember from Code Veronica – the Progenitor virus comes from Africa so we wanted to go back to the root of where the virus originated. For the people who think it's racist... well, we can't please everyone. We're in the entertainment business – we're not here to state our political opinion or anything like that. It's unfortunate that some people felt that way."

Let's hope that all of those anti-racist organizations take notice of his statements and try to think of the game as a whole. The action does take place in Africa so it's only natural that there are African citizens involved in it. But as we have only seen a few trailers and screenshots, we won't know anything for sure about the complete storyline and plot until the game is launched.