How Does RNG Influence Play in Resident Evil 4?

It’s not exactly a hot take, but I’m starting to think Resident Evil 4 might be the Abbey Road of video games. It’s not just a title that course-corrected anyone who thought about flexing their creative muscles in its wake, but one that arrived fully formed after years of refinement and experimentation, effectively acting as a thunderous mic drop for their creators and the years of work that preceded it. In fact, this game has been so universally and thoroughly praised, that the idea of picking it apart critically feels like a waste of time.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to denounce a modicum of this game’s quality here. Anything I say for the rest of my mortal life that resembles negative criticism of RE4 should be interpreted as a cry for help, and the authorities should be alerted of my status immediately. What I am suggesting though, is that its monolithic status in the industry has likely steered modern critics away from really digging into the systems to discern what really makes the package sing. “Resident Evil 4 is one of the greatest games of all time” is a sentiment that’s as natural as breathing to most, myself included, so why even bother trying to justify that notion? I won’t be challenging that instinct today, as breaking down every positive element to RE4 would be an exercise in futility at this point, but there is a single ever-present thread that permeates through the entire game that I would like to discuss today.

I’ve got a theory - a game theory, if you will - that most modern “gamey” games have taken RE4 and its sneakiest qualities for granted, or just completely missed certain brushstrokes that really brought the piece together. It’s hard not to love everything here, but something that really stood out to me on my numerous recent playthroughs was how RNG influences every element of play across the game’s massive campaign.

We all know how masterful Resident Evil 4’s restricted control scheme is, but in my eyes, a big reason why is due to everything surrounding the control scheme. Say for the sake of argument you’ve just cornered yourself in a room flooding with Gonados. This might be a recipe for disaster in a traditional action game, but it shouldn’t be too scary here due to Leon’s plethora of ranged options, right? If you’ve played RE4 before (and if you haven’t, what are you doing here?), you probably know that encounters rarely play out in such a breezy fashion. Enemies and their movement patterns are erratic, their attack options frequently require different countermeasures, and the silent difficulty scaling normal mode means you can never be too sure of what’s coming your way. To make matters worse, any one of these may randomly spawn an even tougher enemy from beyond the grave, making things even harder to keep track of.

The introduction of Las Plagas-infected Gonados early on quickly showcases what makes this setup so effective compared to other action games.

It may sound like the deck is exclusively stacked against the player, but this dynamism swings in your favor too, with critical hits and item drops occasionally feeling like the determining factor between success and failure during bouts. Even in the most ideal of circumstances you always have to stay on high alert, with every layer quickly crumbling with the slightest of breeze and collapsing over your plan near constantly. It’s miraculous how you can play one room over and over again with a vague route in mind, and things can still go wrong.

The item drops are a huge point to consider as well, while the game gives you far more ammo than you could ever need, sticking to just one weapon will all but guarantee its depletion, ultimately forcing you to fall back on other options until you find more ammo. The perfect example is the shotgun: it’s easy to use it as a crutch due to its range and power, but for every encounter where you rely on it, another harder fight is probably just around the corner. Alternatively you could stick with the pistol, a weapon that clearly lacks the firepower compared to most other tools in your arsenal but sets up for efficient melee attacks if you have the precision to wield it, in turn saving your valuable ammo for a time where you’ll really need it. While this power-scale between your arsenal seems lopsided on paper, the game somehow remains near-perfectly balanced for an entire playthrough as a result of these little micro-decisions and small RNG checks you’ll encounter every 5 seconds

Loot drops from villagers and the economy as a whole go great lengths towards affecting Resident Evil 4 long-term, but it’s revealing to me that even on the highest threshold of difficulty, it’s something you never actually need to engage with. Due to the strength of universal options like your knife and invincible melee attacks, combined with the breadth of ways to use crumbs of ammunition for even the weakest guns, you always have a strong chance of survival. The core gameplay is so tight knit that even an in-game shop that lets you sell every weapon and item in your inventory simply exists as a way to mix and match gameplay styles on the fly. While ultimately unnecessary, it serves as a great excuse to try out distinct strategies in a way that feels totally unique to the one behind the wheel.

If you want to sell everything just to max out the Killer7 at the very end of the game and kill the final boss in 8 shots, you can do that! If you feel like killing off the Merchant entirely and only use the tools the game is guaranteed to give you, go for it! You’re all but directly encouraged to do so. It genuinely feels like the limits of play are only shackled by your creativity and tenacity for decision making. That’s true dynamism.

Past a certain skill level, the Merchant’s presence feels more like a suggestion rather than a guideline for your play.

Considering everything at play, from Leon’s limited control to the intense variables that shift the playing field with every passing second, you could say the outcome of the game is at the mercy of RNG in some way. Generally speaking, I’m actually pretty wary about this flavor of design. I always like to have control over my inputs and consequences if I have the dexterity to overcome a challenge, so the idea of a spinning wheel of fate guiding me towards or away from victory isn’t something I normally want to engage with. This also may be why I’ve gravitated towards fighting games as a competitive outlet over the past decade, as their mechanics are so cut and dry that the only thing standing in the way of success is my own skill (and often, my hubris).

Resident Evil 4 isn’t like the other girls though. The core mechanics and encounters are so good on their own that the designers didn’t need to hold back the player in other more heavy handed ways. They didn’t need to procedurally generate the shape of rooms to differentiate encounters, weapon stats are never clashing up against the power level of enemies in ways you can’t be expected to work around, and the player is still largely in control of their success at all times despite factors that are genuinely out of your control. Even an enemy randomizer, something that’s been proven to add to games in meaningful ways through the efforts of fan mods and rom hacks, is simply unnecessary when you already have a campaign so tightly packed with variety and interesting scenarios.

Other forms of play or genres in the medium of games have built their identity and flow around the roll of the dice, and while the unpredictable nature of these may excite some players, few things feel quite as impressive to me in execution as RE4. Bad luck never feels like it will screw over the player completely, and good luck doesn’t rob the player of their own personal victories in battle. It’s a factor of play that teeters the line beautifully between essential and inconsequential, doubly so when you finally reach a level of skill where you can finally turn every undesirable moment of combat into an eventual victory. Its always a critical element of play regardless of skill level, and despite that, it simply follows the player across the campaign and subtly forces them to engage with the mechanics in cool and interesting ways - nothing more, nothing less. It’s one of the more elegant threads of randomization I’ve ever seen, and is a clear sign from the designers that they were completely confident in the game they were designing. Capcom created perfectly optimized systems around the simple act of pointing and shooting, and could be as hands off from the player as possible to let the design of this suplex of a game speak for itself.

A companion video to this article can be found here.