Resident Evil – Code: Veronica

• 1. Introduction

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  In December 1998, three months after she escaped Raccoon City, Claire Redfield raids an Umbrella Corporation facility in Paris. She is searching for her brother Chris, and she is caught. That capture opens Resident Evil Code: Veronica, a survival horror game that Capcom released in 2000. It was the first game in its series to appear on a platform other than the PlayStation. Claire's search will carry her from a prison to the ice of Antarctica. Why does this game carry a subtitle instead of a number? Why does a series known for American horror suddenly turn to European gothic? And how does a game made for a struggling console end up so widely praised?

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• 2. A Saturn Detour

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  Resident Evil 2 was a hit in 1998, and Capcom responded by planning more Resident Evil projects across several consoles. One of them began as a rescue attempt. Producer Shinji Mikami and his team tried to bring Resident Evil 2 to the Sega Saturn. They concluded that the port could only happen with a large sacrifice in quality. Mikami's leadership then asked him to make something different for Sega fans, and an original Saturn game was born. When Mikami asked for more time, he was told the game would need better technical quality. That demand pointed toward Sega's upcoming Dreamcast, which made the project more appealing.

  Around the same time, a PlayStation side-story starring Jill Valentine was also in production. It covered the events leading up to Resident Evil 2. The plan was for that game to be a spin-off, with the more ambitious Dreamcast project serving as the true sequel. Then the PlayStation game became a numbered release, Resident Evil 3, and the Dreamcast game took the name Code: Veronica.

  Why the numbers fell this way is only partly documented. How seriously Capcom considered numbering Code: Veronica is unclear. At the time, Mikami and Flagship president Yoshiki Okamoto told journalists that numbers would stay with PlayStation systems. Games on every other system would get subtitles instead. A 2009 article by IGN reported that Sony bartered for limited exclusivity on the Resident Evil 3 title. In a 2020 interview, Mikami said Code: Veronica deserved a number more than Resident Evil 3 did. He blamed "political reasons between Capcom and the console manufacturing company." Whatever the cause, the Dreamcast game's break with the series went well past its title.

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• 3. Gothic Design

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  The Southern Ocean and Antarctica replace the United States as the setting of Code: Veronica. Earlier games in the series had an American feel, with the panic of American horror films driving their zombies and monsters. This one reaches for European gothic horror instead. Its environments use gothic architecture and gothic art, along with central European carvings and German-style weaponry.

  The story pushes the same mood. It follows a crazed man and the fate of his noble bloodline. Part of it is told through a lullaby, a choice meant to bring out operatic undertones that the designers associated with Europe.

  Mikami managed his art staff by following their passions. Artists who loved guns worked only on gun designs. Those who loved environments studied photographs of houses and castles.

  Detail also climbed during cutscenes, where the polygon count rose to nearly 2,500, especially on character faces. Capcom gave the zombies touches that were unprecedented for the series. Their jaws moved, and their eyes twitched.

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• 4. Claire and Chris

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  Half of Code: Veronica is played as Claire Redfield, and the other half as her brother Chris. The camera follows, pans and zooms around them, much like in Capcom's own Dino Crisis from 1999. Because the environments are built in real-time 3D, the view shifts as the player walks. Cinematic CGI sequences and real-time cutscenes carry the story.

  The controls and interface stay close to earlier entries. Characters can run, attack, and push or climb objects. A status screen lets players examine items for clues, equip some of them, and open a map and a file menu. Every note found along the way is saved in those files, and some are needed to solve puzzles. Inventory space is limited, so extra items go into storage boxes scattered through the game.

  Herbs restore health and grow more effective when combined with other herbs. Too much damage ends the game, and the player resumes from the last save point. The death of a partner also ends it. Some enemies are weak to fire or acid, so weapon choice matters.

  Clearing the main game unlocks Battle Mode, a minigame with infinite ammo and a series of locations from the story. Players can control Steve Burnside and Albert Wesker there, plus Claire in a new wardrobe.

  Claire herself looks tougher than she did in Resident Evil 2. The designers reasoned that her ordeal in Raccoon City had built her toughness and confidence. She dual wields sub-machine guns, and the opening cinematic shows her in a John Woo-inspired action scene. In February 2001, Mikami called Code: Veronica between 50 and 60 percent of his perfect vision for Resident Evil, and said future projects might supply the rest.

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• 5. The Ashford Twins

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  Rockfort Island, a prison complex that Umbrella owns in the Southern Ocean, is where Claire is taken. She is knocked unconscious on arrival. Some time later she wakes to find that the man who captured her has released her. A T-virus outbreak has torn through the island. In the chaos she teams up with Steve Burnside, another inmate trying to escape.

  The pair soon face the island's commander, Alfred Ashford. Both find him mentally unstable, because he switches between his own personality and that of his twin sister Alexia. Claire and Steve find a seaplane and flee. Alfred pursues them and switches their plane to autopilot, steering it toward another Umbrella facility in Antarctica.

  That base has suffered an outbreak of its own. The pair fight through its zombies and monsters, and they battle Alfred and fatally wound him. Before he dies, he frees Alexia, who has lain in cryogenic sleep inside the facility. She had injected herself with the T-Veronica virus, an experimental virus that the Ashford family developed 15 years earlier. Awakened, Alexia recaptures Claire and Steve.

  Chris Redfield meanwhile reaches Rockfort Island after receiving a message from Claire through Leon S. Kennedy. Learning she has gone, he begins to search for her whereabouts. He crosses paths with Albert Wesker, an independent agent since the Spencer mansion incident, who wants a sample of the T-Veronica virus. When Wesker discovers that Alexia is alive and carries what he needs, both men make their separate ways to Antarctica.

  There Chris frees his sister, and they look for Steve. They find that he was experimented on and injected with the T-Veronica virus. After mutating, Steve tries to kill Claire but fails. He regains control of himself and turns on Alexia, who gives him a mortal wound. Before he dies, he confesses his love for Claire. Chris and Wesker confront Alexia, and Wesker escapes with Steve's corpse for further experimentation. Chris defeats Alexia and leaves with his sister before the Antarctic facility destroys itself.

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• 6. Crew and Launch

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  A development staff of 70 people built Code: Veronica, and much of it was outsourced. Capcom's own resources were tied up with Resident Evil 3. Mikami and Okamoto's team at Flagship oversaw the scenario and direction. XAX Entertainment helped with environments, and Nextech handled much of the technical work. Capcom Production Studio 4 kept responsibility for art direction and character design. By September 1999, Sega was sending some of its own developers to add final touches and to help with programming so the game kept a good framerate.

  The public had known about the game since August 1998, when it was confirmed in development and promoted as the true sequel to Resident Evil 2. Okamoto, then Capcom's R&D chief, officially revealed it on the 6th of October 1998. Capcom of Japan hoped to sell it to roughly a third of all Dreamcast owners, which it estimated at around one million copies. By July 1999 the Japanese shipment expectation had dropped to 400,000. Journalists wondered whether that was only an initial shipment or a sign that Capcom had overestimated the Dreamcast.

  The original plan was to release the game near Resident Evil 3 and the North American Dreamcast launch on the 9th of September 1999. Delays pushed it into early 2000. To fill the gap, Capcom announced a Dreamcast port of Resident Evil 2 for that December. It was called Biohazard 2: Value Plus and included a Code: Veronica demo.

  In February 2000 the game arrived. Pre-ordered copies came with a numbered tag, special red packaging, and a unique title screen. Capcom also made two limited Dreamcast bundles. The Claire Version, limited to 1,800 copies, paired the game with a transparent red system, a transparent red controller, and a VMU. The S.T.A.R.S. Version used a dark transparent blue system, carried a S.T.A.R.S. logo, and was limited to 200 copies. Expecting high demand, Capcom ran a contest for the chance to buy the systems, and a soundtrack came out the same month.

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• 7. Praise and Numbers

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  Derek Williams of AllGame ranked Code: Veronica as the best game on the Dreamcast, alongside Soulcalibur from 1999. A critic at GameRevolution judged it the best horror game on the system, ahead of The House of the Dead 2, Zombie Revenge and Carrier. Many reviewers called it the best Resident Evil game to date and a "must-own" title for the console.

  Presentation drew special attention. Edge called it "the closest the series has got to emulating a Hollywood action feature." Most reviewers counted the graphics among the best on the Dreamcast and a showcase of its hardware. The CGI sequences won praise, particularly the opening cinematic, and the music and sound were called "top-notch" and "perfect." Maura Sutton of Computer and Video Games liked the adult twist on the story. Some critics noted that the game still inherited both the strengths and the flaws of earlier entries, and several faulted the controls.

  GameSpot gave it the "Best Adventure Game" award among console games. It was also runner-up for "Best Dreamcast Game," "Best Sound," "Best Graphics, Technical" and overall "Game of the Year." The editors wrote that "Code Veronica is the culmination of everything the developers of the Resident Evil series seemed to be trying to accomplish."

  In sales, the game outsold Shenmue within its first week on shelves in February 2000. The Dreamcast version sold almost 450,000 units in the United States and 1.14 million copies worldwide. Those numbers were weak next to earlier Resident Evil games and strong next to other Dreamcast games.

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• 8. Veronica X and Afterlives

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  Capcom announced an expanded edition in November 2000, because the Dreamcast's small user base meant the series had to continue elsewhere. Code: Veronica X reached the PlayStation 2 in 2001, and Japan also received it on the Dreamcast under the name Code: Veronica Kanzenban. It added about 10 minutes of cinematics revealing more about Wesker's involvement with Umbrella. The core game stayed the same, though Steve Burnside received a different hairstyle. As a pre-order incentive, Capcom printed Wesker's Report, a DVD styled as an in-universe documentary. In North America it was also sold on Capcom's website and handed out at specialty retailers such as Electronics Boutique and GameStop.

  Reviews of the PlayStation 2 release were mostly positive, though some complaints noted it was a mostly unmodified port of an 18-month-old game. GameSpot's Joe Fielder pointed out that Extermination and Onimusha: Warlords, both from 2001, had arrived in the meantime with better controls. The GameCube version, included in Japan's Biohazard Collector Box with a copy of Wesker's Report, drew average reviews for the same reason. The PlayStation 2 version sold 900,000 copies and earned $27 million in the United States by July 2006, outselling Resident Evil 4. It reached 1.4 million copies worldwide, for 2.54 million across the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 versions. Veronica X was nominated for GameSpot's "Best Action/Adventure Game" prize, which went to Grand Theft Auto III.

  A high-definition remaster reached the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in September 2011 and earned mediocre reviews, as critics found its design and controls archaic. Game Informer's Tim Turi still enjoyed what he called a "challenging classic survival horror game" and "a harrowing but memorable trek through the series' heyday." Emulated editions followed, including a PS2 Classic in July 2012 in Japan and May 2014 in Europe, a PlayStation 4 version in May 2017, and Xbox One backward compatibility in February 2019.

  Game Informer placed the original 69th in its "Top 100 Games of All Time" in 2001, and GamesRadar+ named it the 14th-best Dreamcast game ever. Aaron Boehm of Bloody Disgusting remembered it as one of the era's most memorable survival horror games. The story returned as a first-person light gun game, Resident Evil Survivor 2 - Code: Veronica, for Naomi-based arcades and the PlayStation 2. It returned again in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, a Wii light gun game from 2009 that also revisits Resident Evil 2. S. D. Perry wrote a novel adaptation, and DC Comics published a miniseries. A demo of a fan remake appeared in 2021, and Capcom shut the project down in 2022. IGN and fan polls have both named Code: Veronica a strong candidate for an official remake.

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