Resident Evil 5

• 1. Introduction

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  In May 2026, Capcom's financial release reported that Resident Evil 5 had sold 19.01 million copies. That figure made this 2009 third-person shooter the best-selling game in the Resident Evil series. Capcom developed and published it, and it first reached the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in March 2009. Its hero, Chris Redfield, travels to Kijuju, a fictional region of West Africa, to investigate a terrorist threat. The game also stirred up arguments that few of its predecessors had faced. Critics asked whether it was still a horror game at all. Others asked whether its portrayal of Africa was racist, and a British film classification body ended up examining a single cutscene. How did a Resident Evil game come to be built for two players? What went into its look and sound? And why did a game that divided so many people go on to sell so well?

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• 2. Two Players, Nine Slots

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  Each player in Resident Evil 5 can carry exactly nine items, and the size of an item no longer matters. A herb and a grenade launcher take up one space each. Four of those items can be assigned to the directional pad for quick use. The game uses an over-the-shoulder view, with handguns, shotguns, automatic rifles, sniper rifles, grenade launchers and melee attacks on offer. Players can spin through a quick 180-degree turn to dodge enemies. Many boss fights rely on quick time events. As in Resident Evil 4, weapons are upgraded with money and treasure, and herbs restore health. Players still cannot run and shoot at the same time. New to this game are infected enemies who carry guns and grenades. Weapons can be upgraded at any moment from the inventory screen, with no merchant required. Items can also be equipped in real time. Puzzles are present, though fewer than in earlier games.

  The biggest change is that this is the first Resident Evil game designed for two-player cooperative play. The first player controls Chris, a former member of the Special Tactics and Rescue Service, known as STARS, and a member of the BSAA. A second player controls Sheva, a new character. Playing alone means the computer steers Sheva. After one full playthrough, the game offers the option of making Sheva the main character. Two people can play online or on one console with a split screen. In split screen, the top half belongs to one player and the bottom half to the other. Each half keeps a widescreen shape, so unused space sits to the left and right of both windows. A player in critical condition can be revived only by their partner, and dies if the partner cannot reach them. The game separates the pair deliberately at certain points. Partners can trade items, though weapons cannot be traded with online players. Everything else about the storyline is linear, and talking with other characters happens almost entirely in cutscenes.

  A version of the Mercenaries minigame, first seen in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, is also included. It drops the player into a closed arena against a clock. Customized weapons are off limits, so players hunt for weapons, ammunition and bonus time while facing waves of enemies, chasing the highest score. Mercenaries opens up after the story mode is finished. At release it was offline only, and a day-one patch was needed to reach its online multiplayer.

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• 3. Wesker's Plan

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  Five years after the events of Resident Evil 4, in 2009, Chris Redfield arrives in Kijuju as an agent of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. His mission is to stop Ricardo Irving from selling a bio-organic weapon on the black market. His new partner is Sheva Alomar. On arrival they find the locals infected by the Las Plagas parasite, who are called Majini, and the BSAA's Alpha Team dead. Delta Team rescues them, including Sheva's mentor, Captain Josh Stone. In Stone's data, Chris spots a photograph of Jill Valentine, his old partner. She has been presumed dead since a confrontation with Albert Wesker. Irving slips away with help from a hooded, masked figure. The documents he leaves behind lead the pair to marshy oilfields, but they turn out to be a decoy. Delta Team is found slaughtered by a mutating, troll-like giant. Stone is missing from the bodies. Hoping Jill is alive, Chris decides not to report to headquarters.

  Stone turns up again and helps them trace Irving's boat. Irving injects himself with a variant of the parasite and becomes a huge octopus-like beast. After they defeat him, his dying words send them to a cave. It grows the flower used to make the viruses of the Umbrella Corporation, along with a new strain named Uroboros. Evidence shows that Tricell, the company funding the BSAA, has taken over a former Umbrella underground laboratory and carried on its research. Inside are thousands of capsules holding human test subjects. Jill's capsule is empty. Outside, Tricell's chief executive, Excella Gionne, is revealed to be working with Wesker on a plan to fire missiles carrying Uroboros around the globe. Wesker hopes to pick a chosen few from the chaos and rule them as a new breed of humanity. The hooded figure is Jill, brainwashed. Chris and Sheva subdue her and remove the mind-control device, and she urges Chris to go after Wesker.

  On Tricell's oil tanker, Gionne escapes but drops a case of syringes, and Sheva keeps several. Wesker then announces over the ship's intercom that he has betrayed Gionne and infected her with Uroboros. She becomes a giant monster, and the pair defeat her. Jill radios in with a crucial fact. Wesker needs precise, regular doses of a serum to keep his strength and speed, and a larger or smaller dose would poison him. Sheva realizes that the dropped syringes hold exactly that drug. They inject him, then disable the bomber carrying the missiles, forcing a crash landing in a volcano. A furious Wesker exposes himself to Uroboros and chases them through the volcano until he falls into the lava. A helicopter piloted by Jill and Stone rescues the pair. Wesker, still alive, tries to drag it down, and rocket-propelled grenades finally kill him and the Uroboros. Chris asks himself whether the world is worth fighting for. Looking at Sheva and Jill, he decides to live without fear.

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• 4. Daylight in Kijuju

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  Production on Resident Evil 5 began in 2005, and at its busiest more than 100 people worked on it. Jun Takeuchi, who had directed Onimusha: Warlords and produced Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, was the producer. Keiji Inafune supervised the project. He had been promotional producer for Resident Evil 2 and executive producer of the PlayStation 2 version of Resident Evil 4. In February 2007, some members of Capcom's Clover Studio joined the effort, while others worked on Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii. The director, Yasuhiro Anpo, had been a programmer on the original Resident Evil. Several other veterans of that first game also took part. Haruo Murata and Yoshiaki Hirabayashi wrote the script from a story idea by concept director Kenichi Ueda. Takeuchi said the game would keep the Resident Evil 4 gameplay model, with "thematic tastes" of both that game and the original.

  Previous games in the series mostly take place at night. Resident Evil 5 plays out almost entirely in daylight. Capcom pointed to two reasons. One was the African setting, and the other was hardware that allowed far more detailed graphics. Takeuchi named the film Black Hawk Down as an influence on the setting, and his work on Lost Planet shaped the development too. Chris and Jill were redesigned to show how they might have aged, as Anpo put it, while keeping their signature colors, green for Chris and blue for Jill. Sheva went through several redesigns, all aiming at a mix of "feminine attraction and the strength of a fighting woman". The Majini were made more violent than the Ganado enemies of Resident Evil 4.

  The move to cooperative play came partway through development. The team first worried that a second player would drain the tension and horror. They later decided that rescuing a partner in trouble could raise both. Widescreen windows in split-screen mode were chosen so that one player's view would not sit directly on top of the other's and distract. The ban on moving while shooting stayed, to keep players tense by denying them free movement. Asked why the game skipped the Wii, then the most popular console, Takeuchi said that might have made business sense. He judged the Wii weaker on power and visual quality.

  The game runs on version 1.4 of Capcom's MT Framework engine. Cutscenes were recorded with motion capture, using custom virtual cameras that let the developers watch character movements in real time. Reuben Langdon, Karen Dyer and Ken Lally performed Chris Redfield, Sheva Alomar and Albert Wesker. Dyer also voiced Sheva, while Roger Craig Smith voiced Chris. Dyer's circus training helped her win the role, because Capcom wanted someone who could handle the physical demands. She did her own stunts and worked on the production for over a year, sometimes for 14 hours a day. Every human character was captured this way, and the non-human characters were animated by hand.

  Kota Suzuki was the principal composer, with extra music from Hideki Okugawa, Akihiko Narita and Seiko Kobuchi. Fifteen minutes of orchestral music in the electronic score were recorded at the Newman Scoring Stage of 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles. The 103-piece Hollywood Studio Symphony played, with Wataru Hokoyama conducting. Capcom chose Los Angeles because it wanted a Hollywood-style soundtrack with more cinematic value and global interest. The theme song, "Pray", was composed by Suzuki and sung by Oulimata Niang.

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• 5. From Trailer to Gold Edition

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  The 20th of July 2005 is the date Capcom first announced Resident Evil 5. Two years later, in July 2007, it showed a brief trailer at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the full trailer reached the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Store that same month. Another trailer debuted in May 2008 on Spike TV's GameTrailers TV. A demo came out in Japan for the Xbox 360 on the 5th of December 2008. North America and Europe received it on the Xbox 360 on the 26th of January 2009, and on the PlayStation 3 on the 2nd of February. Demo downloads passed four million across both consoles. More than 1.8 million of those came between the 26th and the 29th of January.

  A rumor then spread in January 2009. D+PAD Magazine reported limited-edition Xbox 360 box art claiming that two to sixteen players could play offline over System Link. Capcom first said its "box art isn't lying". It then corrected itself, saying System Link would support only two players. Microsoft also sold a limited-edition red Xbox 360 Elite with the game. That bundle added a Resident Evil theme for the console dashboard and a download voucher for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.

  The game reached the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in March 2009, alongside a dedicated space on PlayStation Home. That space, called Resident Evil 5 "Studio Lot" and themed on Kijuju, offered a lounge with items for sale, events and game-launching support. Some of its areas were limited to owners of the game. The Windows version followed in September 2009, built by Mercenary Technology. It used Nvidia's 3D Vision technology through DirectX 10 and added more costumes and a new Mercenaries mode. Downloadable extras were not supported on Windows at first.

  On the 7th of April 2009, a competitive mode called Versus arrived for download in Europe and North America. It has two online game types. In "Slayers", players score points by killing Majini. In "Survivors", players hunt each other while dodging and attacking Majini. Both can be played in two-player teams. At the 2009 Tokyo Game Show, Capcom announced Biohazard 5: Alternative Edition for the PlayStation 3 in Japan, due in spring 2010. It supports the PlayStation Move accessory and adds a scenario, "Lost in Nightmares", in which Chris and Jill infiltrate an estate of Umbrella co-founder Oswell E. Spencer in 2006.

  Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition came out in North America and Europe. It includes "Lost in Nightmares" and a second episode, "Desperate Escape", in which players control Josh Stone and Jill as they assist Chris and Sheva. It also holds Versus, four new costumes and an alternate Mercenaries mode with eight new playable characters. A Move patch arrived on the 14th of September 2010. On the 5th of November 2012, the PlayStation Network offered Gold Edition as a free download to PlayStation Plus users for that month. Gold Edition reached Windows on the 26th of March 2015 through Steamworks. That version blocked 3D Vision and fan modifications, though Capcom later confirmed a workaround. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One re-release came in June 2016, with a physical disc in America that July. The Nintendo Switch version followed on the 29th of October 2019. A 2023 Windows update removed Games for Windows - Live, restoring split-screen co-op.

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• 6. Critics Divided

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  Metacritic recorded generally favourable reviews for Resident Evil 5, with praise aimed mostly at visuals. Joe Juba and Matt Miller of Game Informer said it had the best graphics of any game to date, and that music and voice acting made the characters feel alive. Brian Crecente of Kotaku called it one of the most visually stunning games he had played. Adam Sessler of X-Play said the graphics were exceptional, and Corey Cohen of Official Xbox Magazine liked the fast pace. Edge found the gameplay exhilarating and frantic. Ryan Geddes of IGN noted a surprisingly high replay value, and Louis Bedigian of GameZone said it was "worth playing through twice in one weekend".

  Awards followed. The game took the "Award of Excellence" at the 2009 Japan Game Awards. Earlier, at the 2008 Game Critics Awards, it was nominated for Best Action/Adventure Game and Best Console Game. It received a nomination for Best Action Game at the 2009 IGN Game of the Year Awards. The 2010 Game Audio Network Guild Awards gave it five nominations, among them Audio of the Year and Best Original Vocal Song - Pop for "Pray". At the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the game was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, and Dyer for Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance.

  Several reviewers, though, saw a break from survival horror, and regretted it. Chris Hudak of GameRevolution called the game a "full-on action blockbuster". Crecente wrote that about halfway through, it dropped all pretense of being survival horror and revealed itself as an action shooter. Kristan Reed of Eurogamer wrote that it turned a survival horror adventure into a survival horror shooter. He expected the shift toward action gamers to upset some longtime fans.

  Controls drew complaints. James Mielke of 1UP.com disliked that cover from enemy fire worked only in specific areas, that aiming was too slow, and that players could not strafe away from enemies. Even so, he called it "still a very fun game". Reed also found the 180-degree turns slow and the inventory hard to reach. Juba felt that the ban on moving while shooting seemed like an artificial way to raise difficulty. Geddes liked parts of Sheva's computer control but disliked how she wasted ammunition and health supplies. Downloadable episodes fared well. Steven Hopper of GameZone gave "Lost in Nightmares" eight out of ten. Samuel Claiborn of IGN gave "Desperate Escape" seven out of ten.

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• 7. The Racism Debate

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  N'Gai Croal, an editor at Newsweek, said of the 2007 trailer that it held "a lot of imagery" that "dovetailed with classic racist imagery". The trailer showed a white protagonist killing black enemies in a small African village. Croal acknowledged that only a preview had been released. Takeuchi said the producers were completely surprised by the complaints. The second trailer, released on the 31st of May 2008, showed a more racially diverse group of enemies, plus Sheva, an African BSAA agent. Critics thought Sheva was added to answer the criticism. Dyer said the character was in development before the first trailer appeared. Takeuchi denied that the complaints changed the design. He accepted that different cultures might react differently, but expected no further complaints once people could play. Producer Masachika Kawata told Computer and Video Games: "We can't please everyone." He added that Capcom was in the entertainment business and not stating a political opinion.

  In February 2009, Dan Whitehead of Eurogamer worried the game might become a controversy. He said it played so blatantly into old clichés of a dangerous "dark continent" that it felt written in the 1920s. He added that the "light-skinned" Sheva made things worse. Hilary Goldstein of IGN did not think the game was deliberately racist, though he expected others to take offense. Hudak dismissed the allegations as "stupid". Dyer, who is of Jamaican descent, rejected them as well. She said she saw nothing racially insensitive in over a year of work and would have left if she had.

  Wesley Yin-Poole of VideoGamer.com asked Glenn Bowman, a senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Kent, for his view. Bowman called the accusations "silly" and saw an anti-colonial theme. He suggested critics might hold an "inverted racism" that says black people cannot be scary. One report described a cutscene in which black men drag off a screaming white woman. Yin-Poole said this was wrong. A single man pulls the woman, and he is not obviously black. The British Board of Film Classification reviewed the scene. Spokesperson Sue Clark said only one man pulls the blonde woman in from the balcony. She added that the BBFC takes racism seriously, but found no issue here.

  Academic voices continued the argument. Writing for the 2015 Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Harrer and Pichlmair called the game another moment in the history of commodity racism. They argued that its Africa is seen through a Western gaze. In 2016, Paul Martin of Games and Culture wrote that the game's theme could be described as "dark continent", drawing on colonial imagery and nineteenth-century European racial theories.

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• 8. Record Sales

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  Within two weeks of release, the PlayStation 3 version of Resident Evil 5 was Japan's top-selling game, with 319,590 copies sold. In March 2009, it became the fastest-selling game in the series in the United Kingdom. It was also the biggest Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 release the country had seen. By September 2025, the original PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 releases had sold 9.9 million units worldwide. Gold Edition added 2.4 million on those consoles. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions added another 3.8 million. Together, those figures reach 16.1 million units.

  The game's place in Capcom's own history shifted in 2018. Until March of that year, the original release was Capcom's best-selling single edition of any game. Then Monster Hunter: World reached 7.5 million units against 7.3 million for Resident Evil 5. Counting every edition, Resident Evil 5 was still the series' best seller in 2018, with 10.6 million sales. Resident Evil 6 was second at 8.4 million. By May 2025, Resident Evil 5 stood at 15.5 million copies. The 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 was close behind at 15.4 million and was expected to pass it soon.

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