Eurogamer's Resident Evil 5 hands on preview by Dan Whitehead brought up the racist imagery purportedly portrayed by the game. Resident Evil 5 got plenty of flak for its portrayal of Africa in last years trailer for the game at E3.
Newsweek's N'Gai Croal mentioned the trailer reminded him a lot about the dark history of the portrayal of Africa by western explorers. Since then, Capcom has made the infected in the game a little more multi ethnic.
The Eurogamer article highlights that:
Later on, there's a cut-scene of a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men. When you attempt to rescue her, she's been turned and must be killed. If this has any relevance to the story it's not apparent in the first three chapters, and it plays so blatantly into the old clichés of the dangerous "dark continent" and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s.
That Sheva neatly fits the approved Hollywood model of the light-skinned black heroine, and talks more like Lara Croft than her thickly-accented foes, merely compounds the problem rather than easing it. There are even more outrageous and outdated images to be found later in the game, stuff that I was honestly surprised to see in 2009, but Capcom has specifically asked that details of these scenes remain under wraps for now, whether for these reasons we don't know.
Seeing the history behind the context of the setting, it will be interesting to read about people's impression of this game when it is out. I think looking at this preview, I don't think Resident Evil 5 will ever escape the debate about the imagery it evokes.
Resident Evil 5 is set to be released on 13th March 2009 for the PS3 and XBOX360.
Read the entire hands on preview here
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