1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF OCTOBER 1 | A DARK DESCENT INTO RESIDENT EVIL

Encumbrance Value: Finding the Horror in Limited Inventory

Cover Story: How Resident Evil's limited inventory systems terrify for all the right (and wrong) reasons.

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evelopers still ponder how to best handle inventory systems. With the numerous tools that games throw at players to help them come quandaries about what limits to place on these tools. Allowing players to hold as much as they want is convenient, but it also means you don't have to make any meaningful decisions about what to take with you. Placing strict limits on what you can hold, on the other hand, forces players to think about resource management, but it can also annoy and frustrate. At the end of the day, a game's inventory philosophy depends on the game in question, and more specifically, what it hopes to achieve. Resident Evil utilizes limited inventory systems to tax the player and create moments of horror and tension, but it also created problems as the series evolved.

The moniker "survival horror" meant creating horrific moments, but it also meant underscoring them by limiting what players can do, creating a very real sense that they may not survive. Both ammunition and health restorers were in short supply, and you had to actively look for them as you explored the game environments. Though most games in the genre gave you enough guns to take down a small army, the fact that your ammunition was limited meant you had to actively think about whether you would shoot at monsters or simply run away to save it for something worse in the future. After all, if the game threw piles of ammo at you, then you wouldn't feel threatened by anything in the game, and thus wouldn't be scared of much.

The games' limited inventory systems tapped into a similar sentiment. If you could carry everything with you, then you'd feel less threatened. In the Resident Evil games, this meant prioritizing between three different types of items: weapons and ammo, restorative items, and keys, which doesn't sound bad until you realize you only have between six and eight item slots, with ammo taking up a separate one from its corresponding gun. Loading up on weapons means you can take down whatever gets in your way, but you won't be able to get very far and you risk dying. You'll generally have to sacrifice some item slots to keep some of the keys you have on hand, but if you're not familiar with the lay of the land, then you won't know which you'll need, so you'll feel the need to take as many as you can. But do this and suddenly you're even more vulnerable to enemies, as you have fewer options for taking them on and healing yourself. Arranging your inventory requires an intelligent balance of the three categories, but even then, chances are you're still vulnerable enough to feel threatened. The beauty of employing a limited inventory system in a horror game is that no matter what players do, they're compromised and vulnerable.

When Resident Evil's priorities changed with its fourth installment, however, its inventory system did as well. The flow of the game de-emphesized tense horror in favor of pure action. Resources were no longer as limited, as you could buy what you needed for the first time in the series. New types of items, treasures, appeared, and while they didn't take up space in your main inventory, their presence marked the game's emphasis on finding loot. As such, strictly limiting how much you can hold no longer made as much sense. Instead, Capcom employed what is essentially inventory Tetris, a system where the relative sizes of items matter when determining what you can hold (similar to Diablo, the ultimate loot game).

Each item's total area occupies a number of squares in a big grid. You can rotate items 90 degrees, but if you can't fit an item, you can't hold it. While still limiting, this allows players to hold pretty much every small item they find. The only real choice players have to make is what guns they take with them, as they can take up a large part of your inventory by themselves. This usually means you can only take a couple of guns with you at any given time. You'll still mow through enemies, but your options are somewhat limited. In the context of Resident Evil 4, this does nothing to increase the horror, as you're still too empowered to feel truly scared most of the time. But it does balance out the difficulty, creating a pitch-perfect dynamic that helped make it one of the best games of all time.

It also proved that strictly limiting what you can carry isn't for every game. If Resident Evil 4 had used the exact same system that previous games used, it would have been frustrating rather than tense. Players will eventually have over twenty different kinds of items in their inventory. Limiting players to only six in that climate can really frustrate given how much you're going to be switching between everything you find. Resident Evil 5 proves this, as it went back to individual slots, albeit nine of them versus the six of the original games. The same kinds of items fit in them as in 4 -- guns, ammo, restorative items, and armor -- but the problem is you're never given any incentive to prioritize which weapons to use. You'll end up carrying most of them with you, leaving only a couple of spots free for ammo and healing. If you don't, the ammo placement in the levels might not work in your favor, especially once you have all of the types of weapons. You can give items to your partner, but they have their own stock of weapons to use, which still needless limits your options. Worse still is the fact that the game is designed in the mold of 4, where you never feel like you're in much danger even if you're hurting for ammo. It makes the inventory design feel like a direct callback to the earlier games by people who have no idea why they were designed that way in the first place.

When designing a game, you have to ask yourself what sort of game you're making, what kinds of feelings you want players to have, and how each of the design elements contributes to these feelings. Capcom built Resident Evil with horror in mind, so they wanted gameplay elements that made the player feel vulnerable, creating the right amount of tension and panic without making a given situation truly as hopeless as you want the player to feel. Limited inventory accomplished this for the first games in the series, and it evolved along with the series. But even with Resident Evil 5's inventory stumbles, the series stands as a shining example of both the need for limits in games and the restraint to know when harsher ones hurt the player experience.

Jeremy Signor

Jeremy Signor still thinks you should have been able to use Ink Ribbons to trip up zombies or even blind them. Maybe then he'd actually have a reason to carry them around.

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• RE5 Inventory

  Posted: Oct 05, 2012 12:00AM PST by  BugleHawkeM
  

  I have to disagree with your impression of the RE5 inventory system.  It was presumably designed the way it is in service to the fact it is a co-op game.  It was simplified so that players can easily manage it in an environment that does not allow for pausing, so it is relatively small and allows for quick switching with the d-pad.  The inventory is actually simple enough that skilled players often handle all of their inventory management, such as reloading guns and moving items around, during melee attacks.  The limited nature also encourages specialization in co-op (I'll take the shotgun, you take sniper) to keep players from fighting over types of ammo.  

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• Inventory Management in general needs a leap...

  Posted: Oct 05, 2012 12:00AM PST by  levelsandgear
  

  Not just in games like this, but in all games - When playing MMOs, Borderlands, Diablo - I get struck how tired I am of constantly just getting and selling garbage and managing my inventory, bank slots, and everything in between.

  "Grays" are an idea whose time has come. If it isn't worth anything in the game, just give me more money or something. 

   

  Having to spend time finding room in your case/backpack for stuff has become extremely tedious across all games. Let's come up with something better.

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• I like this

  Posted: Oct 04, 2012 12:00AM PST by  Exevalon
  

  It was a nice design aspect, the inventory system throughout the games. To those who say it frustrated them, its a comprimise that was needed, becuase then, the game may have been broken if it wasn't like that. Or way to easy. Id rather frustrate a few people, but know they would still play the game as opposed to having a dozen say the game was a joke, or a piece of crap or to easy, etc.
  
  RE4 changed it up nicely and it felt just like a ring on my finger. 

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  • Compromise?

    Posted: Oct 05, 2012 12:00AM PST by  TheRealFearlessCelt
    

    Or lazy design. There were pelenty of games that had good inventory systems in that era, without sacrificing a thing. There was no change to difficulty due to a clumsy inventory system, it just mean you had to do a lot of backtracking. It is what it is, a minor blemish on an otherwise stellar series (for the most part).

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• This is a bit of a stretch.....

  Posted: Oct 04, 2012 12:00AM PST by  TheRealFearlessCelt
  

  I never found any horror in inventory management in these games. What I did find was frustration and anger.

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• True

  Posted: Oct 04, 2012 12:00AM PST by  TyrantT316
  

  I think the imperfections in the older games are what made them feel more like survival. Yes, backtracking can be a frustration if you missed or forgot something. However, that was a part of what made the "RE/Survival Horror" pace. That there were times of tension and not necessarily running, jumping, blowing up, quicktime events, etc.

  The lack of ammo and health resources did cause you to have to ration inventory or made it feel like you had to do some open ended exploration to find more. The interesting thing was that the game never let you get to a point where you COULDN'T beat a boss or get through a situation due to a lack of ammo or health. Even if you had to "game over" a few times before finally beating that boss with 2 shells, a clip and some cheap running in circles tactics, it felt all the more rewarding because it wasn't easy and you did it manually without quicktime events.

  It caused you to think, use reason, recall locations, use resources, make the right moves, etc vs simply having the ammo or a roundhouse kick. I think the nostalgia many times comes from the technical simplicities of the older games.

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• I hate the RE inventory system.

  Posted: Oct 04, 2012 12:00AM PST by  echosauce
  

  I did not find it scary, just frustrating.  Let good writing and game design make be afeared.  Forcing me to backtrack all the time is a joke.

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• The inventory system made chris' game kind of a drag in pt. 1

  Posted: Oct 03, 2012 12:00AM PST by  colinmccarthy16
  

  I understand the game developers not wanting people to carry an entire arsenal with them, but keys should not have taken up an entire inventory slot.

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  • I agree!

    Posted: Oct 04, 2012 12:00AM PST by  FreqMod
    

    You can see in illustrations of the character that his clothes had pouches everywhere.  Like, he seriously couldn't have one pocket that had a lighter & 3 keys in it? My key ring has 4 keys & carabiner on it.  I totally share your view on this, and I'm glad I'm not the only one for whom it irked a little.

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• I liked what they did in 4.

  Posted: Oct 03, 2012 12:00AM PST by  MikkiSaturn
  

  In the first game I always played as Jill and my inventory always had 2 guns, ammo for them, the ribbon, one healing item, and 2 keys or jewels or whatever I thought I needed.  If you played as Chris you had fewer item slots and that made the game a lot harder.  4 made more sense - big things are big, small things are small.  It was actually satisfying for me to feel like I had optimized my load out.  

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• So true

  Posted: Oct 03, 2012 12:00AM PST by  nsonic79
  

  But I remember one of the downsides to the system in 1-3 was how you might up thinking you had all you needed to advance in the level, only to have to backtrack ALL THE WAY BACK. It's at that point the game felt more frustrating than survival horror. Or worse, you decide to leave the typewriter ribbon in a chest only to find that you needed it later down the line to save before a big boss fight.

  4 did simplify the inventory system, which usually had me stay with a choice of weapons that I upgraded.

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