Dead Rising 4 Story Rant

[progarbageman]

So, I looked in whether or not Dead Rising 4 was really a remake or not and it turns out that it wasn't a remake at all. 

This, for some random reason, actually pissed me off to a certain degree. (As in my eyes aren't boiling red but they are showing discontent for very STRONG reasons.)

First off, if it isn't a remake, then what is it then in the first place? It's not part of the main story as Frank has no major reason to go back to Willamette, he looks and sounds younger, and doesn't need Zombrex. (And yes, I looked at the footage: There doesn't seem to be ANY Zombrex counter anywhere in the HUD to begin with.)

So, that's thrown off the window into the second possibility: It's a non-canon game. This could be plausible, as Frank sounds different than his DR1 counterpart (though his voice could just be a placeholder) and the other reasons above actually support it in a sense. But if that's the case, why name it Dead Rising 4 if it doesn't have anything to do with the main story? Is the name just a placeholder to excite people or is it the ACTUAL title of the game? There is so many things that are inconclusive to the point that it actually wants to make my brain puke.

In the end, there is the third (but shut down) possibility: It's a remake/reboot and Capcom is lying to us. (Now, before you call me out on my supposed BS, please, I beg you, just read it first.) First of all, everything that was said above supports this claim down here. I don't need to repeat my wording twice. Second, Capcom (and possibly every Triple A game) has a pretty shoddy track record when it comes to previews of their games. Sometimes, they are pretty honest about the information given to the fanbase. Other times, however, they either leave out important details and make it extremely vague or lie to the fanbase and claim there was a miscommunication problem or even blame the fanbase itself!

One of these games was Dead Rising 3. When DR3 first came out on E3, we were amazed at the quality of the scenery, the amount of zombies, and the FRAME RATE (notice this word, it will come in handy later.) Then, when DR3 came out for the Xbox One, most of this was accomplished except the FRAME RATE. But then, we just thought that game was too graphically advanced for the Xbox and didn't mind it as much. After that however, there came the PC version of the game (keep on mind that this version came ONE YEAR LATER after the Xbox version.) So, you would have thought they would at least fix some of the glitches and the FRAME RATE. Nope, instead they made the frame rate WORSE and added some more glitches to the game. (This is a problem to the former: leaving important details out and making others extremely vague.)

To the latter problem we have a Capcom-made reference to a certain platformer (most of the time at least): Mega Man. Or, to be more specific, Mega Man Legends 3. (I'm too lazy to describe the gameplay here, just look it up.) In short, what happened here was nothing short of tragic. In other words, fans of this game were told that this release would come out on the 3DS. However, they were also told that they would be able to donate their time and money in order to help the development and their Oc come to life. Short to the end, the game was CANCELLED possibly due to arguments with Keiji Inafune and Capcom as a whole. All those who pre-ordered a 3DS practically wasted $300 dollars on a game that wouldn't even come out, the people that donated money practically wasted hard-earned money as a result, and fan artists and designers wasted all their time creating ideas that would turn to dust. But to even make it worse, Capcom decided to blame fans themselves by saying that there wasn't enough support to begin with. (Keep in mind that the fandom, for the game, donated a least a year of their life and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars funding this project.) (Capcom eventually made a more formal apology to this mess which came ONE YEAR LATER! What a coincidence...) (This, as stated earlier, applies to the latter: Lying to the fans and claim this or that or even blame them.)

[Janson]

I agree. Worst of all is Franks voice for me. As a long time Deadrising player, it just bothers me. Not recognizing the voice but recognizing the face makes him seem so weird. And Exo-Suits? It all goes downhill from here. (well, it already did but I mean it will SERIOUSLY never be able to recover now.)

[progarbageman]

Except I was making a rant about it being part of the main story or not...
Still, you make some pretty good points but I kinda differ on some of them.
First, Frank's voice, while not the best, isn't the worst either. Hell, it might just be a placeholder of all things. (Which I might explain later in another thread.)
Second, the exo-suits to me are like combo weapons in a bigger scale. No one said you HAD to WEAR them 24/7.

[Deleted]

Hey there. I'll try to hit a few points about what we've shown and what the game's going to be like. Sorry if I don't address everything at this point, there's definitely parts of the story we want people to experience playing the game rather than reading about it on a forum.

First off, if it isn't a remake, then what is it then in the first place? It's not part of the main story as Frank has no major reason to go back to Willamette, he looks and sounds younger, and doesn't need Zombrex.

Well it's 16 years since the events of Dead Rising, you'll see why he's going back to Willamette.

In the end, there is the third (but shut down) possibility: It's a remake/reboot and Capcom is lying to us. (Now, before you call me out on my supposed BS, please, I beg you, just read it first.) First of all, everything that was said above supports this claim down here. I don't need to repeat my wording twice. Second, Capcom (and possibly every Triple A game) has a pretty shoddy track record when it comes to previews of their games. Sometimes, they are pretty honest about the information given to the fanbase. Other times, however, they either leave out important details and make it extremely vague or lie to the fanbase and claim there was a miscommunication problem or even blame the fanbase itself!

This would be a really weird thing for us to lie about. Given the popularity of the original game a remake would probably draw a lot of attention and get people excited. The idea that we'd do a bait and switch like that is a bit of a stretch.

I'd also point out that most developers don't lie. What typically ends up happening is that they overpromise and under deliver, especially when things are shown off really early in development. They might say something (randomly generated example) like "And we'll have a level on the moon with new gravity adjustments" and then as it gets late in development they realize they don't have the time or money (or both) to do that and so they just drop the lunar gravity adjustments from the game.

I don't believe I've ever heard of a team lying about a remake being a new game.

But don't believe me, check it out in December and discover it for yourself.

[SWEGTA]

I just wish they would get rid of combo weapons already.
Wasn't the whole point of them to give Chuck Greene a unique and likeable personality?

Because of how common they are, Chuck has now been reduced to a boring and stale character with nothing going for him.
He's just whiny and morose all the time. A real buzzkill with zero unique character traits.

Why was he even in Dead Rising 3? He literally added nothing to it.
It was just a cameo to make DR2 fans cream their pants. And even as someone who enjoyed Dead Rising 2, I actually hoped that he wouldn't make an appearance.
When he showed up I kept telling myself "This is non-canon. This is a parody. This game is just a joke."

I don't know anymore.
I just wish they would go back to their horror roots. But that doesn't appear to be the case.
The more lucrative route is clearly making yet another Saints Row-ish zombie game with fart jokes and combo weapons.
Yay.

[Skeleton]

Combo weapons are good. Because they're the next logical step forward from the core concept of the original game: improvised weapons. What I don't like are the ones that make no sense, or when the items used to make it can't even be found in the final product. Why do a microwave and motorcycle engine make a laser cannon? What about the electric staff made of a traffic light and a battery is supposed to feel like something I could realistically use to defend myself from mushy people who want to eat my neck? Why, when you put a spear and a hat rack together, do you not get the spear heads stuck to the feet of the hat rack like a makeshift trident, but a bundle of spear heads on a metal pole?

Yeah DR2 had a few unrealistic ones and my favorite in DR3 was actually the hammer with grenades on it, but the basic concept itself is absolutely not the problem.

Anyway, the story doesn't really matter to me that much. None of them are great. DR2's is passable but that's only because most characters' actions make sense. I think DR3's is terrible, but it could be completely unchanged and I'd still love the game if it had scheduled events and were more about improvising weapons than showering you in guns and swords and nonsensical combo weapons that turn it into Dynasty Warriors

[SWEGTA]

* The page randomly refreshed the last time I tried to write this, so pardon me if I skim over any details or if my text gets weird.

Combo Weapons
As for the combo weapons, I feel like they should've been limited to Chuck Greene.
What is the point in building a character around the idea that he can make these badass weapons if every single other character after him has the exact same ability?
In fact, THEY'RE ALL BETTER THAN HIM AT IT.

So what are we supposed to gather from this?
That Chuck Greene is WORSE than everyone else at building weapons, despite that the fact that it's supposedly his speciality?
It makes no sense and it has gone far enough as it is.


Horror VS Comedy
Dead Rising 1 has tons of comedy elements, but they were subtle and charming in their own ways.
Now let's fast forward to Dead Rising 3. Fart jokes. *sigh*

There's a difference between cracking a pun or throwing something funny out there to lighten the mood, but it just gets incredibly obnoxious when it's all crudely flung in your face for shock value.
Just because a 13 year old might find it hilarious doesn't mean that your target demographic will.
This is also why I can't take the franchise seriously anymore. It's just a series of cheap slapstick jokes that have been done to death combined with a weak storyline and unlikeable characters.



Why I liked Dead Rising 1 so much
Dead Rising brought a lot of old ideas to the table, but built something interesting and unique on top of it all.
Instead of just roaming around in a generic setting with nothing to do, Capcom decided to spice it up a bit.

You weren't just aimlessly killing zombies. You were exploring, gathering weapons, trying to level up and meet new survivors.
It's a simple idea, but it was executed so well.

Now let's take a comparison at the original idea and what we've got now, shall we?
When Dead Rising was in its early stages of development Capcom had plans to make it mainly revolve around your interactions with your fellow survivors.
Would you abandon this survivor in need of help in order to save yourself? Or would you stop and help them, putting your own life at risk and giving them the chance to stab you in the back?
It was heavily focused on your choices and the risks involved. This isn't what the end product was like, but it sure as hell sounded cool.

Now let's have a look at Dead Rising 3.
Special infected (which we have seen hundreds of times already in other games), slapstick humor, silly combo weapons, Nick being able to build a bulldozer at his whim, unlikeable characters with zero to little depth, and a stale storyline that had me yawning endlessly during the last quarter of the game.

Am I the only one seeing a steady decline in quality?
The further the series goes from the original format, the worse it gets.
This is why I'm hesitant to even try Dead Rising 4. I absolutely adore the first game. And I do like the second one (although it certainly didn't match up to the first one).
But everything after those two games has been a huge letdown. I don't want to throw money at something, knowing damn well that it could very well disappoint me.



Conclusion
This is why I don't consider Dead Rising 3 (or any other game after the second one) to be canon.
First off, it makes no sense when you start disecting the storyline. Second of all, the premise becomes to ludacris and forgettable that it just hurts the first game.
Bring back the people who were in charge of the first game and you have my interest. If not, then I'll spend my time and money elsewhere.

[progarbageman]

This was more like a rant than anything else so don't be shocked about my attitude. However, my point still stands even to today so I'm going to observe this with some skepticism.

[djlarryt]

Jul 10, 2016 15:54:38 GMT -5 SWEGTA said:

unlikeable characters with zero to little depth, and a stale storyline that had me yawning endlessly during the last quarter of the game.

This is my main complaint about why I didn't like DR3. There are too many involved characters and they're just erratic idiots- NPCs that are there to do one thing to get you to the next chapter and that's it- the rest of the time they stand around yelling at you or blathering on incessantly. There were too many story threads that were also pointless and stupid, and I got lost trying to follow everything that happened (including the important stuff). Not long after beginning the game I found myself hoping they would just get killed already so I didn't have to listen to them or care about what they did anymore (the only saving grace was Rhonda, as she had at least an ounce of personality and contributed to how Nick 'grew' as we played the game). Even Nick is too bland and vanilla- I'd expect a Latin American mechanic in a zombie apocalypse to be a bit more ballsy and self-preserving, but he just carried forward the personality of the original 'Mick' (high school nerd), making him look and feel like the producer's goody-two shoes <3ish nephew.

The survivors were fun- but too many of them were at missions near the end of the game so there's no chance to even enjoy taking them with you. And there were too many points in the game where your player gets stripped of all weapons for some ordeal in order to extend gameplay. Yawn.

There was LOTS of cool innovations added in, however- being able to combo vehicles- sure, that was the next logical escalation from making simple combo weapons. And some of the weapons were outright awesome (Reaper anyone?) but the problem is once you make one that kicks zombie butt you just end up using it all the time and not caring about the lesser useful ones, even for the silliness of them. Enlarging the map was also a great innovation but cluttering it up as you progressed to make gametime take longer is the oldest trick in the book.

As for DR4, I really want to like it- I'm sure Capcom is taking the best of what worked in the previous games and playing it forward. However I don't like this Frank West imposter- he doesn't look like Frank and doesn't sound like Frank- so to me it is NOT Frank. Agreed it is a cheap pull to bring fans into considering to buy this game.

I also agree with the point about the original DR1- there were a lot of comical references to American commercialism intelligently webworked into a horror scenario- even DR2 in Vegas played on that in an amusing and ridiculous way. Then you really had to start looking for any of it in DR3. DR3 took itself too seriously and therefore lost a lot of the fun factor. It seemed too much like a "Walking Dead" wannabe, and I fear DR4 is going the same route- taking itself too seriously.

[trinitykill]

As for why Frank is going back, the mall is now called the Willamette Memorial Mall. It could be that as he was responsible for unveiling the truth and rescuing dozens of people from the initial tragedy that he is invited back as an 'event' to commemorate the tragedy or the unveiling of the new mall. Perhaps due to it's significance as a symbol for the first zombie outbreak, it paints a huge target on them for people like Carlito or CURE to get revenge.

As for why we see no Zombrex counter on the HUD. Frank could still need zombrex but they removed the gameplay element so Frank just doses himself during the story, this could be likely as they have also removed the whole 'time limit' from gameplay so forcing players to continuously find zombrex because they spent a few days exploring first could be considered annoying to a mainstream audience since Capcom is just turning this into a sandbox zombie grindfest.

Alternatively in Case Zero we see that Zombrex requires a dose every 12 hours. By the time Dead Rising 2 rolls around Phenotrans has release an updated formula that only requires a dose every 24 hours. As more years have passed the research into the zombie infection has likely improved and it could be a case that the drug has been improved to the point of only needing a dose every week/month/year etc.

Edit - Having looked over the story for DS3 again, it apparently reveals in the S ending that Isabela Keyes was successful in using Nick's blood to create a Zombie cure. As old 'friends' it's likely that Frank would have recieved this cure, having battled the infection longer than anyone.