Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

I feel like I should talk about the plot railroad a bit, for those of you who don't roleplay a lot, the plot railroad is a term used when the Game Master is forcing the plot onto a certain track, resisting any and all efforts by the players to inject some of their own decisions into the mix. This generally makes for a poor game and frustrated players, as the point of an RPG is that the players decisions matter, and can change the story of the game.

The players in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter must be among the most frustrated people ever. I know I know, it's a movie, the characters are not actually getting to do anything but what the script tells them to, but good writing makes it feel like there is some agency for the characters, there is no agency in RE: TFC.

Another sign of a bad GM is when his girlfriend joins the game, now of course women, and significant others, playing in a game is not a bad thing, my wife is in my groups, and we have had couples play regularly with us, but there is a stereotype that is totally founded in reality of the GM that forces the game to revolve around his(it's always a he in the stereotype) significant other, she gets the best loot, the story begins to revolve around her, she gets to save the day.

Paul W.S. Anderson is that GM, Milla Jovovich is the SO, and the rest of the players clearly barely care by this point, only a couple of them even get their characters names said on screen, they know that it is her show now and are basically going through the motions. There are flashes of attempts at independence, successfully navigating a trap composed of giant fan blades at one point which it was obvious the GM wanted to kill someone, because he reverses the flow of the fan while simultaneously making it powerful enough to suck people off of their feet, it arbitrarily shuts down once it claims a victim. Later there is a pit trap that one of the characters makes his save for and catches himself before falling to his death, so the GM has the trap cut his fingers off.

It proceeds like this all the way, the fakeout deaths, the jump scares, the traps, the monsters that don't die until they kill someone no matter how many bullets they are shot with, but after they kill someone a knife will put them down.

Another sign of a bad GM is the attention he puts on his villains, now a good villain is necessary, you need the heroes to feel like they have a reasonable threat in front of them, one that requires all of their wits and abilities to overcome, but GMs can fall in love with their villains, allowing them to survive things that should have killed them without explanation, giving them resources and powers that have no reasonable explanation, and of course allowing them and the NPCs to hog the screen time.

In this movie all the plot is explained by the villains, aided by one NPC that straddles the line, the heroes discover nothing without being explicitly told about it, they don't make logical leaps or brilliant deductions, they don't steal vital intelligence or even overhear nefarious plans, they just go from one villain or NPC monologue to the next, bouncing along even as the villains keep on not dying until the GM decides they are ready.

I have played in games where only one of these problems dragged it down, and I have quit those games too.

That said, I had a good time tonight. The movies aren't role-playing games, and the predictibility of the plot and shallowness of the characters didn't exactly come as a surprise, this is Resident Evil for gods sake, the sixth movie in the series no less, we aren't exactly breaking cinematic ground here. The action was well done, though Anderson does favor the technique of showing only 1-2 second long shots during fight scenes. The monsters looked great and I think I even saw some practical models used at several points. And the villains finally getting killed was satisfying too, even though we all knew it was coming, they all had time to see their end and know who caused it, which is what makes me happiest when the evil mastermind is defeated.

Rest in peace pair of unnamed filthy refugees, engineer girl, shotgun guy, nondescript guy, black dude, and doc, plus the others I probably forgot about. May you have better luck in your next game.