One thing that bugs me about game developers these days is that nobody can get guns right. There is always something missing. I find, for the most part, that while video games and guns go together really well, exquisitely well in fact, nobody can seem to hit the nail on the head. Every game has "good" guns, but not "great" guns. Devs will get the design right, but they'll get the reload wrong. They'll get a caliber right, but a mag size wrong. Normally, this goes completely unnoticed by the gaming public, and if it gets noticed, it doesn't get brought up. Except by guys like me. In my opinion, too long has lazy work by devs been going on unchecked.
In interviews regarding RE5 and it's realism(s), Takeuchi-san has stated that they're really upping the level of detail on the firearms this time. He mentions this while making faint reference to RE4's wilder, more fantastical weapons. (I assume he means the PRL412, Mine Thrower, et cetera.) He even goes as far as to say they hired a "firearms specialist" to consult! Wow. So who is this "specialist" then? One of the self-proclaimed "experts" you might find trolling the various message boards, who know every spec and detail of their favourite guns, but wouldn't have a hope of being able to fight with it because they have no training or experience? You guys know the type of person that I mean, we've all met them. (I used to be one of them...) Does he play a lot of Airsoft? A lot of CoD4 maybe? Or does he have a lot of training? Hell, even a LITTLE training? I ask because he's getting a lot of things wrong. To his credit, he's getting a lot of things right as well.
Now without getting into too much of a negative or sarcastic tone for this "article," to use the word loosely, I shall begin talking about what I've seen in the guns from RE5 so far. I will be centering this largely on the guns in the demo, which are, the Ithaca M37 shotgun, Skorpion vz61 submachine gun, Beretta 92 pistol, Remington 700 rifle, and the HK MP5 submachine gun. However, I will touch on some other guns that have made appearances in RE5 promo materials, such as the ubiquitous AK47.
To start off, let's address the Beretta 92. Everyone remember the funky little "Samurai Edge" pistols that the STARS had in RE1? Well, the base model of those guns is making an appearance in RE5, used by both Sheva and Chris. I don't intend on getting too techy or esoteric about this, so I'll jump right into the meat of what I'm here for; what's correct, and what's not? The look is correct, the stopping power is, dare I say, "correct," the sound is a bit quiet and weak. Overall, the gun is pretty accurate to it's real-life counterpart. The sound, though, really bugs me. It is the same sound from RE4; a light, "pak-pak" kind of noise. It doesn't make you feel like you're firing a gun at all. This is because real guns are L-O-U-D. Anyone who has been to a range or even just heard a gun go off knows that even quiet guns in small calibers are quite loud. Hence why shooters are recommended, and usually REQUIRED, to wear what we call "ear-pro," or ear protection. In games, your favourite heroes go through the entirety of a game busting thousands of rounds from their long and short guns, indoors and outdoors, with no ear protection. In games, this is nothing to worry about. In real life, doing this would wreck your hearing for the rest of your days. I need not explain this particular point further.
Next, let's talk about the Ithaca M37. Actually, let's talk about shotguns in general. In games, most of the time shotguns are mythical gods of war that can knock down buildings and send bad guys flying. In real life, they are just guns that can either shoot one really big bullet, (a solid slug) or a bunch of small ones. (To keep it simple, we'll just say buckshot, even though there are many kinds of 'shot.') A slug is a big wad of lead that punches a big hole in you. A load of buckshot is comprised of about eight or nine .32 caliber pellets that put several smaller holes in you. That's it. They do not lift you off your feet. They do not blow up cars. They do not tear you apart. They only put holes in you. The same thing every gun does. Now that we've got that part out of the way, let me discuss another fundamental part of shotgun ballistics that many people are not aware of, and that nobody in the developer community seems to know about. That is the actual external ballistics of shotgun projectiles. By "external ballistics" what I mean is, what happens when the objects are in flight. In games, and out of the hundreds of games I have played, I can only think of ONE where this does not apply, what happens when you shoot a shotgun with buckshot is the pellets expand into a pattern a few yards wide immediately after leaving the barrel, making it easy to hit things up close, but impossible to hit anything past about 10 or 15 yards.
What you guys have to understand is, projectiles do not just fan out of a gun's barrel as soon as they leave it. It is physically impossible. Think of the way a water hose works. It directs a lot of water molecules (the shot) along a straight, restricted channel, (the barrel) and when those molecules leave the hose, they leave IN THE SHAPE OF THE CHANNEL, until they spread out after a certain point of freedom in the air. The water doesn't just spray apart as soon as it leaves the hose, does it? The same thing with a shotgun load. It requires time and space to spread into a pattern. In reality, an average load of buckshot will make a spread of pellets approximately 12-15 INCHES APART at 20 yards. That means if you shot somebody 20 meters away in the chest with a shotgun, there is a good chance that all of the pellets would hit him. AT 20 YARDS, most of the pellets would hit him! Compare that with the pellet spread of video game shotguns, and it seems we have quite the discrepancy on our hands, don't we? Do you guys think that maybe there is something a bit absurd about video game shotguns now?
So let's take a look at the M37 shotgun in RE5. What's correct, what's not? The design is A-okay. Wood grip, lots of scratches, looks grimy. The sound is great, loud and powerful. The stopping power is way, way too great. This thing is a street sweeper. I don't know who the "firearms specialist" they hired is, but maybe they should have hired somebody who has fired a shotgun before. He might have been able to help Takeuchi-san with this typical, cliché, video game fantasy weapon.
Wow... this is turning out to be a lot longer and more in-depth than I wanted it to be. I hope people out there will still read it. :\ The truth is, I'm not even half-done with this, but I feel I should throw this out there now before I tackle the rest of it.
Before I jet, though, let me establish one thing; I'm not by any means saying that RE5 is bad, just that the devs are falling into the same lazy traps that every game developer falls into. They just don't do the work. Feeding their clients stereotypical content bites every company in the ass eventually. I mean, come on, guys. This is 2008, we have the most powerful consoles ever imagined, yet you still can't even get the fundamentals of SHOOTING BAD GUYS right. Get it together! Consumers aren't stupid. We like realism, not faux-realism. Takeuchi-san, if you say you're stepping up the realism, step it up. Don't just put a glossy coat of black on the guns and call them "realistic." MESSAGE TO ALL DEVELOPERS: One day, we will find out that you've been fooling us all these years. Stop faking it, and do the work.
Anyway, with that said, if you guys dig weapons, watch my blog for successive parts of this article, where I'll discuss the rest of the guns in the demo, and also some training and handling issues that I notice with them. I'll be paying special attention to the reloads.
Be easy,
Gene
