Parasite Eve 2

The original Parasite Eve was a certified classic. Arguably the best game to come from Squaresoft's post-Final Fantasy 7 financial boom, a period of time where a number of unique, experimental games were getting released. A genuinely chilling horror RPG beloved by everyone who played it, a love that continues even to today.

There was also a sequel that people don't talk about as much, so I thought I would.

When the first Parasite Eve came out, there was a constant comparison to Resident Evil. It didn't matter that the two games were wildly different from each other, with their only similarity having you shoot biological horrors with a gun, but the comparison was still made regardless. Squaresoft must have heard this, because when it came time for a sequel, they said, "oh, we'll give you a Resident Evil game!" and made PE2 a survival horror game with light RPG elements (read: numbers go up after you kill things). So now you have a greater concern with conserving ammo and magic, and limited inventory space forcing you to make tough decisions on what valuable items to keep and which ones to toss out.

Parasite Eve 2 does a fantastic job of combining narrative with those mechanics. The first Parasite Eve saw its protagonist, Aya Brea, discovering herself. Learning the secrets of her childhood, gaining her mitochondrial powers, and stopping the titular Eve from causing further havoc. Now, in Parasite Eve 2, Aya is not the same rookie detective thrust into a bizarre situation. She's a much more experienced, bolder woman who has begrudgingly accepted the responsibility thrust upon her to stop more incidents of biological terror. The human aspect of her character from PE1 is falling to the wayside in favor of a detached being that occasionally shows compassion. Even when she discovers that humans are now susceptible to the same mitochondrial mutations as the animals she fought in the previous game, she'll deal with this revelation by putting a bullet into the nearest mutant and crack a joke to maintain that cold facade. Of course, in trying to hide her humanity, Aya falls into that great narrative trap: being the most human character of all.

What happens after a biological horror beyond human comprehension occurs? Well, this is a Playstation game, so it's only natural that a major corporation buys up a bunch of land to try and recreate the horror by experimenting on the surrounding population for the same reasons all evil corporations do: make a lot of money in a completely nonsensical way, and because they love eugenics. PE2 adds a bit of a wrinkle to this, in that in addition to the usual underground lab found in these kind of games, there is also a giant underground museum or zoo. The monsters that you have been fighting throughout the game are treated as wildlife exhibits, living in an artificial habitat like animals. These exhibits exist for wealth investors to view, and then tell the execs and scientists doing these experiments which one of these lifeforms they wish to be reborn as. Stripping away what makes them human for a taste of extreme power. Or as the game so eloquently puts it:

The corporate money is all a front for an unnamed secret society. The lab/zoo/museum is referred to as Neo Ark, an obvious reference to Noah's Ark, with the mutated CEOs as the animals Noah led out of the flood. However, in the Japanese version, this area is called Shambala. Shambala is the birthplace of the deity Matreiya, who is said to bring about the end of the Kali Yuga, an era of conflict and suffering. You might be thinking that that is a strange localization change to make, well, let me present you with something. Shambala is one of many Buddhist concepts appropriated by the nazis as a part of nazi occultism during the Third Reich. No longer is this the birthplace of Matreiya, but rather, some unknown progenitor of the master race. Unfortunately, this ended up getting lost in translation due to restrictions put into place that meant you could not portray hate groups like nazis in any way on consoles (see examples: Bionic Commando, the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Maken X), so it had to be changed.

So what we have here are bunch of facists giving money to other facists, turning themselves into all sorts of fucked up looking shit, because it means that have power, no matter how horrific it may be, and also because they really don't want to live in a world with any black people. Like I said, Aya, a literal super-powered woman that tries to hide her humanity, is the most human character, both in appearance and deed.

Getting back to how this all ties into how the game actually plays. At the beginning of this, I mentioned that original Parasite Eve was compared to Resident Evil by the press and by other players. The thing about Resident Evil, is that you're not meant to fight every enemy that you see; running away in order to save resources or get a better completion time when unlocking the meta rewards. Parasite Eve 2 is different, in that it judges you on how many monsters you kill. If you want money to purchase new weapons and equipment, if you want to earn more "Parasite Energy" to gain new magic abilities, and if you want better post-game rewards, you need to kill everything you see.

But also, you need to explore every inch of every room multiple times, often within a limited time frame, so as not to miss out on items to add to your end-game score, or even items that will give you access to important areas later in the game. For example; there's a chapel you enter at the beginning of the game. The game's plot encourages you to immediately leave and chase down a large monster. However, there's a door off to the left that leads to a small garden outside. Going to that garden, you'll find a keycard on the ground. Now, if you leave the chapel before going to that garden, the keycard will no longer be there, and you won't be able to get it later. This keycard unlocks an armory in the last area of the game, which provides you limitless ammo boxes and a new shotgun. Or if you miss a small detour in the game's final area, you won't be able to back to the previous town, which gives you new sidequests and access to better weapons that won't make you want to pull your hair out during the game's finale, where every enemy becomes a bullet sponge that tests your patience.

Aya's objective is to Kill. Kill monsters, find better weapons, and kill those monsters more efficiently. Revisiting previous areas after every plot development, no matter how minor, will either respawn or introduce more enemies to kill. Kill, and get those points. It does not matter if they were innocent people who got infected by nazi scientists, don't think, just shoot. No emotion, no remorse. You aren't a human anymore, if you even were to begin with. It's all about becoming numb to the violence, until it becomes too much. The mutilated bodies of humans being attacked by mutants that take their time in their act of butchering. Finding an innocent child who had been cruelly experimented on. It's too much for Aya.

In an act of cosmic convenience, after that point, the remaining enemies are nazi scientists fallen prey to their own experiments, mutant shareholders, and genetically enhanced commandos that Aya can direct her murderous intent towards. The violence becomes righteous. No need to numb yourself anymore. Every gained experience point is another person in this world who will be spared the wrath of this greedy, eugenicist bullshit. Ending this nightmare and obliterating a secret lab in Nevada is no guarantee that this won't happen again, but Aya will be ready if it does, as brutal as she has ever been.