A few months ago, a new attempt to adapt theResident Evilgames to a live-action series was made by Netflix, but it didn’t get the traction that fans hoped for. In fact, theResident EvilTV series was canceledshortly after it premiered due to its reception. As a result, it seemingly remains a tall task for the popular Capcom saga to find the proper format for it to be adapted to media beyond video games.
TheResident Eviluniverse has also been transferred to other formats such as animated films and even manga, but none of these have managed to reflect the original ideas of the saga to the same extent as the video game franchise. Who did succeed, however, was a writer by the name of S.D. Perry. She published seven titles covering the original trilogy,Resident Evil Zero,Code Veronica,and a couple of books that are original stories from the novels. In these works, the writer manages to capture what the originalPlayStation 1 gamesconveyed to gamers in the late 1990s, while posing certain differences from what was seen in the video games.
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The Story Behind Resident Evil’s Books
In the late 90s, whenCapcom first launchedResident Evilas a successful video game horror saga, Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, acquired the rights to publish novels under theResident Evilname. The publisher’s original plan was to hand the project to Steve Perry, known for hisMatadorseries of books, as well as for collaborating on several books forStar Wars,Alien,andConan, but in the end, he recommended his daughter, Stephani Danelle Perry, better known as S.D. Perry, to write the books instead.
The first book in this series is calledThe Umbrella Conspiracy, which is an adaptation of the first video game that was published in late 1998, whereas the second is an original story by the author entitledCaliban Covestarring the characters of the first game. The third isCity of the Dead, an adaptation ofResident Evil 2, and the fourth isUnderworld, another original story by S. D. Perry. The fifth and sixth areNemesisandCode Veronica, based on the games of the same name, and the last of these novels isResident Evil 0, which adapts the prequel video game of the entire saga and which was published in 2004.
Although she had the rights to the video games, S.D. Perry did not have access to any additional material or developer’s notes from Capcom. To compensate for this, S.D. Perry used the game manuals for inspiration alongsideResident Evil: The Book, which is a prequel to the original game written by Hiroyuki Ariga.
How S. D. Perry Gave Resident Evil Continuity
In her work, S.D. Perry takes the opportunity to try to achieve something that the saga did not have at the beginning: continuity. In particular, the first games were not characterized by developing a story throughout their installments but were different plots set in the same world. Perry sought to compensate for this, and she tried to unite the plot of the first games through the figure of Trent, a mysterious character with unclear ties toResident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation, who helps the protagonists in one way or another throughout all the books.
Here is where S.D. Perry’s novels shine the most, as she manages to keep all the important moments of each plot while making the story much more coherent. Also, this allowed adding quite a lot of fillers to the novels, which provide more context to the events and further enrich the story of its characters, such as why Jill joined the STARS inRaccoon City. The books also explain the suspicions Chris already had that something weird was going on with Umbrella before the first game, Albert Wesker’s compulsive obsession with being a professional always in control, or how deeply disturbed police chief Brian Irons was, for example.
Of course, this is not perfect, as these books began to be published afterResident Evil 2was released so, at a certain point, they were written in parallel to the games and with no support from Capcom. This is especially noticeable betweenResident Evil 2andResident Evil 3, since the author assumed at the beginning that Jill Valentine left Raccoon City with the rest of the STARS group before the events of the second game. When making the book based on the third game, where Jill is the main character, Perry had no choice but to add a note explaining that this was a mistake impossible to avoid.
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Perry’s Books Added More Detailed Characters and New Monsters to Resident Evil
Despite these details, S.D. Perry’s plot brings more detail to the characters and gives them a personality that did not exist in the games. The writer manages to adapt the idea of survival horror from the games into the novels in a masterful way, enriching with many noteworthy facts the plot of the games, but preserving the basis of the story at all times. The novels also include many additionalResident Evilmonsters not seen in the game series, like invisible Hunters, giant scorpions, and trained humanoid bio-weapons.
As already mentioned, Perry wrote these stories at the same time as the first games came out, before the saga turned more towards action starting withResident Evil 4, and before the Milla Jovovich movies that completely changed the idea ofResident Evil. Another point that differentiates the books from games likeResident Evil 5andResident Evil 6is that the action is replaced by high doses of terror. Instead of incredible scenes with incredible confrontations, the novels explore the most primitive fears of the human being with a dark and paralyzing atmosphere.
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