When Are We Getting A Resident Evil Outbreak Part 3?

Towards the end of the PlayStation 2's life cycle, Capcom released the once under-appreciated and now-forgotten gems that are Resident Evil Outbreak and Resident Evil Outbreak File 2. These are cooperative multiplayer Resident Evil games, set during the event of the Raccoon City Incident.

These games took what we knew about Resident Evil at the time and built on it tenfold. It keeps the familiar setting of Raccoon City, tank controls, and the fixed-camera perspective, but combines them with bold and well-built new features like the ability to manufacture items, kick in locked doors, use melee weapons to save ammunition, and much more. You can also tackle and knock back enemies if you find you're surrounded and out of weapons. The scenarios too are super interesting, perfectly blending both recognisable and newly created areas to help further flesh out Raccoon City. Not to mention, we get all of this in glorious 480p.

Take control of one character from a whole cast of colourful individuals — each has their own unique abilities — and fight your way through several short scenarios. To help you survive the nightmares that await, you must take with you two other characters from the roster. In North American and Japanese regions these NPC teammates could even be replaced by human players. Growing up in the PAL region I can attest to how painfully bad the NPC friendlies are in this game — probably some of the worst ever devised — which definitely contributes to making Outbreak much harder than it needs to be. They randomly pick up and drop any and all items, they never follow you and will roam the levels by themselves, and finally they will not attack anything (yes, you read that right).

Another aspect I do not appreciate is the infection meter. The game clearly wasn't designed to be rushed by players, so why I am expected to race through it before the infection overwhelms and kills me I don't know. The idea of this addition is a neat one, but its implementation is broken; you should be able to alter its parameters and how efficient it is in each game but you can't. It has one setting, and it's permanently switched to kill-the-player-as-quickly-as-possible mode.

But this is where we bring up the question of a third entry in the Outbreak series because my mentioned issues can be ironed out and brought up to date with modern technology. Also, due to online play now being a norm in modern gaming, the franchise can finally take advantage of the team-based gameplay they tried all these years ago. Just imagine: a cooperative multiplayer Resident Evil entry built from the ground up in the RE Engine; it would be amazing. The most frustrating thing is that Capcom keeps trying and failing (hard) to bring fans a modern multiplayer Resident Evil game, but I think an Outbreak 3 is an easy answer that they simply keep overlooking.

Though I hope someone at Capcom stumbles across this article and manages to get the ball rolling on a follow-up, I also want to make it known that at this point I'll even take remasters of the first two games. Having Outbreak and Outbreak File #2 available in 1080p and with modern multiplayer lobbies would compel me to hurl fistfuls of my hard-earned money at Tsujimoto-san.