Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 Story Comparison

 

Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 Story Comparison

This write up sounds a bit weird, a story comparison between 2 FPS games? A genre that never needed to rely on story to engage players to begin with? Sounds weird, right? Well, the thing is, both games came out around a time where story was slowly becoming more common in FPS games. There was Half Life, Marathon and Unreal yes, but the 00s is where storytelling in FPS games really started to get out of hand. I won't go into too much detail on this but I feel Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 both tell their stories in complete different ways. I think the former does a better job at telling it's story than the latter, is more enjoyable, and doesn't get in the gameplay as much. Which is strange because whenever Resistance discourse comes up at times, there are some people who really like 3's story or at least prefer it's more "personal" story compared to the "military" story of the 1st two games. I just find this to be so weird. I wanted to keep to make this it's own write up because if I included it in my R:FOM review, it would've made it too long.

Now, I will just talk about the series briefly before starting the comparison. I really enjoy Fall of Man and 3. Both games to me are some of the best FPS games the 7th gen has to offer especially in a time where the genre was in a very "strange" phase. And the 2nd game? Well, to avoid sounding like a ranting madman, I am not a fan of it, I played it again recently for the first time recently since 2009 and I was appalled by how bad it was. Everything about it felt like a poor man's Call of Duty campaign. Playing that game was like watching someone you respected sell out to a crowd you don't like. Everything about that game felt so "anti Insomniac" to me, and a 2 year timeskip after the opening level where Nathan Hale's team of super soldiers are already established was already enough of a bad sign for me to not to continue with the story. I might play on Easy mode and maybe get more fun of it that way and update this write up if I ever do beat, but I am not sure. Now the 3rd game is great. While taking a step back in some ways from Fall of Man, the game more than makes up for it's weapon feel and super satisfying combat. When it comes to having weapons that feel great and hitting the enemies, the game is a huge improvement over Fall of Man, and there's more environment variety too. For me, choosing between R:FOM and 3 is like choosing between Max Payne 1 and Max Payne 2.

But I rambled long enough, time to get to the point: the stories. Fall of Man's story to me was a simple story told well enough to keep me interested. It's not writing masterclass or anything, far from it but the story in that game is told well enough and doesn't get in the way of gameplay. It's sort of the reason why I tend to jump into Fall of Man randomly while as much as I like the 3rd game, I don't jump into as much. The story in Fall of Man is told through these documentary style cutscenes probably to make up for the fact that the Insomniac couldn't actively put in full on cutscenes due to budgeting most likely and I feel it adds to the game's charm and setting. Kind of like Max Payne's comic book cutscenes. The alternate WW2 setting with the documentary cutscenes makes it feel a bit like watching a WW2 documentary but not entirely. I feel it adds to the mystery aspect to what the first game is going for. Since the whole story is basically Racheal Parker's recollection of the Chimeran in invasion of Europe and her recollection of a mysterious man named Nathan Hale. Back a good couple of years ago, I saw some constantly attack Nathan Hale for being a "bland and boring" character, the same usual bargain bin critique but to my response, "isn't that the point?" The story isn't told from Nathan's perspective, it's Parker's and Nathan Hale is supposed to be a quiet and mysterious soldier that people only saw but never actually celebrated his actions to how ambiguous his existence was. It's what Halo 3's marketing campaign went for except it's actually is the plot here. Hale is a legend or myth by definition. The Chimera themselves are mysterious too since any documents on their existence were wiped out when the game started. On a side note, it is nice for an alien invasion story where the military isn't portrayed as complete and utter idiotic buffoons. The best part of these cutscenes and that they can be skipped and Fall of Man still keeps you in the action. It's a story is told in an interesting way and doesn't get in the way. I also really like how, the game also has an in universe explanation as to why the main character talks during cutscenes and not gameplay considering gameplay is just playing out Hale's battles huge plot dumps weren't happening. In fact the whole game is basically playing out what Racheal described what was going in the cutscene giving the player enough context for the levels.

Now I will get to Resistance 3, while I have bashed this game for having cutscenes that get in the way, it's not as bad as in other games like Wolfenstein 2 or hell, Machine Games Wolfenstein in general. I still feel like wannabe City 17 Opening in R3 kind of takes too long to get to the action for me. Some of the down time moments where the characters are going through major problems were just boring to me because I didn't really care for any of the characters. The walking sections just didn't add enough to the story for me and I prefer R:FOM's way of getting to the action fast. This isn't my major issue with the story in R3, my big issue is just how bad the story is in general. People praise R3's story for being more "personal", I feel the story just fails to keep me invested. It may be "personal" but that doesn't make it good. I also feel like the whole post apocalyptical setting and the world being destroyed is extremely generic and typical especially when the 1st game and even the 2nd at least portrayed the military as people who actually could stand a chance against the alien force. I remember some Resistance fans complaining about this change in setting and I agree with them. The biggest issue I have is how little I care for Joseph Cappelli. His motivation is "personal" yes but I don't feel very attached to his family and I get this isn't a movie or TV series where you have downtime but I feel like more could've been done. Now the biggest problem I have is everything after. Cappelli and Malakov have very little character interactions in general. It doesn't even make sense for Cappelli not to talk during cutscenes at least with Hale he was quiet and was playing out his fights. The lack of interactions just makes the 2 super boring. And the funny thing is, Fall of Man even had an actual dynamic with Cartwright and Hale. Cartwright being the witty funny guy who is tough and likes to tease Hale while the latter was more stoic and collected. I'd argue Cartwright had more character in sniper rifle than the entirety of R3's cast. The lack of interactions makes Malkov's death mean very little when he dies. The story also makes some dumb turns too. Like how Cappelli tells Charlie Tent, a guy he knew for 8 hours to check on his family because he had a bad dream. The former had no proof that his son was in danger and asks a guy who wasn't even his friend for help. There also that extremely poorly done foil villain late game where he was once a member of SRPA like Cappelli where the latter chose a quiet family life the former chose a life of war and survival of the fittest. The problem here is that the villain only shows up for one level and since Cappelli never talks and says anything in gameplay, there's nothing to contrast with him here, they only interact at the end of the level and this isn't the Last of Us where it uses it's foils more effectively with Joel and how each character him and Ellie meet represents certain sides of him. Here, it's just a guy a crazy bloodthirsty asshole fighting a guy who is mute one moment and not the next. Humanity fighting each other this much doesn't even make sense considering what comes after, more on that later. Before I get to my next issue with R3's story I will say the cutscenes of Cappelli walking in the snow and him making the speech before he charges into the terraformer to be pretty well done due it being shot well and having very little dialogue and for how hopeless it will be. Then the story starts getting dumb again by first of all establishing the Chimera as a boring Invincible Villain who loses all the time, but come back stronger than ever like the Templars from Assassin's Creed and the Light from Young Justice. What annoys me here is that the beginning of the game, it was said that SRPA was wiped out by the Chimera yet for some reason I am supposed to believe that a depowered Cappelli and Charlie Tent and his group are supposed to be strong enough to take down the force that killed a super solider army? That is just nonsense. The Chimera took over the world apparently, wiped out the military and they get beaten by a few humans? Ugh.

In conclusion, while I still really enjoy both games, I am surprised by how bad I find R3's story. It's not bad enough to ruin the game, but it's just too poorly written to me. R:FOM was a simple story told in an interesting. R3 was a "personal" story told very poorly. Execution is what matters and it seems online discourse either forgets or tries to ignore it.