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Resident Evil Re:Verse will be released alongside Resident Evil Village in May, and will be free to owners of that game. The game keeps us aware of how overwhelming Ethan’s pain is through these expressions.The heroes and villains of the Resident Evil franchise will square off in mortal combat in Resident Evil Re:Verse, a new multiplayer deathmatch game, Capcom announced Thursday during its Resident Evil Showcase presentation. “Whatever pain achieved, it achieves in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language.”Įthan’s expressions are more utterance than speech: groaning while climbing a ladder with a partial hand, sounds of exertion while navigating obstacles, and yells of pain and fear. Scarry notes that while we can see and sympathize with pain, drawing on our own experience, we cannot understand someone else’s pain. As Elaine Scarry discusses in The Body in Pain, pain is beyond explanation and language. Sound reinforces the visuals as Ethan’s physical suffering is audible and visceral. In just a few minutes, the brain signalling shifts to send weaker electrical signals to the real hand. Research shows this isn’t simply a mind game, as they have also observed a physical response. The psychology of human association with our hands has been the focus of studies of the “rubber hand illusion,” which involves putting a rubber hand in one’s shirt sleeve and showing the fake hand receiving touch stimuli as the actual hand receives the same form of contact. In English, the expression to know something “ like the back of your hand” is to know something intimately. Identifying hands as an extension of ourselves has some cultural and psychological grounding. Our engagement with our world is often mediated by our hands, so when a game wants to highlight violence or trauma, it may start with the hands. He writes that “a player of a video game is personally responsible for the outcome.” A player’s assessment of her potential determines how she experiences the monster: with fear, if the monster presents a challenge, with despair “if he feels that he has no coping potentials” or with “triumphant aggression” if she feels “amply equipped for the challenge.” Empowerment shapes our emotional experience.Īs film and video game theorist Timothy Crick notes, the player’s projection is a means to “produce high levels of dramatic tension and engagement.” However, games can shape that projection and feedback through our primary visual of the avatar’s body: the hands. Film theorist Torben Grodal discusses immersion as part of our emotional response. That avatar body is how we understand the game - how we play. Professor of film and media studies Bob Rehak describes embodiment: “Players experience games through the exclusive intermediary of another - the avatar - the ‘eyes,’ ‘ears’ and ‘body’ of which are components of a complex technological and psychological apparatus.” Theories of game bodies and avatars often focus on the psychology of projection and identity. Why do the ‘Resident Evil’ games make players so aware of the lead character Ethan’s damaged hands? (Shutterstock) Avatars and bodies Why do these games make us so aware of Ethan’s poor, damaged hands? He must pick up his hand, which appears in the inventory as “severed hand.” He heals by pouring medication over his hands, removing the damage and inexplicably reattaching severed limbs. In “Biohazard,” Ethan’s left hand is violently removed with a chainsaw and inexplicably reattached with staples and medication in “Village,” Ethan’s right hand is removed - after he has pulled hooks through his hands and had fingers bitten off. In raising his hand to check his health monitor in “Biohazard,” or in his interaction with doors, ladders and gates in “Village,” players are constantly aware of the damage. His hands are cut, stabbed, bitten, slashed and removed brutally, and both games keep the hands visible throughout gameplay. Hands showing painĮthan’s hands experience numerous traumas in the two games, paired with sound and voice acting that expresses pain and suffering. The games’ use of the first-person perspective builds the cultural and psychological projection, and helps players feel like they are part of the experience. In “Biohazard” and “Village,” players experience embodiment through Ethan’s hands, and in that experience, are encouraged to feel his trauma.