<cite>Resident Evil 5</cite> Racism Debate Revived

Ever since Capcom revealed the first images from Resident Evil 5, certain factions in the gaming community have labeled the title racist because of its portrayal of African natives. If you thought the debate was long behind us, Eurogamer's preview of the game wants to assure you that it's not.

After warning that the game most certainly has visible undertones that at least hint at racism, the preview offers examples:

There's a cut-scene of a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men. When you attempt to rescue her, she's been turned and must be killed. If this has any relevance to the story it's not apparent in the first three chapters, and it plays so blatantly into the old clichés of the dangerous "dark continent" and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s. That Sheva neatly fits the approved Hollywood model of the light-skinned black heroine, and talks more like Lara
Croft than her thickly accented foes, merely compounds the problem rather than easing it.

I'm not about to get sucked into this argument during daylight hours, while sober, so instead I offer it up to you commenters, who have now had a week to download and digest the demo on your platform of choice.

Is Resident Evil 5 perpetuating long-standing racist stereotypes against the native peoples of Africa, or are those with a voice in the gaming community inventing a slant on behalf of developer Capcom to generate controversy (and thus, page hits, ad revenue and their continued employment)?

Image courtesy Capcom

Resident Evil 5 [Eurogamer]

See Also:

• *Resident Evil 5 Collector's Edition *Revealed
• Resident Evil 5 Demo Now on Xbox Live
• Rumor: *Resident Evil 5 *Red Xbox 360 Bundle Planned
• Xbox 360 Gets *Resident Evil 5 *Demo First