Resident Evil 4's remake is right around the corner, and while, for the most part, fans are excited to see Leon Kennedy venture back into the village to save Ashley, one specific detail isn't going down well - the rain.
The unnamed Spanish village was treacherous as is in the base game, with washed-out browns and greys making up most of the colour palette, a muddy sky, and an overwhelmingly isolated feeling permeating throughout. The rain will no doubt add to that sense of hostility, but the problem lies in how it looks.
Like the infamous GTA Definitive Edition, Resident Evil 4's remake rain is being critiqued for how out of place it looks. It's bright white, appears unshaded, and clashes with the scenery. Rather than adding to the ambience of dread, it pulls you out with how much it clashes.
The major complaint levied at the rain's design is its colour, rather than the fact it exists. "It's comically distracting but idk I kinda like it making it look like it's HELLA heavy downpour," Runebee tweeted in response. "But they can definitely do something about the rain being pure white".
Not only are complaints aimed at how it looks aesthetically, but how it makes it hard to see and understand what's going on because of the raindrops' size. These are similar complaints to what the GTA Definitive Edition received, which was so distracting that modders quickly implemented better rain addons within days of launch.
However, the distracting rain is wildly inconsistent across screenshots and footage, with some showing heavy downpour that is clear and blends well with the environment, adding to the atmosphere rather than standing at odds with it. You can see this in the tweet embedded above, though it's unclear why it varies so much.
GTA Definitive Edition isn't the only game that it's being compared to, however, as others threw out old 2D Legend of Zeldas, the GZDoom Definitive Rain Mod which makes it practically impossible to see anything, and even Simple Plan's Perfect music video.
These are all good examples of intrusive rain, but some also compared it to Resident Evil 2, saying that "It's stranger still because REmake 2 figured out rain pretty well", attaching a GIF of Kendo's hun shop. There's still a heavy downfall, but it's subtle and realistic, not obscuring any of the map's details.
Resident Evil 4's remake launches on March 24, 2023, so we don't have long to wait to see how it looks in the final build. Hopefully, it's not quite so milky white.