The Hexbear fountain of youth

After the survival horror excellence of the RPD section, the linear middle sections with Ada and Sherry were easily the worst parts of the game, with Sherry's being the worse of the two. Instafail scripted stealth sequence, my favourite! At least it was short

I also didn't feel like the addition of the orphanage was really necessary- Umbrella and Chief Irons were already plenty fucked up in the original. I didn't really need to see a creepy old guy menacing a little girl while repeatedly calling her a bitch either

So I played the original Claire A run, and the remake, back to back.

And the Sherry segment in the remake is... Better? Gameplay wise. It's more fun to play at least.

The original had two playable segments with Sherry. One where she runs off, gets vomited on by zombies, completes an awful puzzle, doesn't find what she's looking for, and runs back.

In the second one, she gets lost in the sewers and ends up getting uh... Implanted.

These segments in the original were awful to play, but they provided valuable characterization for sherry. Yes, she's a scared little girl, but she also has agency, and can Muster up the courage to get things done of she needs to, however misguided.

In the remake though... I'm not doing stupid puzzles in the sewer anymore, the parallel between Claire being stalked by Mr. X, and sherry being hunted down by the chief is good thematically. As is the subjectivity of placing the camera down low, at Sherry's eye level.

But in the remake... Sherry has no agency. She's kidnapped, and Claire has to save her. You get to be with her for only a brief time before the game effectively cuts to sherry passed out in the sewer. You rescue her, and she immediately passes out again.

Maybe this is my connection to this character talking, but I really feel like Sherry is the core of Claire's entire section of the game. Claire goes to raccoon city to find her brother. So the know her primary motivation is rooted in family. So I makes sense that her part of the story revolves around the conflict among the Birkin family. Claire becomes a maternal/big sister figure for sherry as her shitty absentee parents self destruct, and as their creations destroy the city. There's a big "found family" thing here that makes my little queer heart sing, but also feels woefully under explored on both games.

Sherry in the remake is such a nonentity, and a consistent damsel in distress, and I think that hampers an otherwise really solid remake.

PS I feel a little sorry about responding to your heartfelt post with a pun, but only a little.

I'm glad you got out of your egg.

These are all definitely solid critiques of the remake. I get why they gutted the A/B scenarios. Games are way harder to make now.

But the ways they smashed the two versions of the story together in the remake, and then failed to link those stories together... Meh. I had a ton of fun, but narratively, it left a little to be desired.