Really? I completely missed that. Is it ever made clear in one of the numbered titles?
Personally, I would just remove Jake and Helena and team Leon with Sherry and you'll be one campaign short but in return have more development time and better character interactions.
Oh, but that would require
many changes, don't you think? Not that I don't agree it
could have been handled like that, but with RE6's story as it is now, it would be harder to do than just writing Quint and Keith out of Revelations.
Basically I agree with you, though. If I could redo the entire Resident Evil series, I would change quite a few things, especially by narrowing down the cast of characters. Instead of countless people that only appear in one game and are never seen again, I would take the material that's already there and expand it, so that every character can have more screen time and a more detailed back-story. Here are a few examples of what I would do:
- Combine the characters of Jill and Piers. Since they have similar relationships to Chris, it shouldn't be an issue, and it would avoid the drama of Jill suddenly disappearing and Piers coming out of nowhere between RE5 and 6.
- Combine the characters of Jessica, Excella and Carla. Revelations is set before 5, so Jexcarla could still be a supposedly "good" character then, turn on Chris and become Wesker's ally for 5, get away at the end after seeing Wesker's true colours, and throw herself at the next powerful man just to end up as a clone of the woman he lusts after. So instead of three one-off characters, we would have one major recurring villain.
- Replace Sheva with Rebecca and Parker with Barry. Rebecca could also take on the role of Quint and/or Keith in Revelations if they're really needed, and if nothing else is planned for her and Barry in the future, they could be part of Chris's team that dies in Edonia, replacing two of the faceless soldiers.
- Get rid of Ashley and have Leon rescue Sherry instead. She's not the president's daughter, but still important to the government or else they wouldn't keep her there, and I'm sure they would be interested enough in getting her back to send an agent after her.
- Replace Helena and Deborah with Claire and Chris. Claire is a member of an organisation that fights bioterrorism, and the speech the president had prepared was about bioterrorism, so it should be easy to come up with some excuse for her to be there. Chris was missing for six months, but instead of becoming a drunk, he might has well have been kidnapped by Jexcarla after being knocked unconscious in Edonia, experimented on, and used as a leverage to make Claire do as Simmons says. With the first three chapters of Leon's campaign being set at least two days before the start of Chris's own campaign, there would still be enough time for the amnesiac captain (who, unlike Deborah, didn't mutate of course) to leave the hospital for a drink at the bar, be found by Jiers and brought to China.
- As for Jake, I would either keep him, but make it so that he's actually Steve who was "adopted" and brainwashed by Wesker after his apparent death in CV, or rewrite the whole story so that Sherry is somehow the cure.
There you go, at least ten unnecessary characters are gone, yet the story still remains roughly the same. Half of this just came to my mind right now, soI haven't really thought it all through, and there's no point in doing so because it will never happen anyway, but I'm sure it could work.
. Besides, don't you think that this guy acting different in every game/film? Rookie in RE2, fearless macho in RE4, silent professional agent in Degeneration... For me, they changed him too much. RE2- ok, he was young and scared, but I don't think that intensive training could change his personality so much (not physical skills, that's obvious).
