The role of Labyrinth

Now that the primary functions of the Mansion have been established, it is time to address a lapsed requirement of Resident Evil – narrow corridors.  Corridors in the Spencer Mansion don’t run straight, but angle around key plot and puzzle rooms, sometimes requiring you to go through such rooms to reach corridors, and generally restrict movement of the player while enabling them to see all (or most) of the Mansion early.  They conjure to mind the metaphor of “rat in a maze,” a key requirement for Resident Evil.

Most other Resident Evil’s share this core facet, but it felt downplayed in Code Veronica, where most corridors are wide and accommodating.  Darkside Chronicles addresses this absence with a new addition, as Ashford can be heard on the PA taunting Claire and Steve while throwing random explosive packages together with zombie attacks.  RE4 likewise seems to eschew this model for wider corridors and masses of Gannados to attack the player.  While it is possible to create a sense of fear and tension for the player without narrow corridors, something has to take its place.

This Mansion was built to hide a smuggling operation, but the primary facets of that are already set.  The smuggled goods take a short, express path from underground harbor to waiting overland cart through dumbwaiters, trapdoor – ladders, and big double doors.  All of these should have different keys and should have challenges that prevent them from being picked, whether as guards, alarms, or traps.  The main reason why is because they would all pique the curiosity of law enforcement; if any are found, the Baron would be screwed!  But law enforcement shouldn’t have cause to draw anywhere near these passages.

It customary for nobles to entertain their friends, so the PCs should have access early to guest quarters, the dining hall, the sitting room, anywhere where a guest would need to go to feel welcome in this Mansion.  Big long corridors may be detrimental here, as they would only encourage the curious to poke their noses where they shouldn’t.  Victorian servants generally never needed to go to the Masters’ quarters except to do specific jobs at specific times.  Assuming that the servants were in on the smuggling ring, the Baron would do his utmost to keep his own space apart from his servants, and make it plausible that he could be ignorant of the massive natural harbor right under his feet.  He would set them up to take the fall, at least at the architectural stage.

These competing needs are starting to build a ground plan for a basic polar split.  No guest in a Baron’s house would be caught dead in the servant’s quarters, so that seems a reasonable tactic for hiding the operative rooms.  The common areas, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, would be in the middle, perhaps just off of the main hall.  Guest quarters would be on the other side, perhaps on the main floor, while the Baron would make his quarters just above them on the second floor.  Topped with a library and a few other amenities (both areas need separate toilets) and we have the start of a floorplan.

But where are the corridors?  The hall can have two corridors reaching off to the two poles of the Mansion, but those are not the snakey, winding corridors that we’ve previously established are needed.

I certainly plan to have the heavily armed Constables be assaulted near constantly, but is that fulfilling the desire for a Resident Evil role playing game?  Seems a lot to leave up to my wholly unoriginal Gannodos! 

The only other option is the vague disguise from RE3; Raccoon city would have been much simpler to escape, perhaps using straight lines of egress, if not for the general ruin that the outbreak has caused.  General ruin won’t work in my plan, but the Baron Larksley could have spent lavishly, maybe all of his profits from smuggling, in terror of the law one day coming to investigate his home.  He has built his house to frustrate, or possibly kill, but certainly to temp invaders to kill, his family and/or more likely servants.

All of this rests on a rule little known to Americans, that commoners cannot strike noble men.  We are in an age of transition, but I would lay money that ninteenth century gentleman would still be clinging to this achaism for as long as possible.  If the PCs, who are commoners with badges and public guns, take aggressive action against a noble man or his home, then they are liable for their actions.  All of the rest is disputed, the original he-said, she-said, where the nobleman’s word counts for more in law than theirs.

The idea begins to germinate, that the Mansion is in fact much more of a nut-house than the one in the Arklay mountains, as by the 1870s the British are definitely comparing notes with the Japanese, and a western built Koga house, with trap doors, hidden ladders, levered into place walls, and swinging traps would be completely fair game.  The PCs should be given fair warning, perhaps with a handful of recovered notes from the guest spaces hinting at this construction idea.  But I love the idea, as the Koga Houses of Japan were supposed to protect typically common ninja from noble samurai, and now the Mansion in Britain protects a troubled noble from civic (synonym for common) law enforcers.

Suffice to say that the PCs are in for the fight of their lives in a madhouse where the enemy holds all of the cards.  Except one.  Victory needs to be more than achievable, but obvious to all of them right from the main hall.  Tomorrow, if I can, I shall endeavour to write the introductions.