Book Review: Resident Evil Revelations: Official Complete Works

This is the English translated version of the original Japanese book Biohazard Revelations Unveiled Edition: Official Complete Works that was published in 2013. This is published by Titan Books. I was actually expecting the publisher to be Udon Entertainment since they have translated quite a lot of Japanese video game artbooks in the recent years, included the one for Resident Evil 5.

This large paperback artbook comes in at 200 pages.

Bulk of the book are on designs for the characters, enemies and environment, in that order. There are also some pages for weapon design, packaging art, merchandise and some storyboards. There are lots of insightful staff commentary that talks about the characters as well as their designs.

The character and creature designs are a mixture of in-game stills and concept art. The staff commentary occasionally mentions the artworks as being drawn but there's a very CG or 3D look to them as if they are screenshots from the game. It's got to do with the textures and lighting. There are many design variations to the main characters and those are clearly line art with colours. It's quite fun to see the pirate costume of Jill and Chris in tight sailor uniform. There are also discarded costume designs, such as those that show Jill with too much flesh.

Those will like zombies, creatures and grotesque beings will be treated to a sizeable portion on those designs. Every Resident Evil game is like a celebration of deformed and monstrous creatures.

Environment artworks are nice but again printed too small, usually three to one page, and often times a bit too dark. Some are quite detailed and it's a shame not being able to see the details at the small reproduction sizes.

The last few pages are of files that Jill and Chris recovered in the game.

It's a fantastic video game companion for the fans.

Resident Evil Revelations: Official Complete Works is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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