Resident Evil 4 Remake: Kennedy vs. Krauser

Now that we have officially reached Halloween season — or fall, as it’s also known — the time for all things spooky is nigh. In the gaming sphere, there aren’t too many names more synonymous with spooky than Resident Evil.

The remake of Resident Evil 4 that released earlier this year was certainly full of scares (the Regenerador enemies in the final third of the game are nightmare fuel) but the Capcom game also told some surprisingly compelling and emotional stories. The game uses the fights between main character Leon Kennedy and antagonist Jack Krauser to reveal the narrative that unfolds between them, an interesting and interactive vehicle for storytelling.

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Round One

Their first fight is about introductions — or rather, re-introductions. At least two years have passed since Leon and Krauser last saw each other, so they have to re-establish their baseline. Leon clearly hasn’t changed, per Krauser. He calls him a kid and points out that he’s “still holding on to fantasies of what’s right and wrong.” Leon’s own words reinforce this — he wonders aloud how Krauser could orchestrate a young girl’s kidnapping and work for this dangerous cult.

Krauser insists that Leon knows exactly why he’s doing what he’s doing, and Leon still wants to believe the best of Krauser. He expects that Krauser is acting to avenge his unit who were either abandoned or burned by the U.S. government, that his intentions are honorable even if his behavior isn’t. After all, Leon’s would be if were he in Krauser’s position, and so he can’t help but believe that the man who taught him everything he knows would be the same. Krauser, on the other hand, asserts that he’s doing what he’s doing for purely selfish reasons. “I’m a free man who made a choice,” he insists, not beholden to the cult at all but serving his own motives. It’s clear that Leon still has a great amount of respect for Krauser – he addresses him by rank – so this betrayal of the cause that Leon undoubtedly believes they both shared stings even more.

First Fight, Old Lessons

The fight itself is much like this, a re-introduction for both of them. It’s clear that Krauser’s lessons have stuck with Leon – he’s made it this far, and he even paraphrases one of them when he manages to beat mercenary extraordinaire Ada Wong in a scuffle. But this fight is unlike every other one he’s had in the game thus far. Up until now he’s been fighting monsters, taking out seemingly mindless hordes with his firearms. Now, he’s fighting a human, one who is not only as capable as he is but, arguably, even more so. On top of that, this is an opponent who knows him extremely well. All of this, plus the shock at seeing Krauser again, has put Leon on the back foot.

Where before Leon chided Ada for bringing a gun to a close-quarters knife fight, he slips up and makes that same mistake here. Krauser is the one doing the chiding this time, and it’s here that we learn for the first time that he’s the one responsible for Leon’s rookie cop to certified-action-hero glow up. Leon has to re-learn how to fight a rational, strategizing opponent, and Krauser treats this moment a bit like a pop quiz. It’s one that Leon apparently passes if his “Not bad” after their initial clash is any indication.

In a mechanical sense, this is the first time in the game where the knife (and not a gun) is the primary weapon. It’s the only weapon, in fact. This test from Krauser for Leon is also a test of your ability as the player. Krauser is a big boy, but he’s eerily fast despite that. If you haven’t mastered the game’s block and parry system, Krauser will take you out before you can blink.

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Round Two … and Three and Four

If the first fight is a re-introduction, an establishment of character for the two combatants, the second fight – the boss fight – is all about stakes. Krauser lays it all out quite nicely during his villain monologue before the fight. “You can’t save her,” Krauser taunts, referring to Ashley. “You can’t save anyone.”

In the game’s opening prologue, Leon makes it very clear that the outbreak in Raccoon City six years earlier (Resident Evil 2) shook his confidence in himself as a protector. He says the cop in him died that day. Krauser puts Leon’s worst fear in plain words, lays out his greatest insecurity, and mocks him with it. If Leon loses this fight, he doesn’t get Ashley home. He fails his mission again. This fight is as much about restoring his confidence in himself as it is about clearing an obstacle from his path. In this way, surviving every phase of the fight, every section of the gauntlet that Krauser has set up especially for him, is slowly repairing his belief in himself.

Krauser’s Fight for Vindication

For Krauser, this fight is about choices. Leon has declared that Krauser made the wrong choices, and it almost seems like beating Leon means proving the man wrong. If his absolute power (thanks to the plaga parasite that he allowed the cult to inject him with) beats Leon’s conviction to do the right thing, he wins. He’s justified, vindicated. So when the one-on-one phase and the booby trap phase don’t work, when Leon proves himself to be a more than worthy opponent, that’s when Krauser transforms.

It’s interesting to note that he is the only boss in the game, the only enemy, in fact, who is in complete control of the plaga transformation. Even Osmund Saddler, who is the cult’s leader and the game’s final boss, transforms because his anger overwhelms him first. Krauser’s change, on the other hand, is completely voluntary. He deliberately removes his shirt and his gear, continuing to taunt Leon all the while that he’s “too soft to do what’s necessary,” and triggers his shift himself. When you lose this third phase of the fight, Krauser mocks Leon again, telling him as he dies that he would’ve done well to accept the power of the plaga for himself, lending more credence to the idea that winning the fight against Leon feels like validation for his choices.

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The Student Surpasses the Teacher

Beating Krauser presents another interesting difference between him and every other boss in this or just about any other RE game. When Leon wins the fight, Krauser isn’t dead. Any other villain would keep fighting or at least keep talking trash, insisting that Leon just got lucky or that they’d beat him next time.

No, Jack Krauser gives up. He stops fighting. Not only that, he tells Leon that he knows what he has to do and encourages him when Leon seems hesitant to go through with killing him. His last words before he dies by Leon’s hand (at the end of his own knife, no less) are almost proud. It’s also the first and only time that Krauser forgoes calling Leon “rookie” and instead uses his name.

Lessons in Victory

The defeat at Leon’s hands represents a lot of things for Krauser. It’s a passing of the torch, literally; the player gets to keep Krauser’s knife as a reward for winning the fight. But it’s also clearly proof that Leon was right, that his own choices were not. It’s why he stops fighting after he loses — why continue when his whole reason for doing so in the first place has been invalidated?

Of course, winning the fight bolsters Leon’s confidence and his resolve. He is shaken by the death of his mentor and by being the one to bring it about, but he never questions his ability to complete his mission and get Ashley home again. He knows, whether consciously or not, that he’s been vindicated by his victory, and so he moves through the rest of the game with an assuredness that he’d been missing.

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All this thematic, ludonarrative harmony in a campy Resident Evil game. Who would’ve thought, huh?

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