Since the release of the first game in 1996, the resident evil series has consistently managed to frighten the living daylights out of its customers, and revolutionize the horror adventure genre. The one thing that has been missing for the last 12 years, however, has been racial diversity. In an attempt to show that it isn’t racist, Capcom has decided to branch out and fix hundreds of years of tension and racial inequality, by allowing you (the player) to kill black people… err, black zombie people. If you look on the bright side, the developers have decided to add hundreds upon hundreds of black people to diversify the already popular franchise.

N’Gai Croal of Newsweek said of the game’s trailer: “There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery”. It’s obvious the racial issues of the game go deeper than just some white protagonist killing black enemies. Croal points out that the problems aren’t based on the colour of the zombies’ skin, but rather the impression that “it’s like they’re (the native population) all dangerous; they all need to be killed”. Either Capcom hasn’t paid much attention to the critics of the trailer, or it simply hasn’t dealt the dilemma publically. Expect them to address the issues closer to the release date. Capcom is hoping Resident Evil 5 will be released by March 2009 at the latest. You can view the trailer here, to see what all the hubbub is about for yourselves.

From Kotaku