Encyclopedia Muranica: The Absent Rain Theorem

Sometimes, you’ve got to look at the absence of what’s not there for the deepest, relative value you care about, and the lack observed thereafter will help put into perspective what matters most.


For example, not pictured: Fry

After a nearly week long romp of raging through Raccoon City, I’m more or less at ease with my adventures through the abhorrently infested zone of nightmarishly ghoulish proportions. As predicted, I took a second to size my unofficial review of the game up, and I think I more or less hit all of the notes of importance I wanted to. “Back in my day”…so to speak, when I was writing reviews in a more official capacity, they use to be far more long winded, maybe even taking a fine toothed comb of the entire process to a certain detrimental nature of sorts. I gladly leave that structural approach behind, as it feels a bit too outdated at this point, and perhaps leaned too heavily on magnifying the nitty gritty details almost obsessively, to the point of being OCD about the most frivolous of nonsense.


Much in the vein of: 0MFG! NEMESIS DOES TENTACLE THINGS TO
MONSTERS IN THE REMAKE! HE NEVER DID TENTACLE THINGS TO
MONSTERS IN THE ORIGINAL!!!11!

One important takeaway I feel of my overall thoughts involving the RE3 remake, was in regards to a notion I mentioned awhile back…which is ironic, cause I don’t even remember what it was initially in reference too, but the idea was sound I think I initially used a different name for the happening as well, but I’m reutilizing it again with the new dubbing “The Absent Rain Theorem”, as it deals with the concept of seeing value relative to what isn’t present. I initially posited it in terms of focusing on how much it isn’t raining when I ride my bike, as opposed to how much it is raining, to help frame my own perspective on the moment itself, and I ended up reusing the very same idea for my review on the RE3 remake, in all of the excessive absences that make up it’s quality.


Another good example: this wall has now enhanced in quality,
because of the massive fucking hole Jill just blew through it. It’s the
absence of material that makes it so god damn metal. The theorem
works in many ways of detailing quality.

To wit; the A.R.T (Absent Rain Theorem) I ended up utilizing was extraordinarily helpful in focusing my perspective involving the RE3 remake by what wasn’t present, more so than what was, and then parsing through whether or not that was good or bad….or just, different, relatively speaking. That doesn’t necessarily mean it drove me down a mad path of delusion involving said quality, or kept me in denial about the inherent “-ishness” (that’s right, I used that idea a little while back, too) of the game, as it in fact lacked too much in most regards, failing it’s own “-ishness”, both in what was absent, and what was present, but I think my approach with A.R.T in mind was a useful philosophical approach that has now worked in a couple of different applications, and I think will get a lot of use out of me moving forward.


Pictured: Nemesis, trying to get (a) value (meal) out of a
Jill (Sandwich)

With all of that said, and the post mortem on the event more or less done and dusted, I figured I would mirror the game a bit in it’s machinations…or at least, the original release of Resident Evil 3, by having my last focus on the game be about what comes after the escape from Raccoon City, and ironically, fits in with my mention and usage of A.R.T, in distilling the nature of what the RE3 remake fundamentally lacks, and one of the core absences that degrade the entire process after the fact.

And that’s the Mercenaries.


Absence makes the heart grow fonder

To be concluded…

~Pashford