In RollerCoaster Tycoon – yes, that’s right, I’m opening this Resident Evil 4 blog with a comparison to RollerCoaster Tycoon; don’t you ever question my ability to connect anything and everything back to objectively the greatest video game of all-time – you can hire Handymen to take care of your park. They have four main duties; sweep the footpaths of garbage/vomit, watering the flowers, emptying litter bins, and finally, mowing the grass. All of these are automatically turned on. In RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, mowing the grass is the only option which is automatically turned off.
This is because, if you’ve ever played the game and forgotten to turn this option off, you have at some point been completely befuddled by a startling influx of messages about how guests are complaining about the filthy state of your park, all of your benches and bins have been vandalized, and you have no idea why; you’ve hired so many Handymen! You just… haven’t seen any of them in a while. Where are they, anyway?
… How did they get all of the way over there? There’s nothing there for them to do! How did they even – how did that one guy get on an island?!? Handymen can’t swim! Why, I oughta…
Now, this is annoying, but it’s what I would call an affectionate annoyance. RollerCoaster Tycoon is, legitimately, not just me saying it for a meme, a very well-received video game that is beloved by millions. Clearly, this Handyman problem is not a huge issue for the people who loved this game. You could say similar things about any other beloved game with a well-known irritation. Navi from Ocarina of Time is annoying, but clearly not a game-ruining feature; after all, Ocarina of Time is widely-recognized as one of the greatest video games of all-time. Yoshi’s Island has Baby Mario. Star Fox 64 has Slippy Toad. These games were positively received, and while I have no doubt that there are more than a few Newgrounds-esque animations of these characters being brutally murdered, for the most part, we’ve grown to accept or even appreciate them. Like a partner who snores, but when they’re away for some reason, you actually find it harder to fall asleep without them. What a romantic example… and also completely false, I stole it from Scrubs, but hopefully you still see my point.
Resident Evil 4 has Ashley Graham.
When not hiding in dumpsters or being carried away by villagers while she ineffectively flails at them, Ashley Graham can be found on basically every list of ‘Most Annoying Video Game Characters’. I literally Googled that selection of words and 50% of the results were lists featuring Ashley Graham; less than I was expecting, actually. So when the Resident Evil 4 Remake – henceforth known as the R4make because my hands are lazy – was announced, one of the first things people asked Capcom to fix was sentient escort-mission and walking air-raid siren, Ashley A. Graham. The ‘A’ stands for ‘Annoying’, I have been told.
And fix her they did! Ashley Graham is now much more toned down, a more realistic and yet slightly more actionized version of the character who is much more helpful and complimentary of Leon’s – and by extension, the player’s – skills, and generally speaking, we can all understand why Leon would go to hell and back to rescue this adorable cinnamon roll whose character model is unrelatedly a twenty-five year old Dutch supermodel… not that we won’t still take the chance to throw a few eggs at her, just to see what happens. Don’t take it personally Ashley, we do it to the Merchant too.
And so, Ashley Graham was fixed, the R4make was a resounding success, and a good time was had by all. But… did Ashley Graham need to be fixed? Was her original portrayal that bad? I imagine that some people are screaming “Yes!” at their screens right now, but I would argue… no. Ashley Graham is both an integral part of the original Resident Evil 4 experience, and also… fine. She’s fine. Not in that way, ya pervs, but in the sense that I always found any accusation that she ruined the experience to be completely unfounded.
So I will be explaining why Ashley Graham didn’t really need to be changed in the first place, while also kind of exploring the difference in tone between the original game and the remake.
She fits the tone of Resident Evil 4 perfectly
The biggest difference between Resident Evil 4 and its remake – more than the addition of stealth mechanics, more than the rearrangement of plot threads, more than abducting the optional post-cabin El Gigante fight from 2-3 and inserting it halfway through the Castle section – is its tone. Resident Evil 4 is delightfully, unapologetically, self-awarely… very, very dumb. It is a remarkably dumb game. “Where’s everyone going? Bingo?!?” You can’t tell me that isn’t the dumbest thing you’ve heard. And just to be clear, I mean this in the most affectionate way possible. Resident Evil 4 is one of my favourite games; just because something is dumb doesn’t mean it can’t also be amazing.
Resident Evil 4 is an action game. It’s a game where you shoot people in the head to stun them, then run up and kick them so hard that their head explodes and everyone in the vicinity flies backwards. Leon survives a fall at terminal velocity by firing a grappling hook which grabs onto nothing, and he’s fine. There are multiple backflips through lasers. Not one of these things is anything less than perfect. Even the background story that the President sends someone to Spain who can’t speak Spanish to rescue his daughter is just pitch-perfect. It’s a 10/10 at what it is. But, how does Ashley Graham fit into this?
Ashley Graham is the President’s daughter. Not just in the sense that she is quite literally the President’s daughter, but in the sense that if Resident Evil 4 is a cheesy 80s action movie, Leon is the fresh-faced rookie from the academy who has somehow also just been called out of retirement for one last job because the President’s daughter has been kidnapped by terrorists, and he’s the only bad enough dude to rescue her. He does backflips and wears sunglasses and drives a speedboat and I’m only exaggerating about the sunglasses.
Ashley Graham fits perfectly with this vibe and frankly, Carolyn Lawrence, her original voice actor, does not get enough credit for perfectly nailing the role of the constantly kidnapped damsel who also gets a surprising amount of badass moments herself. Let’s not forget that when separated from Leon, she (optionally) kills several zealots herself, evades a small army of Armaduras, and can drive a bulldozer like a fucking champion. It could be said that Ashley’s situation, the trauma she would realistically be experiencing, and her mental wellbeing in the face of repeatedly being kidnapped and being unable to assist her rescuer in any meaningful way, for the most part, is not taken seriously. And that would be entirely correct. But would taking it seriously match the tone of the game, or would it clash in a way that disrupted the experience?
I am slightly worried that the way I am phrasing this could be construed as “Ashley Graham is useless but that’s fine because Resident Evil 4 has the tone of a stupid action movie where characters like her are always useless! Maybe she would have done better if the game had been set in the kitchen, am I right fellas? I will die having never touched a tiddy” and that is not my intent at all. It’s more that the outcry that the R4make has fixed Ashley by giving her more agency and taking her seriously rubs me the wrong way because… is the implication that the OG Ashley Graham is less-deserving of being rescued because she isn’t sufficiently independent by your standards? In the original, she only throws a harmless piece of wood at Leon upon first meeting him, but in the remake, she tries to hit him with a candelabra and then runs away. 10/10, strong female character quota met. She will go on to be kidnapped the exact same number of times as the original.
I think the Ashley moment that perfectly sums up the tone of the original for me is when she helps Leon out by driving a bulldozer while he’s standing on the back, blasting away waves of Ganados, or whatever the Island enemies were called. In the remake, Ashley pilots a wrecking ball, and there’s a throwaway line about her Driver’s Ed classes. It’s… fine. I like it well enough; there’s nothing wrong with the moment. But it just can’t compete with the stupid, glorious, inexplicable moment in the original when you approach a bulldozer and Ashley brightly chirps “Leave it to me, Leon!” and then drives it flawlessly with no explanation whatsoever. This was the moment in an Indiana Jones film where the kid-sidekick suddenly reveals that they are an expert pizza-tosser and the only way to stop the villain is to prepare a perfectly-seasoned calzone. Sometimes, things are actually better without the explanation.
Still, I just want to clarify that while original Ashley matches the tone of the original game, R4make Ashley also perfectly matches the tone of the R4make. A tone which is more serious, dramatic, and not played for laughs. And that brings me onto my next point, and possibly the only serious problem I have with the Resident Evil 4 Remake.
Angst is the opposite of fun
In the original game, when Leon and Ashley are separated (for the first time, at least,) it’s kind of Ashley’s fault. She coughs up blood, and when Leon asks if she’s ok, she pushes him away and says “I’m fine, leave me alone!” which is not strictly indicative that she is a bad person, but knowing that there’s a parasite inside of you that is causing you to cough up blood, and you have an unknown amount of time (but not long) to get rid of it before you will die, and the guy they sent to rescue you is too busy thinking up cheesy bingo-related one-liners, then it’s understandable that she’s a little on edge. After running an entire metre away from Leon, they are separated by a convenient gate, and she is promptly restrained by the world’s most obvious wall trap.
When Leon reunites with Ashley, they’re separated by a storey, but he frees her, she gets her fun little playable section where she lights some zealots on fire, and then she escapes and reunites with Leon for real (until she’s kidnapped again in the next chapter.) She says “Leon!” and he says “Ashley!” and they hug, and he says “You did good!” and she remorsefully says “I’m… sorry if I was-“ and he says “Oh, don’t worry about it! Come on, let’s move on.” It is never referred to again. I’m not saying that this is 10/10 quality writing, or that I am against expanding this scene/dynamic considerably, but I don’t think it’s done particularly well in the remake.
In the remake, Ashley and Leon are separated when Saddler remotely takes control of her via Las Plagas, forces her to steal Leon’s knife and try to stab him with it, and then she holds the knife to her own throat. When they’re separated by the same convenient gate as in the original (but in a courtyard this time) then Ashley is horrified, drops the knife, and runs away of her own volition. On the one hand, this is a much more sympathetic portrayal than “I’m fine, leave me alone!” but it’s also… not pleasant. Obviously they were never going to be separated because Saddler was throwing Ashley a surprise birthday party and Leon has to go on a lengthy excursion to find his invite, but it doesn’t make me happy to see Ashley Graham portrayed as a traumatized young woman realising that someone can forcibly take control of her body and use her to try to kill her only allies.
It’s worse when you find her. Ashley isn’t trapped or restrained; she’s just… crying. Alone. In an empty room. Which, judging by how long it will take the average player, she will have been doing for probably over an hour. Crying. By herself. When Leon approaches her, she warns him to stay back because she’s scared that she’ll be forced to hurt him again, and weepily explains how terrified she is, and he gives her a Saturday morning cartoon speech about how they should keep going and not give up hope, and she gains the strength to keep going, and it’s all very sweet and all, but I…
…
It makes me uncomfortable that the decision was made that in order for Ashley Graham to be more sympathetic, she had to suffer significantly more. That’s the gist of what I am saying. I can’t phrase it in a way that sounds like an objectively morally correct take, or link it to an overarching societal problem, but I just… really don’t like how Ashley Graham in the remake is a much more realistically traumatized young woman, going through an extremely traumatic situation. Of all the things that are at odds with the original Resident Evil 4, trying to portray how harrowing and horrific Ashley’s ordeal would be is one of the biggest changes that Capcom made, and while it’s not uninteresting, it’s certainly not pleasant.
This ties into another scene that is drastically altered from the original; after Ashley is captured by Novistadors big scary bugs, Leon briefly reunites with her in Salazar’s throne room, but then he falls down a trapdoor. Classic Leon. In the original, Ashley is just… there, relieved by Leon’s presence but also concerned for him. This just wouldn’t do for the remake though, so instead… she is forcibly restrained and forced to drink a chalice of black goo – possibly blood – against her will. She is resisting the entire time, begging them to stop, gagging as they force her mouth open, it’s… extremely uncomfortable. Also, it visibly speeds up the growth of the Las Plagas parasite, and unlike in the original, where she immediately knows that Leon survived his wacky one-way vertical adventure, here, she has no idea until much later. This is… I don’t want to repeat myself, but it’s just unpleasant. Not just in the sense that it clashes horribly with the tone of the original, but it’s pretty grim compared to the R2make and R3make too. This is the kind of thing you’d expect from an Outlast cutscene; in fact, forcibly having your mouth held open while someone makes you drink tainted blood is a cutscene event in Outlast 2, and we all know how fun and uplifting that game is.
None of this makes the remake empirically worse, but personally, if I had a choice between playing a game featuring 2004 Ashley Graham, the damsel in distress with a mildly irritating voice, or 2023 Ashley Graham, a tortured victim of trauma who will require years of therapy to recover from the events of this game, I would pick the former in a heartbeat, because at least I won’t be averting my eyes for half of the cutscenes that she’s present in the game for. And you know what? I said I couldn’t link this to a big, deep, meaningful societal point, but while I definitely don’t have the patience or the courage to explore this in more detail, I do think that it’s definitely weird and a bit gross than in order to make a female character more sympathetic to the audience, she has to be exploited and traumatized in a myriad of unpleasant and uncomfortable ways. It’s certainly an effective way to get player to root for someone, but that doesn’t mean that they enjoyed the experience.
It was for the best that she could be annoying sometimes
This is kind of leading on from the above, but another way that the different tone of the remake affects the experience, is how it correlates to the player’s feelings of urgency, and how they react to failure. I think that a good way to emphasize this is to focus on one of Ashley’s most frequent lines in the original, that being the iconic “LEON, HEEEEELP!”
You might think that in the original game, this line was annoying. But what if I told you that it was annoying on purpose? I actually have some (sketchy) evidence for this; if you leave the game on the menu screen long enough for the demo to play, then on the second demo, there’s a brief clip of Ashley being carried by a zealot while Leon reloads his rifle before taking the shot to rescue her. And in this clip, Ashley says “Heeeelp… Leon!” Uh, obviously it’s difficult to convey the difference in her tone via text, but it’s a very distraught wail, not the shrill cry that ended up in the final game. This means that they intentionally changed Ashley’s voice line to be the one that we all know and love acknowledge.
And here’s the thing; that was a good decision.
If you’ve played Resident Evil 4 – especially if you’ve played it more than a dozen times, like myself – then you’re going to be hearing this voice line a lot. And when you hear it, how does it make you feel? Slightly annoyed? Maybe, but it also serves the valuable and vital service of letting you know that an enemy is near Ashley’s vicinity, and that you should probably prioritize rescuing her as soon as you have the chance. You should also want to rescue her for the emotional reason that you are invested in the story and in keeping her character safe, but the gameplay is already a balancing act in that regard, and if you have the perfect chance to blast two Ganados away with a shotgun before turning around to save Ashley, it might be worth taking that chance. You don’t need the distraction of Ashley’s plea for help sounding like she’s on the verge of tears.
Now, there’s a certain speedrunner I watch on YouTube and Twitch named CarcinogenSDA, and I’ve somehow gotten into the habit of using his Resident Evil videos as ASMR. He played the Resident Evil 4 Remake and I would like to quote him directly regarding an offhand comment he made when Ashley was grabbed. “God, Ashley screams like an angel getting her wings torn off.” And this is accurate. The voice direction for the remake clearly called for a cry that would not be irritating, but that would cause the most alarm. Ashley sounds like a realistic young woman screaming in fear of her life. That’s… distressing.
This is a personal call, but I would much rather be very mildly irritated by the OG Ashley’s needy “Leon, help!” then startled into immediate action (and worrying my neighbours) because a very realistic scream of abject, primal terror was just unleashed upon me while I was trying to throw an egg at dollar-store Wolverine. This carries over to what happens in the unfortunate event that you are unsuccessful in rescuing Ashley and encounter the dreaded ‘Game Over’ scenario.
In the original game, if Ashley is hurt then she falls to the ground like a ragdoll, or if she is carried away, a short animation plays of her captor carrying her into the light while she pounds ineffectively on their back. It’s not, like, an encouraging thumbs-up to the player, but it’s also not particularly distressing. Also, if Leon dies while Ashley is alive, she’ll continue to say “Leon, help!” or “Help me Leon!” in a way which is frankly, comedic. If this had happened in the remake, it would be played for drama and Ashley would be having a complete existential breakdown and refusing to acknowledge that he was dead.
In the remake, if Ashley is carried out of the area, she cries, reaches out a hand dramatically, and screams “LEON!” with the kind of intensity that prevents guests from trying rides in RollerCoaster Tycoon. Told you I could connect anything to it. It’s the dramatic hand-reach that gets me; on top of Ashley being a more realistic victim of trauma, it really piledrives in that she was depending on you to protect her, and you failed. Obviously, a ‘Game Over’ scenario should hardly pat you on the back and tell you that you did a good job, and Ashley’s bloodcurdling screams are a fantastic performance on the part of her new voice actor, Genevieve Buechner, but it’s a lot harder to shrug off and go back to your last save. Once again, it’s more engaging, at the cost of being less pleasant to play. And it’s not like people weren’t going to be engaged in the first place when playing a remake of one of the most successful video games of all-time.
New Ashley is strong and independent… superficially
There are far more moments in the R4make where Ashley is more proactive, or vocal, or just generally tries to be more of use than she was in the original, and I can’t deny that some of these are pretty cool, they work, and it’s nice that they were trying to improve on the original impression of Ashley as a helpless damsel in distress. They’re also nearly all surface-level superficial improvements that don’t actually change her character or impact the plot in any meaningful way.
When Leon first meets Ashley in the original, she squeals “Stop! Don’t come!” and throws a harmless chunk of wood at him, before he explains that he was sent by the President to rescue her, and she agrees to follow him. However, in the remake, Ashley is a cool girl badass who swings a candelabra at Leon and then runs out of the room before he can explain. And then he immediately catches up to her, explains that he was sent by the President to rescue her, and she agrees to follow him. Hmm. Not exactly the drastic departure that it initially sounded like. If anything, running away from the armed American agent who is clearly here to help is actually… pretty stupid, when you think about it.
Ashley also helps in the cabin fight! In the original, Leon and Luis have to kill dozens of enemies before the crowd just give up and leave, but in the remake, Ashley is encouraged to hide in a secret passage by Luis, and after Leon and his new bestie board up the windows and beat up a very bad minotaur cosplayer, Ashley bursts through a door, revealing that she’s found a way to escape the horde in the nick of time! Which… um, Luis, if you knew that this was where the secret passage went, why didn’t you and Leon just follow her? I’m worried that this is veering into CinemaSins territory (Leon’s handgun is clearly based on the BlackTail model S0E3PQ, but the graphics for the ammunition have closer resemblance to the S0E4P7! Plothole alert! Ding! Ruined forever!) but it’s a cool moment for Ashley that nonetheless raises some questions due to the clumsy way it’s shoehorned in.
In the boss fight against Mendez, AKA The Big Cheese, Ashley saves Leon’s life in the remake in a huge way! In the original, Leon kills Mendez and then jumps out of a window to escape the burning building, but in the remake, Leon kills Mendez, and then… Ashley breaks the window with a random chair or something and says “Hey Leon, you could probably get out this way if you wanted!”
None of these changes are bad, but they feel weirdly… corporate to me. It feels like a checklist, and I don’t like that. It doesn’t feel like anyone involved in the story was interested in changing any of the characters in a significant or meaningful way, other than maybe updating a few of the one-liners, but that they had been given the task “57% of players said they found Ashley annoying, add at least five instances in the story where she is useful,” and then they asked their boss “Oh, can I like, alter the story at all to accommodate these?” and their boss said “… No.”
So all of the major story beats – at least those related to Ashley – continue in the same way (she actually gets kidnapped sooner the second time they’re separated in the castle,) except now she has a handful of witty one-liners, she voices her appreciation for Leon – and by extension, the player – more frequently, and she’s occasionally more useful to the player, which makes her more worthy of your respect, apparently. It’s all very – oh! You know what it reminds me of? Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones. It’s all very ‘Strong Independent Woman™’ as written by a boardroom of men.
But maybe I’m being too critical; a lot of these changes are genuinely nice. But I still wouldn’t say that they ‘fix’ Ashley Graham, probably because a lot of the qualities shown in these changes were always there to begin with.
Ashley Graham was always a good enough character
In the remake, Ashley is occasionally more vocally supportive of Leon, by which I mean she sometimes says “Nice shot!” when he shoots someone. This is a far cry from the distant, unsupportive Ashley Graham of the original, except for the part where she did the same thing. Well, not exactly the same, but during the cable-car portion shortly before the Mendez boss fight (which was weirdly cut in the remake) then every time Leon shoots an enemy with his rifle, Ashley will do an adorable little fist-pump. 10/10, celebrating Leon’s success without wanting to distract him. You love to see it. And I know you love to see it, because she does the same thing in the remake, and everyone is tripping over themselves to gush over how amazing it is and how much it makes them love Ashley, even though it was something she did in the original game too.
In the remake, Ashley is a lot calmer and more polite when meeting Luis Sera. He says “Hey, I see you found your missing Señorita!” and she says “The ‘Señorita’ has a name, and it’s Ashley.” A huge improvement on the original, where she’s shrill and naggy, chiding him with “How rude!” just because he… uh, immediately makes a comment about the size of her breasts. Like, right away. Literally the first thing he says to her. It would have been very interesting to see Capcom try to keep this line intact without making Luis come across as sleazy and unsympathetic. Anyway, while Ashley’s comeback needs some work (“I don’t believe there’s any relevance with my figure and my standing!” 2/10, no punchline, doesn’t even mention bingo) her reaction is honestly understandable.
In the original, Ashley helps Leon to move some crates that are too heavy for him to move by himself. This is honestly impressive for a twenty year-old woman who could still pass for a sophomore. However, in the remake, she can kill a Regenerator… by pulling a lever. That’s it. OG Ashley pulled more than her fair share of levers too, but she never killed a Regenerator. In fact, other than throwing some lanterns around, she never-
… Oh yeah, that.
Glitches aside, I think I need to bring up again the inexplicable awesomeness that is Ashley driving a giant bulldozer through a path filled with dozens upon dozens of armed Ganados. That’s far cooler than new Ashley’s brief Miley Cyrus tribute act with a wrecking ball. But I’m getting off-track; my point here isn’t “Old Ashley rules, New Ashley drools,” but that they are both good characters who are integral parts of two good games.
This isn’t a character assassination of new Ashley, nor do I want to put old Ashley on a pedestal. They’re both great and they both fit in perfectly with the radically different albeit similarly-named games that they are a part of. Ashley Graham (2005) is an essential part of the original Resident Evil 4 experience, both in terms of the camp 80s action movie aesthetic that the game is going for, and in terms of her effect on the story, the gameplay, and motivations of both Leon and the player. Ashley Graham (2023) is… a little more angsty and realistic than I would like, but you know what? Resident Evil 4 (2023) is more angsty and realistic than I would like. Except when it comes to the durability of knives; they were fine being unrealistic there and making them just barely strong enough to cut halfway through a cheese sandwich before shattering into pieces and requiring a repair. But new Ashley Graham also fits the new game perfectly. She’s a little more proactive and Leon’s sass quickly rubs off on her – and I died a little inside when she said “Skillz,” once when Leon caught her, as if she’d just wandered in off the set of Life is Strange – but honestly, new Ashley is pretty awesome as well.
Despite all of the criticisms towards the changes in tone and the superficiality of the new and improved Ashley, then I really enjoyed her character in the remake, probably even moreso than I enjoyed it in the original. But I also feel a very strong disagreement every time I see an exaggerated “Wow! Thank God they finally fixed this utter trainwreck part of the game! Talk about an upgrade! 0/10 to 10/10 right there!” Because Ashley Graham was never that bad. Ashley Graham was never one of the most annoying characters in video games. Ashley Graham was, at the worst… a Handyman who wandered off to mow the grass. And just like in RollerCoaster Tycoon, when you see the flaws in her design, you’re honestly more likely to just laugh and accept it as part of what is still one of the greatest video games of all-time.
So yeah, I liked Ashley Graham before it was cool. And also I think she should definitely have been brought back for a sequel by now. Everybody loved Ethan Winters because he wasn’t a highly-trained secret agent, he was just some guy who stumbled into a horror game. Let Ashley Graham do that, except maybe don’t cut her hand off with a chainsaw in the first five minutes.
Oh! I almost forgot. There are new alternate costumes in the remake, aren’t there? I see the suit of armour is still around, that’s neat. And she also has a ‘Casual’ outfit, alright, let’s-
…
… …
(heavy breathing)
… … …
Oh my God, I – okay, I get this look isn’t for everyone, but she looks like every girl I ever went to a shitty house party as a teenager for in hopes of meeting so that she could tell me all her favourite bands I’d never heard of. Jesus Christ, I-
Ok, I get it now, remake Ashley wins. That was a waste of 5,000 words then. Well, I hope that regardless, you’ll all join me in pressuring Capcom to speed up the development and release of Resident Evil IX: Ashley Graham Beats Up Everyone.
Thanks for reading!
-Dopefish
The Dopefish 