Claire’s Presence

Claire’s Presence was a Capcom staff blog published 22nd May 2009. It is the fifth in a series of some twenty-three blogs detailing the development of the game.

Transcript
To me, Claire is one of the most interesting characters in the Resident Evil universe. I personally have always really liked her as a character..

In the story, Claire is just your average college student, and the fact that she is a civilian makes her quite unique. With the exception of the Outbreak games, there haven’t been very many civilians to play a major role in the Resident Evil Series.

I’m of the mind that it is the regular people that play the most important roles in horror. Characters in games who are just ordinary people without any special skills are emblematic of most of us. I believe that these characters put a face to our fears. In horror films there are generally many main characters, of which most are killed off. They are there to make the audience think, “What if that was me in this situation?” Also, I think Claire being a woman fits nicely into this kind of horror story.

I enjoy, and have seen quite a few horror movies, but to me most of the female main characters seem to be in the movies for the sole purpose of having a terrified person who can scream loudly. Perhaps it is this way because the women are generally portrayed as weak and defenseless, and seeing them being chased increases the feeling of oneness with that character, and thus the sense of fear.

But back to Claire, I feel that she is perhaps more well-rounded than a lot of the characters we see in horror movies and games. Sure she has a tough side, but she is also a just your average civilian/college student/woman. It is my opinion that all of these elements together make her a perfect main character for a horror story.

For Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, Claire’s voice was again done by the immensely talented Alyson Court, who has been the voice of Claire since Resident Evil 2. We were very privileged to be able to work with Alyson again, and even though we asked a lot from her, she never failed to exceed our expectations. On the set, Alyson BECAME the young Claire again from 1998. It was truly a pleasure to work with her again.

Going into the voice recording, we thought about how a regular girl thrown into a town writhing with the undead would react, how the fear would affect her breathing, and how she would scream. So it was with this direction in mind that we had Alyson consider all of these things when delivering her lines. We wanted to convey from the mere sound of her voice, the terror Claire was feeling.

In the end, what we needed to do was to convey through Claire the real “presence” of horror.