Resistance (series)

Colonel Parker: In the 1930s, reports of biological experiments began leaking out of Russia. Whole villages disappeared overnight... then, entire cities. We feared that the Russians had developed a weapon of unparalleled power. The truth was far worse.

"Brotherhood, strength and fortitude... in the face of the angry night."
—The last radio transmission received from Russia, looped endlessly over 12,000 stations before the fall of the Red Curtain.


Resistance is a series of First-Person Shooters (beginning with Resistance: Fall of Man) by Insomniac. Yes, the guys who did Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet and Clank.

In this era, World War I was mostly contained to Europe and its ideological fallout greatly diminished by the lack of US intervention and the triumph of the Russian Monarchy over the Bolsheviks. With the only conflict being a simmering tension with Moscow, and with the lack of American capital to fuel rebuilding- and to go under during the Great Depression- the nations of Europe are forced to unite to both reconstruct themselves and to contain the Russian Czar, who isolates Russia from the world behind the 'Red Curtain'. As a result, the mutual hostility within the West largely fades away and the the economy is quickly rebuilt. As such, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini, and their compatriots never rise to power, and World War Two never happens.

Or, rather, never in a way humanity could have predicted.

After a few decades of tension between the West and the Russian Empire and some disturbing reports from those spies who manage to evade the Czar's secret police, Russia apparently disintegrates overnight. Refugees come to nearby countries pleading for help before dying mysteriously. A team sent to investigate disappears, and shortly afterward, the Red Curtain falls apart, to let loose a deluge. Within months, most of Eurasia is overrun by a race of creatures called the Chimera.

A year passes, and the British Isles alone escape the Chimeran horde that has all but destroyed humanity on the mainland thanks to the English Channel. Until the Chimera dig under and pop up in the middle of London, decapitating most of the surviving UED leadership and delivering England into enemy hands in one fell swoop as the survivors flee North to Scotland and try to hold off the horde. The US quickly sends help, but upon arrival their force is slaughtered save for one man - Nathan Hale, who is resistant to the virus.

Cue a long slog through the UK, and the destruction of a Chimeran Angel (more or less a telepathic General) which allows the humans to kick the Chimera out of Britain and allows a stalemate in the European theater to ensue. In the end Hale is kidnapped by American troops for unknown reasons.

Resistance: Fall of Man came out on the same day as the Play Station 3, and was the system's Killer App for several months as Sony tried to figure out what they were doing.

Insomniac released Resistance 2 in 2008. In that, the US has captured a strange Angel called "Daedalus". Its appearance has caused the Chimera to greatly increase their tactical capabilities, and they have stage a massive invasion of the United States from the West and East coast. Nathan Hale is put in a platoon of soldiers who can also resist the Chimera virus and sent to track down the Russian scientist who can stop Daedalus. Notable for hinting at major revelations regarding the origin of the Chimera. The ARG Project Abraham was a lead up to Resistance 2 that detailed what happened before Fall of Man.

An Interquel, Resistance: Retribution was released for the PSP in 2009. It features James Grayson, a Royal Marine with a personal reason for hating the Chimera and several of the first game's supporting characters and their quest to help The Maquis free France and Germany from the Chimera. Notable for switching from the main series' First-Person Shooter gameplay to being a Third-Person Shooter, and hinting at yet more unresolved plot points for the fans to fill with Epileptic Trees.

Resistance 3 was released in 2011. After the events of Resistance 2 the Chimera have succeeded in invading the U.S. and the remnants of humanity live a meager existence in hiding. One of Nathan Hale's old comrades, Joe Capelli, is persuaded by the Russian scientist from before, Fyodor Malikov, to go to New York and destroy a giant tower the Chimera built that is freezing the planet. Like its predecessors Resistance 3 raised questions about the Chimera, and failed to answer a single one.

A second portable game, Resistance: Burning: Skies, was recently released on the Play Station Vita. Burning Skies takes place during the Chimeran invasion of America, and focuses on Tom Riley, a New York City fireman who joins the fight against the Chimera. Unlike Retribution, Burning Skies uses the same first-person gameplay style as the main games, and also makes use of the Vita's touchscreen.

Tropes used in Resistance (series) include:
  • Action Bomb: Leeches in R2 and R3.
  • Advancing Boss of Doom: Satan/The Creature in R3 becomes this during a short mine cart section.
  • After the End: Near the end of R2, pretty much the entire United States (if not the world) has been wiped out by the Chimera, while the setting of R3 focuses on the few survivors trying to stay alive. The multi-player of R3 focuses on areas where humans have managed to stick together to form coherent armies, such as Africa.
  • Alien Invasion
  • Alien Sky: Done in the ending of R2, to show that a wormhole has opened up above Earth.
  • Allohistorical Allusion: It's mentioned in R2 that Douglas MacArthur eventually became President of the United States, after the whole government crashed down when the Chimera overran the Liberty Defense Perimeter.
  • All There in the Manual: Most of the game's back story and character development is explained altogether in the comic series and the Project Abraham, and events between the first and the second game are expanded upon in the novels.
  • Alternate Reality Game: Project Abraham.
  • Alternate Universe: See above, though the cultural implications aren't explored. (The technological ones, however, are - tilt-rotor aircraft and assault rifles similar to modern-day ones were active in the 1940s. Word of God says technology went pretty far when the Chimera showed up.)
  • America Saves the Day: Averted. America gets its ass kicked. Twice. There are three million Americans left over from the initial attacks.
    • More played with than anything else, given the crucial US aid to Britain and elsewhere, and the fact that they are one of the few nations out there that is still...well, out there; think "America Saves The Day But Dies To A Man Doing So, And Tomorrow Ain't Looking That Sunny."
  • And Then Hale Was A Chimera
  • Anachronism Stew: As a result of being an Alternate Universe. Human technology is now on par with stuff from the real 1990's or 2000's, but civilian design aesthetic is still rooted in the 1950's, as you especially see in Resistance 2 when cruising through a few towns in Iowa. There are also a few 1950's-style weapons which have been enhanced by alien technology, like the Fareye, a conventional sniper rifle with a time-slowing scope for better headshots.
  • An Axe to Grind: Burning Skies features a fire axe as the player's melee weapon.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Resistance 3 gives the player control of Joseph Capelli, the man who killed Nathan Hale.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Both Fall of Man and Resistance 2 are guilty of this; FOM sees Hale going up against an inanimate nuclear reactor - once the four cooling rods are destroyed, it's over. Resistance 2 does have a proper final boss in the form of Daedalus, but you don't actually fight him - instead you destroy the machinery in the room. Both bosses are very easy and don't really live up to the tension set by the Nintendo Hard stages that precede them. Resistance 3 repeats the pattern; just like the first game, the final boss is an inanimate reactor... also, unlike the first game which at least had a massive firefight between British and U.S. soldiers and Chimera elite troops and sub-bosses, the reactor fight in Resistance 3 is just you vs. a few squads of Chimera and one non-unique Giant Mook.
    • The Leviathan also counts - after being hyped up in every single trailer and preview, and catching glimpses of it throughout the preceding level, the inevitable boss fight turns out to be a largely-automated interactive cutscene.
    • The battle against Mick Cutler is just a short Button Mashing cutscene.
  • Anyone Can Die: Usually your teammates...and Nathan.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Interestingly played with in Retribution. You do find a couple of documents, but the majority of the files you find are actually the protagonist's personal thoughts on whatever object he found, or intel report he just read at the location.
  • Arc Symbol: The SRPA logo, which appears prominently in all three games. In the first game it's a mystery as to what the symbol actually means; it's only in Resistance 2 that SRPA and the central role it plays in the plot is finally revealed.
  • Back From the Brink: The plot of the third game.
  • Badass Longcoat: Appears in several screenshots and in the teaser trailer, but nowhere in the games themselves.
  • Badass Abnormal: Nathan Hale. In fact, all of the Sentinels, by definition.
  • Badass Normal:
    • Cartwright in Fall of Man manages to single-handedly survive several impossible situations, made even more impressive by the fact he's an unaugmented human without Nathan Hale's Chimera powers. On at least two occasions the game leads you to believe he's been overrun and killed by Chimera, only for him to turn up unharmed and kicking ass.
    • Retribution's protagonist, James Grayson, definitely counts. He's just an average soldier with no special abilities who can plow through armies of Chimera on his own. Not to mention he decides to go out on his own and destroy 26 conversion facilities, just because he's angry.
    • Specter team in the Co-op campaign of Resistance 2. Despite being simply normal soldiers, they face much tougher opposition than the Sentinels and complete all of their missions successfully.
    • Capelli in Resistance 3 is this, as he gets cured of the Chimera virus at the beginning of the game and loses all his Sentinel powers (no more Regenerating Health for you!). Also, from the same game, Charlie Tent, the commander of the Remnants in St. Louis, who assists you in the last mission against the Chimera.
    • Riley in Burning Skies is neither a trained soldier nor a superhuman Sentinel, yet manages to kick just as much ass.
  • Badass Preacher: Jonathan Rose from R3, who defines the Chimera invasion as God's final test on mankind, and fights to get through it. And he identifies a giant Chimera living underground as Satan.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Big time at the end of the second game.
    • Averted in R3. Capelli manages to destroy the black hole over New York, resistance groups around Earth start reporting successes against the Chimeran forces, and humanity starts to rebuild after several years of war (a shot of the Statue of Liberty being repaired is shown during the credits).
  • Beehive Barrier: The Super Drone's shield, and the Auger's secondary fire.
  • Big Applesauce: The Chimeran wormhole in the third game is located in New York.
    • Burning Skies starts out in New York.
  • Big Bad: Daedalus in the second game. The Angels in the first game.
  • Black Dude Dies First: Inverted. The very last person to die in the Holar Tower level in Resistance 2 is Benjamin Warner.
  • Bloodstained-Glass Windows: The first game's infamous Manchester Cathedral shootout.
  • Breath Weapon: The Titans' roars in Fall of Man can damage you if you're standing too close to them. The same can be said for the Angel during the start of the "Angel's Lair" level.
    • The Kraken and Mother Spinner's roars can also damage you in Resistance 2.
  • Body Horror: What the Chimera do to captured humans.
  • Captured Super Entity: Daedalus in the second game, though he's released almost as soon as you find him.
  • Chain Lightning: The Arc Charger and the Atomizer. The first one shoots a bolt of energy that jumps from enemy to enemy, and gets stronger with each body it passes through; the second one shoots lightning at its enemies
  • Chainsaw Good / Deadly Disc: In R2, the Splicer. Its main fire mode launches circular saws that ricochets on walls and splices everything that gets in their way. And with the secondary mode, it can rev up the saw (it can double as a melee weapon during this phase) and when fired, it hits the enemy and splices it from within. For bonus points, some fans call it "Evil Chainsaw".
  • Check Point Starvation: Fall Of Man was pretty bad about this: each level only had 1 or 2 checkpoints, with many major firefights between each checkpoint. Given how quickly you can go from full health to completely dead in this game, it's very common to get booted back 15-20 minutes of progress or even right back to the beginning of the level just as you're about to hit the next checkpoint. The sequels used a much more conventional and forgiving checkpoint system.
  • Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Your allies in R2 will often yell at you to move as fast as possible to cover the fact there's no actual penalty or consequences for being slow.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Hale's U.S. Ranger battalion gets utterly slaughtered during the first level of Fall of Man, and U.S. forces are not seen again for the rest of the game. The British resistance seen later in the game, by comparison, are still outmatched by the Chimera but manages to do noticeably better. The remarkably poor performance of the U.S. troops is attributed to the fact that the American leadership didn't even bother to brief their soldiers regarding the threat they were facing, so the Rangers went in expecting to fight Ultranationalists and ended up facing infectious aliens backed up by Humongous Mecha.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Resistance 2's control layout is different from that of Fall Of Man.
  • Darker and Edgier: Going steadily further with each game.
  • Deadly Gas: The secondary fire mode of the mutator from R3.
  • Diabolus Ex Machina: Literally every single time humanity seems to have the upper hand, they get stomped into the dirt. Grayson discovering a vaccine/prevention fluid for conversion? The Chimera evolve to become immune to it, something that they were never shown/implied to be capable of. Hale killing Daedalus and destroying the Chimera fleet? There are randomly dozens more Angels, and the fleet was only a fraction of the Chimeran full force!
  • Distaff Counterpart: The Chrysalis (Raine Bouchard) to Daedalus.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Hale is the protagonist for the first two games. However, in R2 he finally succumbs to the Chimeran virus and is killed by Capelli. Capelli himself takes up Hale's position as the main protagonist in R3.
  • Downer Ending: In 2, America is in shambles, and Hale becomes fully Chimeran. His only surviving teammate shoots him.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Though he doesn't appear in person, James Grayson is mentioned in a few co-op intels of Resistance 2 before his debut in Retribution.
    • The protagonist of the Vita game Resistance: Burning Skies was rumored to be one of the survivors living in Haven, Oklahoma during the first few chapters of R3.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Capelli certainly does this in Resistance 3.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect: In the part of Resistance 3 that takes place in St. Louis the Gateway Arch is prominently depicted, though the game is set well before it was built in our own universe.
  • Eleventh-Hour Superpower: In Resistance 2, after Hale defeats Daedalus, he touches him and gains rather interesting abilities. He can basically cause chimeras to spontaneously explode by waving his hands around.
  • Elite Mooks: Steel Heads, Iron Fangs and Berserkers. And other giant Chimera...
  • Enemy Civil War: Feral Chimera (mostly Grims and Leapers, with a few Widowmakers around) against Military Chimera (Hybrids, Brawlers, Longlegs, basically any Chimera that is armored and can carry a gun) in Resistance 3.
    • The humans also get into this as well. One faction, the Wardens, capture humans and lock them up in Graterford prison, making them fight in the occasional arena brawl (ala the Roman Empire). This marks the first time in the Resistance series that features human enemies in campaign mode. Otherwise, expect humans to team up with each other as much as they can.
    • During the R3 campaign, the player would encounter a Widowmaker fighting a squad of Hybrids in New York. The player gets a trophy for assisting the Hybrids in fighting the Widowmaker (i.e not killing the Hybrids whilst fighting the boss).
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: By the third game, which continent hasn't been completely overrun?
    • Since you asked: Australia has yet to be touched by the Chimera...but it has seen brutal civil war and martial law, after the influx of millions of refugees from Europe. Nowhere is truly safe.
      • To answer that question: Australia, Europe (though it was overrun and then retaken), Japan, and part of North America.
      • And most likely South America.
        • As of Resistance 3, nowhere.
  • Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: The Kraken in the second game.
  • Evolving Weapon: In the third game, weapons upgrade via use, much like Ratchet and Clank.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Leapers? They leap at you. The Rollers? You should get the idea.
  • Foregone Conclusion: Storyline is very, very bleak, but what did you expect with "Fall of Man" as a subtitle?
  • Gatling Good: The HVAP Wraith from R2.
    • Burning Skies features a chain gun as part of the player's arsenal.
  • Giant Mook: Ravagers are the standard first person shooter version of this trope, while Titans and Widowmakers are practically walking tanks. And taken to the logical extreme with the Leviathan.
  • Giant Spider: The Widowmaker from R:FOM and R3.
    • The Goliath walking tank in Resistance 2 also counts - they are many times bigger than they were in Fall of Man, scaled up to emphasize Insomniac's "bigger and better" approach.
  • Glass Cannon: Chameleons can kill you in one swipe of their claws but also die to a single blast.
  • Good-Looking Privates: Col. Parker from Fall of Man.
    • All the Sentinals look good, if you like beefy manly men.
  • Gorn: And quite a bit of it. Somewhat averted with the Chimeran Hybrids, as you can blow up bullets inside of them and they stay in one piece, until the end, where Hale temporarily gets the ability to blow them to pieces with his bare hands.
    • R3 features even more, by having Chimera Hybrids blow up left and right even by impaling them with a bayonet or attacking them with a sledgehammer.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: You'd think with all the Gorn in these games, they wouldn't mind showing Malikov getting decapitated by Mick.
  • Half the Man He Used To Be: Happens in Resistance 2 when Hale and two soldiers survive a Chimera ambush and run into another surviving soldier. As he is about to announce there's another monstrosity (the Chameleon) in the forest, he is brutally stabbed in the back by a Chameleon, and then ripped in half right in front of their eyes.
    • Hawthorne in r2.
  • Hand Cannon: The Magnum pistol. Against Chimeran Hybrids it is a one hit kill weapon (the carbine isn't, and it's a rifle) and once there's a bullet in something you can make it explode.
  • The Hero Dies: At the end of R2.
  • Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Hale loses his G.I. helmet during the first level of the first game, and completely fails to get a replacement even after multiple missions and 2 deployments. This is especially noticeably when he's seen alongside other soldiers, who are all wearing their helmets.
  • Heroic Mime: During cutscenes, the protagonist can speak (but even then he rarely does), but he never utters a word during first-person sequences, not even when other people are talking to him. It's kind of jarring, like his mime-ness has an on/off switch.
    • Hale's Heroic Mime tendencies are even lampshaded in-game, where a British Commando describing him uses the words "shaved head, kind of quiet."
      • Averted in Resistance 2, Hale will give orders and communicate with his squad over the radio.
    • The player-2 characters in RFOM and R3's co-op campaign play this trope totally straight. They never contribute a line of dialogue to the story. The only time we hear their voices is when they call their partners.
      • Capelli's partner in R3, John Harper, may have a good reason to be silent- his family was slaughtered by the Chimera.
    • Capelli himself is weird about this in R3. He does not talk at all during the levels, even when other people are talking to him, but talk regularly during cutscenes.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Inverted in Resistance 2. Instead of Hale going down as the man who was infected with the Chimeran Virus and spent his last hours delivering a crucial blow to the enemy, he'll go down as the Chimera who basically started Judgement Day.
    • Not necessarily. Hale's blood was used as part of a cure for the Chimeran virus, as R3's beginning shows Capelli and other infectees being cured. Capelli actually gets all of the flak for killing Hale to begin with. To quote him:

"Hale was the hero, and I was the villain."

  • Hide Your Children: Averted, after a fashion. Some of the Grim are quite noticeably smaller than normal. Combined with some distinctly child-sized conversion cocoons, these smaller Grims were almost certainly children once.
  • Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: There was no World War II in this timeline. Instead, most of Europe and Asia and North America, by the end of the second game are wiped out by the Chimera.
    • Notable because this is appears to be one of the rare inversions. The events that brought the Chimera invasion were independent of Hitler or much of history in general (they apparently came during the Tunguska Blast), the West exited the Depression early, and the most pressing conflict of the day was a Cold War with Czarist Russia that burned far cooler than even the historical Cold War. While we don't know what the Japanese, Chinese, or miscellaneous Communists were doing at the time, it seems fair to say that humanity would have been far better off in general in this time line were it not for the fact that they share it with a race of genocidal super-aggressive hivemind alien zombies.
  • Hive Mind: Somewhat. The Angels are all linked together and give commands to the foot soldiers. If one dies, its subordinates die. According to Retribution, the Cloven are this.
    • In the case of the Cloven, this hive mind also extends to their numbers, becoming more brutal and savage if their numbers are depleted.
  • Hopeless War: Humanity has been almost entirely wiped off the face of Eurasia, the British have lost Ireland and England and are barely holding on in Scotland, the enemy is vastly more numerous, more technologically advanced, and can turn those of you it kills into more it itself. It Gets Better when the Chimera are kicked out of the British Isles and mainland Europe starts to get taken back, only for it to get a LOT worse when the Chimera invade North America. And humanity is desperately short on warm bodies.
    • But wait, there's more! The Chimera are also using their technology to make the Earth much, much colder than normal as they have a higher metabolism and otherwise require personal cooling devices. One level in the first game takes place in July in England that is under at least six feet of snow. Assuming that small pockets of people could survive after the world falls, it would not really matter as they would probably freeze to death.
      • This is much more noticeable in Resistance 3, because the Chimera are starting to terraform Earth and only a handful of humans are left to fight them.
  • Humongous Mecha: All of the Chimera's war machines, like the Goliath, the Hammer and the Stalker.
  • Hybrid Monster: Most of the Chimera are not merely mutated humans, but surgically altered to have cybernetic implants, most often large radiator rods sticking out of their backs, because their heat output is too great to survive normally. No word on whether or not Grims get cybernetically augmented later; they generally resemble unenhanced Hybrids (the stock enemy) upon emerging from their cocoons.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: The weapon wheel system in RFOM makes every new weapon the player discovers a permanent part of their arsenal. This setup was ditched in R2 in favor of a conventional two-weapon limit, but has been brought back for R3.
  • Idiosyncratic Logo Art: On each game, the "A" of Resistance has a landmark from the game's setting (Big Ben on the first, Golden Gate Bridge on the second, Eiffel Tower in Retribution, Statue of Liberty in the third). The upcoming midquel, Burning Skies, breaks with this tendency by showing a silhouette of a firefighter, who is the main character.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The Chimera and the Cloven are known to eat the flesh of deceased humans. While it is only alluded with the Chimera, the Cloven example is much more unsettling, as they actually prepare the flesh from corpses of the women being stored on the Paris storage facility, as Grayson attests in Retribution.
  • Invincible Minor Minion: The Furies in R2 are unkillable despite the fact that part of their bodies is exposed and that they don't look more special than any Chimeras. This is because they primary exist to railroad the player into the intended path.
  • It Got Worse: Pretty much every one of the main games from a narrative and story progression standpoint.
  • Jerkass: Capelli in R2, Grayson and Mallery in Retribution.
  • Kaiju: The Leviathan, one of the bosses in R2.
  • Kill'Em All: Everyone from your squad, except Capelli, is dead at the end of R2. Only three million Americans are left in America.
  • Kill It with Fire: Air-fuel grenades, the L11-2 Dragon flamethrower.
  • La Résistance: The Maquis in Retribution, Freedom First in The Gathering Storm, and the Remnants in Resistance 3.
  • Left Hanging: While Resistance 3 isn't as definitively conclusive a finale as Gears of War 3 or Halo 3, the ending is ambiguously hopeful enough to serve as a finale (and Word of God is that their current plans are for it to be the last game). By the end of the game, the true nature of the Chimera is left unrevealed, the hinted-at True Chimera are not encountered, and the Cloven fail to play any role in the main plot despite the significant build-up they receive throughout the series. Hopefully, Burning Skies will answer these questions.
  • Les Collaborateurs: In The Gathering Storm novel, President Noah Grace attempts to make a deal with Daedalus where the Chimera are left to conquer the rest of the world unopposed as long as the United States are left alone. Daedalus is not impressed and Hale kills him for trying to betray humanity.
  • Lost Technology: The Gray Tech, technological objects found in Chimeric towers but not originating from the Chimera, suggesting an even greater force than the current Chimeric threat. The half chimeric/human Cloven who watched both sides scrambling for the unknown artifacts obtained the objects themselves in hopes of wiping both sides out, resulting in them collecting the most Gray Tech. Unfortunately for them (and fortunate for humanity and the Chimera), the only use the Cloven found for the Gray Tech was as objects of worship. Had they reverse engineered the components instead of holding rituals for the objects they could have potentially wiped out all the other combating races.
  • Magnetic Weapons: The Longbow in Retribution.
  • Majorly Awesome: Major Blake, Hale superior in R2.
  • Melee a Trois: Several times in Resistance 3, between Capelli and the human Remnants, the military Chimera, the feral Chimera and a group of ex-prisoners called the Wardens.
  • Mono-Gender Monsters: Pointed out in Resistance: Retribution. All the Chimeran soldiers were apparently male. In Retribution we get to see where they were taking all the female humans for conversion. Then inverted in Resistance 3, where the Remnant leader mentions that Feral Chimera can breed.
  • More Dakka: The Wraith cannon boasts a fire rate of 1200 bullets per minute.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In R2, it's heavily implied that literally everything Hale did in the game was all part of Daedalus' master plan.
    • It was. The nuclear bomb kick-started the Chimera global tower network (which had been routed to Daedalus' ship) and opened a gigantic wormhole above New York City.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Related to the above: Daedalus' My Death Is Only the Beginning master plan was entirely contingent on the superportal remaining open long enough to bring the Pure Chimera to Earth. It also had the effect of causing the Chimera to lose their leadership structure as well as lose control of the lesser Chimera lifeforms, which helps accelerate the Chimera's downfall once Capelli closes the portal and causes the Pure Chimera to fail to show up to start running things.
  • Nintendo Hard: The Resistance series is significantly tougher than any of its major contemporaries (i.e. Killzone, Halo, Gears of War, or Modern Warfare). Resistance 2 takes the cake by a wide margin, as even on Normal difficulty you'll die more than a dozen times even in many regular encounters, and unless you progress through a firefight using the exact piece of cover the designers want you to, you'll end up mowed down by pop-up Chimera. It's not clear if this is because Insomniac games doesn't know to properly balance level design because they don't specialize in FPS games, or if they're just sadistic bastards.
  • Ominous Floating Spaceship: Huge ones appears in the R2 when the Chimera invade LA.
  • One-Winged Angel: At the end of Retribution, Raine Bouchard mutates into a giant monster called the Chrysalis that looks like the Distaff Counterpart of Daedalus. Daedalus himself may also count, though we never see what he looked like before he mutated.
  • Psycho Prototype / Psycho Serum: In the backstory, Malikov's attempt to create a serum that prevents soldiers from turning into Chimera resulted in thousands of Cloven, half-human cannibal mutants.
  • Real Is Brown: Resistance goes for a mostly-monocrhome look in the original game. For the sequel it completely averts this trope, with gorgeous, highly-colorful locations and skies. The third game takes a "Kodachrome" approach, looking like a retro, faded photo from the 50s.
    • This Trope is so Up to Eleven in Resistance 3, IGN posted the music video "Fade to Brown".
      • It gradually averts this as the game progresses. The earlier levels which take place in areas where humans are still dominant are mostly brown, while the later levels which take places in Chimera-controlled areas are mostly green, blue and grey. The multi-player in the game shows this off, with humans being color-coded yellow-brown and the Chimera being colored blue.
  • Redshirt Army: Absolutely everybody in this series: the Chimera die like flies but are limitless, and the Humans are better trained but less powerful and are running out of replacements.
    • The crown goes to the Army Rangers in the first level of the first game, who get utterly slaughtered by artillery, Chimera, and even exploding cars. The British resistance forces later in the game do noticeably better during war sequence levels, although they still need your assistance to make any headway.
  • Regenerating Health: Fall of Man utilizes a segmented health meter. As long as their was some health remaining in one segment, it will refill as long as the player avoids getting shot. To restore a fully-depleted segment, you have to pick up a Sym-bac canister.
    • R2, on the other, does away with the health meter and uses the "bloodied-screen" effect commonly seen in other shooters.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: The Magnum, able to one-shot kill most non-elite enemies, PLUS its alt-fire causes the bullet lodged in the target to explode violently. You can kill many enemies with just one shot this way.
  • Rise to the Challenge: A few times you have to run away from a watery area as it's flooding, lest you be devoured by the shark-like Furies.
  • Roboteching: The Bullseye does this towards wherever you shoot a tag at. It's basically the ZF-1's Replay function from The Fifth Element.
  • Scary Scorpions: Arguably the Leapers and Rollers, which look strangely like a Chimeran version of modern scorpions.
  • Scenery Gorn: Beautiful 1950s America and England, utterly destroyed by warfare and alien flora and fauna.
  • Second-Hour Superpower: In the first game, Nathan doesn't get his signature regenerating abilities until a little while in. In fact the only way to restore your health in the first level is to get killed and be booted back to a checkpoint.
  • Sequel Escalation: Resistance 2 is bigger and insaner than the first game, with several humongous bosses and more War Sequence levels. Resistance 3 actually reverses the trend, with an even smaller setting than the first game, and telling a much smaller-scale, more personal story. This even extends to the gameplay, with much fewer war sequences or boss battles in favor of Half Life 2/Metro 2033-style survivor communities to interact with, as well as removing the protagonist's Chimera superpowers and thus taking away the series' staple regenerating health and replacing it with more traditional medkits.
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Hitting an enemy with the upgraded mutator will cause it to charge other enemies before exploding.
  • Shaggy Dog Story: Deadalus' death and the destruction of their fleet turns out to have been only a temporary setback for the Chimera, and in fact was All According to Plan. However, as it turns out, Daedalus' defeat and Hale's actions also led to the development of a vaccine against the Chimera virus, which sets the stage for humanity to slowly but surely regain control of their planet.
    • The real Shaggy Dog Story in the series is Retribution, as Grayson and Bouchard sacrifice pretty much everything to stop the Carriers, only for the Chimera to upgrade to Spinners like nothing ever happened.
  • Sigil Spam: The SPRA logo is stamped onto a remarkably large number of objects throughout the game, despite supposedly being the logo of a top secret covert organization that presumably wouldn't want to advertise its existence.
  • Smug Snake: Roland Mallery in Retribution (He stole a lot of things from people who needed them most and undermines James Grayson's efforts just because he doesn't like him), and U.S. (corrupt) President Noah Grace in the novels (who sets up a fascist regime in the United States, refuses to send aid to Europe, kidnaps and tortures Adam Shepard's, (Daedalus) wife to lure him, and when finally Daedalus meets him, he tries to force him to spare his life in the event of a Chimeran invasion to the United States).
  • Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: The ending of the second game.
  • Super Drowning Skills: You actually can swim in Resistance 2, but the waters are almost all invariably filled with "Furies," who kill you instantly the moment they swim up to you and cannot be harmed in any way. Therefore, avoiding water like it's lava is essential, and a few times you have to hop onto cars or whatever else is in a flooded area to proceed. Resistance: Retribution, conversely, has lots of watery areas for you to traverse and if you're in Infected Mode you can even hold your breath indefinitely.
  • Thanatos Gambit: Daedalus engineered the events of the second game.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: See Half the Man He Used To Be examples.
  • Tsarist Russia: The opponents of the West in the post-WWI Cold War and the first victims of the Chimera.
  • The Unfought: And the unseen, for the most part. The Cloven are only directly seen in Resistance: Retribution, so far, but they prove to be a hugely important part of the backstory. As a bonus, they also act as a sort of Metal Slime because some of the Skill Point challenges in Retribution are sniping the distant Cloven you see sneaking around in the background.
    • The Pure Chimera also fail to show up, despite being hinted at several times throughout the series as the true enemy.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The American Government's propaganda machine, which covered up the Chimeran invasion of Europe as an influenza pandemic, and dismissed all warnings that the Chimeran invasion was only a matter of time. This doomed the continental U.S. to retreating to the "Liberty Defense Perimeter" (which got overran anyway).
  • Viewer-Friendly Interface: The Chimera computer just shows an attack plan of the Chimera, which... consists of a map and a line.
  • The Virus: The Chimerans use this to kill humans, then convert the dead to soldiers and a working force.
  • Was Once a Man: All the Chimera, but special mention goes to Daedalus, whose former identity (Jordan Shepard) is a major plot point.
  • We Have Reserves: The foot soldiers are more-or-less things to be thrown at humans until the humans died, and dead humans are collected and formed into new Chimera.
  • Why Am I Ticking?: The Titans in Fall of Man will look around questionably after the cooling unit on their back overheats and beeps loudly, and then roar with defeat when they realize they're about to blow up.
  • Xanatos Gambit: In R2, if Hale fought back against the Chimera, he'd open a portal and doom humanity. If he didn't fight back, the Chimera wouldn't need the portal to kill everyone.
  • X Meets Y: The game is more or less Halo meets Call of Duty meets Gears of War meets Mass Effect.
  • You Don't Look Like You: Cartwright is inexplicably blond and blue-eye in the comic series.
  • Your Head Asplode: The Boiler's attack method in Retribution consists in running at you to detonate themselves this way. They explode either way with a single shot to the head.
    • In R3, this happens to Mick Cutler after Capelli shoots him in the chin with a Magnum, and then detonates the bullet.
  • Zerg Rush: The main tactic of the Grims, which are unarmed but almost always charge you in huge swarms and deplete your ammo VERY quickly. Leapers also do this.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Menials in the first game, Grims in the second and third, Boilers in Retribution.
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