I can’t wait to organize my attache case in the Resident Evil 4 remake

It’s hard to describe how revolutionary Resident Evil 4 felt when it initially released back in 2005. The over-the-shoulder camera is standard now, but at the time, it felt fresh and unique. More importantly, the gameplay was wildly different from any survival horror game I’d played before. I could take a strategic approach to enemy attacks, disarming or disabling them instead of killing them outright. There were tons of opportunities to interact with my environment, which made the game’s world feel more alive.

But all those features pale in comparison to Resident Evil 4’s incredible inventory management system.

Instead of an invisible, bottomless inventory, Resident Evil 4 gives players an attache case, a small briefcase that will carry all their weapons, ammo, healing items, and other essentials. On the inside of the case is a grid, and each item takes up a certain number of spaces on the grid. The first case has just sixty squares of space, which fill up fairly quickly. There are several upgrades, but even the largest case only has 120 grid squares, so space is always at a premium.

Lots of games have limited inventory space, but in Resident Evil 4, organizing and rearranging your inventory can free up precious squares of space. Every item stored in the attache case can be moved and rotated, so you can fit together flash grenades and handguns like puzzle pieces. For me, this feature quickly became a game within the game. I spent hours repositioning and reorganizing the items in my attache case, fighting to make room for as many items as possible.

My main goal was to maximize my inventory space, but my ultimate objective was to fill every single square on the grid. The most effective way to do this is with eggs, which only take up a single square of space. When there was a gap in my inventory, I could pick up an egg and fill the space, allowing me to achieve inventory peace. If I came across an item I didn’t have room for, I could use up some eggs, move things around, and free up a few slots of space.

This reliance on eggs made me realize that they’re much more useful than they appear to be. Eggs are healing items, but they can also be equipped and thrown at enemies. While an egg won’t do any damage, an egg to the face will stun an enemy, allowing you to run past them without using any ammo.

If it’s used at the right time, an egg attack can even be fatal. When you’re being chased down by a truck driver, tossing an egg through the windshield can make him crash. An egg won’t normally kill a zealot, but if you hit them with an egg when they’re near fire, you can make them topple right into the flames.

At first, the attache case was just a fun little organization puzzle, but it wound up sending me on a journey of discovery. My desire for a well-organized attache case motivated me to try out weapons and strategies I normally would have ignored. Today, Resident Evil 4 is widely recognized as a classic, but I’m not sure the game would have fully captured my heart if it had a different inventory management system.

I would happily play a game built entirely around attache case organizing, but for the time being, I’m content to arrange my inventory in the Resident Evil 4 remake. I can’t wait to shoot through Ganados so that I can find more eggs and make my attache case beautiful again.