Satoshi Nakai (BH0/BHCV Artist) Interview - Community Questions

[News Bot]

Project Umbrella has gotten the opportunity to interview Satoshi Nakai, creature designer of BH0 and creature/character designer of BHCV. Post any questions you have here.

During development, his immediate superiors were Noboru Sugimura and Hiroshi Soda of FLAGSHIP so he is somewhat versed in aspects of each game's story and development on top of his designs. He will also be providing some artwork for us to release, some never before seen.

(For the record, he is the one who came up with "HCF")

[Carnivol]

Development process questions!

Ask about the approach that was taken;

Like, did he pitch and design monsters/concepts that they basically fit into the story or did they more or less present pieces of story/concepts that they wanted him to design monsters based on?

[MiLØ]

With a little bit of searching already I found answers to a couple of questions I was going to ask:

1) Was "leeches" theme present is N64 build?
- Yes.

2) Were there other variations/ideas for the final boss of the game?
- Maybe there were but the Queen Leech was present in as early as N64 build. There is concept art of first and final forms of the monster during that stage of development.

[News Bot]

If you're referring to the yellow "DALI" creature, that's actually something completely different and the name stands for something.

[MiLØ]

Yellow DALI creature? No, not really. You mean this one?

But it's not even all that yellow... o.0
http://residentevil.wikia.com/Plague_Crawler

Maybe you meant this yellow one:

But that's a Queen Leech concept art.
http://residentevil.wikia.com/Queen_Leech

[News Bot]

The bottom one is yellow, and is named DALI. It has nothing to do with the Queen Leech, it's just a concept design (one of many that were rejected in both games). The idea apparently evolved into the Plague Crawler, though, going by the shared name in that top art.

[Rombie]

I'd love to hear more about the original plans with HCF and Wesker as of CV itself, and perhaps any thoughts on the CVX additions and where they went after (if he's aware). Unless it has been explained somewhere I missed (especially translated stuff) I've always been curious about the whole concept/intent of what Wesker was up to at Code Veronica (until it was reshaped in later games).

I'd be interested in also hearing about the sort of impact idea the whole vague 'Alice In Wonderland' thing in the games design had on his enemy ideas for CV... (see Bandersnatch etc.) because I think that was a much heavier theme in the early planning.

Other than that I'd just be interested in hearing anything about the creation of Zero, especially the N64 version, in general... because it's a game we haven't really had that much info about it's planning and creation about ever.

[Ridley W. Hayes]

We forgot to mention he also did Initial Character Design in BH0. He's responsible for Billy here on the left: http://goo.gl/48c5cq. Other artist took over the Character Design duties shortly after and created the version on the right. Questions about the initial setup of characters can also be submitted. Nakai's work on Creature Design in BH0 was subsequently taken over by Yoshihiro Ohno, who did most of the finished designs parting from Nakai's approved ideas.

I don't know why the Plague Crawler was given the DALI name in that scan, but I think it's mislabeled.

[TheBatMan]

Most of mine are story related.

1. Any and all info on the rival company/HCF
2. Can he explain the last-minute inclusion of Birkin's lab in Zero? Were the developers aware of conflicting geogrpahy issues?
3. Was there any restrictions placed upon him with his designs on the creatures for Zero given the fact it was a prequel to the first game?
4. Why was Wesker given a terminator-esque eye in some of his art for CVX?
5. What influenced the decision to not focus on Bravo Team in Zero?
6. Was there any early scenarios that differed from the final product for Zero, for example were there ever any plans to include the mansion?
7. Was the story of Zero originally meant to be a direct tie-in to an early version of Biohazard 4?
8. What influenced the decision for the leech theme in Zero and why make the main antagonist a leech?
9. How much contact did the Zero team have with the Remake team in terms of keeping continuity?
10. Does he know of any original plans for the Wesker character and his organization during the time of C.V? Was the initial plan for them to become a major player in later games?
11.Were the added scenes in CVX in the original script or added just for this version?

[Guest]

It sound stupid but i remember that rebecca was wearing a beret in the N64 version, im just wondering why did they remove it from the final version ?

[alexdz]

It sound stupid but i remember that rebecca was wearing a beret in the N64 version, im just wondering why did they remove it from the final version ?

Good one.

[Lanzagranadas]

Maybe he couldn´t answer some of these, but well, let´s go:

1- Rockfort Island was attacked by an air raid, and soon after Alfred activated the island self destruct system. when Chris arrives however, some locations are still in almost perfect condition ¿How was it possible?

2- Did the HCF intentionally caused the outbreak or was it an accident during the attack?

3- How could the T-Virus spread so fast and infecting almost all Rockfort habitants in no time, considering that Claire just awakes in his jail and the entire island is already zombified?

4- Are the labs from RE0 and RE2 really the same?

[News Bot]

Interview coming very soon. In the meantime, here's an example of exclusive, previously unreleased artwork that will be provided:

[Darkness]

dat swag tho. i love that uniform

[Akimbo]

It sound stupid but i remember that rebecca was wearing a beret in the N64 version, im just wondering why did they remove it from the final version ?

Could it have been possibly removed due to the similar look to Jill's uniform in RE1?