Interviews with the Developers

[Ridley W. Hayes]

We have just released a quite comprehensive list of interviews with producers, directors and other developers involved with the series at Project Umbrella. This article serves as a continuation of Prime Blue's Creator Voices web page where a couple of years ago he began to gather interviews to give the community that particulary fun resource. It's an ongoing labor though, so there's still a lot to include, but we have gladly managed to include around 350+ interviews.

If anyone wants to point out any interview we might have missed -that I'm sure we missed many-, you can post it in this same thread.

DEVELOPER Interview Database

[OKeijiDragon]

Thank you so much for creating this convenient list, and thank you for linking me to my interview with Tomozawa. That is especially pleasing to see sites respect other fan sites for their work instead of just copy-pasting just because they can.

[yurieu]

WOW dude, thats a ultra good job, the community almost doesnt deserve something like this!

(i can translate portuguese to english if u dudes want to!)

[News Bot]

Don't worry about the Japanese interviews either. Those will all be translated.

[Grem]

Good job PU, once again.

In one of the interviews for BH6 :

Well, initially we had a lot more content planned for Jake. As he's a new character, we wanted to immediately explore his complex background [Jake is the son of archvillain Albert Wesker], and the various enemies he faces, but because we wanted to keep the focus of the game as tight as we could, we had to cut a lot of it. That doesn't mean that the ideas were bad, mind you - we just couldn't put them in this game. We'll just have to use them later on...

Interesting. I was under the impression that Jake was under-exploited in RE6.

It's almost safe to say that Jake will be one of the protagonist of RE7, now.

[Ridley W. Hayes]

Some of you might have noticed this already, but PU has some infrastructure problems. The edition of articles has been restricted to staff-only and we no longer have the 'Revisions' feature we used to keep track of any changes we make. Due to this, there's no way to know what has changed in a large block of text and it might pass unnoticed even if the article appears in the front page 'Latest Updates' column. For those interested in keeping track of the interviews, I'll be writing here whatever new information is added to the article, beginning today and with the interviews added since the feature was first launched.

Mission: Compressible -Achieving Full-Motion Video on the Nintendo 64-
2000 - September - Game Developer Magazine.
Programmer Todd Meynink shares a very in-depth look at the challenges Angel Studios had to face in order to compress 1,2Gb worth of data (15 minutes of cutscene video at 30Hz playback, plus audio) to a single 64Mb cardtridge with a ratio of 165:1 in compression. The game in question is the Nintendo 64's port of BIOHAZARD 2. The details offered are very technical oriented, but surely some of you will find this article quite interesting. We already had a related article where Mr. Meynink also explains how this very technology, the custom N64 OS, FMV compression and playback system, was proprietary of Angel Studios. This would be the reason why BIOHAZARD 0 for the Nintendo 64 which was been developed by Nextech at the time didn't feature Full Motion Videos.

STYLISH Desires
2001 - December 20 - Devil May Cry Graphic Edition.
Devil May Cry Director Hideki Kamiya explains the origin of his Stylish version of BIO4, how it eventually became a different IP, the design decisions to create Dante and some other information in relation to DMC. The interview had been translated years ago by doughboy but it was archived in the depths of Morbid Creations (seriously, what's the route to get to it from the front page?). Sadly the translation seems to be incomplete.

POSTMORTEM: The Graphical Styling of Resident Evil 4
2005 - October - Game Developer Magazine.
Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, lead real-time cinematics director of BIOHAZARD 4, provides an overview into what went right (seamless shift between game and cut-scene, improvements in technology and workflow, believable images and reinvente gameplay) and what went wrong (freshen up, data constraints, textures vs. light, DOF and multi-camera strain) at a time when the developers wanted to fulfill a complete shift from Full Motion Videos to Real-Time Cutscenes, a storytelling style first introduced in the main series with BIO4. It's an interesting read for the tech savvy and the common folk as myself.

Hopper's Vol. 2: Snake vs Zombie
2007 - April 14 - Not The 1UP Show: Episode 11.
Developers Hideo Kojima and Shiji Mikami share stage along with Suda 51 as host. They talk about various experiences in the industry, about movies and TV series and make some jokes here and there. It's a quite fun event to watch. In regards of BIO, Mikami shares his memories on how busy he was at the time of the remake of BIO1 and how he decided to take charge as the Director during the final meeting of the year, in December 28, while drinking. More information about the event can be read in 1UP, and for those who like to purchase interesting collectives, it's possible that you might find the complete event in this DVD.

In Japan, a Beloved Deaf Composer Appears to Be None of the Above
2014 - February 06 - The New York Times.
News that include some of the statements made by Mamoru Samuragochi and his ghost composer Takashi Niigaki. Mr. Samuragochi is credited as the composer of the BIO HAZARD Director's Cut Original Soundtrack, and given that he commisioned work since 1996 it's possible, but not yet confirmed, that Mr. Niigaki was actually the composer of some of these pieces.

Shinji Mikami and the Fountain of Youth
2014 - February 14 - Polygon.
Mikami, now in the last stages of making The Evil Within, shares some of his memories while working at Capcom in titles as BIO, BIO2, biohazard and CODE:Veronica. It's one of the bests interviews I've read lately, since he touched other themes as being a Director and to give others the chances to get into that type of work. Chances he'd like to have been given more frequently at Capcom.

Resident Evil 4 PC - Producer interview
2014 - February 21 - Resident Evil Youtube Channel.
Producer Takayuki Hama answers a few questions about the launch of BIO4 Ultimate HD Edition. The reasons why to port it, how they have a hard time when having live-stream communicating with Q-LOC -the company in charge of the port- and Capcom US, and he comments on some of the features of the port, like textures, framerate and resolution.

Meet the gay soldier you didn't know was in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
2014 - April 18 - Polygon.
BIOHAZARD Operation Raccoon City's Creative Director, Adam Bullied, explain some details about the characters he helped to create, aswell as the play of words in Dee-Ay's name, "DA" or "Don't Ask", referring to the phrase "don't ask, don't tell", which was United States policy on service by gays and lesbians in the military.

Satoshi Nakai Interview
2014 - May 01 - Project Umbrella.
Last addition to the list is our exclusive interview with Satoshi Nakai. Conceptual artist in charge of the initial designs in BIO0 and CODE:Veronica, who's now a former employee of Flagship and works as a freelancer. We have said it before, but I'll say it again, we have some artwork and we will release it eventually.

[Ridley W. Hayes]

Added a bunch of interviews, here the list:

- Mar/--/2005: Real-time 3D Movies in Resident Evil 4

- Feb/21/2008: The Music of KILLER 7, GOD HAND, RESIDENT EVIL: THE UMBRELLA CHRONICLES
- Nov/07/2008: Resident Evil 5 Developer Interview
- Nov/13/2008: Resident Evil 5 Jun Takeuchi walks us through the latest build.

- Mar/11/2009: THREE DAYS OF RESIDENT EVIL 5 ~ DAY 1: INTERVIEW WITH LEAD COMPOSER KOTA SUZUKI
- Mar/12/2009: THREE DAYS OF RESIDENT EVIL 5 ~ DAY 2: INTERVIEW WITH COMPOSER WATARU HOKOYAMA
- Apr/08/2009: GR Asks: Why was Biohazard renamed Resident Evil?
- Dec/29/2009: MASS EXODUS FROM CAPCOM PART 3: INTERVIEW WITH HIDEAKI UTSUMI

- Mar/09/2011: Shinji Mikami on Shadows of the Damned and inspiring a new generation of competition

- Feb/06/2012: Res Evil: Operation Raccoon City: 'We thought it was important to broaden our market'
- Mar/12/2012: GDC 2012: The Making of Resident Evil Revelations
- Mar/14/2012: Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City - 'We're not remaking Resident Evil 2'
- Apr/10/2012: Resident Evil 6 - Developer Interview
- Jun/06/2012: Each Storyline In Resident Evil 6 Has About 70% Of The Volume In Resident Evil 5
- Jul/23/2012: Resident Evil Damnation interview with Makoto Kamiya
- Jul/26/2012: Why Capcom Brought Zombies Back For Resident Evil 6
- Jul/27/2012: How Resident Evil 6 Blends Elements From Past Games (Plus Skill Point Details)
- Aug/02/2012: Resident Evil 6 – Our video interview with the development team
- Oct/02/2012: Resident Evil 6 Interview: Can Capcom Inject New Life Into The Undead?
- Oct/25/2012: RESIDENT EVIL 6: PRODUCER HIROYUKI KOBAYASHI INTERVIEW

- Jun/24/2014: The godfather of video game horror: Shinji Mikami interview

There's a shortage of interviews from this year.