Biohazard 5 Official Art Works Translation?

[Archelon]

I just got mine in the mail today, and I am blown away by all of the stuff that they scrapped while making this game.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has translated, or has a translation of, the interviews with Jun Takeuchi and Masachika Kawata, as well as the information that's included in the "Unpublished and Unused Materials" section? I'd love to know if they explain why the scrapped some of the things they did.

While the differences aren't quite as night and day as say, going from RE3.5 to RE4, it looks like this originally would have been a significantly different game than what we actually got.

[Darkmoon]

Anything especially jump put from the scrapped stuff?

[Archelon]

There's a lot of stuff, including what I assume are suggestions of where the story might have gone initially.

Keeping in mind this is all just production artwork, and some of the stuff depicted may not have been possible due to any possible limitation of the current hardware, but it looks like an all out war. As depicted in the artwork, the environments looked to have been much larger, and there are Majini/zombies all over the place. It's hard to tell if they're supposed to be Majini or zombies, because a) we already knew there was a version that had traditional zombies in it, and b) there are artworks of zombies and even some 3D rendered models.

The 3D models, by the way, look insane. I almost wonder if this was back before they decided to use the MT Framework Engine for the game and were considering licensing the Unreal Engine (I seem to recall reading an old interview with Takeuchi where he mentioned the possibility).

But whatever they are, the artwork really gives the impression that the BSAA (assuming there even was a BSAA at this point in development) were being completely overrun. You see them being chased, surrounded from all sides, etc. There's even one shot of several soldiers facing off against an entire horde of El Gigantes (I count nine) in addition to the regular enemies in the middle of a city. You really get a Black Hawk Down meets Resident Evil vibe from the artworks, which I know was one of their initial inspirations.

As for story stuff, I can't know for certain, because I'm just going by the images, but it looks like Chris started off in Kijuju by himself and even faced the first Uroboros on his own, while Excella and Irving look on from afar. It wasn't until much later that he met up with Sheva (this might have still been when the game was single player).

There's a guy I'm assuming is Spencer, but he might be a new character, who is seen with Wesker in a few shots, and if it is Spencer, he's still alive and well (and not wheelchair-bound) by the time of RE5. They appear to even have been working together, as there's a shot of Excella with Spencer, but Wesker still kills Spencer eventually. However, he just shoots Spencer, and Chris and Excella are both there when he does, so I'm guessing it was some sort of double cross or something?

There's a shot of Wesker and Excella getting cozy. Chris finds Jill by himself, apparently, and her role looks to be largely unchanged from the final version, except Sheva evidently is captured at one point by Excella and Chris and Jill have to work together to find her and save her.

At some point a Tyrant is unleashed, and it kills Excella by shoving its claws right through her chest (where have we seen this before?). The final battle with Wesker appears to be similar to what we got, but he doesn't mutate, and instead of being shot with a couple of rocket launchers, Sheva and Jill swoop down to the volcano in a jet (I'm guessing this means Chris was fighting Wesker by himself?) and unload its entire payload at Wesker.

[Vogue_Dirge]

Is there anyway you could scan and upload these pictures?

They sound absolutely epic.

Oh, and is it this one:

[Archelon]

Yeah, that's it.

I'll see what I can do about scans, but I can't promise anything. I'm not too keen on risking damaging the spine.

[Vogue_Dirge]

It's OK if you can't. I found a copy on Play-Asia that I fully intend on purchasing. I understand if you don't want to mess up your copy.

[Zombie Fred]

That's the original picture I had in my mind for 5 back in the day. Damn =(

[Alexia_Ashford]

I just ordered a copy off Play Asia too. Looks fantastic.

[Archelon]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the Merchant was still around. It looks like this time though he may have been somewhat of a black market weapons dealer, perhaps to make him feel like a part of the story rather than just a game mechanic?

Also, there's a picture I missed looking through the first time, but it looks like there may have even been sections where not all of the locals were infected and would actually help you fight the infected off, or at the very least fight them off themselves, if not directly cooperating with you.

And it may just be because of the pictures they chose to print in the book, but it looks like Uroboros played a far less significant role originally. There's only one Uroboros boss shown, and it's the first one in the game, but like I said, they may have simply chosen not to show the others.

[Alexia_Ashford]

Sounds like they cut a lot out. It's a shame, a lot of what you said sounds really good. I'd have personally much preferred Excella to die by being a Tyrant than a big fat blob. I prefer the version they scrapped with the majority of it, tbh. :/

[Archelon]

I'd have personally much preferred Excella to die by being a Tyrant than a big fat blob.

She doesn't actually become the Tyrant. It skewers her like what happened to Wesker in RE1.

[James]

Reading over Excella's page in the Artbook and doing a rough translation, I'm a bit happier we got this Excella over the one in the artbook. While I prefer the design of "Artbook Excella" as it's much less over sexualised, that's probably the only thing.

The artbook says she was meant to be a secretary for TriCell. God knows who the head of TriCell was then, but I prefer Excella being the CEO. Makes her just a little bit more powerful =P

[News Bot]

If anyone can provide scans of it, I can get it all translated.

[REmaster]

Damn that sounds better than the final outcome. I think I would have really enjoyed the game more if you worked alone as usual, and I thought Spencer deserved a little more screen time considering we've been hearing about the guy for the past 14 years lol.

[Archelon]

Damn that sounds better than the final outcome. I think I would have really enjoyed the game more if you worked alone as usual, and I thought Spencer deserved a little more screen time considering we've been hearing about the guy for the past 14 years lol.

To be fair, I don't actually know if the guy is Spencer or not. He may be a completely different character that they removed from the final version. I just don't know who else it could be. Hopefully the captions will shed some light on the subject.