Betas, breasts and the making of Resident Evil 5

[News Bot]

They ruined the franchise forever! But stealing from Capcom's hard drives makes me feel better! Just imagine... we can take whatever we want. like: different betas of Re1.5, Re3.5 and Re 4.5 ! When our dreams come true?

From now on, we can call it "Resident Evil 4.5" or "Biohazard 4.5"

lol.

Companies don't keep their extremely old beta material lying around. They're either deleted or re-used/remade into something else. In this case, RE5 ended up getting a lot of elements from RE 3.5 (Uroboros and the scrapped hallucination creature). The zombie version of RE5 didn't get past rough beta stages. There are screenshots of it in a book, though which book exactly escapes me.

Also, the ancient B.O.W. idea is still in the final game, its just never explicitly brought up or mentioned. There are cave drawings of the Ndipaya kingdom being savaged by beast-like figures. I would assume those are the ancient B.O.W.s.

[Archelon]

There are screenshots of it in a book, though which book exactly escapes me.

They're in the official player's guide.

[Zombie Fred]

Remembering this information again from the art book still strikes me on the many ideas on the beta version of 5. I thought the ending on Weskers' fate with the jet was more fitting to me than infused with Uroboros. The bright side is some of the ideas can be moved on the next chapter (Tri-Cell CEO, hallucinations, etc).

I think the best way for CO-OP is to be a seperate mode to save technical resources to increase the single player's quality in certain areas (this has its own pros/cons) and have other teams focus on focusing the level design around COOP and make some interesting scenarios for later on.

[Archelon]

Maybe it's not fair to make this comparison, as I'm not entirely certain how Capcom's resources compare to these other companies, but the thing that I think still irks me the most is when you look at certain Western titles like Uncharted 2 or Mass Effect 2, for example. These titles were only in development for 2-3 years, and yet they were still such monumental leaps forward from their predecessors. It looks like other games like InFamous 2 and Dead Space 2 will be similar in that respect, though we won't know for certain until they're actually released.

Then you look at Resident Evil 5, which we know was in development for almost five years. Despite that fact, we get a game that could have easily been done on the previous generation of consoles (the graphics notwithstanding) and probably in less time, to boot. Heck, the game is even full of reused assets, which, in my opinion, is inexcusable when you consider how long the game was in development and the fact that it was developed for a brand new set of consoles.

Now, as I said, this may not be a fair comparison, as studios like Naughty Dog and BioWare may have access to more resources than Capcom does, but even so. If those Western teams can make such huge strides in just a couple of years, why can't Capcom?

[Zombie Fred]

Maybe it's not fair to make this comparison, as I'm not entirely certain how Capcom's resources compare to these other companies, but the thing that I think still irks me the most is when you look at certain Western titles like Uncharted 2 or Mass Effect 2, for example. These titles were only in development for 2-3 years, and yet they were still such monumental leaps forward from their predecessors. It looks like other games like InFamous 2 and Dead Space 2 will be similar in that respect, though we won't know for certain until they're actually released.

Then you look at Resident Evil 5, which we know was in development for almost five years. Despite that fact, we get a game that could have easily been done on the previous generation of consoles (the graphics notwithstanding) and probably in less time, to boot. Heck, the game is even full of reused assets, which, in my opinion, is inexcusable when you consider how long the game was in development and the fact that it was developed for a brand new set of consoles.

Now, as I said, this may not be a fair comparison, as studios like Naughty Dog and BioWare may have access to more resources than Capcom does, but even so. If those Western teams can make such huge strides in just a couple of years, why can't Capcom?

I think honestly is the most bet would have to do with MT's production over the course years and their production approach compared to how fast Western development did this generation. It was constantly updated over past games - from Dead Rising, Devil May Cry 4 - to Resident Evil 5. MT 2.0 must have got the mile stone number after a significant leap from its vanilla release. It could be with how Capcom's internal project teams share and use their resources when producing these games. Compare with how far Unreal 3 has changed quickly and then look at games like with Mass Effect 1 and 2, Batman and other big U3 game releases, these games had much a much bigger punch in features and length, these games were only around a two year production set (outside of pre-development with like Mass Effect), and that’s only looking at Unreal 3 when you think on other engines; EA Redmond/Viscerals’ dead space Engine or with Sonys’ ICE engine on Uncharted and other titles have evolved in a short amount of time.

It just boils to how quickly technology overseas from Japan has been better implemented and ready this generation compared to the past. Capcom is not the worst of the bunch though (Square Enix with Final Fantasy 13 is one of the worst offenders) and they’ve tried to adapt to an approach to help release a number of new and old IPs’ over the years but management and planning has been far weaker on production when you look at Western titles.

[Archelon]

It kind of makes me wonder how the game would have turned out (or perhaps how long it would have taken to develop) had they used an engine like Unreal. I know very early on Takeuchi mentioned they were looking into the possibility of using Unreal or another similar engine to help reduce development time, but obviously that didn't happen.

Also, I'm still not entirely sold on the idea that producing the cutscenes in Hollywood was really all that necessary. I've asked this before, but does anyone know if Capcom allocated funds specifically for the cutscenes? If the production costs for the cutscenes and the game development were entirely separate, then it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference had the cutscenes been handled in-house, but if all of the money was basically in one big pot, I'd be interested to find out how much of it was spent on the cutscenes and how much was spent on the actual game.

I only bring this up because the cutscenes in both Lost in Nightmares (okay, so there was really only one in LiN) and Desperate Escape certainly didn't suffer from lacking the Hollywood treatment.

[Zombie Fred]

I only bring this up because the cutscenes in both Lost in Nightmares (okay, so there was really only one in LiN) and Desperate Escape certainly didn't suffer from lacking the Hollywood treatment.

I think I remember hearing the production team being slightly disappointed on the cut scene work being imported to external teams. I bet that was involved on the games production time and certain things being changed. But I guess the best outcome from all of this would be boosting some confidence or change within Capcom on the next game to work harder after the reception being not that fond on the games' direction and fan criticism, and then the experiance with the production on 5 might be changed to be faster (and better in some regards to resource allocation).

[Det. Beauregard]

*The Tanker stage was originally supposed to be completely open so that the player would be able to explore every inch of it.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Due to the co-op nature, they had no choice but to dumb it down and make it completely linear. I can seriously think of TWO locations in the game that aren't linear, and that's just sad.

[xfactor]

i was suppose to buy the book today. I guess I'll get it tomorrow.

[Vixtro]

It's seems to me that a few of you guys are forgetting what did the series in before this game. As bad as RE5 turned out to be and how much worse it seems to be now that we know what it could (should) have been, RE4 is the real culprit to blame here and is the sole reason for this poor show of sequels for over 5 years running now.

Now Capcom knows that dumb generic action and sex appeal (which was always mild in the past games) sells a Resident Evil game, how can the series possibly recover and get it back to what the true RE fans really want?

[Darkmoon]

Well, RE5 did get a lot of flak from the various reviewers over the complete lack of horror. I don't think that will go unnoticed. In my darker moments I do expect the series to keep heading into the dark water of the action game, though.

[Archelon]

and sex appeal (which was always mild in the past games)

Resident Evil 3, anyone?

Well, RE5 did get a lot of flak from the various reviewers over the complete lack of horror. I don't think that will go unnoticed. In my darker moments I do expect the series to keep heading into the dark water of the action game, though.

You know, maybe I'm the wrong person to make a judgment call on this one, because I never considered any of the Resident Evil games to be scary. In fact, I would even go so far as to say the original Resident Evil (and by extension, REmake) are really the only two games in the series that could be considered "survival horror" in the truest sense of the term. Each game since then has been progressively more action-oriented than its predecessor. I think CODE: Veronica tried to return to the roots of the original game, but even it was hampered by the ridiculously easy difficulty and large stockpiles of ammunition and healing items. Heck, even the knife was overpowered.

For me, it was always more the horror aesthetics that I enjoyed about the games. I'm the kind of person who just doesn't get scared watching horror movies or playing horror video games. I've been that way ever since I was a little kid, even. I still enjoy watching horror movies and playing horror video games, but I guess I play them for different reasons than most people, since I obviously don't play them to be scared. But as I said, it's more that I enjoy the overall aesthetics and visual style of horror-themed media. So even if a game is a straight up action title, it's not as big of a deal for me as long as it still maintains that general horror aesthetic or presentation.

Resident Evil 4 did that, and even Resident Evil 5, to a lesser extent, still managed to achieve this if for no other reason than the designs of some of the enemies. My issue with Resident Evil 5 isn't the complete lack of horror. It's that it was simply a bad action game. At this point I'm fine with the possibility of Capcom turning the series into more of a standard third person shooter, but they need to make it a good one. If they want to make an action game, then they can't water it down or hamper it with archaic game mechanic holdovers from previous games in the series that they feel will keep it a "Resident Evil."

There are other, better, ways to make a game feel like a "Resident Evil" title than that.

[Zombie Fred]

Resident Evil 3, anyone?

Oh Capcom

[News Bot]

Resident Evil 3, anyone?

Jill's choice of clothing is officially because the weather is still pretty warm at the time the game takes place. You can see this reflected on pretty much everything in the Raccoon City based games. The police officers have summer uniforms, most of the female zombies are wearing revealing clothes and so on.

[Archelon]

That doesn't make a tube top and miniskirt any less ridiculous, though, particularly for someone who should know better.