Some cool 1.5 exclusive screenshots (**As seen on TV!**)

[AsteroidBlues]

No, no no no, I assume it will be 92.7% at exactly 12:00 pm.

you know, these dudes are great. not only acquiring the game, but being the first ones on earth hacking it and modding it.

lol Ok, I hope for your sake that your interpretation turns out to be true. Don't say I/we didn't warn you though.

P.S.
Taking the time it was posted and putting against local time in Spain, it matches though. :S

[pato]

Back at 5th and old gen days, games had a shorter development time, at the 5th gen some games started to took 1 year or more to release after being announced, and this was getting commom on the 6th, and today its pretty commom.

Resident evil 5 was one of the 7th gen games that had a long development time along with killzone 2, from the july 2005 announcement to the march 2009 release, more than 3 and half years, althrough sequel of these long development games were know to have a shorter distance beetwen reveal and release, resident evil 6 for example was revealed in january 2012 and was meant to be released in november of the same year, but came 1 month earlier.

[SonicBlue]

Back at 5th and old gen days, games had a shorter development time, at the 5th gen some games started to took 1 year or more to release after being announced, and this was getting commom on the 6th, and today its pretty commom.

Resident evil 5 was one of the 7th gen games that had a long development time along with killzone 2, from the july 2005 announcement to the march 2009 release, more than 3 and half years, althrough sequel of these long development games were know to have a shorter distance beetwen reveal and release, resident evil 6 for example was revealed in january 2012 and was meant to be released in november of the same year, but came 1 month earlier.

Developing a game is not something you can do that easily, it takes time to create all the assets, especially in "next gen" games, where you have to make high resolution models too with the only purpose of transfer data to the low res in game version.

The development of Resident Evil 6 started after the release of 5, anyway, the longest game in development was Gran Turismo 5, that took over 5 years.

[Rombie]

Also disagree. Development now is just as it was always. Things just take the time the company publishing it allows, that's how we still get annual shooters and sports titles yet we still get games that take six years to arrive.

Also earlier in a generation dev times tend to be longer because people have to get used to the hardware and shorter at the end due to familiarity. These are traits that have also always existed.

[yurieu]

well, in this biggest development time of all time, what is the RE4 position? i dont remember, it started on 1999/2000?

[PROTOBOY]

most likely.

So in this build that THE TEAM is working, really have manspider?

What's the name of the manspider creature?

[Alzaire]

There's no official name for it. It's just generally called the manspider.

[PROTOBOY]

Now I see it, I think that is very interesting the scene of the G-Birkin killing that creature .

this system of an enemy killing another enemy, it was in RE3 when nemesis kills the zombies ,.

[imacwesker]

so they developed the majority of Final in roughly 9 months. Considering the amount of content in 2, it really is crazy.

Not really. They'd "wasted" so much time on RE1.5 development, they had to cut corners to release RE2 as quickly as possible: it does explain why they decided to go with the Mansion's layout for the RPD; most of the puzzles from RE1 and the final lab of RE1.5 for the retail version of RE2.

I suspect someone like imacwesker or NB can pull out a quote with a more specific month from a later interview but the whole delay/scrapping thing was vague for most of the first half of 1997.

Sorry Rob, but I didn't follow RE1.5's development as precisely as I did with the following RE and all the written informations I have about its development are vague (Famitsu journalists making assumption and later, interviewing the staff - these texts has been dissected thousand of times).

[Darkness]

Now I see it, I think that is very interesting the scene of the G-Birkin killing that creature .

this system of an enemy killing another enemy, it was in RE3 when nemesis kills the zombies ,.

Except That's from a cutscene, not running in the field.

[biohazard_star]

I can't confirm it. There are demo units behind the front video display with the eye on it that are part of the display but I don't know if they are just showing other products like the Saturn Biohazard. I haven't ever found images or video myself but I haven't really looked. There might be some more info out there. A playable is more likely later in dev of course but then as we know Capcom was already scrapping this and they may not have seen the point of anything more than video. But that's really the point I wanted to make, that it was at least on the show floor.

So the closed-door event with a playable version (shown in pic) most likely did not occur during TGS '97, right?
Spoiler:

show spoiler

[OKeijiDragon]

So the closed-door event with a playable version (shown in pic) most likely did not occur during TGS '97, right?
Spoiler:

show spoiler

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[biohazard_star]

Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator

Sorry about that. It's been fixed now.

[Guest]

Not really. They'd "wasted" so much time on RE1.5 development, they had to cut corners to release RE2 as quickly as possible: it does explain why they decided to go with the Mansion's layout for the RPD; most of the puzzles from RE1 and the final lab of RE1.5 for the retail version of RE2.

Capcom deffinately cut corners in the retail game but I wouldn't say it was like you think. From a development perspective it seems Capcom went out of their way to make the retail game as different to the prototype, as the simpler thing to do is just reuse your assets and concentrate on the scenario, instead of changing the majority of the stages as well. Where corners were cut imo was in the scenario its self, making the game more streamlined and less interactive by killing off characters and allowing them to spend more development time on finer details of the scenario.

For instance, the final scenario is focused more on the relationship between Leon and Claire as opposed to the relationship between groups of people like Leon, Ada and Marvin; Elza, Sherry and John. Two less characters means more energy can be put into the rest of the characters, from both a writing perspective and a programming perspective. It's less room for inconsistency and deffinately better from a design perspective if you want to eliminate the likelyhood of sloppiness in the scenario.

And that's what Capcom say, the scenario was bad. I think 1.5 was a very ambitious project and one that might have become too much to handle in the time they had left. I imagine 1.5 to be very rough around the edges and that's where I think the retail game made a difference, because the characters were fleshed out and the gameplay was consistent. 1.5 would have deffinately taken more work fleshing out the extra characters and making their interactions meaningful to the game, its unnecessary and Capcom found other ways to increase replay value like the A/B scenario system as opposed to an exadurated zapping system (and presumable multiple endings).

Whatever they did it worked and they deffinately made one of the most iconic games from my era. But I deffinately think the design choices of 1.5 could work and make a successful game, untill I play 1.5 I don't see anything they were doing wrong besides giving up on it.

[imacwesker]

So the closed-door event with a playable version (shown in pic) most likely did not occur during TGS '97, right?

1) There is no "closed-door event with a playable version (shown in pic)". It is completely unclear if this picture of a playable RE1.5 demo comes from a public or a private event. The only thing that it is sure is that the picture comes from Famitsu and is used to illustrate the article (subject = first announcement that RE1.5 is canceled)

2) The picture above (with development team) and on the left (with journalists listening to development team) is about an interview done by Capcom's development team (Kashiwazaki, Okamoto and Mikami) in March 1997, in the Shinjuku Sumitomo building in Tokyo. Mikami said: "When I checked the game at the end of last year, I realized that the game didn't reach the goals that we had set at the beginning of its development. So I decided to restart it from scratch. This is why we have delayed its release date from spring to winter. We have changed the story, the CGI and the game will be on 2 CD".

reuse your assets

And that's exactly what they did... if not, why did they reuse the concept of the Mansion, the puzzles of RE1 and the final lab of RE1.5? In fact, they reused some of RE1.5 puzzles too, like the shooting range transformed into the library.
The scenario is an other asset that they did reuse too, granted.

Look at RE3: there is a "Mansion" (clock tower) but its layout isn't similar to the one from RE1 or the RPD and you don't start the game with it.
Same thing with RECV. There is a Mansion at the end of the game but it make sense from a story point of view and it isn't the main building from the beginning of the game.
In both case, Capcom took the time to come with fresh ideas for the building's layouts of these two games.

I am not saying that they destroyed RE1.5 to build an half-assed game on purpose. But Capcom is a company and their first goal is to be profitable. I am sure that the cancelation of RE1.5 has created a gigantic financial mess for them, and that they couldn't afford to spend 2 years to create a "new" game. So they did the best they could with what they had available at the time, so they could release RE2 retail as soon as possible.