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

[Wrathborne]

Do you always have to fight with people about their opinions? Whats wrong with just disagreeing and shrugging it off? You always have to mix in some kind of insult or imply that the other person dead wrong because they don't agree with you.

[News Bot]

Do you always have to fight with people about their opinions? Whats wrong with just disagreeing and shrugging it off? You always have to mix in some kind of insult or imply that the other person dead wrong because they don't agree with you.

1) No fighting involved, just back and forth banter about the validity of questionable statements.

2) I'd be all for that but some people will continue to drone on and on about how 1.5 was some bastion of light and hope in the dark days of the PS1 that would've outshone its eventual successor, and its creators are all liars that saw fit to reuse totally unique and groundbreaking assets in later totally unrelated games rather than in the huge success they eventually crafted right off the heels of an inferior attempt.

3) I haven't insulted anyone. Yes, people are dead wrong when they claim the above. It's not even negotiable and borders on willful delusion at this point. The whole "could/maybe" thing going before so many statements about 1.5's purported greatness is also very telling.

[Kegluneq]

We do have the "era 4" build to judge. And it sucks. Go figure. No, it wasn't "experimental", that implies that they were testing the water. They were very much full speed ahead in terms of development. Item placement, layout, positions etc are completely irrelevant to the fact that the game, functionally, was inferior. I don't know how many times we need to go over this before people stop making excuses. A "Metal Gear Solid type" game? Why, because zombies looked nearly as bad as the models in that game? "Acceptable dialogue?" What are you basing this on, translations not done by CAPCOM, who fucked their own up and hired some of the shittiest actors they could?

Absolutely none of those examples you gave are recycled. The armor in Dino Crisis 2 at a stretch, but even that's pushing it. What you're implying is that developers consciously went back to a scrapped, all-round despised prototype and took supposedly great, none of which are unique or ground-breaking, elements from it for later titles... rather than keeping those superior elements in the retail version itself. That's stupid, nothing else.

Let me get this right. Layout, enemy positions, item placement, puzzles, stage progression, resource arrangement, etc are completely irrelevant because it's a fact that the game was, functionally, inferior? What kind of fucking argument is this? Going by this simplistic logic, any preceding game is inferior to the next because the engine should, in theory, be technically superior to its predecessors, and therefore, the best game of the series. A game is not defined sorely by its engine. Want some proof? Go watch some of those fan-made BH2 Prototype videos using BH2's retail engine. Does that shit look like its funny to play because it has the BH2's retail engine? What you just said is a load of crap. A game has a long way ahead of itself after the engine, the backgrounds and the scenario are created. It can have the best of the three worlds and still be a drag to play because it's poorly structured and horribly flowed.

Also. Learn 2 Read. I never said any of those things were recycled.

[News Bot]

Yes, you've got it right. They don't matter. We've already mapped most of them out pretty well by now. Anything else is pretty inconsequential. We know the stage progression pretty much room-by-room, with a fairly comprehensive idea about "resource arrangement." None of it interesting or groundbreaking. You're not going by any logic of mine there, you're just stating nonsense. My entire point is that 1.5 is inferior to BH2 and not a substantial improvement over BH1. That doesn't mean BH1 is bad. Heck, it doesn't even mean 1.5 is bad. All it means is that BH2 was a more substantial leap from BH1 while 1.5 was not.

1.5 was scrapped only a few months before it was scheduled for release, with all of the groundwork finished. Please don't give me that bullshit about how they could've turned it completely around with what they had. They did manage to turn it around... with something completely new: BH2. You've got the right idea but you're looking the wrong way. Incidentally, 1.5 was poorly structured and horribly flowed, so thank you for the apt description.

I didn't say you said they were recycled. Just that's what people generally say around these parts, which is why I addressed them to begin with.

[icemann]

Hey all

First post after lurking around the forums here reading up on all the posts in this thread over the last month (god was there ALOT of posts to go through).

B.Zork by the look of things you and the team have done some awesome work on 1.5 and I wish you the best of luck and success with this project. Unlike the vast majority of people here, I haven't downloaded the public release from last week as I would far prefer to play this in a finished state that the team feels is their completed work.

Been loving the youtube videos. Very fascinating stuff.

Oh and is your username in any way inspired by the old 80s/90s series of videogames by the same name or just coincidence?

Either way keep up the awesome work.

[Kegluneq]

Yes, you've got it right. They don't matter. We've already mapped most of them out pretty well by now. Anything else is pretty inconsequential. We know the stage progression pretty much room-by-room, with a fairly comprehensive idea about "resource arrangement." None of it interesting or groundbreaking. You're not going by any logic of mine there, you're just stating nonsense. My entire point is that 1.5 is inferior to BH2 and not a substantial improvement over BH1. That doesn't mean BH1 is bad. Heck, it doesn't even mean 1.5 is bad. All it means is that BH2 was a more substantial leap from BH1 while 1.5 was not.

1.5 was scrapped only a few months before it was scheduled for release, with all of the groundwork finished. Please don't give me that bullshit about how they could've turned it completely around with what they had. They did manage to turn it around... with something completely new: BH2. You've got the right idea but you're looking the wrong way. Incidentally, 1.5 was poorly structured and horribly flowed, so thank you for the apt description.

I don't know where did you get this idea that most of it has been mapped out. The bioflames.com screenshots? It's missing portions from every single floor of the RPD. I'd like to understand how you know the game plays out based on such little information. To give a fairly simple example, there's no public footage of any zombies being fought at the laboratories (minus the P-4 Lab) except when the place is on fire. Yet, from the Trial Discs pre-rendered backgrounds, we can assert that they are fought in pretty much any place that has a crawling vent. Which is more than half the hallways on the B1F and B2F. Now, extrapolate this to every other aspect of BH1.5 related to gameplay. My guess is, either you are completely unaware of how ignorant we are about the final build and you're just trying to show off, or you're completely making this stuff up to prove a point. Another example. Resource arrangement? Do you know how many handgun clips and shotgun shells are documented in the final build?

All of this might sound insignificant to you, but it's what determines what a game plays like. Every single bit is important in deciding if the player can comfortably tank through most enemies, if he needs to evade them to get from point A to point B, if he must carefully approach the situation by only fighting a small number of enemies to create a path and prevent waste of ammunition, or if he can just mindlessly slaughter them without risking being faced into a corner in later stages. Creating this balance is what provides a through and fascinating experience, not only the engine.

One more thing. The game was scrapped when it was only 60%-65% in development. So yeah, they could have done whatever the hell they wanted with it. Not even the era 5 build is representative of a retail product. BioHazard 2 is my least favorite BioHazard of the PS main series, yet Extreme Battle Mode is, by far, the best full experience of gameplay I've managed to come across in a BioHazard title. I doubt that represents 35%-40% of BioHazard 2's retail development or months of development.

[News Bot]

Why do you assume I have little information? Heh.

Zombies being in the lab when it isn't on fire isn't very impressive nor is it some sort of game changer. The amount of ammo doesn't mean much when the weapons themselves are broken. Each character had two handguns, one for single fire and one for burst fire, and two shotguns that didn't have any difference apart from power, etc. Oversaturation of guns in a game intended to be "Survival Horror." Then you have the chemicals that allow you to create any grenade type you want, etc. Things like that affect the balance of the game. On the other hand you can dot ammo around pretty haphazardly if you wanted (like almost every game in the series) and it wouldn't affect the game to any significant degree.

Here's one thing you should keep in mind: percentages don't mean a thing when it comes to game development. There are so many different factors involved in the entire process that it's impossible to gauge how far along a percentage actually represents, or what it's even based on. Does that include work by Imagica? How much of it was polishing or bug fixing? If you can't actually provide details behind the percentages then they really are just pointless, and mere guesswork figures. According to CAPCOM in one of their own books, the game was 80% completed. That's quite a big change. Sounds reliable!

[Black~Crow]

Here we go again! Anyway, I do not care if RE1.5 is not as good or is just terrible, compared to RE2. I just want to be able to play the most complete version and then I can really compare it to RE2. I just want to see what is similar and different, that is what interests me the most. If RE1.5 is a bad game ok, I still want to play it.

If News bot thinks RE1.5 is terrible, then that is his OPINION, just like if another said the game is terrific, and I don't care either way!

[Rick Hunter]

Here we go again!

During breakfast and with some nice background music it's actually quite enjoyable to read on a sunday morning.

[Darkside05]

Here we go again! Anyway, I do not care if RE1.5 is not as good or is just terrible, compared to RE2. I just want to be able to play the most complete version and then I can really compare it to RE2. I just want to see what is similar and different, that is what interests me the most. If RE1.5 is a bad game ok, I still want to play it.

If News bot thinks RE1.5 is terrible, then that is his OPINION, just like if another said the game is terrific, and I don't care either way!

But come on, we know having an opinion is not allowed.

[Deus Flux]

Yes, people are dead wrong when they claim the above. It's not even negotiable and borders on willful delusion at this point. The whole "could/maybe" thing going before so many statements about 1.5's purported greatness is also very telling.

This is a prime example of what i'm referring to. I can say the same thing: it is you who is "dead wrong". "It's not even negotiable" .. lol.. News Bot: Resident evil game dictator? Opinions work both ways. You're behaving as if your opinion a be-all-end-all fact and it is not. You seem to have some kind of bizarre superiority complex that I really don't care to go on about.

You and 1.5:

'Is this supposed to be a hotdog?!'

"Well don't eat the fuckin' thing!"

Love retail RE2 all you want but i'm never going to agree with you on it.

[Guest]

News Bot in a nutshell:
"Besides, even if you are right, I'm going to debate with you, because I'm smart and you're dumb, I'm right and you're wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

[Sly]

http://survivhor.biohazardfrance.net/RE1.5/TEXTES/03/index.html

The 65% thing comes from here, Mikami said so in this interview from Famitsu.
In this article, Mikami and Kamiya state precisely why the game was scrapped : boring environments (every floor of the RPD look the same), zombies not scary enough despite their number, and the story was really bad (lot of negative feedback from professional writers). You can disagree with them but I don't see the point, since they are the ones responsible for scrapping it. Now you might say : "they are liars !" then read this :

But Kamiya wasn't instantly successful. In fact, his first attempt at RE2 -- which has since become known as RE1.5 -- got scrapped after a year and a half of development because, he says, "It was too bad to be part of the Resident Evil brand."
He cites that as the worst moment in his career. "I feel chills when I recall this, but that experience made me understand that there was no vision in my development and I had been taking the easy way out... I was disgusted with myself and I felt responsible to the members of my staff and my company. If I'd never been given a chance to direct another title from Mikami-san after this, my life as a creator would have ended."
Kamiya's second stab at RE2 went much smoother, with the game shipping to stores in January 1998 and cementing the franchise as one of Capcom's most popular.

from here : http://www.1up.com/features/hideki-k...pager.offset=1 (1up is down for now though)
Do you really think a liar would utter these words ?

[doriantoki]

News Bot in a nutshell:
"Besides, even if you are right, I'm going to debate with you, because I'm smart and you're dumb, I'm right and you're wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

And to be honest, he would be right.

The problem I do have though is some of you here are acting like just because in your opinion you think Retail 2 is the superior game then it is no matter what and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

Ho-lord. Hypocrisy much? I've said my part. I don't even care to discuss this, really.

[J0shuaKane]

But come on, we know having an opinion is not allowed.

welcome to THIA.