Staff – January 18, 2019 at 4:34 PM
Even if this isn’t your first zombie rodeo, the enemies in the Resident Evil 2 remake will still make your skin crawl. Don’t believe us? Try the free demo yourself.
One could argue that the biggest difference between 1998’s Resident Evil 2 and its 2019 remake is neither their graphics nor their color schemes, but their cultural contexts. In the two decades following 1998’s RE2, there’s been no shortage of zombie-related media. From TV shows to video games, we’ve seen just about every iteration of zombie there could be — airborne disease zombies, alien zombies, ancient zombies, fast zombies, slow zombies, lone wolf zombies, and zombie packs. So this time around, the developers at Capcom were presented with an interesting challenge: How can they make zombies scary again in 2019?
As it turns out, the “scary-ness” of a zombie game isn’t merely contingent on how realistic the zombies look or how gruesome they can appear using current-gen graphics (though that certainly plays an important factor). It’s also very much about environmental design, pacing, and the presentation of challenges to the player’s progress.
Capcom has learned a great deal from the critical success of the excellent Resident Evil 7, a game that hearkened back to the roots of the survival horror genre and favored scarcity of resources and creative challenges over gratuitous gunplay or cheap scares. Where in other games, one might be able to mow down a horde of zombies with a gatling gun or flamethrower, RE2’s zombies take a little more cunning to incapacitate.
“The main concept was to redefine traditional, orthodox zombies with the latest technology,” Director Kazunori Kadoi said. “Having a large army of zombies run at you as you headshot them has its own sense of satisfaction, but we felt like that zombie image didn’t quite hit the mark with the tenacious, resilient zombies that we were imagining this time around with Resident Evil 2.”
In Resident Evil 2’s remake, every zombie is an urgent problem that demands your attention. Expend too many bullets and you might lose your edge over later enemies, while failing to act quickly might result in a fatal altercation. The result is an ever-present sense of impending danger, forcing you to think twice about turning a dark corner or yanking a door open.
Even if you choose to gun the zombie down in these fight-or-flight situations, however, don’t expect it to go down easily. “We wanted to show it would take more than just a few bullets to cease their raw, ravenous hunger,” Kadoi said. “The game’s tempo and perspective really focused on this aspect.”
Standing still to line up a headshot, for instance, grants you more precision but leaves you vulnerable to attack. This is not a game that rewards running and gunning without properly getting a lay of the room.
The changes made to the player’s perspective and control scheme are perhaps the most obvious in the remake. Gone are the clunky tank controls and fixed camera angles of the original RE2; Capcom added free-roaming camera movement and an over-the-shoulder third person perspective in their stead.
Historically, fixed camera angles were appealing because they allowed developers to exercise control over the cinematography of the player’s experience. In the context of a horror game like RE2, this also meant maintaining control over the game’s scares while also creating a claustrophobic effect.
To replicate this in the remake, Capcom paid special attention to the environmental design of the game, capitalizing on advancements in graphical technology to cultivate an even scarier atmosphere. You may find yourself in a space bathed in fog, filled with long shadows, or lit only by your meager flashlight. Current-gen graphics gave Capcom a variety of new and creative ways to make their zombies scary in the absence of a fixed camera.
Make no mistake: 2019’s Resident Evil 2 is much more than a dressed-up version of the original. Capcom redesigned the experience from the ground up to meet the expectations of today’s survival-horror gamer.
The Resident Evil 2 remake will be released on PC on January 25, 2019.
