Resident Evil 4 Remake is around the corner, and having played the short demo; I can safely say that it feels like a new game. That is what Capcom intended to do, according to the game’s producer, long-time Resident Evil veteran Yoshiaki Hirabayashi. He talked about how the game is fresh and familiar at the same time in order to respect the original game.
Last updated on April 20th, 2023 at 07:54 am
As someone who played the original game, I do have fond memories, which I hope to relive in the remake, and I did get a taste of that in the demo. Hirabayashi talked about just that:
I know that fans have their own memories of the original game, and there are a number of features that I thought should be preserved. One of the most important of these is the game design of the original, which allowed players to come up with individual strategies and playstyles that suited how they wanted to enjoy the game.
Capcom has done a couple of remakes, and it seems that the strategy is to respect the original while making the remake feel fresh. That is exactly what Hirabayashi says about Resident Evil 4 Remake:
We want the game to be simultaneously fresh yet familiar, our aim is to ‘betray’ your expectations in the best way possible, while of course respecting the feel of the original game.
Hirabayashi highlighted some of the new features in the game. He talked about how the knife can now be used for stealth kills. But it also has durability, so there is an aspect of resource management as well.
The knife has been expanded with not just a parry but other actions, including even a stealth kill mechanic.
To balance the newly added abilities, your knife now has durability, so it also adds a degree of resource management to the gameplay.
Hirabayashi also talked about the parts of the game where Leon and Ashley are together. He mentioned that a lot of focus went into the interactions and dialogues between the two characters.
When approaching the remaking of the parts of the game where Leon and Ashley are together, our focus was on how the two characters interact through action and dialogue and get to know each other gradually, and to make that more appealing. While there are elements of moving through the game as a pair which differ from how you manage just controlling Leon, and introduce a different kind of challenge, I think we have made it so that by having Ashley be a more convincing standalone character, players will come to enjoy these sections.
Let us know what you think about Resident Evil 4 Remake and whether or not you are interested in checking it out. We also covered an article about the performance hit the hair strands setting in Resident Evil 4 Remake on the AMD RX 7900 XTX and the Nvidia RTX 4090.