San Diego Comic Con 2018 was a scene of a zombie outbreak as Capcom’s Resident Evil series invaded the famous convention for a second year in a row! Focusing mainly on the upcoming Resident Evil 2 Remake that’s due out January 25th, 2019, Capcom pulled out all the stops featuring both a fancy zombie centric booth with a cop car on the convention floor and then an actual panel covering a bit more on the upcoming game, including the strong passion being put into the game by the development team.
According to the game’s producer on Playstation Blog, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, this version of Resident Evil exists due to the overwhelming fan demand for so many years after the first Resident Evil 1 Remake back on the Gamecube. Hirabayashi also says that this Resident Evil 2 isn’t just a remake but instead it’s a complete redesign of Resident Evil 2 from the police station — where a majority of the story takes place — to all the other areas fans of the series and this game know of. Another topic that came up at the panel also included the redesign of Leon Kennedy for the remake from his grizzled hero look of the later games like Resident Evil 6 back into the more feeble, rookie look he had in the original Resident Evil 2. HIs new redesign took in the more modern photorealistic graphics that they are using, which are based off of the Resident Evil 7’s RE Engine. To achieve Leon’s classic-yet-new-look, the development team had to create a physical version of his costume using photogrammetry technology to put his clothes into the game and then add little details here and there afterwards.
Next up, Hirabaysahi talked about the second protagonist of the remake and fan favorite, Claire Redfield — who happens to be in Raccoon City at the time of the viral outbreak when searching for her missing brother, Chris. Claire was show briefly in the E3 trailer revealed last month, so this is finally the first time we get a good look at her fully. Claire’s updated redesign was done similar to how Leon’s was above; but compared to Leon being similar to his classic look of the original game, Claire is slightly different this time around. Instead of jeans shorts and a red biker jacket, Claire is now wearing regular dark blue jeans, sports a gun holster around her hip and trades that biker jacket in for a red leather/synthetic style jacket. Her iconic boots and ponytail are the two features that still carry over. See the promotional art for Claire below, what do you think?
Photo Source: Capcom
Lastly Hirabayashi talked about both the city and of course the zombies that plague the game. When they first came up with the redesign city they wanted to focus on two key concepts that will run throughout the game: a sense of wetness and having a fear of the dark. They achieve this new found sense of horror by using the RE Engine. With a key difference in setting between this and the original game, is that the remake will occur on a rainy day in Raccoon City which will cause puddles and flooding in areas around the city where else other parts of the city will show the aftereffects of clashes with monstrosities that run amuck in the bad weather.
Speaking of which for the zombies themselves, the team wanted to design them to the point where you don’t ever want to be bitten by them! In the remake, the camera will now pull in closer to you, and you’ll see first hand in a rather visceral manner a zombie chomping down on your neck. The zombies too also use the same ideas of wetness and darkness in mind, which in turn makes each encounter with them a tense one.
And finally, here’s everything that will be included in the Collectors Edition of Resident Evil 2:
Photo Source: Capcom
The Collectors Edition of Resident Evil 2 will only be available in North America via Gamestop and EB Games. Supplies are very limited! If you can’t manage to pre-order a copy or the price point for the collector’s edition is too high, I recommend pre-ordering the Deluxe Edition instead, you’ll lose out on the physical collectables but you still get the digital goodies like the character skins and the soundtrack swap to play the game with the original audio of the classic Resident Evil 2.
This was pretty much it in terms of Resident Evil at Comic Con this year, with no news on when or if the demo of the game will be released to the public. Most likely news on that may come at either at Gamescom next month or around Tokyo Game Show sometime in the Fall.
