In the mid-2010s, the “Resident Evil” game franchise was withering. The switch to an action-oriented approach in the fifth and especially the sixth main entry in the series had not fared well with fans.
Then came 2017’s “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard”. A switch up to a first-person perspective and a return to the survival horror genre, the game scored critical acclaim and strong sales. However, it turns out that Capcom’s original plans were very different from what we ended up with.
In a new discussion with Shinji Mikami on the official Biohazard YouTube channel, the game’s executive producer Jun Takeuchi revealed that Capcom originally was putting pressure on the development team to turn the title into a live-service game with an online multiplayer and microtransaction-centric approach. Takeuchi explains:
“Right around that time there was a big push at Capcom, a big ‘marketing’ push, saying ‘we have to make the games players are asking for’. So we were being told ‘make this, make that’, it was really hard on the directors at the time. ‘Online multiplayer’ this, ‘downloadable content’ that. ‘Ongoing service games! Microtransactions! Make a Resident Evil game that ticks all those boxes!’
Seriously, there were so many demands… those poor directors. Finally, our president, [Kenzo] Tsujimoto stepped in. He’d heard about all the unsuccessful attempts at that point. So this is one of those unforgettable moments for me. It was January 4th, the first working day of the new year. The president called me to his office. ‘Resident Evil 7 is in pretty bad shape. Takeuchi-kun, step in and help make it!’ So that’s how I ended up working on Resident Evil 7.”
Takeuchi then says that once he joined the team and pushed to enlist Koshi Nakanishi as the game’s director, they set about trying to rip out the live service and microtransaction features Capcom’s marketing wanted to implement:
“First, we decided that Resident Evil’s roots are in horror. We talked about it a lot. The idea of multiplayer got killed off pretty quickly. If we could properly put it together, we could make an exciting horror multiplayer game, but we didn’t really have any good ideas, so we set it aside. We went down the list, chopping them out until we had marketing’s worst nightmare – a regular old single-player horror game. That’s what we ended up with.”
The result may have upset marketing, but not the fans. Seen as a big return to form for the franchise, it kickstarted something of a renaissance as the subsequent “Resident Evil 2” remake 2019 scored stellar reviews, 2020’s “Resident Evil 3” remake also fared well, and last year’s eighth main title “Resident Evil: Village” was very well received and one of the biggest titles of last year.
A live service title did eventually get made with “Resident Evil: Resistance,” the online component of “Resident Evil 3”. ‘Resistance’ was released in early 2020 to poor reviews and criticisms over its use of microtransactions and loot boxes. The company will try again later this year with online multiplayer title “Resident Evil Re:Verse” which is coming in October.
Meanwhile, the main franchise keeps soldiering on with a remake of its creative apex – “Resident Evil 4” – set to be one of early 2023’s biggest titles.
