Resident Evil 2 almost had a first-person mode implemented in the remake, according to the development team. In another Capcom developer roundtable discussion, the team behind the popular re-imagining flirted with the idea of using first-person and fixed-camera mode for the remake to more closely align it with the original 1998 release.
Resident Evil 2 is a great game, the rare remake that improves upon its source content in nearly every way. The game was met with positive reception from fans and critics, and has helped spur interest in future franchise remakes. Resident Evil 2 is also unique in that it’s a remaster that was given several years of development to get right. The team that worked on the game spent over three years refining it, and the resulting product shows that the extra development time paid off.
Capcom has been releasing the Resident Evil 2 developer roundtable discussion in parts, and Part 2 highlighted some of the ideas that were ultimately left unpursued by the team. There were a lot of concepts that got scrapped, but the most intriguing was the idea of creating a first-person mode for the game. The original Resident Evil 2 wasn’t even a first-person title, so the decision to head in that direction would have been a bold one, especially with a fan base as ravenous as the one that had been petitioning Capcom for a remake for years. Although the team didn’t end up implementing that feature, the Resident Evil 2 modding community picked up the slack. A first-person Resident Evil 2 mod is already available, alongside others that allow players to return to fixed-camera mode as well. With such an active group of players looking to make changes or improvements to what Capcom released, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other scrapped features crop up in the near future.
Luckily, fans have guidelines for those features thanks to these roundtable discussions. This session also included the revelation that the game’s boss fights were originally meant to be a bit more complex, with both the Resident Evil 2 alligator and Tyrant fights being highlighted. The developers also considered implementing a new enemy type into the orphanage, focused on jump-scaring players as they make their way through the already terrifying setting. Finally, the team revealed that it had originally thought dressing Tyrant in a military aesthetic might be a good idea - thankfully they never followed through with it, lest we be presented with a camo-wearing Tyrant that’s invisible to the naked eye.
Beyond anything else, though, what the peek into the development team’s thought processes does is make it painfully obvious that remakes take an incredible amount of effort. Capcom should be commended for giving the team as long as it did to get the remake right and, hopefully, Resident Evil 2’s success will make more publishers consider taking a slower, more methodical approach to their most beloved properties.
More: Resident Evil 2: Ghost Survivors Trailer Revealed As The DLC Drops
Source: Official Resident Evil YouTube
