The upcoming Resident Evil 2 doesn’t actually have a ‘remake’ or ‘remaster’ moniker on the end. Much like 2002’s reboot of the original game, Capcom’s banking on the reimagining to stand entirely on its own – and this time, the company isn’t even banking on the clever REmake branding to communicate what’s happening with the new edition.
That’s partly because Capcom wants this to be more than a remake. “It won’t be faithful one to one,” brand manager Mike Lunn says. “For someone that’s played the game, some people played it once and some people played it a thousand times because it’s their favourite game. For the people that have even played it a thousand times, we wanted it to feel fresh. That’s why we don’t call it Resident Evil 2 Remake. It’s a new game built on top of the foundation.”
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If you’ve watched the gameplay footage from E3, you’ll note the early scene where a licker disturbs Leon in the police hallway is gone – the hallway is still there, but that particular scare is not. Lunn tells GamingBolt this is one example of how the team is keeping the game fresh.
“We don’t include that because of the jumpscares, the puzzles, and because we want you to be challenged by that stuff. We want you to be scared by that stuff, not just repositioned to a new part of the building, but sort of reimagined. Because we don’t want you to know exactly how the puzzles are solved, we don’t want you to know exactly where the enemies are going to be. We want to surprise you.”
It’s an approach that sounds pretty similar to the first Resident Evil remake, with a similar overall flow and story but plenty of new and rearranged details all over the game. There’s the big, obvious stuff – like the third-person camera or the apparently combined Leon and Claire campaigns – then there are plenty of tweaks to puzzles and specific jumps.
Either way, the game made a strong showing, winning top honours in the Game Critics Awards: Best of E3 selections this week. Resident Evil 2 shambles out of Raccoon City on January 25, and the game’s system requirements are already available for your perusal, to make sure your machine is up to the task.