In case you were hiding under a rock this past day, or locked in a productivity-sapping, time-warping binge of Hearthstone, you might have missed the news that Capcom has finally decided to pull the trigger on a full-fat, all-the-sugar remake of beloved survival horror sequel Resident Evil 2. Once the cerebrum eroding thrum of this monumental announcement subsides however, we’re left with the very real question of now that Resident Evil 2 Remake is a thing, a proper real thing, what exactly do we want from it?
Well, funny you should ask.
Keep the fixed camera angles
Arguably, the Resident Evil titles were at their atmospheric and nervously engaging best when the player forfeited control of the in-game camera. Rather than the bobbing third-person shoulder camera that would define later entries in the series from Resident Evil 4 onwards, Resident Evil 2 retained the fixed camera angles of the original game to manufacture some massively tense situations where you never quite knew what was waiting for you around the next corner.
Thankfully, with producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi taking the reins on the project coupled with his experience in developing the earlier released Resident Evil HD Remaster, it seems very likely that Resident Evil 2 Remake won’t deviate from one of the defining elements of the original 1998 release.
All-new rendered environments and character models at 4K resolution
Going hand in hand with the absolute requirement to preserve Resident Evil 2’s fixed perspectives, is the need to bring them kicking and screaming into the modern era with all new rendered backgrounds that preferably display at something a little higher than 640x480 resolution.
In short, Capcom need to take the same sort of approach to reengineering visual aesthetic of the game that they did with the original Resident Evil Remake way back in 2002 on Nintendo’s Gamecube. Simply put, nothing less than a wholesale re-rendering of the game’s backgrounds and character models will suffice and while the 1080p display of Resident Evil HD Remaster was nice enough, trotting down the eye-blistering path of 4K resolution would ostensibly prove to be the definitive way to glimpse Resident Evil 2 Remake’s newly detail-flush environments and character models.
Leave the scenario alone
Not to mention the fact that it allowed us to adventure into the single largest police station in videogame history, the actual scenario of Resident Evil 2 was pretty decent all told. With a quartet of possible scenarios to take part in between protagonists Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, Resident Evil 2’s odyssey took our heroes through the infected streets and buildings of Racoon City before heading beyond into the deep, dark secret labs of the Umbrella Corporation.
Aside from keeping the narrative intact, the remake would also need to preserve that survival horror feeling of perpetually dreading what’s lurking around the next corner, all the while impressing the need upon the player to scrimp and save every healing herb and bit of ammo that they come across. It’s important to remember then, that rather than instant, pant-soiling scares, Resident Evil 2 engineered an anxiety that would slowly build to a crescendo of paranoia and desperation over its duration. The developers behind Resident Evil 2 Remake need to replicate that feeling all the while resisting the temptation to start recklessly tinkering about with stuff that simply isn’t broken.
Optional control schemes
One of the early franchise elements that divided the Resident Evil fanbase since time immemorial have been the not-so-affectionately termed ‘tank controls’. So while Resident Evil 2 was meaningfully advanced over its predecessor in a number of significant and different ways, the game still reused the very same control system that the original game leveraged.
Fortunately realising that 3D adventure games can now embrace a different form of movement some seventeen years later, Capcom implemented an optional control scheme of movement into this year’s Resident Evil HD Remaster that allowed players to move their avatar in whichever direction their analogue stick pointed towards. It was much better for it too.
So given the likelihood of Resident Evil 2 Remake following in similar footsteps to its remastered prequel then (and because having more choice is always great), it would appear quite likely that both lovers and haters of the original control scheme will be able to have their brains and eat them.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of divisive stuff…
Optional door transitions
Look, I get it. A lot of folks place an atmospheric premium on the door transition animations that occurred when moving from one room to the next, but in an era where things have moved along a fair old whack, it’s fair to say that not everybody is quite so thrilled to see those animations crop up each and every time they saunter through a doorway.
In fact to this end, a group of crafty folks even fashioned a mod for the earlier released Resident Evil HD Remaster that would allow players to skip these animations entirely. So, with that in mind, it seems clear that Capcom should at least provide that choice in the first instance.
Proper online leaderboard support
Long before players were able to easily share their gaming achievements with one another across the globe, Resident Evil 2 imparted a number of metrics upon completion that would serve in separating the Chris Redfields from the Barry Burtons (oh come on, Burton was a tool and you know it).
From the number of saves used to the time it took to complete a single playthrough, Resident Evil 2 had a variety of ways to grade players on their performance. Sadly, because everyone was mucking about on Angelfire pages and Alta Vista back in 1998, the nascent development of the internet meant you couldn’t expand your own ego to the size of a T-Virus infected Andre the Giant by sharing just how good you were with everyone else that owned the game. So with proper leaderboard support and the sort of competitive scene that would arise a result, Resident Evil 2 Remake would arguably benefit from such an inclusion.
Elsewhere too, with the current infatuation for speed-running just about anything with a set of pixels now so prevalent in gaming culture, such bespoke leaderboard infrastructure could also open up Resident Evil 2 Remake to a whole new community of high-speed, ultra-completist players in the process.
Bring on the completion bonuses and extra content
Of course, while completing Resident Evil 2 back in the day was its own reward (along with nabbing that perfect A Ranking to shame your mates with), it was the promise of unlocking special bonuses and extra content that really made the game such a complete package.
You see, in addition to unlocking extra costumes and weapons with high grade completions, Resident Evil 2 also let players fill the boots of other characters such as Umbrella operative Hunk, who embarked on a mini-mission to save his own skin after his unit comes under attack by nefarious antagonist William Birkin.
So it stands to reason then, that with Resident Evil 2 Remake being all new and shiny that we get a whole bunch of new and wonderful bonus content to get stuck into. After all, if every other aspect of the game is being brought up to date, it makes sense that the extra content does too.
So there you have it; a bunch of things that we really want Capcom to stick in Resident Evil 2 Remake lest they suffer our not-so eternal wrath. That’s enough waffle from us though; what do you folks want from the forthcoming Resident Evil 2 Remake? Fire away in the comments below.
