The Resident Evil 2 remake will include Tofu, Hunk and that big bastard alligator, we learned last month. But the latter didn't come easy.
In conversation the Daily Star, Capcom producers Tsuyoshi Kanda and Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, say they toyed with cutting the hulking crocodilian entirely as they felt it jarring against the remake's darker tone. They were always wary, though, of fan backlash.
"It was tricky to do without changing the game’s tone a lot. We’re competing with people’s memories with this game, too, and that’s really hard," Hirabayashi tells the Daily Star. "Trying to make a convincing scene where a human-sized character—a guy with a knife—is taking on an alligator… that’s really silly. People don’t remember it as silly because the whole game was groundbreaking at the time, but that moment was ridiculous. It was a difficult process for us, making that work today."
Kanda adds: "It might be easier for us to answer that question when the game comes out though—we have our own thoughts and what we liked and what we didn’t, and people might feel differently to us on that level."
The devs have also been answering questions about the potential of virtual reality Resi. When asked about VR, Kanda and Hirabayashi say virtual reality support is an unlikely consideration for the third-person perspective Resident Evil 2 remake.
"We’re not thinking about VR support currently," Kanda tells the Daily Star. "Given that the camera perspective and the over-the-shoulder choice would mean that VR is not the best way to present the game. VR doesn’t match the vision for us."
Referencing the rat's eye view RE2 Remake trailer that aired at E3, Hirabayashi adds: "Thinking about it, maybe giving you the rat’s eye view in the trailer might have given people the wrong idea. But if you think there is Rat VR coming… that’s not the case."
Due on January 25, 2019, here's everything we know about the Resident Evil 2 remake. If you need a virtual reality fix, know that Megaton Rainfall will finally get VR support on PC next month.