Resident Evil 4 Preview

Developer	Capcom Production Studio 4
Publisher	Capcom
Genre	Survival Horror
Release Date	Winter 2004

An Entirely New Evil

The gaming community was in shock when they learned that Shinji Mikami – the creator of the Resident Evil series – stepped down as head of Capcom’s Production Studio 4. Instead of managing the Gamecube-focused development house, Makami instead showed more interest in what he did best: game making. Thanks to this bold move, Mikami is now heading up the ultra highly-anticipated Resident Evil 4 as director.

Until Mikami took the reigns of the new Resident Evil, the game played exactly like the previous games in the franchise did. Mikami wanted to shake things up a bit. Actually, he wanted to shake things up a lot, by defying fans’ expectations – in a gory, spooky, altogether ooky way. In a good way.

Resident Evil 4 is certainly different. The game in fact, feels like an all-new monster, which is exactly what Mikami is aiming for. Allow us to set the scene.

The Whereabouts of Leon S. Kennedy
If you remember Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 2, you know that he was a rookie police officer for Raccoon City’s police department. It didn’t take long to discover that the city wasn’t what he expected, but was far worse, and far more terrifying than anything he’s ever encountered. Leon escaped with his life, along with Claire Redfield, sister to S.T.A.R.S. member Chris Redfield.

Now fast forward to 2004: six years after the events in Resident Evil 2. Raccoon City has been vaporized into zombie-flavored milkshake, and Leon is long gone from the past events that haunted him. He’s still working to serve and protect however; he’s hired to protect the daughter of the president. But, just like in RE2, Leon never gets a chance to start his job for everything around him goes terribly awry. The president’s daughter is kidnapped, and as Leon attempts to track her down, he’s lead to a rundown South American village.

This dude with the chainsaw is pissed! Just check out the particle effects system at work. This is all in-game visuals here in full, real time 3D, folks. And look – Leon’s health and ammo are displayed onscreen! Yay!

This is where things start to take a turn for the bizarre. When Leon arrives at this decrepit old village, he finds that he’s not welcomed with open arms, but with blades, hooks, and chainsaws. The village’s occupants are immediately out to get him, showing no hesitancy in killing him outright. This forces Leon to fight back and go into hiding; in totally unfamiliar territory.

A New Beginning?
Now, you might be wondering when the Umbrella Corporation comes in. That’s just it: it doesn’t. In what is perhaps the most surprising move of the Resident Evil 4 project, Mikami and company are retreating from the Umbrella Corp. storyline to concentrate on something fresh, thereby abandoning everything series fans know of the Resident Evilmythos.

But why? After spending so many years and game installments guiding players through the sinister and convoluted web of Umbrella conspiracies, why abandon the story? Mikami wants to make Resident Evil scary again, and to do that, the unexpected must make a return to the series, something that has been missing from every Resident Evil since Code: Veronica. It’s hard to argue Mikami’s logic: How can you be scared of something when you know exactly what you’ll be up against? Horror thrives on the unexpected, and if everything is sadly predictable, the game’s atmosphere, mood -- and ultimately, the experience – suffers.

This is one of RE4’s main camera perspectives. There are no more static camera angles. Leon takes up the left side of the screen, and all of your playing and aiming is done in this view. In order to successfully pull this off, the game must be viewed in Widescreen mode.

So okay, we have no more Umbrella Corp. How will the zombies be explained? These shambling undead – which are the franchise’s trademark enemy – are the result of Umbrella experiments gone terribly wrong. So if the Umbrella aspect is gone, where do the zombies come from? Well, this is where Capcom makes another ballsy – but intriguing – move: zombies are now as bye-bye as Umbrella. Umbrella? Gone. Zombies? Gone. Resident Evil 4 will indeed be 100% Umbrella- and zombie-free. If you think these meaty bits are shockers, there’s more beef where they came from, because Resident Evil 4 has got many more surprises up its sleeve; so many in fact, that if it weren’t for Leon Kennedy being the main character, the game would resemble nothing like what we know as Resident Evil.

Goosebump-inducing Graphics
Visually, we can say with confidence that RE4 is by far the slickest-looking game we’ve seen on the Cube so far. Even creepier than the remake, the environments in RE4 are just stellar, mostly ranging to from rundown farmhouses and sheds, to a marshy area riddled with insects and tall weeds enveloping a small, rotting rowboat. The lighting is amazingly ambient, as are the game’s particle effects, such as flames and blood. What’s so unreal is that the game is being rendered in full 3D; the game looks much better than the remake of the original game -- which is still great-looking by today’s standards, and was done via the traditional 3D characters over 2D backdrops. Obviously, to achieve this kind of graphical beauty on a full 3D engine is quite a feat, and there are still many months of development left to go.

What is perhaps most interesting are the crucial tools the team is using in its presentation to create the ultimate scare-fest. Resident Evil 4 uses three views. One of them is a first-person perspective, an obvious choice as this generation of hardware can better support such a feature. The other two perspectives are indeed third-person, but much different than most third-person viewpoints, as these are both close-up over-the-shoulder perspectives. So critical to the game are these perspectives that Resident Evil 4 must be played in Widescreen mode, as Leon fills the entire left side of the screen. If your TV doesn’t support the 16:9 aspect ratio, the game will have black bars on both the top and bottom of the screen so the player can experience the game as it was meant to be on a 4:3 television.

The clever use of light and shadows make Resident Evil 4 one of the most graphically beautiful games to date. It also goes without saying that just the backdrops alone are enough to convince naysayers that RE4 is going to be one hell of a scary ride.

To top off all this luscious visual talk is the lack of CG cutscenes and door animations. All cinemas are done via the in-game engine, and though the lack of door animations may seem out of place, know that the load times from area to area are extremely quick and painless.

A New Breed to Take the Bullet
The environments in RE4 are much more open than in previous games, which have been largely dominated by narrow corridors and awkward camera angles. And this newfound openness is good news, because combat in RE4 will be quite different from what series veterans have come to expect. Leon will be able to aim both up and down to shoot, but there will also be the ability to target different body parts of each enemy. So there is a distinct possibility that Leon won’t want to actually make a kill, but instead target a lesser area of the body to injure. Of course, a well-placed headshot will result in lots of bloody chunks and an instant kill. Taking action in other ways will also help Leon survive. The Action button will allow Leon to do a number of different things, depending on where he is and what’s around him. He’ll be able to move tables around to barricade a door, or kick down ladders to prevent the enemy from closing in. If low on ammo or completely unarmed, he’ll be able to kick enemies to defend himself.

Now, since enemies aren’t zombies in RE4, you can’t count on them being the shambling, dimwitted oafs they were in previous RE games. In fact, the enemies in this new Evil are very smart because they’re people. They move faster, have better reflexes and even have some common sense. Rather than run full speed at you when they see you are armed, they may go into hiding or even run away from you. Sometimes, they may lead you into a more dangerous situation, like an area where they have leverage or even an ambush. This alone changes the way players will experience Resident Evil.

“Don’t Pee Your Pants”.
Though the Resident Evil series has grown stagnant over the last few years, Shinji Mikami is about to make the series scary again. In many ways, he and his team are returning to the roots of what raw fear is. With everything Capcom’s Production Studio 4 has in mind for one of gaming’s most anticipated sequels, we have no doubt that Resident Evil will once again become the series that makes your skin crawl and have you looking under the bed. A gorgeous 3D engine, totally revamped combat gameplay (you’ll be able to drive vehicles too!), all-new enemy encounters, and a brand new storyline that is full of chaotic twists and turns, Resident Evil 4 is the game that will have many a gamer screaming helplessly into the night.

Preview by Brendon Hivner