In a photo post to the official Resident Evil series Facebook page, producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi (who worked on the remaster for the first Resident Evil game released earlier this year) publicly announced his submission of a pitch for Resident Evil 2 HD. In a cool, bold move, Hirabayashi rather casually and openly made his announcement like so:
Right after the RE HD Remaster project was finished, I actually started putting together my ideas for this “RE2 Project”. So, I just brushed it up and went to see my boss to present the basic concept of the project already…
Resident Evil is definitely one of Capcom’s most successful franchises, finding a home on many gaming platforms (Revelations 2 is even on the Vita, and Revelations 1 started out on the 3DS before moving to HD home consoles.) Within the past couple of years, “older” games within the franchise have been receiving the Capcom remaster treatment, and Capcom itself has been more comfortable exploring collections or remasters of games with added content like Devil May 4: Special Edition or Mega Man Legacy Collection. This isn’t new ground for Capcom by any means (Darkstalkers Resurrection? Street Fighter Alpha Anthology? Mega Man X Collection? etc.) but Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition in particular has performed well commercially in the West, and in between major releases titles like these can offer some decent sales for the company.
Resident Evil 2′s proposal is also notable because the older entries in the Resident Evil series are sometimes regarded as closer to the essence of “survival horror” as newer games began to embrace more action-oriented gameplay and deviate from tanky controls. Resident Evil 6, while commercially successful, perhaps brings to the light the schism present as the Resident Evil fandom expands and older fans of the series hang on. It embraced the idea of having multiple scenarios that capture different “flavors” of Resident Evil, and these flavors (alongside other changes made to the general Resident Evil experience) invited mixed reception at large.
As it is, Resident Evil 0 is also being remastered and is set for release in 2016. Resident Evil HD Remaster (for the first game) was released at the start of this year and a PC version for Resident Evil 4 called the Ultimate HD Edition was released in early 2014. Since the remakes are clearly pretty popular (and I think it’s hard not to see Resident Evil 2 HD coming to pass,) it’ll be interesting to see what sort of impact they may have on the inevitable Resident Evil 7.
Any favorite Resident Evil 2 moments? Be sure to share them below!
