Ben-DutkaThe die-hard Resident Evil fans may not like the idea of the fast-paced shooter, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City .
But don't come down too hard on Capcom. It's not about changing the franchise, per se, it's about expanding the IP. In speaking to Gamasutra , producer Masachika Kawata and designer Kenji Matsuura talk about the new RE effort, the one in development at SOCOM developer Slant Six.
Kawata first addressed the complaint that Capcom has turned Resident Evil a "twitchy" non-survival/horror series:
"The entire Resident Evil series — it was never something that we planned to do. We never sat back and said, 'Okay, we want to make these games more shooting-like, more action-focused.' Resident Evil, especially the numbered Resident Evil games, have, for us, always been about being survival horror. If you can shoot a little bit more, and you do that, that's fine. But first and foremost, they've always been survival horror games.
With Operation Raccoon City, we started from a place where we said, 'Okay, we want to make a shooter, not a survival horror game.' At the same time, we want to keep some of the same emotions that you get when you play the game. So even though it feels like maybe it's been a slow progression, it really hasn't been a deliberate thing, where we're making the series more shooter-like. This time we definitely wanted to make a shooter."
The purists still say RE should always be survival/horror and the idea of shooter spin-offs doesn't sit well. But Kawata explains that they want to "make the best use of our brand." He also believes the fans want to see "a lot of different experiences," and when he was asked if he was worried about diluting the brand with different types of games, he replied- "I'm not too concerned about that."
At the end of the day, Capcom absolutely believes that if all they did was survival/horror, "people would be really sick of Resident Evil ." Do you believe that?