Dear Reader:

You are viewing a story from GN Version 4.0. Time may not have been kind to formatting, integrity of links, images, information, etc.

Iwata Asks: Resident Evil: Revelations - full rundown

by rawmeatcowboy
21 January 2012
GN Version 4.0
Return to Survival Horror

- Kawata became involved with this project a bit before E3 2010
- Kawata wanted to make a full-on Resident Evil game rather than just port the series into a handheld system
- He was motivated when he heard that there was going to be hardware that could show 3D without special glasses
- Kawata also wanted to get back to the origins of the series
- Kawata wanted a team that could make a truly frightening Resident Evil
- There was talk about giving the project a lot of volume and wanting the fans to enjoy the fear element
- Takenaka believes that the first demo for E3 was like a concept trailer for showing how much Capcom could do with the 3DS
- 3D implementation wasn’t going well at the start because no one had used the 3DS that much
- Capcom brought a demo along when there was an opportunity for an exhibition so they could have many people try it and remove anything unsatisfactory
- Kawata: “We thought we could make something even better than we had set out to, and said, “Why don’t we make Mercenaries?”


The Second Lap of Development

- The Mercenaries 3D came about as Capcom needed to actually run a game on the 3DS
- Capcom took Resident Evil 5 and ran it on the 3DS
- The impact of this was more than Capcom had imagined
- Capcom thought, “We can make this into a product” and knew making it would give them experience
- Control changes were made to Mercenaries and finished Revelations looking at players’ feedback
- Kawata feels that Mercenaries 3D is pushing the 3DS hardware-wise in terms of it being a developmental challenge
- The Revelations team was on their second lap of development and could make it smoothly after gaining experience making Mercenaries 3D
- Capcom could have set the deadline earlier than planned because of the experience they had earned; everyone worked twice as much
- Capcom was able to address different issues about one year ahead of time that might be expected about half a year before completion
- Mercenaries 3D/Revelations development periods overlapped
- Hori thinks the visuals went smoothly because the key concept of horror was decided early on and it was clear the script was based on the sea/ship
- Kawata asked Hori to turn the visuals that had barely been pulled off in time for E3 and turn them into something that would run as a game
- Hori: “So I talked with the programmers and checked into the memory and thought about what to do. Part of my job was also consulting with others on level design—stage design and layout—and making decisions as we went along.”
- Iwata says that Capcom’s way of designing from function is a lot like Nintendo’s approach
- Hori proposed a lot for the makeup of gameplay along with making the graphics

Full details here