I think that when we’re making a game we do the best we can with what we currently have.The original Resident Evil remake for the GameCube is arguably the gold standard for how to update an older game. “If I had to do every project thinking about the fact it’s going to be coming back around in a few years, it would be very difficult to achieve the best you possibly can on each game.

So is that the fate of classic games? To be endlessly remade as technology improves, or will we soon reach a point where technology takes that original design as far it can go? The first scenario definitely doesn’t bear thinking about for Kanda, another one of the game's producers. Even though it’s something we could’ve made a decision to cut that because it’s no longer in keeping with what the game’s going for, but we decided ultimately it’s what makes Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 2.” Hopefully people pick up on that, and will recognise that. “We really went back-and-forth on it, but if you notice the final shot of the new trailer, when Ada and Leon are sarcastically goading each other going into the sewer tunnel – my intention for that is that the alligator is waiting down there in the sewer for you. The more zoomed-out perspective of a fixed-camera wasn’t really going to work for what we wanted to achieve with the horror effect.” When they grab you and bite you, it just feels really in your face and intense. He tells me they have shifted perspective “not just because of people’s expectations these days… but because of what we wanted to achieve with the horror expression – the intensity of an up-close, claustrophobic zombie encounter. (This is part due to the Resident Evil games that followed RE2.) But Hirabayashi believes this is one aspect that helps improve upon the original. 'Audiences now expect this type of a game to take a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective. “We felt that was a modernisation that had to happen,” admits Hirabayashi. One thing that had to be changed was the camera.

While technology has obviously advanced significantly since 1998, so have people’s expectations of a modern game.

Scene by scene, room by room, the same question was repeatedly asked: “Keep it, get rid of it, or update it? We wanted to find out what were the core concepts we wanted to keep pushing in this one.” The team at Capcom sat down and anatomised the 1998 sequel. “Development on the project began with a collective playthrough of Resident Evil 2.

Resident evil 2 remake update may 8