Capcom has released a new Resident Evil Village Behind The Scenes video detailing the game’s struggles during development. Appropriately titled “The Internal Struggle,” the seven-minute-long video explains how the COVID-19 pandemic halted development for a period of time, and how the game’s combat was initially considered a “slog” by the company’s QA team. It includes interviews with various members of the development team, such as director Morimasa Sato and producer Tsuyoshi Kanda.
Director Morimasa Sato stated that, because of the pandemic, development for Resident Evil Village was halted for over a month. During that time, employees were unable to work from home, and all Sato could do “was worry about Resident Evil Village.” Sato says that the core theme of the game focused on “the struggle to survive.” The team aimed to accomplish this by making enemies “very aggressive,” in order to instill this sense of fear and survival.
After coming back into the office, the team decided to conduct a focus test with a group of players. However, it was then that the Quality Assurance team found that many players did not feel this sense of fear. Instead, Quality Assurance Manager Shuntaro Kobayashi noted, many of the playtesters felt that “the game’s content was completely divorced” from the original vision. Kobayashi continued:
The playtesters’ first impressions of Resident Evil Village were: There are too many enemies, and they’re overly aggressive. Plus, there isn’t enough ammo. This made combat uninteresting, frustrating…boring, and incredibly tiring to play.
Project Manager Tatsuo Isoko added that, by the time these issues came up, the deadline for the game was already near. The team had already been in the final stage of development, and the QA team had expected pushback to some of their criticisms. General Manager Makoto Kadono recalls that the development team initially panicked at the idea of a fix, and even contemplated keeping the game as is. In the end, however, the team decided that “something had to be done,” and began working on overhauling the game’s combat.
To this, they came up with several solutions. Firstly, they identified the core issues with the combat. “I think the core of horror is going forward when you just really want to run away,” Sato stated, “[players]…then finally overcome their fears and the obstacles in front of them.” To do so, the team focused on improving the pacing of the game and giving players space between combat segments.
Rather than make the players panic by just throwing aggressive monsters at them, we make them paranoid about if and how they’re going to be attacked, and worry about where the next enemy will be. Then, when an enemy appears, it’s relentless.
QA Manager Kobayashi notes that while voicing opposing opinions “can definitely be upsetting” for some team members, it was still vital to creating a game that fans would enjoy. Kobayashi concludes with the hope that the QA and Dev team will continue to be able to work together “even if it causes disagreements along the way.” Producer Tsuyoshi Kanda states that this critical feedback is ultimately a vital part of the development process and in delivering a quality product. With Resident Evil Village shipping over 3 million copies within the first few days, it looks as though Capcom was ultimately able to achieve this goal.
You can check out the full behind the scenes development video below:
Resident Evil Village is currently available for PlayStation 4 and PS5. For more information, you can check out our PS5 review and prior coverage of the game.
[Source: YouTube]