RESIDENT EVIL 3
Resident Evil 3 is coming back, Ian Dean meets the team behind Capcom’s latest remake…
If you thought Resi 2’s Tyrant was terrifying, get a load of how Capcom’s remaking Nemesis.
STARRRRRRSSSSS!” If you switched on a PlayStation in 1999 the drone of Nemesis gurgling and growling this word would have given you sleepless nights. It was the sound of something terrifying lumbering just out of view; a noise heralding a near-fatal confrontation with one of videogames’ greatest adversaries. And he’s back, with “STARRRRRRSSSSS” in his eyes.
“Like Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 is a reimagining,” confirms producer Peter Fabiano. “We will be keeping to the essence of the original story and characters, but adapting to modernise the game as if it were being made today.”
This means the core gameplay and ideas from Capcom’s classic threequel are being piped through the fantastic RE Engine, which can turn the shadow of an armchair into a jump scare.
The camera is again slung over the shoulder of the returning hero – Jill Valentine – “so it’ll feel familiar for those who have tried out the new Resident Evil 2,” says Fabiano, and in many ways the third-person action approach is a better fit for a sequel that always placed action over atmosphere. The 1999 original literally blew the doors open as it somersaulted Jill out of an explosion and into the streets of Raccoon City. They really knew how to introduce characters in the ’90s. The once-peaceful streets were erupting with gunfire, explosions, and the groans of the walking dead. The city was there to explore, albeit funnelled through the limitations of PS1 hardware.
On PS4 Resident Evil 3’s Raccoon City will be fully explorable, right? Not quite. While Fabiano confirms “it’s [still] not an open world game” he does tease: “You’ll find that you’ll be able to walk through areas and explore a bit more than in the original. Keep in mind that you never know what might lurk around the corner.”
That lurker is, of course, the returning Nemesis. In the original game he would appear in scripted moments, each time returning with a new weapon and attack to avoid. Building on the Tyrant AI technology used in the Resident Evil 2 remake, the team behind this sequel are eager to make Nemesis even more terrifying. Tyrant was Alien: Isolation levels of scary but he was confined to the corridors of the Raccoon City Police Department. Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 is untethered – he’s loose in the city and out for your blood.
GOING VIRAL
“There was some overlap in the development of Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 2, and both utilise RE Engine,” says Fabiano as he explains how Nemesis will hold every corner of the city hostage with his random acts of violence. “We certainly took some elements that we learned putting together Resident Evil 2’s
“THE TEAM ARE EAGER TO MAKE NEMESIS EVEN MORE TERRIFYING.”
Tyrant, but Nemesis is his own brand of terror, and a relentless pursuer who can use weapons.”
Surviving against Nemesis, and the zombies, came down to a deft use of the original game’s dodge move, introduced in 1999’s Resident Evil 3. We can assume this move will make it into the Resident Evil 3 remake, though Fabiano jokes: “Hey, we haven’t actually yet confirmed that the dodge is in there – that’s cheating! I’ll just let you know that we’ve made adjustments to gameplay and you’ll see more [soon].”
THE SOUND OF FEAR
Nemesis has been created to keep you on edge. It’s a tool to ensure every corner you take or burning store you enter could mean a duel to the death with one of horror gaming’s greatest creations.
Part of implementing Nemesis comes down to the use of sound design, and Fabiano tells us this is something that will be greatly enhanced over the previous game. “This depends on the situation,” says the producer as we ask how sound is being used in this sequel. “Resident Evil 3 has more open spaces and one of the things that makes Nemesis so frightening is that he is relentless and you never know when or where he might show up. Sound is very important, especially in horror games, and we are always working to ensure that sound design adds to that feeling of tension. We’re using similar sound techniques from Resident Evil 2, and even some of the same sound designers.”
Back on the streets, we can see the famous locations and events of the 1999 game remade in the RE Engine. The city’s cluttered roads – burning cars rest one on top of another, fires rage behind groups of shuffling of zombies, abandoned emergency vehicles lie ominously silent – have
“EVERY CORNER YOU TAKE COULD LEAD TO A DUEL TO THE DEATH.”
never looked better. The lighting technology that made every shadow feel sinister in Resident Evil 2 ensures you never feel comfortable, despite this sequel’s action focus meaning ammo is less scarce.
Fabiano explains: “We used what we learned working with RE Engine to make Raccoon City feel alive and vibrant in the midst of the early days of the outbreak. You can see some art design and colour choices that help bring the ’90s time period to life.”
For the team, using the RE Engine means pulling off a balancing act. They need to ensure our return to Raccoon City’s famous locations – the burning Stagla petrol station, the detritusstrewn Raccoon Press offices, and the sterile-lit city hospital – feels emotive without straying too far from the original design and tone of these places.
“With the advancements in technology, and by utilising the RE Engine, we were able to take the original and reimagine it with current graphics and modernised gameplay. That meant we needed to be able to drive our creative vision while keeping true to the source material,” says Fabiano.
Key to the new game’s astonishing detail is photogrammetry, a graphics technique that enables the artists to import photographs of real-world objects and people to create lifelike textures and models. In Resident Evil 3 it means many of the zombies you meet are individually created. “There were a number of different variations used for zombie characters,” says Fabiano as he reveals even some Capcom employees have been scanned into the game. “Photogrammetry and motion capture techniques allowed actors to bring the characters and their expressions more to life. And let’s not forget that we needed to build out Nemesis and make sure he felt just as terrifying as in the original,” continues the producer.
Moving around Raccoon City we can see how photogrammetry brings character to the environments. The use of scanned items ensures a reporter’s cluttered investigation wall feels tactile. You can feel the details of the weapons and clothing of the game’s soldiers – Carlos Oliveira, Mikhail Victor, and Nikolai Zinoviev – bursting out of the screen. “Photogrammetry helps us make Raccoon City feel more like a living, breathing city,” says Fabiano.
RESI REVIVAL
The remake follows the same story as the 1999 original, beginning just before and then running alongside the events of Resident Evil 2. We get a glimpse of this in the trailer from late December as we see Ada Wong and Leon Kennedy about to drop into the sewers, Claire Redfield and Sherry Birkin escaping the Umbrella compound, an abandoned orphanage, and bloody footprints leading across the RCPD’s iconic floor mural.
Where the original game focussed on Jill Valentine’s struggle to contain the city-wide outbreak, Fabiano and the trailer suggest the two remakes are far more interconnected. “You would expect that since the events do indeed chronologically overlap that there would be things you’d find familiar. I’ll just leave it at that for now,” Fabiano explains. We’ve seen enough areas of the original game reborn on PS4 – the streets and shops, Jill venturing underground to face off against mutated worms, the mercenaries hiding in defeat in a starkly lit cable car – to suggest the core of Resident Evil 3’s story will remain intact.
We’re keen to hear more about how this remake will develop the plot of the original, and it seems likely Capcom is adding more to the game, just as we had Sherry’s orphanage escape in the Resi 2 remake.
The natural way to develop the story is to increase Carlos Oliveira’s role in the game. He shares space on the game’s cover with Jill Valentine, suggesting his mission to the city’s hospital to find a cure for the T-virus could be expanded upon. “Carlos will have his own interesting section to play through,” confirms Fabiano, without giving much away.
Fans will also remember Resident Evil 3 broke the mould by offering choices that would affect immediate routes through the game at key moments throughout the story, leading to different endings. So will the remake return with a mix of endings? “No,” confirms Fabiano.
There are changes coming to this version of Resident Evil 3, and after the success of Resident Evil 2’s remake revelations that this remade sequel has removed alternate endings, probably in favour of a defined story arc, can’t dampen our excitement to retread Raccoon City’s avenues and alleyways on 3 April.
“CARLOS WILL HAVE AN INTERESTING SECTION TO PLAY THROUGH.”