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Resident Evil Requiem producer Masachika Kawata revealed that the game was originally planned to be an online title before they scrapped the idea to focus on horror.
Kawata shared this information in the BIOHAZARD 30th Special Mook (‘magazine book’), a 124-page, full-color fan book with a complete history of the series' timeline, creature genealogy, and developer interviews.
“Every game is a continuous process of trial and error. For example, with Resident Evil Requiem, [game director Koshi Nakanishi] initially went so far as to develop it as an online game,” he said, via a fan translation.
“However, the results of research conducted partway through development were not favorable, so we decided to prioritize the horror concept once again and abandoned the online direction.”
That’s not the only wild thing Kawata revealed in the mook; he also said that Leon was the first character the team chose as a protagonist, but they ultimately felt that being able to hack and slash zombies with ease would lean too heavily on the ‘action’ side of things, making the overall game less scary.
“Leon was also the first character confirmed to appear as a protagonist. However, we determined that with Leon alone, who excels in combat, ‘horror would no longer work,’ so it was decided to introduce Grace as a new character,” he continued.
Kawata also explained why Capcom decided to wait before sharing Leon’s involvement in the game, saying, “by keeping the full picture of the game, which would develop along both the horror and action sides, until the very end, we were able to successfully maintain interest in it up until release.”
Nakanishi’s early plans to make RE9 an online game isn’t something totally surprising, given that management at Capcom had also pushed for Resident Evil 7 to have multiplayer and microtransactions during its conceptual phase.
"Right around that time, there was a big push at Capcom, a big 'marketing' push, saying 'we have to make the games players are asking for,'" franchise producer Jun Takeuchi said in 2022. "So we were being told 'make this, make that', it was really hard on the directors at the time. 'Online multiplayer' this, 'downloadable content' that. 'Ongoing service games! Microtransactions! Make a Resident Evil game that ticks all those boxes!'
“The idea of multiplayer got killed off pretty quickly. If we could properly put it together, we could make an exciting horror multiplayer game, but we didn’t really have any good ideas, so we set it aside. We went down the list, chopping them out, until we had marketing’s worst nightmare — a regular old single-player horror game."
Capcom is moving full speed ahead with many of its high-profile IPs, Resident Evil being one of them. The series just enjoyed a film adaptation directed by Zach Cregger, and a Code Veronica remake is set to release in February next year. Given that the devs of RE9 didn’t move forward with an online version of the game, it’s possible that we see another online Resident Evil title in the future — perhaps another Resident Evil Outbreak?
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