http://dengekionline.com/elem/000/001/785/1785772/
This is a Japanese interview, but it is loaded with new details, so I wanted to make a topic and summarize here. It goes into depth on some mechanics of the game not previously revealed, design philosophies, things about Claire and Birkin, and more.
I'll write a summary:
-They worked to make the story of RE2 more "dramatic", and shuffled some events around in order to do this. Chief Irons arriving after meeting Birkin for the first time is one example of this, but there's others. People also probably have noticed Marvin doesn't die when you first meet him. They say they think when people experience the story, they will agree that the changes they've made really helps the pacing and drama of the story. They also tease that Irons sticks around longer than he did in RE2 and becomes increasingly unpleasant, way beyond anything he did in RE2.
-Confirms the game has one story timeline (two separate campaigns but both Leon and Claire's campaign have events that are reflective tn the others campaign), and you see different sides of this story as Leon and Claire. Their stories are made to interconnect the events that happen in the other.
-They changed Sherry Birkin to become more like an actual little girl than a sorta' Japanese image of a little girl like was in the original RE2. They also changed her outfit to examplify she is lonely and kinda' weird, but in a rich and sheltered upbringing.
-The Birkin Form 1 battle in the Claire demo is customized for the short play time, giving the player a lot of weapons and ammo to play around with. In the actual game, you won't be arriving at that encounter as loaded as you see in the videos.
-For the first encounter with William Birkin, they wanted to really emphasize the power that a G-Virus creature has, both as a destructive force on the move and how it corrupts a person. The fight takes place in the basement of the police station.
-In terms of game design, Birkin's Form 1's weakness is obviously the eye, but when choosing weakpoints they tried to work with what was in the original designs rather than making alterations to the classic designs. They also worked to introduce the idea of Birkin's eye being his weakpoint in this first form, but things may get more.... Complicated in Birkin's later forms once this idea is introduced.
-There are Main Weapons and Sub Weapons in REmake 2. Main Weapons are things like the handgun, shotgun, while Sub Weapons are things like the knife and grenades. Sub Weapons often have two uses, one as an option in combat, and one as a defensive item, a concept they brought back from the remake of the original Resident Evil. They say there's more sub-weapons than we've seen.
-Gunpowder from RE3/RE7 is in REmake 2, and with it you can make three kinds of bullets. You can simply use two weaker gunpowder to make handgun bullets, and a weaker gunpowder+stronger gunpowder to make Shotgun shells, and a stronger+stronger for another type of ammunition.
-Herb combinations are back, and REmake 2 has three types of herbs, Green, Red, and Blue. They mention there's enemies in REmake 2 that can poison the player, which blue herbs can fight against. In a new combination for the series, you may combine Red+Blue Herbs. Doing this not only makes you invulnerable to poison for a period of time, it also raises your defensive power by a lot for this period of time until it wears off.
-They have seen some of the divided response to Claire's new design, but they've worked hard on the new Claire and hope impressions will change as people see more of Claire in motion, being voiced, and her arc through the game.
-The part of the remake they probably spent the most time evolving for a modern version of the game were the zombies, they spent a lot of time thinking how to make them work best mechanically, look disturbing, feel somewhat scary to fight, how to make their movements unnerving, they wanted to remind people that zombies could be scary. Also mention they wanted the zombies to feel strong, like, "Why won't this thing die!?" They mention the zombies in REmake 2 can act like they're dead for a while, only to get back up. They can look like they should be dead, but just keep going. They wanted to make players not always feel like they reliably know that the zombie is dead.
-They confirm there's nothing like Crimson Heads in REmake 2.
-They put a lot of time into thinking how to make horror work best with this camera perspective, how audio plays into suspicion and fear, how turning a corner can be intimidating with the perspective, how something taking up your field of view quickly can be scary.
-On the switchable original OST that's DLC for the game (part of the Deluxe Edition). They mention it's the original OST, but it does function different than how it did in the original RE2. In the original RE2 the music would change at room changes or key events, while playing the original OST in this version the music changes depending on the situation. They also say if you have the DLC you can switch the music back and forth in the middle of play. They also hint that with the original OST, the title screen may play the original "Resident Evil 2" announcer voice.
-They want this game to show that behind-the-camera can be used really well for a horror game, and that the RE Engine can provide beautiful but twisted graphics and binaural sound design to unnerve the player. They say they know there's still many people who played the original fixed camera horror games and are impressed, and they haven't ruled out ever going back to the style yet, but they hope that users can experience this game with it's new perspective and come to love what they've done to realize horror from this perspective.
-They paid a lot of attention to small details in the game's look, details on character models like bite marks, wet clothes, burn models, being able to see under zombies skin when shot, etc. They also mention recently they've been working with NVIDIA for Ray Tracing, and seeing where it fits in the game to make it look even better, but that's not fully reflective in this version people have seen yet as they're still experimenting with it right now.
-Confirm PC versions can play in native 4k resolutions, and they're working hard to make the game on all platforms look beautiful and run stably for a solid gameplay experience no matter what platform you go on right now.
-They were absolutely honored that REmake 2 was one of the first third-party Japanese games to win best of E3 awards ever, they want to aim to make more titles and E3 presentations to wow people like REmake 2 has.
-Say to look forward to TGS, there will be a pretty big dump of information then and that Leon and Claire will both be playable at TGS.
---
Lot's of interesting details.
This is a Japanese interview, but it is loaded with new details, so I wanted to make a topic and summarize here. It goes into depth on some mechanics of the game not previously revealed, design philosophies, things about Claire and Birkin, and more.
I'll write a summary:
-They worked to make the story of RE2 more "dramatic", and shuffled some events around in order to do this. Chief Irons arriving after meeting Birkin for the first time is one example of this, but there's others. People also probably have noticed Marvin doesn't die when you first meet him. They say they think when people experience the story, they will agree that the changes they've made really helps the pacing and drama of the story. They also tease that Irons sticks around longer than he did in RE2 and becomes increasingly unpleasant, way beyond anything he did in RE2.
-Confirms the game has one story timeline (two separate campaigns but both Leon and Claire's campaign have events that are reflective tn the others campaign), and you see different sides of this story as Leon and Claire. Their stories are made to interconnect the events that happen in the other.
-They changed Sherry Birkin to become more like an actual little girl than a sorta' Japanese image of a little girl like was in the original RE2. They also changed her outfit to examplify she is lonely and kinda' weird, but in a rich and sheltered upbringing.
-The Birkin Form 1 battle in the Claire demo is customized for the short play time, giving the player a lot of weapons and ammo to play around with. In the actual game, you won't be arriving at that encounter as loaded as you see in the videos.
-For the first encounter with William Birkin, they wanted to really emphasize the power that a G-Virus creature has, both as a destructive force on the move and how it corrupts a person. The fight takes place in the basement of the police station.
-In terms of game design, Birkin's Form 1's weakness is obviously the eye, but when choosing weakpoints they tried to work with what was in the original designs rather than making alterations to the classic designs. They also worked to introduce the idea of Birkin's eye being his weakpoint in this first form, but things may get more.... Complicated in Birkin's later forms once this idea is introduced.
-There are Main Weapons and Sub Weapons in REmake 2. Main Weapons are things like the handgun, shotgun, while Sub Weapons are things like the knife and grenades. Sub Weapons often have two uses, one as an option in combat, and one as a defensive item, a concept they brought back from the remake of the original Resident Evil. They say there's more sub-weapons than we've seen.
-Gunpowder from RE3/RE7 is in REmake 2, and with it you can make three kinds of bullets. You can simply use two weaker gunpowder to make handgun bullets, and a weaker gunpowder+stronger gunpowder to make Shotgun shells, and a stronger+stronger for another type of ammunition.
-Herb combinations are back, and REmake 2 has three types of herbs, Green, Red, and Blue. They mention there's enemies in REmake 2 that can poison the player, which blue herbs can fight against. In a new combination for the series, you may combine Red+Blue Herbs. Doing this not only makes you invulnerable to poison for a period of time, it also raises your defensive power by a lot for this period of time until it wears off.
-They have seen some of the divided response to Claire's new design, but they've worked hard on the new Claire and hope impressions will change as people see more of Claire in motion, being voiced, and her arc through the game.
-The part of the remake they probably spent the most time evolving for a modern version of the game were the zombies, they spent a lot of time thinking how to make them work best mechanically, look disturbing, feel somewhat scary to fight, how to make their movements unnerving, they wanted to remind people that zombies could be scary. Also mention they wanted the zombies to feel strong, like, "Why won't this thing die!?" They mention the zombies in REmake 2 can act like they're dead for a while, only to get back up. They can look like they should be dead, but just keep going. They wanted to make players not always feel like they reliably know that the zombie is dead.
-They confirm there's nothing like Crimson Heads in REmake 2.
-They put a lot of time into thinking how to make horror work best with this camera perspective, how audio plays into suspicion and fear, how turning a corner can be intimidating with the perspective, how something taking up your field of view quickly can be scary.
-On the switchable original OST that's DLC for the game (part of the Deluxe Edition). They mention it's the original OST, but it does function different than how it did in the original RE2. In the original RE2 the music would change at room changes or key events, while playing the original OST in this version the music changes depending on the situation. They also say if you have the DLC you can switch the music back and forth in the middle of play. They also hint that with the original OST, the title screen may play the original "Resident Evil 2" announcer voice.
-They want this game to show that behind-the-camera can be used really well for a horror game, and that the RE Engine can provide beautiful but twisted graphics and binaural sound design to unnerve the player. They say they know there's still many people who played the original fixed camera horror games and are impressed, and they haven't ruled out ever going back to the style yet, but they hope that users can experience this game with it's new perspective and come to love what they've done to realize horror from this perspective.
-They paid a lot of attention to small details in the game's look, details on character models like bite marks, wet clothes, burn models, being able to see under zombies skin when shot, etc. They also mention recently they've been working with NVIDIA for Ray Tracing, and seeing where it fits in the game to make it look even better, but that's not fully reflective in this version people have seen yet as they're still experimenting with it right now.
-Confirm PC versions can play in native 4k resolutions, and they're working hard to make the game on all platforms look beautiful and run stably for a solid gameplay experience no matter what platform you go on right now.
-They were absolutely honored that REmake 2 was one of the first third-party Japanese games to win best of E3 awards ever, they want to aim to make more titles and E3 presentations to wow people like REmake 2 has.
-Say to look forward to TGS, there will be a pretty big dump of information then and that Leon and Claire will both be playable at TGS.
---
Lot's of interesting details.
