If you’ve been reading PSLS for some time, you’ll know that Resident Evil 4 is my favorite video game of all-time, but as Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami told IGN, it could have turned out much different:
With Resident Evil 4, I intended to make more of an action game – 5 and 6 were outside of my responsibility, of course – but with Resident Evil 2 and 3, that wasn’t necessarily the intention I started with. They just naturally became more like action games. I suspect that Dead Space followed the same path. It naturally became more about action. When developers think about their players… I don’t think it’s the case that they were thinking, ‘Okay, if we want to go from two million units to four million units, we need to put in more action.’ It’s a more intuitive process than that.
After explaining this, he brought up the Resident Evil remake on GameCube and how it didn’t sell very well. Because of that reaction, “I decided to work more action into Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 4 would have been a more scary, horror-focused game if the remake had sold well.”
When it came to actually making RE4, Shinji would tell the development team “that fun gameplay is the most important thing.” The second thing is nothing, and the third thing “is to be scary.” Then, as we all know, Resident Evil 4 “sold really well” and is available on a multitude of different platforms.
Where does Resident Evil 4 sit on your all-time favorite games list? Let us know in the comments below.
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