When it comes to remaking classic titles, Capcom has played it incredibly smart for a long while now. While the recent sequel remakes rightly earned the horror gaming behemoth much praise, the reimagining of Resident Evil began in earnest with the first entry over twenty years ago. 2002 saw Capcom’s first major REmake release on the Nintendo GameCube; a ground-up, visually stunning rework of the original Spencer Mansion nightmare, it would set the stage for Capcom to keep the door open to revisiting its iconic franchise for many years to come.
But all of this begs the question — how do you go about remaking a title as influential, omnipresent, and still readily available as Resident Evil 4? Responsible for the series’ pivot to third-person action gameplay and arguably its trajectory into mainstream success, Resident Evil 4 (2005) barely shows its age in 2023 thanks to HD re-releases on every major platform. Sure, you still plant yourself to the spot while shooting, but thanks to remapped controls even this becomes more of a playful oddity than an aged core issue. The game is effectively a timeless masterpiece, one of the few titles to exist at just the right time of development history to be fortunate enough to have both basked in the glow of the industry golden age and been forward facing enough to hold up to modern scrutiny. There’s very little you can easily point to as the starting point for a remake. And yet, later this month, Capcom will release Resident Evil 4 (2023) and attempt to capture the magic once again. After seeing just under twenty minutes of raw gameplay and chatting with the developers, I might be ready to believe they can pull it off.
Los Illuminados have upped their decoration budget
As part of our preview window, we were shown a lengthy portion of gameplay taken from several different mid-game points. This includes the boat-helmed exploration immediately following the lake incident, the assault on the castle gate and some snippets of the Garrador and Krauser boss fights. Peppered throughout were cutscenes and small glimpses of exactly how much they’ve blown the door off the hinges with this remake, from extravagant horror imagery to exploration and side-quests. While we couldn’t go hands-on with this gameplay, it’s undeniable how much of an impression it made on us, both as fans of the original game and Capcom’s recent modernisations. This is Resident Evil 4 jacked up to eleven, a richly detailed and meaty reimagining of Leon Kennedy’s European nightmare that looks to be honouring its origins and is entirely unafraid to venture into new territory.
The first thing we noticed was how much heft combat seems to carry with it. It’s unsurprising that this would be a focal point for the remake given the original game’s historical shift to a more action-focused loop. But even knowing how satisfying Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 remake’s combat was, this looks a cut above. Even the basic handgun packs a wallop, each bullet colliding with infected villager brains with a wet crunch. Across the demo, we saw Leon use a nice array of weapons, including the shotgun, scoped rifle, TMP, and of course the trusty knife. Each of these weapons looked great, a nice combination of sound design and visceral impact on the world around the player.
Everything in the remake just looks so…meaty.
Better still, the remake has changed the way players will switch between weapons. The D-pad can be used to switch quickly between your chosen arsenal, with double presses of a direction used to quickly cycle between choices. It’s a small change that rapidly speeds up combat from the original and suits the modern approach nicely. Leon is also far more versatile in combat encounters now, dodging and deflecting a variety of blows, including knocking a Molotov out of the air before it can hit him. At one point he stabs a fleshy monstrosity and quips “no food for you”, a profoundly stupid and beautifully in-character moment for the campy action tone of the original game.
While there were several hints that Resident Evil 4 will retain the cheesy humour of the original, Capcom have amped up the horror of the situation in fascinating ways. The remake is far, far darker – from dimly lit caves to light-suffocating castle catacombs, Leon’s flashlight and nerves get quite a workout here. A lot of this creepier tone is thanks to the reimagined Los Illuminados cult, which now appears deeply entrenched in the culture of the region. Leon passes cave wall paintings and intimidating shrines in their honour, instilling the play space with a palpable sense of danger from the iconography littering the landscape. It’s only fitting that the idols to the Plagas would be harsher and more apparent given how grotesquely rendered the monsters themselves are here. The video gave us a close up look at some of the heftier infected states and they feel of a piece with John Carpenter’s The Thing, with dripping tendrils and gnashing teeth.
Case in point
Arguably the most important thing for the remake to have nailed is the game’s strangely iconic inventory management system, the attaché case, and I’m stoked to report that Capcom have thoroughly understood the assignment. The case, which still allows for the signature, Tetris-style item store mini game, can now be fully customised to your heart’s content. In the footage we saw the case change colours and textures, as well as having little keyrings equipped that dangle off the side in what looks like real-time physics. These customisations also look to be granting passive boosts, such as item discoverability.
It’s a sweet love letter to the original game and a smart way of incorporating a new element to the remake, assuming the keychains are rewards for the game’s new side-quests. We catch a brief glimpse of one midway through and Leon is tasked with collecting and selling an egg from “any location” by a pamphlet in the world. The location note is interesting, the implication being that certain quests will require players to return to previous locations, a theory further supported by what looks like a series of interconnected underground rivers on which Leon can now take his little boat.
Combat is fast and brutal by the looks of things
In preparation for the remake I’ve spent the last few weeks deep in the PS4 port of the original game and seeing those iconic locations rendered so beautifully in the remake has me beyond ready to get some hands-on time with it. While some sections looked very familiar, others have been expanded and warped, a fun memory trick the game will undoubtedly revel in when it releases later this month. Only time will tell if it feels as good as it looks but we’ve come away from this preview footage feeling palpably ready to link up with Leon and face the nightmare anew. God, I cannot wait for remake Regeneradors.
Resident Evil 4 releases on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series S and X, and PC on March 24th
Previewed via pre-recorded gameplay // Footage supplied by publisher.
