CAPCOM
Resident Evil 2 Remake: Claire Redfield and RE engine shines in latest Gamescom preview
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In the Capcom business booth I was treated to a brand new demo for Resident Evil 2 featuring Claire Redfield, protagonist and sister of Chris, the star of the first Resident Evil.
In her hunt for her brother, she comes across the Birkin family, which is where my gameplay started. After being warned by young Sherry in very pantomime style that “Hes behind you”, her father William Birkin appears, infected by the body warping G-Virus.
This was the only enemy in the demo and the crux of the gameplay, outside of some exploring in a tense environment.
Whilst I was too young to play the original game, after checking some footage, its safe to say that the remake does a fantastic job of faithfully recreating the environments and characters from 1998.
The RE engine really shines through, and some of the textures and lighting effects I was treated to were astounding. The way the characters move and the level of detail in the environment was consistently impressive, and the cutscenes gave you a chance to appreciate the models.
Its photorealistic but still stylized and the art team deserve roaring applause for producing such a gorgeous game that somehow runs on a PS4.
The gated arena in which I fought the boss was cleverly designed to trap you on its many corners and leave you panicking. William Birkin ambles around the arena wailing in pain and clattering his pipe-arm on the walls.
Sound design here is impeccable, and I was fidgeting in my seat and trying not to look away when the camera got up close and personable with the gruesome viscera. Birkins jelly-like appendages and huge aberrating yellow eye unpicked my brain with ease and scared the life out of me.
The combat was equally frantic and certainly not a breeze. Armed with an SMG, a Pistol and a Grenade Launcher, ammo quickly ran out and I was left to be crushed by the enemy. It was only until I realized I could craft Acid rounds in my inventory that I figured out how to topple the beast.
Sprinting around the arena looking for ammo became the only way to stay alive, and after a couple of tries and some quality hits on his weak spot, I managed to slay the beast with a grenade launcher round that lit up the arena and Birkins immense character model.
I can still hear the screams as Birkin was toppled, and after a short sequence leading Sherry to a parking garage, time was up. Yet, despite the nightmare fuel, I wanted to do it all over again.
Luckily, well be able to play the whole game as both Claire and Leon when it drops on January 25th 2019. Gamescom Preview by Jordan Oloman
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Resident Evil 2 Remake – Claire Redfield
Claire Redfield returns to Resident Evil 2! Gamescom 2018's show for Capcom involved new screens for the famous red-jacketed protagonist, as well as a slew of new screens showing her in action.
"Claire Redfield has been on a mission to find her missing brother Chris – a mission that brings her to Raccoon City," reads a post from Capcom Unity.
"Fans of the original Resident Evil 2 will be intimately familiar with the iconic scene of Claire riding into town on her motorcycle, shortly before meeting up with rookie police officer Leon S. Kennedy and working together to escape the zombie hordes plaguing the city.
"Surviving the streets of the once-lively city, Claire manages to make her way to the Raccoon City police station, hoping to find information on the whereabouts of her brother, Chris… but she finds something much more sinister instead. In this preview, Claire explores a new portion of the R.P.D. before encountering a small, young abandoned child hiding in the sewers and waterways beneath the iconic station.
Just like with Leon, Claire will have her own, full campaign that takes her through Raccoon City, the police department, and beyond.
Familiar faces from the original game have received stunning upgrades in this remake, using the RE Engine to scan real people, right down to their clothing, to bring the heroes, villains, and world of Resident Evil 2 to life.
The new Resident Evil 2 wraps everything up in an experience that both veteran fans and Resident Evil newcomers can enjoy.
Resident Evil 2 Remake screenshots
MORE TO FOLLOW 
Intro – The Resident Evil 2 Remake was first announced by Capcom back in 2015, after years of fans repeatedly begging Capcom to remake, arguably, one of the best games ever made.
In August 2015, the company released a video to the official Resident Evil YouTube page, revealing that Yoshiaki Hirabayashi – a long time Capcom dev with credits spanning several Resi games – would be the lead on the game.
Then, in a surprise to pretty much everyone, the first cinematic for the game was revealed during Sony PlayStation's E3 2018 Press Conference.
For the purpose of this Resident Evil 2 Remake guide, we'll cover everything you need to know about the upcoming Capcom game ahead of release.
This shall include all the E3 2018 gameplay footage you could want, details about the various PC Specs required to run the game as well as our own Preview from our time playing the game at E3 2018.
Between now and the release next year, we'll continually update this page with all the latest news and information you need as it's revealed.
For now, though, enjoy these excellent looking screenshots for the Resident Evil 2 Remake.
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Resident Evil 2: At a glance
Developer: Capcom
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC. Also enhanced on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.
Genre: Survival horror
In brief: Using Capcoms proprietary RE Engine, Resident Evil 2 offers a fresh take on the classic survival horror game with breathtakingly realistic visuals, heart-poundingly immersive audio, a new over-the-shoulder camera, and modernized controls on top of gameplay modes from the original game.
Resident Evil 2 Story
In Resident Evil 2, the classic action, tense exploration, and puzzle solving gameplay that defined the Resident Evil series returns.
Players join rookie police officer Leon Kennedy and college student Claire Redfield two months after the events of the original Resident Evil game. The pair are thrust together by a disastrous outbreak in Raccoon City that transformed its population into deadly zombies.
Both Leon and Claire have their own separate playable campaigns, allowing players to see the story from both characters perspectives. The fate of these two fan-favorite characters is in players hands as they work together.
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Resident Evil 2 Remake Preview
The emergency lights are out, an overflowing toilet is spilling water onto the floor. You can hear each damp footstep as you move through the abandoned police station. Bloody handprints decorate the walls, and you cant see four feet in front of your face, flashlight or not.
Resident Evil 2 is an oppressive game – a remake that hasnt lost the spirit of its survival horror parent. Making the move to the RE Engine that Capcom built Resident Evil 7 in has done wonders for the game: it lives up to the memories you have of Raccoon City from 20 years ago, but it reanimates them with more horror (and more gore) than you thought you needed.
Tentatively, you wander through the police station trying to find your cop colleagues. The tension is palpable even before the zombies make an appearance. Congealing blood guides you to the back room where your goal – a keycard to the next area – lies in the hands of a dying cop.
A cutscene shows the cop get ripped apart by the undead, and a re-rendered Leon announces his disbelief to no-one in particular before turning to face more zombies that threaten to corner him.
Heres where Resident Evil 2 shines: youre still running on limited ammo, but instead of just potshotting zombies to keep them at bay, the game gives you more options. Each enemy has a full deformation model running underneath it, meaning that every bullet you do cuts visceral damage into the shambling monster.
Two headshots take down most zombies, but if youve got a bruiser or something terrible coming towards you, you can choose to kneecap it instead – now it cant walk, it cant pursue you, and you can finish it off with your combat knife.
This little upgrade to the base game – along with the Resident Evil 4 controls – changes the paradigm of Resi 2 for good. It makes it a more tactical game – a game not about killing everything you come across, but about intelligently out-manoeuvring enemies, conserving ammo, thinking ahead.
Paired up the remarkable production values (honestly, this game owes so much to Resi 7 its unreal), the Resident Evil 2 remake surpassed all our expectations.
Injected with a level of gore that would likely make even George Romero blush, and rounded out with imposing, claustrophobic sound design thatll fray the nerves of even the most hardened Resi veteran, Resident Evil 2 is so much more than just a remake… its a revalidation of a classic, a believable take on a cult hit.
And it has every chance of being Capcoms next masterpiece.
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Resident Evil 2 Remake – Tank Controls Update
In an interview with GameIndustry.Biz, Capcom announced why it was making a few changes to its classic game, mentioning specifically the tank controls and changes to how the game handles.
"The world has moved on and these players have changed," Capcom Europe COO Stuart Turner noted when asked about why the company is changing classic elements of the game (such as removing tank controls).
"And if we did [introduce old-school mechanics], these fans might play it and actually decide its not what they wanted after all. But we played around with a few things in development. We did try first-person, we did try fixed camera. But the way the game has been designed, we decided that a third-person view works better.
"So the response to that, the pre-orders weve seen already… we have been a little taken aback by how well it has gone down.”
We'll have more updates on this – based on one of our own interviews – soon.
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We recently had the opportunity to talk to the developers of Resident Evil 2 Remake at E3, and quiz the team on the development process of the title.
Here's what Capcom producers Tsuyoshi Kanda and Yoshiaki Hirabayashi had to say when we asked them what they thought the hardest part of modernising Resident Evil 2 has been, coming from PSOne to modern platforms.
***
KANDA: [laughter] 20 years ago, the graphics that we had werent photoreal and that meant you could get away with… a lot of things. Things that maybe you couldnt today. You could be fantastical with the creatures and it wouldnt stand out too much.
So making a giant alligator – thats a real challenge [laughter]. Trying to update that into a game where youve got scanned faces, motion-captured actors, photorealistic environments… its really, really hard. Where do you even start!
HIRABAYASHI: To make that convincing in any way was really tough. For a while, we were just thinking, shall we just cut the alligator altogether? Its too difficult. But we knew thered be a fan backlash, we knew we had to create one of these perfect fan-favourite moments, so… its a tough one, but its there.
It was tricky to do without changing the games tone a lot. Were competing with peoples memories with this game, too, and thats really hard. Trying to make a convincing scene where a human-sized character – a guy with a knife – is taking on an alligator… thats really silly. People dont remember it as silly because the whole game was groundbreaking at the time, but that moment was ridiculous. It was a difficult process for us, making that work today.
KANDA: It might be easier for us to answer that question when the game comes out though – we have our own thoughts and what we liked and what we didnt, and people might feel differently to us on that level.
HIRABAYASHI: Perhaps they have the perfect version of the game in their heads and what we do undermines that? Were just trying to make a game that feels right and feels like what you might remember from a gameplay perspective the first time.
Stay tuned for more Resident Evil 2 Remake Interview segments… soon.
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During our interview with Capcom producers Tsuyoshi Kanda and Yoshiaki Hirabayashi at E3, we asked whether or not the game was likely to get a VR mode or add-on, since Resident Evil 7 made such a good job of implementing VR.
"Were not thinking about VR support currently, given that the camera perspective and the over-the-shoulder choice would mean that VR is not the best way to present the game," explained Tsuyoshi Kanda. "VR doesnt match the vision for us."
We mentioned that it would have been an interesting addition to the game, especially since the trailer that revealed the game featured a rat's eye view of events when it was first shown at E3.
"…thinking about it, maybe giving you the rats eye view in the trailer might have given people the wrong idea!" laughed Yoshiaki Hirabayashi. "But if you think there is Rat VR coming… thats not the case."
So don't expect a VR mode or version of Resident Evil 2 Remake.
You can see our previous interview (re: the giant alligator being the hardest thing to remake) further down this page.
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Resident Evil 2 Remake – Remaking Ada Wong
In the latest issue of Japanse magazine Famitsu, development staff on the Resident Evil 2 Remake noted that one of the most challenging aspects of remaking the game from the ground up was how they tackled Ada Wong.
"As for Ada Wong, they have confirmed she will be a big part of the game, but outside of that, Capcom is remaining mum," notes Comicbook.com. "Even when discussing the different character redesigns, they were careful to simply acknowledge her existence and move on."
Dualshockers adds: "Ada Wong will of course also appear in the game, but the developers were coy about her. While they cant share anything about Adas appearance in the game, they worked very hard on her design and it was very challenging. They were extremely particular about her, and finding her design was even more difficult than Claires. She will be revealed at a later time."
We look forward to hearing more soon.
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Resident Evil 2 Remake Release Date
The Resident Evil 2 returns next year on January 25th, 2019.
Capcom is releasing the game on PS4, Xbox One and PC. Amazon have previously posted a Resident Evil 2 Deluxe Edition, which includes Arklay Sheriff Leon Costume, Military Claire Costume, Noir Claire Costume, Samurai Edge-Albert Model Deluxe Weapon, Noir Leon Costume, and Original Ver. Soundtrack.
In addition, there's no word on whether Capcom will release a demo for the game. However, given that every mainline Resi title has in the past, this seems like a sure-fire thing.
There's equally no information on a Nintendo Switch release, but as with Resident Evil 7 it's possible the game could come to Nintendo's handheld console in the future.
Capcom announced that Resident Evil 7 was coming to Nintendo Switch earlier this year as a special version of the game that runs in the cloud.
Whilst this game is only available in Japan for the time being, it's possible it could receive a wider release, paving the way for a Switch release for the Resident Evil 2 remake.
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Resident Evil 2 – Remake Vs. Remaster
The developers of Resident Evil 2 aren't calling the game a remake.
Despite treading over the same ground that the original game covered, the new title isn't a 1:1 remake of the PSOne game.
Instead, Capcom prefers to see the title as a 'HD reimagining'.
In an interview with Mike Lunn – Brand Manager for Capcom – GamingBolt asked about the mentality behind the new game, and why Capcom is opting to use the terms it's chosen.
“It wont be faithful one to one,” Lunn noted of the new game.
“For someone thats played the game, some people played it once and some people played it a thousand times because its their favourite game. For the people that have even played it a thousand times, we wanted it to feel fresh. Thats why we dont call it Resident Evil 2 Remake. Its a new game built on top of the foundation.”
Lunn then goes on to give a specific quote about how this affects the gameplay moments.
“So for example, there is a part where youre walking through the police station, and a lurker walks by the window. In the original game that happens every single time. We dont include that because of the jumpscares, the puzzles, and because we want you to be challenged by that stuff. We want you to be scared by that stuff, not just repositioned to a new part of the building, but sort of reimagined.
"Because we dont want you to know exactly how the puzzles are solved, we dont want you to know exactly where the enemies are going to be. We want to surprise you. So, we have changed things a bit. But on the whole, the main idea, the main arcs of the story are very similar. But there are going to be some new surprises in there as well.”
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Resident Evil 2 Remake Minimum PC Specs
- OS: WINDOWS 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-BIT Required)
- Processor: Intel Core i5-4460, 2.70GHz or AMD FX-6300 or better
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or AMD Radeon R7 260x with 2GB Video RAM
- DirectX: Version 11
Resident Evil 2 Remake Recommended PC Specs
- OS: WINDOWS 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-BIT Required)
- Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-9590 or better
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480 with 3GB VRAM
- DirectX: Version 11
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February 11, 2018
This week, rumours have been circulating that Resident Evil 2's original director, Hideki Kamiya, has been visiting the Capcom offices.
Kamiya left Capcom in 2006, but this week he posted an image on his Instagram page of his visit to the publisher, prompting rumours that he'll be consulting on the Resident Evil 2 Remake.
The image on Kamiya's Instagram shows him standing outside the Capcom offices in Osaka, Japan. On Twitter, the infamously outspoken creator captioned the image: “Hideki Kamiya approaching Capcom…”
Kamiya has previously expressed interest in collaborating with Capcom on a project (it's been 10 years since his last work for the company) and has reportedly spoken with Capcom producer Jun Takeuchi about the possibility.
Whilst Kamiya working on Resident Evil 2 isn't off the cards, the developer has also worked on a series of other Capcom properties: Devil May Cry and Okami being the most notable.
Could we see the esteemed director coming back to lend his creative talents to these franchises? We'll have to wait and see…
Resident Evil: Nine cancelled Resi games you never knew existed
To celebrate twenty years since Resident Evil first burst onto our consoles, let's discover nine cancelled Resi games that never saw the light of day. 
Capcom Resident Evil 9 Cancelled games Capcom
28th January 2018
After Resident Evil 2 celebrated its 20th anniversary, the game's original director Hideki Kamiya took to Twitter to disclose some interesting information about the game – and its remake.
In his tweets, Kamiya outlines his confidence in the team that has taken on the remake project and reveals he's even been out drinking with the new director (who has yet to be disclosed).
"I went drinking with him [the new director] last year and told him 'Do as you like'," tweeted Kamiya. "That's the way directors should do. I trust him and his team."
Kamiya has previously stated that the director is a 'friend' of his and that the team making the game don't need to seek advice from Kamiya or any of the original Resident Evil 2 team.
We could hear more updates about the game at E3 2018, or maybe even before – we'll keep you posted.
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