sisslethecat
In amongst all of the excitement over Resident Evil Village‘s new footage and announcements during the Resident Evil Showcase last week, it’s hard for me to focus on pretty much anything else besides the shocking reveal that Resident Evil 4 VR was announced. Exclusive to Oculus Quest 2, Resident Evil 4 VR seeks to deliver an accurate recreation of the 2005 classic with completely redesigned and rebuilt controls suited for a fully immersive VR experience. Today, we got a first look at new footage and details via a new Oculus Showcase stream, which showed off multiple upcoming titles on the platform. What they revealed is exciting as hell:
First of all, the entirety of the original game has been rebuilt in Unreal Engine 4, using over 4,500 remastered textures (both repainted or uprezzed). that blow the ones Capcom used in the 2011 ‘Ultimate HD Edition‘ (which has been used as the base for all ports since), combining their efforts into what constitutes both a remaster and a remake from certain points of view.
- Items and weapons have been re-engineered in order to become physical objects in the world you can interact with (picking up ammo requires you to actually pick up the ammo box with your hand, for instance).
- Swapping weapons has you grabbing them off of your body (although you still need to equip weapons to limited ‘holsters’ from the attache case screen).
- Weapons require manual reloading, such as individual shells loaded into the shotgun by the player, and pumping the handgrip to chamber each shell as you fire.
- Free movement with the analog sticks is available, as well as room scaling, teleporting and snap-turning. The aim was to retain Leon’s movement and collision with the world, regardless of which style you choose. The game can also be played while seated.
- The game has been in development for years, with the project’s aim being to an experience that is both ‘fresh and nostalgic’.
- The world geometry has been adjusted for stereoscopic 3D, and enemy behaviors and attacks have been rebalanced for the new perspective and gameplay.
- Gore appears to have been redone to take advantage of the new 3D space, headshots during gameplay appeared to have new blood spray and giblet effects.
- The game has been readjusted to run at a higher framerate, and many bugs present in the ‘Ultimate HD Edition‘ remaster have been fixed.
- Character animations have been faithfully converted, remaining untouched from the original game. All cutscenes will be presented in their original format as well.
- 3D spatial audio has been implemented, allowing for a fully 3D sound experience to telegraph enemies around the player.
So that’s all exciting as hell. For now, the game still doesn’t have a release date, but it slated to drop later this year. We’ll be keeping a close eye on it, as I’m simply vibrating with excitement (if you don’t know, Resident Evil 4 is my favorite game). In the meantime, Resident Evil Village releases May 7th, and there’s a slew of new Resident Evil content coming throughout the year!
