The History of Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 reached the GameCube in North America on January 11, 2005 and in Japan on January 27. Six years after Raccoon City, Leon S. Kennedy is sent alone to a village in rural Spain to recover the president's daughter from the cult Los Iluminados. There are no zombies, no fixed cameras, and no mansion. Almost nothing the series was known for survived except Leon, Ada Wong, and the dread.
THE MAKING
Four discarded Resident Evil 4sDevelopment began in 1999 for the PlayStation 2, and the record counts four proposed versions discarded before the finished game. The first, directed by Hideki Kamiya, was a stylish action game about a superhuman man named Tony, his powers explained by biotechnology; the team spent eleven days in Britain and Spain photographing gothic statues, bricks, and stone pavements for textures. Mikami judged it too great a departure from survival horror, and it became a new series instead: Devil May Cry, released in 2001.
The second, the fog version directed by Hiroshi Shibata, was 40 percent finished when the game was announced in November 2002 among the Capcom Five: Leon infiltrating Umbrella's castle headquarters in Europe, infected with the Progenitor virus, a hidden power growing in his left hand. The third, the Hook Man version shown at E3 2003, was a haunted house of hallucinations in blue tint: animated armour, living dolls, and a ghostly man with a hook. Its writer, Yasuhisa Kawamura, built it from a scene in the film Lost Souls, and later said he was ashamed that Mikami had to step in. Yet Hook Man already had the final game's grammar: the over the shoulder camera in combat, the laser sight, the quick time events.
Mikami then took over direction himself. The finished game kept Spain, Leon, and the new camera, and discarded the ghosts: the enemy became villagers infected by a parasite, Las Plagas, who dodge, communicate, and work together.
THE DESIGN
The shoulder, the laser, the caseThe camera sits behind Leon and tightens over his shoulder when he aims; there is no crosshair, only a laser sight, and shots have anatomy: feet stumble enemies, arms drop weapons, thrown axes can be shot from the air. Context actions and quick time events carry the cinematics into the controls. The inventory is an attache case of grid squares, and a Merchant buys treasure and tunes weapons, turning the series' scarcity economy into a shop.
The score is by Misao Senbongi and Shusaku Uchiyama. The PlayStation 2 version, arriving months after the GameCube original despite the exclusivity announcement, added Separate Ways, a side campaign for Ada that later versions kept.
THE RECEPTION
Scores, sales, and the dissentWhy this one game, and not the mansion games, is the hinge of the series has its own page in this Library.