Thanks to Capcom’s propreitary RE Engine, 1998’s Resident Evil 2 doesn’t just look like a modern game, it’s visually one of the most impressive looking horror games ever.
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And sure while the character models look great and the environments are brought to life with excellent texturing and lighting, the visual fidelity of the new engine is undoubtedly most noticeable with the game’s gore, which there is a lot of.
Speaking to Complex, Resident Evil 2 Director Kazunori Kadoi talked at length about how the RE engine helped transformed the game, and how and why the team went with the super wet and gory look it did.
“The beauty of having an in-house engine is having that extra level of flexibility,” said Kadoi when asked what advantages the new engine gave to the team. “One of the main purposes of the RE Engine was to streamline production to increase efficiency and speed, which would also make certain tasks more cost-efficient.
“We can evaluate a team’s strengths and weaknesses, [then] update the RE Engine in ways that benefit the team most. In this regard, it’s been a fantastic tool to have in the development of Resident Evil 2.”
Kadoi was then asked why the emphasis on “wet” gore in the game, which is surely to put off some players from playing it. Well, according to the director, it was all about conveying an additional layer of fear.
“If I had to summarize it into one statement, we wanted to emulate that inherent level of fear that people have towards sickness and disease,” said Kadoi. “They have a natural intuition to know that moist or wet areas tend to carry more pathogens than a dry area.”
The director goes on to reveal that the facial features of the humans and zombies characters are textured at 2048×2048 pixels, which is an incredible level of detail, and something Kadoi and the team are proud of. And it’s also this level of detail that makes the gore, the half falling off face of a zombie, look so realistic, and ultimately, a bit disgusting.
But for the Resident Evil 2 team, it wasn’t just about making gory visuals that look pretty, but creating a system where the gore is realistic to the gameplay situation.
“One of our objectives was making sure the physical damage and reactions were as realistic as possible,” said Kadoi. “You can really see this by utilizing different weapons on different enemies. If you use the shotgun or hand grenades on the zombies, their flesh will get torn apart and impacted in a much more [severe] manner.”
Lastly, the director was asked whether he thinks all of this serves a necessary function in a horror title, which he responded to with the following:
“Gore is a visual tool that gives that extra level of realism and visceral tension. When the characters and enemies are inflicted with physical damage and it’s depicted in a very real and detailed manner, it makes the situation and threat that much more real. This in turn allows the player to get more easily attached or involved in the narrative and environment.
“The more immersed and attached the player is, the more scary and impactful it’ll be—whether running into an adversary, or simply walking through an empty, dark corridor. And that, of course, is one of the main goals we always want to achieve in a survival horror game.”
Resident Evil 2 is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, priced at $59.99 USD. If you’ve played it yet, you’ll know that the game’s devotion to gore and general visual fidelity — as Kadoi suggested it would — pays off.
For more on the survival-horror remake, be sure to peep all of our previous coverage of the game by clicking here.
