RE6 dev: “I don’t think we’re losing the horror, just because we keep action in the game”
Simon Williams September 21, 2012 - 3:24 pmNews: Resident Evil 6 producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi can’t understand why people think survival horror and action are mutually exclusive, and says that balancing the two is all about how you control the player’s feeling of empowerment.
Some – including our very own Lewis Denby in the aftermath of its E3 2012 trailer reveal – believe that the Resident Evil series has strayed far more into action territory than its survival horror roots, but Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, producer on the upcoming Resident Evil 6, believes it’s possible to balance the two.
Noting that RE6′s four different campaign threads are designed to highlight varying horror experiences, Hirabayashi asks: “Why do you think horror games and action games are mutually exclusive?”
After it being noted that it’s difficult to be afraid if you have the weapons to fight back, Hirabayashi admitted: “That’s the very same issue that we, on the dev side, were wrestling with when making this game. And so our answer to that is, okay, you don’t make the player feel completely powerful. And one of the ways you do that is you can give them a powerful weapon, but what if you limit the amount of ammo they have? So now it becomes a choice of when you use this ammo.”
“For us, the campaign in Resident Evil 6 is a very important part of the game — the most important part of the game — and so someone might start to play the game, and they would play a number of stages all in a row,” he said in an interview with Gamasutra focused on Capcom‘s development practises. “But then they have to consider, “Should I conserve my ammo? Should I use it now? Should I save it for later?” That kind of tension that you give to the player — by not letting them know when they can use these weapons — I think maintains the horror elements in the game.”
“So while there’s still action, I don’t think we’re losing the horror, just because we keep action in the game.”
