Resident Evil Village enemies were originally a lot more numerous and aggressive

A Resident Evil Village video reveals the internal struggles and issues that Capcom had while developing the game.

Resident Evil Village launched earlier this month and it’s been an absolute hit for Capcom, but things weren’t always looking so rosy for the survival horror title. A new behind-the-scenes video released on the Resident Evil YouTube channel has revealed that the development team went through significant struggles with the game’s identity in the closing stages of development, and had to make huge changes to the combat to make things work.

In earlier builds of Resident Evil Village, combat was much more oppressive and ever-present, with vast hordes of monsters attacking constantly. The werewolves and other beasties that you face off against in the village were much more aggressive in their attack patterns, rushing the player down immediately. Ammunition was also extremely scarce.

“This made combat feel uninteresting” Explained Quality Assurance Manager Shutaro Kobayashi. “The game’s content was completely divorced from what the development team thought they had made”. Footage in the video shows an older build of the game, with Ethan fending off around ten villagers who are all rushing towards him in one of the game’s early scenes.

This feedback caused a lot of panic within the development team, as the title was close to shipping and they were understandably proud of the game that they’d put so much effort into. According to Kobayashi, they brought the most outspoken members of the QA team in to meet with the developers to show what needed to be changed.

The team went back to its core theme of the “struggle to survive”, and ended up dialing back the constant barrage of enemies that the player faced to create more tension. Or “give them space” as Game Director Morimasa Sato puts it. “Rather than make the players panic by just throwing aggressive enemies at them, we make them paranoid about if and how they’re going to be attacked”.

After that realization, everything just fell into place for the team and they were able to make the changes needed to get to the Resident Evil Village that we all got to play a few weeks ago. It’s amazing to think how different Resident Evil Village was even just a few months before launch.

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Resident Evil Village tips | Resident Evil Village guns | Resident Evil Village labyrinths | Resident Evil Village masks | Resident Evil Village wells | Resident Evil Village lockpicks | Resident Evil Village Goats | Resident Evil Village crystal fragments, treasure and money | Resident Evil Village animal locations | How long is Resident Evil Village? | How big is the Resident Evil Village map? | Resident Evil Village mods