-Director of Resident Evil 2-
"This time, I intentionally made the King of Sequels"
2
--: Interviewer -Ayumi Saito-
"Personal fear experience"
--: This time, I felt the development team tried to step the users surprise up, it is like a "positive fear". The original Resident Evil's charm was dark, cold and creepy feelings. I think Resident Evil 2 is a really entertaining game.
K: Yes, I think you're right.
--: Still, Resident Evil 2's expression is so realistic and scary, I'd like to know what is the fear for you?
K: Well..... hard question......
--: For example, what was the scariest experience in your life?
K: I am scared of almost everything, cause I'm just a chicken..... Oh, a few days ago, my apartment got broke in to.
--: Oh, No! When you where out?
K: Yes, When I came back from work, I tried to unlock the front door, and it was already open. I thought "Why?" and opened the door. When I opened the door, I felt cold air blow on me. First, I thought I forgot to turn the air-conditioner off before I left, and inside of the apartment is dark but I could see room is really messy, even I cleaned up the place the day before. I panicked for just a second and I thought I'm visiting a messy friend's room.
When I turned the light on, it was not only messy, everything was tossed on the floor........ when I saw it, it made me a chill down my back.
--: That is scary, the situation you said when you opened the door, cold air blew on you.......
K: Then I called the police.. well, somebody broke in to my apartment didn't take anything important, that was a kinda good part. Anyway, from that day, I kind of feel scared to go in to my own place, When I get home, I don't want to open the door. I feel like somebody is in the room and may attack me..... so, now I open the door slowly and peek inside to make sure nobody is inside.
--: In Resident Evil 2, it was scary to open the door too.There is only one door, when you open it, suddenly zombies attacking character. After I opened the door, it scared me every time I open other doors.
K: I wanted to do that trick from the very beginning.
--: In the development stage, do you let somebody play and see how people are going to react?.
K: Yes, sometimes it is fun to see people's reaction.
When I let Mega-man's director play Resident Evil 2, he was surprised by the scene and throw the controller away *laugh*. Also,I heard a story that somebody pull the controller cable out of the game machine.
By the way, I hate bugs.
--: There are a lot of bugs at Resident Evil 2, roaches, spiders and caterpillar....
K: I really, REALLY hate caterpillar, so I put them on the game. Long time ago, when I was kid, I stapled caterpillar's picture page in the school science textbook together, so I don't accidentally open the page and see the picture. I unbearably hate caterpillar.
And in the original Resident Evil, When you kill Chimera, maggots splashed out from Chimera's dead body. That was my idea. It is like "GASH I hate those!! So, I have to put it on the game!!"
--: I see... *laugh*
K: I'm not scared of roaches but one of the staff really hates roaches, I can totally understand his feelings when I think my caterpillar is his roaches. So, I told him to make Large roaches. I knew, it is going to be really creepy if the person who hates roaches makes it. He was making Large roaches graphic and complaining about he can't stand it when they fly toward the screen. *laugh*
--: How about spiders?
K: I hate to see spiders inside of my house. Once, I found spider inside, so I took some Kleenex and squashed them by my hands, I still remember those feelings... it was like squashing grapes......
--: Noooooooooooooo
K: After that, I try not to kill them, I just gently put them outside.
--: But sounds like your team had fun to create enemy, people said like "OH! I hate this!!!!"
K: Yes, our team was soooo loud and noisy. Other teams always complaint about us. *laugh*
"GamePlay"
--: Mr.Kamiya, You were on the first Resident Evil's development team.
K: Yes, when I started working for Capcom, I joined Resident Evil development team.
--: I heard that when Resident Evil development started, the other team didn't see much of the progress in the Resident Evil team work and didn't know what was going on, so people called Resident Evil team as "the polygon team".
K: Yes, It took a long time to figure everything out.
--: How long did it take to develop a concrete idea for Resident Evil?
K: Well... it was about 2 years. In those days, Playstation was not released yet and the main console was Super Nintendo. The first idea was to develop something for Playstation by using the latest technology, that was the concept of the study. Actually, they started development before I even started working at Capcom.
Then, I was one of 3 planners, and Mr. Mikami gave us a game "Sweet Home" to play. Sweet Home was a game that Resident Evil's main concept came from. We still have some ideas that came from Sweet Home, like characters can carry a limited amount of items or all the characters have a different speciality.
In the beginning, Resident Evil was a full polygon, first person view game, but in that day it is impossible to create the quality that Mr. Mikami required, so it changes to what we play now.
--: Pre-rendered 3rd person view.
K: Yes, but still our main concept is the fear, so we try to use the good part of pre-rendered background.
--: It is using the blind spot from the users?
K: Yes, and also we can make the users to feel like they're being watched from something.
If, we put the camera far away from the character, the users feel uncomfortable, because it shows the character is alone. We used a lot of this kind of expression that takes playing character away from the users.
--: When I see the rough sketch of the cut scene, you really care about composition and camera place.
K: Yes, there are 3 big points I really care about.
--: What are they?
K: First is "beautiful composition". Background picture of the game made by computer graphic modeling, and it is not only one texture. For example, if you just put one big texture in the wall, it doesn't look like real wall, so we put 10 to 20 small texture on the one wall. It depends on cut scene composition to make those works live or die.
--: I see, if the composition is bad, all that craftsmanship will be worthless.
K: And second is "For the users to easily understand the playable area." because we have to show the users the structure of the playable area and the place of the character.
Last and most important thing is "Game Play" <All places are easy to fight with zombie?> <We put effective blind spot to excess the fear?> <Easy to move the character?> <We direct the fight with the enemy good?> This is not everything but I really care about this game can be played good as a "GAME".
--: So, it is not only a beautiful graphics game.
K: It is the last thing I would make. I always try hard to meet all 3 points.
--: I think always the camera is in the character's eye level when character fight with boss.
K: Yes, I thought I can express the boss enemy's big and coerce feeling, I like to put the camera down and look up.
--: Make me remember Tyrant.
K: I love Tyrant. This time, the story was made by the writer, and first, we didn't plan to put that much scene with Tyrant, but when I was talking to the writer, I was persistent to put Tyrant more on the game. *laugh*
--: I felt your love for Tyrant when I see the first Tyrant cut scene.
K: Yeah, I put the camera way down to show him big and I wanted to make his atmosphere solemon, so I used that music. The music was kind of unmatched to the other music, so if the other development team member said "What is this music!?" I was planning to change it.
--: But nobody said anything like that... *laugh*
K: Yeah, my plan went perfect. *laugh*
I wanted to use that "look up" camera more, but if I think about game play, I couldn't.
Personally, I want to use "look up"camera for boss but if I do, it is not a game anymore because the users will hard time to fight, this is the difference between movie and the game.
--: But still you can put a lot of craftsmanship for composition like a movie because Resident Evil is a 3rd person view game.
K: Yes, when we where working on the original Resident Evil, a lot of the staff complaint about changes from 1st person view to 3rd person view. I was one f them, but when I saw the 3rd person view picture, I changed my mind.
--: It was good, that the characters motion changed by characters health condition.
K: Yes, we wanted to do this from the original Resident Evil. It fits better to survival situation if character is not in perfect condition all the time.
--: And when character are equipped with the shotgun, they use it to hold themselves.
K: So, the users can feel the situation "I'm fighting with this hard situation!!" *laugh*
--: HaHa*laugh*
K: But if you too much enjoy this hard situation, you will die by one bite from zombie. So, you have to recover by herbs, and as soon as you use it, character back to normal. I feel like "WHY!!"
--: I thought it is a good idea because the users don't have to open the status to see how the characters condition is. It is the thing the direction and game play connect together.
K: From when we were working on original Resident Evil, Mr. Mikami always said he doesn't wants to put health gauges on the main screen like fighting game. It is a lot scary if you can't see how much exact damage you got.
Published Date: Sep 1st 1998
Published by: Micro Design
Original Japanese text all rights reserved by Capcom and related publishers.
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