-Director of Resident Evil 2-
"This time, I intentionally made the King of Sequels"
1
--: Interviewer -Ayumi Saito-
"I don't like horror stuff"
--: What was the theme of Resident Evil 2?
K: I tried to keep "The FEAR" feeling. The point of Resident Evil is the fear, and people love this game because it was novel to expressed the fear in the game. I tried not to lose the fear from Resident Evil 2.
--: But I think Resident Evil 2 is different from the original Resident Evil that Mr. Mikami directed. This time, I felt more of Mr. Kamiya's color in it.
K: Yes, the original Resident Evil is more orthodox horror, in Resident Evil 2, I put the atmosphere of action movie. It appeals to more people and showy. Also, I always like the entertaining Hollywood movie style, so it is simply what I wanted.
--: I heard you don't like horror moves.
K: No, I don't.. *laugh* When I was in the original Resident Evil development team, Mr. Mikami wrote 30 to 40 movie titles on the paper and gave it to me, he said "Go check those movies." He is a horror maniac since he was young, I don't like horror stuff, I always like action kind of movie.
But I had to check those movies, so I watched "Down of the dead" at home, it made me really depressed.
--: It is a zombie movie right?
K: Yes, it was different from what I usually watch, not like "Hollywood happy ending movie" and made me feel bad. I think it was a good experience because it shocked me.
And other brutal movies.... I hate it, I can't understand the blood and meat...
--: But Resident Evil 2 is brutal too. Zombie's hands fall off and a lot of other brutal expressions.
K: Well, I tried to be businesslike. Honestly, I wanted to make "positive feeling game" but I don't know why, I'm making Resident Evil..*laugh*
--: I think on the other hand, you don't like horror stuff, so you can create the fear. because you know what is scary or feeling bad for you.
K: Yes, I think so. Actually, in the development team, we don't have so many horror lovers. But it was fun to think about how to scare the users, it made me smile when I came up with good idea.
--: It sounds fun.
K: I took a lot of ideas from other development team members. Everybody did a quick job on their own ideas, usually, it takes a lot of time and work to create the fear direction. We have to check the picture, sounds and timing over and over. But they did a quick job in their own ideas in those points too.
"Detailed craftsmanship"
--: Talk about "The fear direction", It made me scream when those hands came from the broken window and grab the character at R.P.D.
K: I know, it still makes me scared sometime too. *laugh* When I was cleaning the bugs, I knew it would happen but it still made me scared, I think hands are scary. I heard the scary story before, that was "The cameraman taking the picture of the female model in front of the lake, there is a cliff and the cameraman accidentally took pictures of somebody falling from the cliff. On those pictures, it shows hundreds of hands trying to drag the falling person in to the water."
--: Oh, no..... it is a true story?
K: I don't know. Maybe some kind of urban legend, but I thought the person made this story knows the point of fear.
Anyway, those hands idea is simple but I put a lot of craftsmanship in it. Usually, zombies hand modeling is simple, just thumb and other fingers together, only two parts. But when I use those simple hands, it wasn't scary enough, so we had to make detailed hands for only this scene.
--: You did a good job with those hands. Zombies are a lot more detailed than original Resident Evil, realistic and not all of them just stick their hands up and walk.
K: I thought it feels more scary to put hands up in front of character.
--: And motion of other characters is better than original Resident Evil.
K: Yes. In the cut scene, we used motion captured by actors.
--: Why only Ada doesn't have a movie cut scene?
K: HAHAHA *laugh*
--: I really disappointed the kiss scene is not on the movie cut scene, I think all of the world's Ada fan is mad.
K: Well, to be honest, we didn't have enough time to make Ada's movie model. But in the development team, we were excited to make "the first polygon kiss scene ever made in the game industry!!"
--: No.....
K: First stage of the game development, we already decide which scene we will make the movie cut scene, such as opening, ending and first contact with Licker. We didn't plan to make Leon and Ada going to be like that, so I thought it is OK to just do by polygon. When I was making the rough sketch of the Leon and Ada cut scene, it changed from the plan and became more showy and long.
--: That was a good scene, especially, Leon shouts "Aeeeeeeidaaaaaah!!"
K: That is one of my favorite scene too.
--: By the way, how did you pick those voice actors?
K: They are all from Canada. We picked about 10 people for a character and let them send those actors video, and we decide which person is match our imagination.
--: The voice actors had hard time? Because this is for a game.
K: Yes, because we had to record voices before we create pictures. Only script, that is all. So, it is hard form them to understand how fast they should talk. So, we let them talk whatever they want at first time, then we ask them to change little bit, like "more tensions feeling" or "talk slowly". We explained our imagination to them but it was hard to understand, I guess...
--: Even zombies voice had a lot of variety.
K: We use a lot of development staff's voice for zombie voice. I didn't do it but everybody said "UUUUUUURRGGGG....." *laugh* And we asked voice actors to make zombie sound and we modified and used it in the game.
Published Date: Sep 1st 1998
Published by: Micro Design
Original Japanese text all rights reserved by Capcom and related publishers.
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