Resident Evil 2 Remake’s Outrageous Alligator Fight Is Proving to Be a “Difficult Process” for the Devs
The developers over at Capcom have their hands full with creating a fully-realized version of the classic horror game, Resident Evil 2. Instead of just being a simple graphical upgrade with a few new features, Capcom is remaking Resident Evil 2 from the ground up, making it as modern as they can, which means making that silly alligator fight with Leon feel as realistic as possible. A rookie cop fighting a gator in a sewage tunnel with nothing but a gun and a knife is pretty outrageous, but Capcom devs are trying their hardest to make it work under the new tone that Resident Evil 2 gives off.
In an interview with the Daily Star Capcom producers, Tsuyoshi Kanda and Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, talked about how hard it was to make a giant alligator not look ridiculous in a game with motion-captured actors and photorealistic elements – you could only imagine how difficult that process would have to be. If you forgot how the scene played out, you can check out the video below to see Leon take on the reptile (courtesy of BiohazardGeek):
“To make that convincing in any way was really tough,” Hirabayashi tells the Daily Star. “For a while, we were just thinking, ‘shall we just cut the alligator altogether? It’s too difficult’. But we knew there’d be a fan backlash, we knew we had to create one of these perfect fan-favorite moments, so… it’s a tough one, but it’s there.” He continues: “Trying to make a convincing scene where a human-sized character—a guy with a knife—is taking on an alligator… that’s really silly. People don’t remember it as silly because the whole game was groundbreaking at the time, but that moment was ridiculous. It was a difficult process for us, making that work today.”
Resident Evil 2 is slated to release for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on Jan 25, 2018. Capcom also announced a $200 collectors edition for the game, which you can check out here.