It’s certainly a period for remakes especially in the survival horror genre. We know about Alone in the Dark getting remade as well as Bloober Team being involved with remaking Silent Hill 2. Not only that they are remaking their Layers of Fear franchise. Capcom has just given us Resident Evil 4 and at the start of the year, we also had Dead Space. Capcom has another franchise with some small rumors of a remake of Dino Crisis. However, a recent video by The Umbrella Project is focused on the original game. We last properly saw this in the 2002 Resident Evil Remake.
A Resident Evil remake was on the horizon, which was a fanmade project. They were also working on Code Veronica while making this fan remake. Capcom, however, stopped these remakes. The first game in the remake had a demo that began before the game’s events and perhaps before Resident Evil 0’s. Similar fan work was done by Capcom for Resident Evil 2, which they later remade. Even so, that fan remake survived and was later remade as Daymare 1998. But that video got me thinking.
Should Capcom Remake The Original Resident Evil?
It was remade in 2002 and remastered for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2015. Though we’ve long abandoned fixed camera angles in favor of over-the-shoulder third-person views in the Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes. Resident Evil 7 and Village were both first-person shooters, though Village eventually added an over-the-shoulder option. In addition, the video above discusses how they are incorporating the games we are familiar with into the Ethan Winters story. So why should Capcom bring back the original? Should it be left alone at all?
A major argument for leaving alone is that the current remake, despite being two decades old, works well. It still stands on its own. However, Resident Evil 4 does as well. One of the reasons for a remake is to connect all of the games. The video suggests combining Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0. My main concern is that the gameplay in both the original remake and the prequel differs. Resident Evil 0 has two playable characters that can be switched between and no storage boxes to store items.
Closing Thoughts
If they could suitably combine the two games and have gameplay similar to recent remakes it would indeed work. It also brings the original to fans potentially new to the franchise. As well it makes the franchise more accessible as the fixed camera angles aren’t to everyone’s tastes. Though it’s hard to decide if a remake is really needed to bring the story to modern hardware or even if it’s one that should be left alone. Though the fan remake demo was certainly a claim for Capcom to return to a classic.
I’d like to see a remake in the style of the newer games, but I wouldn’t mind if they skipped ahead to Code Veronica or the ninth game after Village. But, what are your thoughts? Is this a game that deserves to be remade in this day and age, or should it be left alone? There is a generational comparison below, from the original director’s cut to a fan remake in Unreal Engine 5.
