The history of the development of one of the most unusual classic parts of Resident Evil.
April 4th remake Resident evil 3 – The last of the “classic” issues of the horror series. And in the light of the release, we decided to recall how the original RE3 was created, which is now rethought Capcom.
It so happened that the development of literally every part of Resident Evil was something that was in the way. The first part was planned completely three-dimensional – but PS1 I didn’t draw out the necessary quality of the graphics, and so the game appeared pre-rendered scenery. And the plot ultimately deviated from the original idea: the father of the series Shinji Mikami wanted to make a game about a haunted mansion, but after the appearance of another script writer, the ghosts were decided to be replaced by zombies. Development Resident evil 2 and I had to completely restart – at first, Hideki Kamiya and his team simply did not have a clear vision of the project. So Resident Evil 3 was supposed to be a completely different game.
At first they wanted to make her a “guide” – a spin-off without a triple in the title. The project had a modest budget, and they did not even plan to create beautiful screensavers for it. As a result, they had to be done at the last moment: the license plate could not be released without screensavers – not solid!
How is it that the low-budget branch of the series was urgently redone into the license plate? The blame was an early exit Playstation 2.
After the resounding success of Resident Evil 2, Capcom launched several projects in this universe. Among them were spin-offs for PS1 about Raccoon City, nicknamed “Resident Evil 1.9”; RE0 for Nintendo 64 (she eventually spent five years in development and entered Gamecube); Code: Veronica for Dreamcast and the full third part for PS1, which was developed by the team of Hideki Kamiya, director of RE2. As for RE3, she was supposed to continue the story of Hunk, an agent of Umbrella, for whom you could play in the secret scenario of RE2. In the story, he landed on an infected cruise liner in order to get a sample of the G-virus (which is strange, because it was the G-virus that he exported from Raccoon City to RE2).
However, closer to the second half of 1998 Sony told Capcom about her plans for the PS2. The new console was getting ready for launch in March 2000, and this was very worrying for the publisher. By the time the Kamiya team completed its project, the attention of the entire market would have switched to PS2, and the game would have seemed outdated amid new-generation projects. This could not be allowed.
The English version of RE3 was more complicated than the Japanese one. The developers were afraid that if it would be easier, then the players would rent the game, go quickly and return to the store, which would hit sales
Capcom transferred Camia’s team to develop a new part for PS2, however, creating a project for the next-gen would take a long time, and the publisher did not want the series to stand idle for a long time without a license plate issue. Therefore, the Kamiya project was first renamed Resident Evil 4, and then completely Devil may cry. And the third part was called the very low-budget spin-off, RE 1.9, which only 20 people worked on – mostly newcomers, not Resident veterans. They had in a matter of months to turn their project into a full-fledged number issue. Shinji Mikami, who became the producer of the series after the first part, was opposed to giving the minor release the name Resident Evil 3. But the company’s management was adamant.
At a very early stage of development, they were going to devote the game to escape from the city. But when the “Hayden” turned into RE3, there was a need for a plot to connect it with the previous parts with the help of familiar heroes. Claire and Leon had already left Raccoon City in RE2, and Chris was in Code: Veronica, so Jill was chosen to exclude RE3 heroine.
The starter segment, in which crowds of zombies surround Jill, was added at the last moment. During testing, it turned out that the beginning seemed to the players not interesting enough
Director Kazuhiro Aoyama wanted three protagonists in RE3, but the game was done in such a hurry that only one heroine had to be limited. Yes, and all other shortcomings (or features, then decide for yourself) RE3 appeared precisely because of the tight development time. The most obvious example is the return of the police station from the previous part. It’s a sin not to use ready-made assets when the deadline is on, right?
Aoyama explained why barricades disappeared between the events of the third and second parts in the area. It turns out that during RE3 people are still hiding behind them! Then they disassemble them, become infected – and the heroes of RE2 see no longer the cleaned up Jill site, but a building full of fresh zombies. But did these unfortunate people in addition insert a window that Nemesis smashed?
Even when the game was a spin-off, Aoyama set a goal to make it unique and different from other parts of the series. Therefore, he introduced a number of elements into the project that remained exclusive to RE3. Some zombies are especially fast, the heroine knows how to dodge attacks and craft ammunition, and the player is periodically offered to choose what to do in a difficult situation.
The latter in addition increased replay value. Since RE3 was originally a low-budget and experimental game, it was conceived as rather short – but Aoyama reasoned that in this case it should be designed for several walkthroughs. And to make it interesting for the player to return to familiar places, solving puzzles and arranging objects every time are random.
For the same reason, “Mercenaries” appeared in RE3 – a mini-game in which you need to earn points by killing enemies in a limited time. Subsequently, “Mercenaries” also appeared in the 4th, 5th and 6th parts – and even won their own separate game on 3DS.
Dario, whom Jill meets in the warehouse, is Italian. The developers had heard about the big Italian diaspora in America and decided to translate it into one of the characters
Many elements of the project had to be changed on the go or even abandoned entirely. For example, at first, Jill knew how to walk and shoot at the same time, but it interfered with the mechanics of dodging, so this opportunity was removed, and she migrated to Dino crisis. Liqueurs from RE2 did not appear in RE3 due to the large number of joints: they turned out to be too difficult to implement. And Raccoon City was supposed to be filled with product placement of real companies like Coca cola – the developers thought that this way it would look more realistic. That was a bad idea. So that the owners of these brands would not sue Capcom, shortly before sending the game to “gold”, it was necessary to replace the well-known logos with their faceless nonexistent analogues.
At the same time, the developers saved on virtually everything: borrowing from other parts was not limited to the police station alone. The giant worm was also intended for Resident Evil 1.5 – the canceled version of Resident Evil 2. At first it was assumed that the heroes of the sequel Resident Evil looked at the ruins of the same mansion – there the worm would have attacked them. As a result of this enemy, the authors of RE3 took over.
Since both the director and screenwriter of the game were martial arts fans, they decided to call the mercenaries the names of little-known Russian fighters. So in RE3 appeared Nikolai and Mikhail
The nemesis in the Japanese version is called “tsuisekisha”, which translates as “stalker” or even “stalker”. Producer Mikami had high hopes for him: it was the immortal enemy who followed the heroine on the heels who was to become the hallmark of the game.
At first they wanted to make this “stalker” liquid, like the T-1000 from “Terminator 2”. But the developers decided that the slug enemy would seem faceless, and they still did not figure out why he could not seep through the doors. In the end, they settled on the smarter iteration of Tirana, which received the name Nemesis. And it was this name that got into the subtitle of the western version of the game.
The fact is that in the English language the word “nemesis” has long become a household word denoting a sworn enemy. However, for the Japanese, it did not mean anything – they had a third of them got the subtitle Last Escape, or “Last Escape.” He symbolized farewell to Raccoon City, where Jill was no longer destined to return.
Despite the fact that the original Resident Evil 3 was created in a hurry and in a wild rush, she managed to become a favorite game of many gamers of that time. But on the RE3 remake, modern developers already had much more time and resources. But this, oddly enough, provided the opposite result: many locations of the original disappeared from the new version, and on the whole it does not at all look like the game we fell in love with in 1999. Read more about what has become Resident evil 3 remakeread in our review.
