For any Resident Evil fan who maintained their allegiance to the series through its darkest years, the term action-oriented is sure to furrow a fair few brows.
Up until Capcom soft rebooted the famed survival horror series with 2017’s seventh installment, the general consensus among veterans was Resident Evil had strayed much too far from its roots. The fifth and sixth entries, in particular, were criticized for focusing too heavily on action gameplay, in the process alienating fans who had originally fallen in love with the franchise’s slower-paced, survival-based rhythm.
Hardly a surprise, then, that the developer’s recent comments regarding next year’s Resident Evil 3 remake have now ruffled a few feathers, to say the least.
In a recent interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu (translated by DualShockers), Capcom’s Masao Kawada and Peter Fabiano shared several new details for the upcoming title. According to the pair, Jill Valentine’s redesign in the reimagined third game was born from a desire to have her naturally fit a larger focus on action. Kawada and Fabiano don’t provide more specifics beyond that, though one can only assume the original costume worn by Valentine was considered an impractical choice for a specially-trained officer caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
Hard to argue with that viewpoint, then, but what of the concerns concerning an over-reliance on action? It’s worth noting that the studio only specified that Resident Evil 3 will be more action-based than its predecessor, which is to be expected, given that the same distinction exists between the two original games. In other words, you shouldn’t expect to witness Jill doing backflips or punching boulders as her colleague so famously did but rather, more able to nimbly evade zombies looking for a late-night snack.
Resident Evil 3 is out April 3rd, 2020, and pre-orders are available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. If you can’t decide which edition to get, see here for our breakdown of the bonuses included with each.