Capcom never has its own press conference at E3, instead announcing their games and showing off new content during other shows. For example, they dropped the Resident Evil 2 Remake bombshell during the Sony press conference. This year’s E3 should be no exception, as Capcom is rumored to drop another fan favorite at Microsoft‘s press conference. Hopes are high that it will be another one of their classics remade. What is almost certain is that they will be showing off some new stuff for Monster Hunter World such as the new expansion Iceborne, but that will be eclipsed if they drop another remake bombshell.
The E3 Rumors
Source: Wikipedia page for Dino Crisis.
As E3 2019 draws near, more and more rumors begin making their rounds in the gaming community, planting the seeds of excitement in many gamers. One such rumor is that Capcom is planning a remake of their 1999 game Dino Crisis, a PlayStation title that mixed dinosaurs with the Resident Evil formula. The game did fairly well, earning a comfortable 2.4 million copies sold worldwide with fairly high review scores.
Source: Resident Evil 2 (2019) official website.
Another Capcom rumors is that they plan on showing off a Resident Evil 3 remake, fresh off the heels of 2019’s Resident Evil 2. The Resident Evil 2 remake was Capcom‘s second largest release on Steam, trailing just behind Monster Hunter World. In short, it was big money for Capcom and a guarantee that we’ll be seeing more Resident Evil remakes in the near future, if not at this year’s E3.
Way Before its Time
Capcom may have considered co-op play for their first entry into the Resident Evil series, but it did not come to light until the 2003 Japanese release of Resident Evil Outbreak. Outbreak, which released on the PlayStation 2, featured up to 4-player co-op. Players would navigate a scenario in the classic Resident Evil fashion. The way they balanced four players was to make combat slower, reduce inventory capacity, make ammo even more sparse, and give melee items a durability.
The game was not well-received well by critics, stating that the lack of voice chat hurt the experience. It instead used a set amount of character voice responses that in my opinion made the game harder and more challenging. The real thing that killed the game was the inaccessibility of the PS2 online service. If you didn’t have a PlayStation 2 Slim, a network adapter was needed, and personally I never knew a single person that had one. The game was way ahead of its time, a console multiplayer game before consoles really supported multiplayer.
Since the servers for Resident Evil Outbreak were shut down back in 2007, fans of the game needed a new way to play online. In recent years a fan-made server has popped, allowing players experience the multiplayer portion without the horrendous single-player AI. The amount of players seen on this server, as well as some recent indie titles that follow the same formula, shows that people want a return.
OK
Before we had our first look at Resident Evil 2 remake, we got the game’s official website to go completely blank, apart from a single word at the top left hand side of the website: ‘OK.’ At the time, this was a mysterious puzzle that Capcom threw at us. The 2015 “We do it” announcement gave the first details that Capcom was working on the remake.
In the last year, the official site for Resident Evil Outbreak has changed to solid white, with a single ‘OK’ at the top left hand corner.
This alone gets me thinking about the future of the game — what does the development team have planned?
Why Capcom Needs Outbreak
The current atmosphere for the gaming scene is heavily focused on multiplayer rather than a single-player experience like of Resident Evil 2 (2019). My gut feeling is that bringing out another single-player remake would create a stale taste in the mouths of players at this point. Showing off something so close to their last remake could actually hurt Capcom and the prospects of more remakes in the future. This is where Outbreak comes into the fold as a multiplayer Resident Evil game. The world is so focused now on battle royale games and multiplayer shooters that a new triple-A co-op game could be a breath of fresh air for gamers who may be burnt out on getting their one-hundredth loss.
The time would be right for a more suspenseful co-op Resident Evil, as games such as Dead by Daylight are flourishing. More chills equal more thrills and more thrills is more money in the pockets of the company behind the game. The time is right for an Outbreak remake, because now everyone has the ability to play online, and proper voice chat has also become a staple in most every online game.
Conclusion
Outbreak is in my top five favorite Resident Evil games. I feel it is a much better choice this close to the remake of Resident Evil 2. The new and fresh co-op spin on the RE Engine would bring new life to the franchise, and it’s something fans have been asking for.
With that being said, I am sure that no matter what Capcom shows off at E3, that the reaction will be positive, whether it be Resident Evil 3, Dino Crisis, or some other remake. I for one would love it if any of these three titles came shuffling back to life at this year’s E3.
