Exploration Will be a Central Part of Resident Evil Village

During Capcom's special Tokyo Game Show 2020 live stream presentation, members of the development team shared their perspective on the two main characters of the upcoming horror game Resident Evil Village: Ethan Winters, and the eponymous Village itself, and saying that the game will have more of a focus on exploration than Resident Evil 7. Resident Evil Village takes place in an as-yet-unnamed location, one that the presentation described as "the other protagonist" of the game. Director Morimasa Sato said, "When you take the word ‘village’, people picture a small place. But when you look at Village, it has a colossal, distant feel to it." He emphasized the importance of making a place players could explore. "You have a lot more freedom [in Village] than in Resident Evil VII," Sato said. "We want players to experiment, to figure out what works for them." He described the upcoming game as "a horror movie you can play." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/25/capcom-special-program-livestream-tgs-2020"] In describing the scale of Resident Evil Village, art director Tomonori Tanako said they put a storybook (seen in the most recent trailer) into the game because "there was such variety in the game… it would be hard to summarize all that, and players might get confused." Asked to summarize Village, director Sato took a long pause and said it is "the story of one man named Ethan… the entirety of who he is." Resident Evil Village takes place years after the events of Resident Evil VII, the previous main entry in the series which was released in 2017 and the first with a dedicated first-person perspective. During the TGS broadcast, Village director Morimasa Sato said. "When we were making Resident Evil VII, we thought of Ethan just as a camera for the player," even describing him as "transparent." As production moved on, though, the team ”grew attached” to Ethan, and ultimately wondered "what happened to him" after the story was finished. This secured his position as the star of the next game in their minds. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=resident-evil-village-playstation-5-showcase-screenshots&captions=true"] Before wrapping up the Resident Evil portion of Capcom’s TGS stream, a logo for the series' 25th anniversary was unveiled along with artwork that featured an assortment of heroes and villains from past games. The original game debuted on the PlayStation on March 22, 1996 in Japan, so an anniversary campaign will kick off on March 22, 2021. We also learned that Capcom is considering releasing the game on PS4 and Xbox One, but "can't make any promises". [poilib element="accentDivider"]