Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but Capcom HAS been giving Western devs a crack at some of its biggest franchises.
Kotaku has received documents indicating that Slant Six Games, the creators of a few PSPSOCOM titles and the last SOCOM for the PS3, are developing a "team-based" Resident Evil title under the supervision of Capcom. These documents contain no other details about this supposed RE title in development, but they do put a (slightly silly) name to the project: Resident Evil: Raccoon City.
True or not, this feels like a natural move for Capcom. The publisher has been putting recognizable franchises in Western studios' hands for a good while now. GRIN spit out a few Bionic Commando games before it folded, Blue Castle Games built Dead Rising 2, and Enslaved creator Ninja Theory is currently at the helm of a Devil May Cry reboot.
== TEASER ==As Kotaku points out, Slant Six isn't talking publicly about who it's working with on its next title. On its blog, the developer has written that its next project is being built with a "new publishing partner" and work has started on a "world class franchise." Earlier in March, Slant Six sought out a Japanese translator and interpreter, while LinkedIn profiles of Slant Six employees back up the multiplayer angle, as the developers are listing their latest game as a "multiplayer action game."
Is this the real deal? It's hard to tell. Capcom, understandably, isn't commenting yet, and Slant Six (at this moment) hasn't been saying much either. But while this rumor smells strange, the pieces at least seem to fit. Perhaps we'll finally be able to run and shoot in an RE title, eh?
Well slant six managed to ruin socom for me and re5 was pretty bad. Lets just put the last nail in the coffin and kill resident evil all together /six. There's a new silent hill coming. Maybe that will be good.
If they want to do this right they should not only focus on making the online multiplayer experience great but also the local multiplayer experience. There isn't enough variety of quality titles that offer a solid local multiplayer experience on the PS3 imo. I love playing against people online as much as the next person but what about if I just want to have some friends over to play at my house?Hopefully they'll incorporate solid local play.
I think what would be interesting is a military take on zombie fighting. Slant Six has experience with military TPS, so I hope they use that minor strength.
To be honest I the game would have to work very hard not to suck. If they copy Left4Dead they won't do it nearly as well. If they go for a Battlefield style with 'types vs types' that might be interesting in a 12 v 12 style game.
I would find a large, MMO style Resident Evil game for consoles fascinating IF it was done well. Getting a group of friends together to survive would be great. It's the on thing missing from Red Deads Undead Nightmare pack. Where's my free roam survival mode where my friends and I constantly have a horde on our ass?
If it were RE6, I might have called BS, but this sounds really plausible. I dunno, could be cool, though I've heard some baaaad things about that PS3 SOCOM, so who knows.
People forget that RE has allowed you to move and shoot in the past, just only in RE Outbreak File 2... still, it's understandable why people might either not know or just choose to forget ;P
" @TwoOneFive: SOCOM Confrontation was a small multiplayer only game which had a clear predecessor to pull design from. And despite all that, Slant Six failed to produce a quality product by the time it shipped. Now, if they couldn't do that, how well do you think making a full on resident evil game, or even just a multiplayer only downloadable game under the same (if not more stringent) deadline will turn out? Sorry, but patching it up doesn't count. Do you think for a second that people will tolerate a crappy and buggy as sin Resident Evil game on release day? Games are judged for what they are on release day. And since this is a multiplayer game, one that has to compete with many other multiplayer games for players, releasing a bad game is a death sentence. Also, I could go on about how Confrontation had serious issues with S6 being unable to go beyond SOCOM's earlier controls and style, leading to some serious issues with how the game is played. "
the game wasn't anywhere near finished and it was rushed out of the door.
and don't act like anyone needs to reinvent multiplayer just because they're making it for Resident Evil.
Slant Six made great socom games for PSP. Considering they were able to stay focused and take on a terrible launch despite widespread criticism, I'd say Slant Six is a determined bunch. Now, given a PROPER development time, I am sure they can churn out a successful game that plays great. You act like a know it all. Sony rushed the shit out of that game. The beta was terrible, full of problems, and then like a couple of weeks later the game came out. It's obvious that at the time, Sony NEEDED to release SOMETHING. It was a dry period for PS3 at the time.
And I don't give a shit about your launch day theory. plenty of games have shitty launches bro. Especially consider theyre making a resident evil game...death sentence? yaaaaa ok.
Now look, I hated them for taking forever to patch it up, and then release new maps. It felt like forever. But in the end, I know they were rushed like crazy and its not entirely their fault.
" @TwoOneFive: Has SOCOM Confrontation really turned into a more enjoyable experience? I stopped playing it a couple months after its release, not satisfied, and longing for my SOCOM II experience. "
Not any more. There was about 3 months a while back where it was fun, just before Cold Front, but now it's shit again. SOCOM comes out in the new year, so I'd wait for that. "
yeah but it was certainly not a terrible game once everything was fixed up. it still had an addicting factor like previous socom games. the new game looks fantastic.
" @TwoOneFive: Has SOCOM Confrontation really turned into a more enjoyable experience? I stopped playing it a couple months after its release, not satisfied, and longing for my SOCOM II experience. "
Not any more. There was about 3 months a while back where it was fun, just before Cold Front, but now it's shit again. SOCOM comes out in the new year, so I'd wait for that.
Capcom sure loves them some Canadian studios. I wonder though if this is less about a full on home console game and more about the only vaguely mentioned resident evil PSP game. Slantsix has had more success on the portable front, so making them handle the duties on a PSP (or maybe PSP2?) RE game makes some sense.
@SockLobster: Quite true, however, Capcom is just shooting itself in the foot by going with these less experienced developers. Sure, it's probably cheaper to contract out to these studios, but you get what you pay for. One of the major strengths of Japanese games has been their exploration of themes and ideas in ways Western developers do not, however, their gameplay surrounding and storytelling of those ideas, on average, tend to be poor. To go back to my previous example of Silent Hill's outsourcing to the West, compare Homecoming to Shattered Memories. Homecoming, I think, had pretty decent gameplay over other silent hills, where you could actually fight and control your character. However, what was lost in homecoming was that brilliant psychological connections and subtlety (or perhaps unsubtle) story and underpinnings that made Shattered Memories a more memorable mind blower.
Part of the problem with this kind of cheap outsourcing is that, well, they're most likely not going to give the team the time and money to try and replicate the Japanese style exploration of concepts and combine it with Western style focus on genre gameplay.
I for one would love to see the polish and storytelling of Left 4 Dead on something with the pacing and controls of Resident Evil. L4D is a great game, but it's extremely fast paced compared to how some RE games are presented and gets pretty old going through the same levels no matter how much the AI director spawns zombies in different places or times. Imagine Outbreak with decent controls, more interesting characters and much more interesting re-playability, with an AI director controlling not just where monsters spawn, but also entire objectives for an entire campaign. Or, for instance where the L4D survivors are encouraged to all stay together and run like hell, RE online could promote objectives where players have to make real hard choices about how to do things, who to send where, when to split up or stay together.
And before someone starts ranting about me generalizing. This is reality people. While there are always outliers, those outliers are not the norm.
Although, I suppose a big cause of this is that any big studio that could do RE or Silent Hill justice has probably already established itself elsewhere and is working on their own projects, or they've already got a full plate of projects while these smaller studios fight for the work.
I am most hopefull for Ninja Theory's take on DMC though.
Dude, where the hell do they get their intel that people actually want any sort of multiplayer Resident Evil? This is not the way to break into the Western multiplayer gaming market. Seriously.
It could work, but I can't say Slant Six has shown great skill at PS3 coding. This might be within their grasp, but they would really have to do their best work to date.
@Vertrucio: I believe it is because of the apparent lack of popularity that these franchises hold in the Japanese gaming market compared to the western world, hence taking on developers from the west to help cater the games towards their main market.
@TwoOneFive: SOCOM Confrontation was a small multiplayer only game which had a clear predecessor to pull design from. And despite all that, Slant Six failed to produce a quality product by the time it shipped. Now, if they couldn't do that, how well do you think making a full on resident evil game, or even just a multiplayer only downloadable game under the same (if not more stringent) deadline will turn out?
Sorry, but patching it up doesn't count. Do you think for a second that people will tolerate a crappy and buggy as sin Resident Evil game on release day? Games are judged for what they are on release day. And since this is a multiplayer game, one that has to compete with many other multiplayer games for players, releasing a bad game is a death sentence.
Also, I could go on about how Confrontation had serious issues with S6 being unable to go beyond SOCOM's earlier controls and style, leading to some serious issues with how the game is played.
" Just make a new offline Resident Evil game that plays similar to Dead Space and is actually: - Good - Scary Stop putting out poor action games like Resident Evil 4 and 5. "
When played correctly (which was incredibly rare) Outbreak was incredibly fun. Hopefully this will add a little more structure to the formula to help avoid games where there are just a bunch of confused people running around.
Excited. Officially. I love Resident Evil, and while I liked the idea of Outbreak I think it was a bit before its time. Hopefully, this will be good game, if they can do it right the idea has a lot of potentially.
Also, why is the name Resident Evil: Raccoon City slightly silly? It is the main setting for the RE games, and based on what the game play and story are like it might be a very apt title.
The concept sounds awesome, I mean, in Resident Evil games, you're always rolling around with a partner and you're rarely alone. The team-based multiplayer is like that, but on a larger scale. I loved RE5, and can't wait to see what's next on consoles (I'm also looking forward to the 3DS game in development.)
@TwoOneFive: Has SOCOM Confrontation really turned into a more enjoyable experience? I stopped playing it a couple months after its release, not satisfied, and longing for my SOCOM II experience.
after socom confrontation was fixed up, it turned out to be a decent game thats pretty damn fun and to this day has a solid userbase. the controls felt great and the shooting was spot on.
they definitely are capable of creating a solid multiplayer given a better development time and they've certainly learned A LOT from the Confrontation experience.
I was just innitially surprised by this. They are very much like Treyarch, they got a lot of hate for the terrible launch of Socom Confrontation. But i can hop on that game right now and its still kick ass
But, what's with Capcom hiring, well, second tier developers for what should be first tier games?
It's the same problem Konami ran into with Silent Hill Homecoming, it was only a mediocre game since they farmed it out to a studio that while competent, lacks that high end vision and design.
Not that Slant 6 isn't a good studio, but just look at their last few games. They did a good job on the PSP versions of SOCOM, but utterly failed with Confrontation on the PS3, their first major full console development.
The reason why that Japanese exec made comments a while back about being unhappy with Western developer outsourcing wasn't because of the developers, but probably because their choice of developer to contract out to combined with unrealistic goals/timeframes. While I'm glad these smaller studios are getting work, I'm thinking giant well known properties aren't the best things to farm out to them, at least not initially. Smaller side games with narrower scopes, then build up over time to larger projects as the studio gains experience.
" While I have been interested and excited to a certain extent about Capcom's Western team-ups, this one doesn't seem very promising. "
i agree, i admit slant six haven't had many chances to prove their worth on the consoles, but socom for the ps3 was extremely broken and not very good at all
Sure. I mean...maybe? I don't know. It could be cool. We do have Left 4 Dead already, but it might be neat to see what the (hopefully refined for this release) Resident Evil style gameplay in the trappings of a multiplayer game might turn out to be.
damn, always see 0 replies when I'm not logged in X.x But on topic, never really cared for Resident evil but if these guys can peak my interest then give it a whirl.
Team based Resident Evil? So like a better looking Resident Evil Outbreak? I always wanted to play that game, but never got around to it. I hope Slant Six is up to it. I wasn't too pleased with their take on the current-gen SOCOM.
Oh and personally, I love the fact I can't run and shoot in Resident Evil. Adds to the intensity of the gameplay. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Seeing this current trend Capcom is taking, it makes me think. Maybe they're trying to give these IPs to all these non-eastern developers to put them out of business. Therefor weakening any competition for the games they make and release in the West. DUN DUN DUN! Sarcasm, of course. Please don't take that seriously.
I'm not a fan of RE, but I've heard some people be optimistic about this because it might be like Outbreak, which wasn't given a fair shake at the time.
Kotaku has received documents indicating that Slant Six Games, the creators of a few PSPSOCOM titles and the last SOCOM for the PS3, are developing a "team-based" Resident Evil title under the supervision of Capcom. These documents contain no other details about this supposed RE title in development, but they do put a (slightly silly) name to the project: Resident Evil: Raccoon City.
True or not, this feels like a natural move for Capcom. The publisher has been putting recognizable franchises in Western studios' hands for a good while now. GRIN spit out a few Bionic Commando games before it folded, Blue Castle Games built Dead Rising 2, and Enslaved creator Ninja Theory is currently at the helm of a Devil May Cry reboot.
== TEASER ==As Kotaku points out, Slant Six isn't talking publicly about who it's working with on its next title. On its blog, the developer has written that its next project is being built with a "new publishing partner" and work has started on a "world class franchise." Earlier in March, Slant Six sought out a Japanese translator and interpreter, while LinkedIn profiles of Slant Six employees back up the multiplayer angle, as the developers are listing their latest game as a "multiplayer action game."
Is this the real deal? It's hard to tell. Capcom, understandably, isn't commenting yet, and Slant Six (at this moment) hasn't been saying much either. But while this rumor smells strange, the pieces at least seem to fit. Perhaps we'll finally be able to run and shoot in an RE title, eh?
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