Giant Bomb Video Game News

Stories all over the place are pointing to this Eurogamer report that all but confirms past rumors about the parentage of a potential Dead Rising sequel. The rumors started earlier this year--and then heated up over the summer--asserting that Canadian dev house Blue Castle is working on the new followup, though the original game was created in-house by Capcom Japan.

Its Eastern pedigree showed, too. Underneath the wild, wholesale zombie slaughter and quirky anything-is-a-weapon combat mechanics, Dead Rising had some truly bizarre design quirks going on in its save model, level-up system, and mission structure. I personally loved the hell out of Dead Rising, but I know plenty of people who couldn't get into it because those elements were just so, well, weird.

So if this is true--and if Eurogamer is stating it without equivocation, it probably is--I'd expect a Western developer with more Western-style design sensibilities, one like The Bigs dev Blue Castle, to marry the strong gameplay and humorous elements of the first game to core game-flow mechanics more familiar to those of us on this side of the pond. Considering Dead Rising's Japan-to-US sales ratio, a Westernized design focus for this sequel is not only unsurprising, it's damn near a requisite.

You'll note that Kotaku has also claimed in the past the sequel may be set in Las Vegas. That sounds excellent to me. Think of how many would-be weapons you could find in all those casinos.

So what do you want out of your Dead Rising sequel? I'm going to go with zombie Siegfried and Roy for a start.