Though some amount of trepidation is perhaps warranted whenever a remake of a beloved title is announced, with the Resident Evil 4 remake Capcom looks set to deliver a faithful yet contemporarily technical take on a survival horror classic. That said, while early footage certainly suggests a remake that seems happy to rigidly cling to its source material, it’s only reasonable to wonder just how precisely Resident Evil 4 remake manages to achieve this feat and what can be done to improve upon the 2005 original. So naturally we’ve cooked up this little feature outlining everything we hope will be in the Resident Evil 4 remake.
The Regenerators Are Terrifying And Absolutely Need To Return In Resident Evil 4 Remake
Easily one of the most terrifying enemies in any Resident Evil title, the Regenerators behave as their name implies, rebuilding destroyed appendages all the while lurching towards the player with whatever body parts they have left. Aside from being highly durable to say the least, the Regenerators also emanate this horrid, rasping breathing sound when they are nearby, handily planting the seed of fear in players before they would even see the horrid blighters. Given the massive leap in rendering technology and computational grunt since the original Resident Evil 4 released all the way back in 2005, it’ll be equally interesting and terrifying to see how Capcom brings this most horrendous of foes up to date for a contemporary audience.
Weapon Handling Needs To Be Desperately Modernised In Resident Evil 4 Remake
While Resident Evil 4 has long been lauded for its satisfying third-person gunplay and combat, there are certainly some aspects of its design that haven’t aged well at all. Near the top of that list is the weapon switching system. In the previous releases of Resident Evil 4, changing weapons could only be accomplished by pausing the game, going into the inventory, switching out your weapon and then returning to the action. It is a grandly laborious and inefficient system that totally takes the player out of the game and though being able to switch weapons on the fly is something we take for granted these days, it’s a small feature that would absolutely make a big difference if Capcom implemented it into the Resident Evil 4 remake.
Resident Evil 4 Remake Must Continue To Walk The Tonally Absurdist Tightrope
Resident Evil 4 was very much a product of its time when it launched in the mid 2000s, which is to say that it was developed by a Japanese studio which had one eye on super serious survival horror shenanigans and another on firmly tongue-in-cheek villains and dialogue. From Leon’s notoriously dorky quip “Where’s everybody going? Bingo?”, when he sees the villagers in the opening act collectively marching towards the central church, to the bastion of campiness that is the beloved villain Salazar, it’s clear that Resident Evil 4 knew how to walk the tonally absurdist tightrope and do it well. Though the Resident Evil 4 remake will release some eighteen years after the original release and will debut to an all-new audience of gamers, one can only hope that Capcom knows how to maintain that delicate balance, rather than just regressing the whole thing into a pointlessly grimdark and bleak affair.
Resident Evil 4 Remake Should Still Take Us To Suplex City
Speaking of absurdity, one of the greatest and most satisfying things that Resident Evil 4 allowed players to do was to bust out a bunch of pro-wrestling moves mid scrap, allowing Leon to decimate his foes with style in the process. Honestly, there was nothing quite like stunning an enemy by blasting out their knee caps and then watching Leon switch around to their back with a waist grip, before hoisting them high up in the air and dropping them square on their noggin, causing their skull to explode like a watermelon coated hand-grenade. Every game should have suplexes and hopefully the Resident Evil 4 remake is no exception.
The Krauser Fight Needs An Overhaul In Resident Evil 4 Remake
One of the most significant boss fights in Resident Evil 4, the scrap with mercenary Jack Krauser largely played out with a string of QTEs (Quick Time Events), whereby the player was required to match the button prompt as they appear on screen in order to be successful. The kicker with the Resident Evil 4 remake however, is that QTEs barely feature in the game, meaning that by proxy the Jack Krauser fight will surely need to be reworked. After all, in remaking Resident Evil 4 for modern audiences, part of that effort must surely be to cut out and replace outdated design and nowhere is that more evident than in the Krauser fight. As such, it would be much better to have that fight decided by a proper test of player skill and agency, rather than just pressing a string of button commands as they appear on the screen while the game does all the cool stuff. After all, we do indeed have the technology to make this boss fight much more compelling than it was before – so let’s use it eh?
Ashley Needs To Have A Reworked Role In Resident Evil 4 Remake
One of the main touchstones of Resident Evil 4’s plot was Ashley Graham, the wayward daughter of the US President whom protagonist Leon Kennedy was dispatched to deepest, darkest rural Spain to rescue. However, it’s certainly fair to say that the stealth and puzzle solving sections that she was involved in were Resident Evil 4’s nadir and with the Resident Evil 4 remake, Capcom has a real opportunity to change things up for the better. Now, I’m not saying that Ashley necessarily needs to suddenly morph into a gun-toting monster murderer, but there’s a whole lot of creative latitude there for Ashley to do something more compelling than just sneaking about the place and solving uninspired puzzles.
Resident Evil 4 Remake Needs Additional Scenario Content That Makes Sense
At a bare minimum, the Resident Evil 4 Remake should include the additional single-player content that featured in latest releases of classic Resident Evil 4. In particular, it should include the ‘Separate Ways’ side story which more fully unearthed Ada Wong’s involvement in the events of the game and her alignment with longtime series baddie Albert Wesker. Along the same sort of lines, Capcom should also take the opportunity to provide additional content beyond this too, engineering extra scenarios to not only encourage players to replay the game, but also shed some new light on the various characters and events that take place in the Resident Evil 4 remake.
Check out the Resident Evil 4 Remake on the Green Man Gaming Store
If your internal chainsaw is revving over heading back to the mysterious villages of Resident Evil 4 in the remake, head over to our store and pre-purchase the game now. Las Plagas is out there, only you can put an end to it and rescue the President’s daughter.
