The 'Resident Evil 4' Remake's Story Changes Sound Bonkers

Ever since the release of the massively successful Resident Evil 2 remake that fans have been theorizing about the possibility of one day being blessed by a remake of Resident Evil 4. While we have no official confirmation yet, we're pretty confident that we can now put together a case strong enough to assure everyone that RE4 really will return and as a very different beast.

Exhibit A comes from Shinji Mikami, a man who seems to have previously worked in the series in the capacity of director and creator. Mikami recently gave an interview where he conveniently talks about how he wishes a new team would tackle a hypothetical remake. The most surprising tidbit to come out of the interview is Mikami's admittance that despite being very happy with the game itself, he's never been happy about the story. He hopes the hypothetical new team working on the also hypothetical new game does a better job, something that probably won't be hard considering how his team only had a little over two weeks to come up with the game's entire story.

Luckily, the story has never been the series's strongest aspect, so most gamers still regard Resident Evil 4 as the finest RE of all time. And they're right. Resident Evil 4 managed not only to elevate the horror genre it had created but also to introduce that awesome over-the-shoulder perspective that you see in most critically acclaimed narrative-focused games nowadays. 

If there's one thing fans rightly complain about RE4 is how the series' horror-oriented segments gave way to more action-focused set-pieces, and the unintentional camp gave way to intentional camp. Fans proved that they missed the horror by making the more traditionally horrifying Resident Evil 2 remake one of Capcom's best-selling games of all time. 

That takes us to Exhibit B, a cool scoop that the good people at Fanbyte got that claims Capcom actually did try to get Mikami to work on the remake, but he was too busy with another project. He didn't, however, abandon Capcom without telling the actually real new dev team how he'd improve the game's story. 

Resident Evil 4 didn't come out as a masterpiece out of nowhere. The game's development was a nightmare that resulted in its cancelation three times before becoming the game that we know. And the thing about the canceled versions is that while they didn't ultimately work as a whole, they still did feature a lot more horror-focused elements Mikami didn't want to leave behind. The trailer for one of the failed versions of the game, now known just as the “Castle Version,” was impressive as all hell back in 2002 and still holds up today.

So they just said screw it decided to bring it all back. Yeah, the biggest bombshell to come out of the scoop is that the upcoming Resident Evil 4 won't be just a remake of the game we all know and love, but apparently a combination of the best elements from the four different versions of the game. Normally, apprehension might take hold of fans with such a risky approach to something that would be an easy payday for the franchise otherwise, but the truth is I just couldn't be more hyped about this absolute Spider-Man No Way Home-type move.

Top Image: Capcom