Feels like Capcom went into the RE revival with a solid strategy and I couldn't be happier. In 10 years we got to watch countless live services make a boatload of money but completely ruin the...
Feels like Capcom went into the RE revival with a solid strategy and I couldn't be happier. In 10 years we got to watch countless live services make a boatload of money but completely ruin the development teams behind them. And at the same time there's been so many mega projects that have no chance of turning a profit.
Then since 2016 theres been 6 RE games that are all doing their own thing. 7 rediscovered the the horror house roots with a surprisingly intimate and horrific FPS experience. Remakes 2 and 3 did a lot to get new players up to speed and deliver all the fan-service to long time fans. 8 fully empraced the campy horror carnival and then 4 remake took it home as my favorite action shooter of all time.
Every game had its issues and missteps but it's never the same problems for me between games. There's experiments, adjustments and evolution through the series and now I'm more curious on where they are going. With the consistency, I'm tempted to just avoid all the upcoming coverage and go in blind on release. (Not ever going to pre-order incase of any major performance issues that could come up)
On the whole, just happy that Capcom is seeing success by just delivering games. Who would have guessed its a strategy for a games company. DMC, Ace Attorney, Monster Hunter, Dragons Dogma and their fighting games are all in a pretty good spot and Pragmata is hitting all the right sci-fi notes for me. Now they just need to come clean about Exo Primal being a smokescreen to create dinosaur assets and just give us Dino Crisis 2 Remake already.
I liked your post but my eyebrows raised a bit at this statement. Not necessarily because you're wrong, but because it made me think if they really are in a good spot. The Monster Hunter and...
are all in a pretty good spot
I liked your post but my eyebrows raised a bit at this statement. Not necessarily because you're wrong, but because it made me think if they really are in a good spot.
The Monster Hunter and Dragons Dogma games are selling well, they're popular, they capture old and new audiences, introduce new and interesting things.. but show some serious cracks in the capabilities of their RE Engine. Which is something Capcom must address if they want to keep this rather successful streak going.
So far it's been somewhat confined to the larger open world type games, while RE games themselves have been performing well. I'd hold off on the new RE until at least the performance seems to be at acceptable levels.
Edit: Was trying to find the slide decks from the Capcom convention to share. Turns out they have all the info on their website. Recommend the Past and Future of REEngine and Philosophy of...
Edit: Was trying to find the slide decks from the Capcom convention to share. Turns out they have all the info on their website.
Recommend the Past and Future of REEngine and Philosophy of REEngine to get an idea of how they see the engine in the business. The rest is super heavy technical discussions if you're into that.
RE Engine is a fascinating tool because it's not exactly comparable to how we consider other popular engines. We've seen a lot of studios jump to Unreal and the rational is on the fidelity or workflow or potential talent pool and there's all the AI stuff that was recently showcased. Even player discussions is around an engines rendering capabilities, upscaling and performance.
RE engine is a different beast entirely. It's not primarily built around the ability to generate high poly graphics or advanced lighting or large open worlds. And it's definitely not ment to go to market with a storefront generating licensing revenue. But in 10 years Capcom effectively doubled the codebase REE and scaled the team to almost 200 full time, dedicated engine developers. Its because RE Engine is literally Capcoms entire game development pipeline and dictates the structure of dev teams.
Around the start of last year Capcom had a big Conference to share their development methodology and I tried to stay up for some of it. My notes from then are a mess, but from what I can recall: The Engine team maintains a library of modules to fulfill potential requirements. Some of them are off the shelf until they can make something better in house. Everything from Rendering to Physics to UI, Sound, Scripting and a dozen other scribbles I can't read.
A big part of a new games Kick Off involves the game devs and engine devs working out which modules meet the creative requirements. Engine team assembles a custom engine out of the agreed modules and they work to support/facilitate game dev. RE Engine is there to integrate all these modules into a standard C# codebase, stay compatible with new and old hardware and to make the game look/perform well enough.
Big game dev is simmilar in how studios need to extend the engine to meet specialized requirements. But unless youre EA or Microsoft, Epic is not going to build and maintain your intergrations or being on hand to adress everyday issues. My buddy was considering a UE4 to UE5 upgrade for a project that was pretty early on and they gave up because Epic Support could not be bothered to answer an email.
Its not all so ideal RE Engine either. They mentioned issues with documentation and onboarding new hires/contractors. There's also problems handling very large assets and maintaining complex package sets across distributed teams. And theres also the problem of more complex games demanding more integrations to be managed. It's a really interesting system and is more in line with older style game dev where a lot teams opted for bespoke engines.
So all that context in mind, it feels somewhat misguided to attribute the problems in capcom games to just the engine. It's a big part of the business that does get a lot of attention and seems well run. Something to keep in mind is that the big, obvious technical issues often stem from human problems. It's not like devs just didn't know or want to make a bad game. The best performance and netcode are not fixing the issues people have with Dragons Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds. DD2 was made by 300 people in a cave through the pandemic and is not getting any support, dispite a strong showing. And Wilds looks like the follow up to World, but it feels more basic like Rise and lost a lot of hardcore players to the previous game. Next to other games, their opening numbers and even MH World, it looks dead. Technical fixes would help, but they are still mid quality titles that were boosted by hype. They really need content injections, gameplay tweaks and community management. That's business decisions and resource allocation that Capcom leadership is not doing.
I saw a lot of commentary online about some sort of bait and switch, in a good way, about the trailer. Can someone more familiar with the series give me the short explanation?
I saw a lot of commentary online about some sort of bait and switch, in a good way, about the trailer. Can someone more familiar with the series give me the short explanation?
I can, I was there. There was a fair bit of hype beforehand about there being a re9 reveal before the SGF. So during the SGF, the voice actress behind Lady Dimitrescu from RE8 basically announced...
I can, I was there.
There was a fair bit of hype beforehand about there being a re9 reveal before the SGF.
So during the SGF, the voice actress behind Lady Dimitrescu from RE8 basically announced the RE titles are on sale... Not exactly all that amazing.
Then later on in the show, Geoff Keighley said there was a special announcement from the director of the upcoming Resident Evil game. Man appears on screen and says "please be patient, wait a while. It will be available in a blink of an eye" or something to that effect.
LOADS of people were supremely pissed. The chat basically just flat out gave up on RE8 announcement.
Then towards the end, Geoff Keighley announces there is one more announcement and it's by a big studio. Some people think this is Valve with HL3.
And then it was the above trailer, and all(?) was forgiven.
Man I'm so psyched for this game! To be fair, in the past few years I've really gotten into the RE franchise (only 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8) but man they are such fun and kind of unique games - at least...
Man I'm so psyched for this game!
To be fair, in the past few years I've really gotten into the RE franchise (only 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8) but man they are such fun and kind of unique games - at least tonally - from each other.
Today I played about 10min of RE0 and decided that I just wasn't feeling it. Iv played the first game and one of the revelations games. So I'm gonna get RE 4 and keep going from there coz as you...
Today I played about 10min of RE0 and decided that I just wasn't feeling it. Iv played the first game and one of the revelations games. So I'm gonna get RE 4 and keep going from there coz as you say they are unique games that I feel I want to experience.
As someone who had never touched an RE game until I met someone who forced them onto me, the RE2 remake slapped. I think it's my favorite of the ones I've played: 2, 3, & 4 remakes, 5, and 6.
As someone who had never touched an RE game until I met someone who forced them onto me, the RE2 remake slapped. I think it's my favorite of the ones I've played: 2, 3, & 4 remakes, 5, and 6.
I just had a look and most of them seem to work on the steamdeck so I might try the newer ones. I remember watching a let's play of 7 which was terrifying so I'm not sure how I will do with them haha
I just had a look and most of them seem to work on the steamdeck so I might try the newer ones. I remember watching a let's play of 7 which was terrifying so I'm not sure how I will do with them haha
I haven't gotten around to watching this yet, given the insane amounts of hype i've heard, i'm sorta shocked how "eh" the trailer is? It's pretty but without any game play it's hard for me to care...
I haven't gotten around to watching this yet, given the insane amounts of hype i've heard, i'm sorta shocked how "eh" the trailer is?
It's pretty but without any game play it's hard for me to care at all. Especially for a RE game.
Feels like Capcom went into the RE revival with a solid strategy and I couldn't be happier. In 10 years we got to watch countless live services make a boatload of money but completely ruin the development teams behind them. And at the same time there's been so many mega projects that have no chance of turning a profit.
Then since 2016 theres been 6 RE games that are all doing their own thing. 7 rediscovered the the horror house roots with a surprisingly intimate and horrific FPS experience. Remakes 2 and 3 did a lot to get new players up to speed and deliver all the fan-service to long time fans. 8 fully empraced the campy horror carnival and then 4 remake took it home as my favorite action shooter of all time.
Every game had its issues and missteps but it's never the same problems for me between games. There's experiments, adjustments and evolution through the series and now I'm more curious on where they are going. With the consistency, I'm tempted to just avoid all the upcoming coverage and go in blind on release. (Not ever going to pre-order incase of any major performance issues that could come up)
On the whole, just happy that Capcom is seeing success by just delivering games. Who would have guessed its a strategy for a games company. DMC, Ace Attorney, Monster Hunter, Dragons Dogma and their fighting games are all in a pretty good spot and Pragmata is hitting all the right sci-fi notes for me. Now they just need to come clean about Exo Primal being a smokescreen to create dinosaur assets and just give us Dino Crisis 2 Remake already.
I liked your post but my eyebrows raised a bit at this statement. Not necessarily because you're wrong, but because it made me think if they really are in a good spot.
The Monster Hunter and Dragons Dogma games are selling well, they're popular, they capture old and new audiences, introduce new and interesting things.. but show some serious cracks in the capabilities of their RE Engine. Which is something Capcom must address if they want to keep this rather successful streak going.
So far it's been somewhat confined to the larger open world type games, while RE games themselves have been performing well. I'd hold off on the new RE until at least the performance seems to be at acceptable levels.
Edit: Was trying to find the slide decks from the Capcom convention to share. Turns out they have all the info on their website.
Recommend the Past and Future of REEngine and Philosophy of REEngine to get an idea of how they see the engine in the business. The rest is super heavy technical discussions if you're into that.
RE Engine is a fascinating tool because it's not exactly comparable to how we consider other popular engines. We've seen a lot of studios jump to Unreal and the rational is on the fidelity or workflow or potential talent pool and there's all the AI stuff that was recently showcased. Even player discussions is around an engines rendering capabilities, upscaling and performance.
RE engine is a different beast entirely. It's not primarily built around the ability to generate high poly graphics or advanced lighting or large open worlds. And it's definitely not ment to go to market with a storefront generating licensing revenue. But in 10 years Capcom effectively doubled the codebase REE and scaled the team to almost 200 full time, dedicated engine developers. Its because RE Engine is literally Capcoms entire game development pipeline and dictates the structure of dev teams.
Around the start of last year Capcom had a big Conference to share their development methodology and I tried to stay up for some of it. My notes from then are a mess, but from what I can recall: The Engine team maintains a library of modules to fulfill potential requirements. Some of them are off the shelf until they can make something better in house. Everything from Rendering to Physics to UI, Sound, Scripting and a dozen other scribbles I can't read.
A big part of a new games Kick Off involves the game devs and engine devs working out which modules meet the creative requirements. Engine team assembles a custom engine out of the agreed modules and they work to support/facilitate game dev. RE Engine is there to integrate all these modules into a standard C# codebase, stay compatible with new and old hardware and to make the game look/perform well enough.
Big game dev is simmilar in how studios need to extend the engine to meet specialized requirements. But unless youre EA or Microsoft, Epic is not going to build and maintain your intergrations or being on hand to adress everyday issues. My buddy was considering a UE4 to UE5 upgrade for a project that was pretty early on and they gave up because Epic Support could not be bothered to answer an email.
Its not all so ideal RE Engine either. They mentioned issues with documentation and onboarding new hires/contractors. There's also problems handling very large assets and maintaining complex package sets across distributed teams. And theres also the problem of more complex games demanding more integrations to be managed. It's a really interesting system and is more in line with older style game dev where a lot teams opted for bespoke engines.
So all that context in mind, it feels somewhat misguided to attribute the problems in capcom games to just the engine. It's a big part of the business that does get a lot of attention and seems well run. Something to keep in mind is that the big, obvious technical issues often stem from human problems. It's not like devs just didn't know or want to make a bad game. The best performance and netcode are not fixing the issues people have with Dragons Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds. DD2 was made by 300 people in a cave through the pandemic and is not getting any support, dispite a strong showing. And Wilds looks like the follow up to World, but it feels more basic like Rise and lost a lot of hardcore players to the previous game. Next to other games, their opening numbers and even MH World, it looks dead. Technical fixes would help, but they are still mid quality titles that were boosted by hype. They really need content injections, gameplay tweaks and community management. That's business decisions and resource allocation that Capcom leadership is not doing.
I saw a lot of commentary online about some sort of bait and switch, in a good way, about the trailer. Can someone more familiar with the series give me the short explanation?
I can, I was there.
There was a fair bit of hype beforehand about there being a re9 reveal before the SGF.
So during the SGF, the voice actress behind Lady Dimitrescu from RE8 basically announced the RE titles are on sale... Not exactly all that amazing.
Then later on in the show, Geoff Keighley said there was a special announcement from the director of the upcoming Resident Evil game. Man appears on screen and says "please be patient, wait a while. It will be available in a blink of an eye" or something to that effect.
LOADS of people were supremely pissed. The chat basically just flat out gave up on RE8 announcement.
Then towards the end, Geoff Keighley announces there is one more announcement and it's by a big studio. Some people think this is Valve with HL3.
And then it was the above trailer, and all(?) was forgiven.
I hope that was summarised enough...
Excellent! Thanks, just feeling a little game reveal FOMO. :D
Man I'm so psyched for this game!
To be fair, in the past few years I've really gotten into the RE franchise (only 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8) but man they are such fun and kind of unique games - at least tonally - from each other.
Can't wait to seek my teeth into this one...
Today I played about 10min of RE0 and decided that I just wasn't feeling it. Iv played the first game and one of the revelations games. So I'm gonna get RE 4 and keep going from there coz as you say they are unique games that I feel I want to experience.
As someone who had never touched an RE game until I met someone who forced them onto me, the RE2 remake slapped. I think it's my favorite of the ones I've played: 2, 3, & 4 remakes, 5, and 6.
I just had a look and most of them seem to work on the steamdeck so I might try the newer ones. I remember watching a let's play of 7 which was terrifying so I'm not sure how I will do with them haha
I haven't gotten around to watching this yet, given the insane amounts of hype i've heard, i'm sorta shocked how "eh" the trailer is?
It's pretty but without any game play it's hard for me to care at all. Especially for a RE game.