Resident Evil 4 Devs Talk About Making the Remake Scarier Than the Original

Capcom has never been afraid to rip up the rulebook and made radical changes with its Resident Evil remakes, so naturally, there’s plenty of curiosity around how the company is approaching the upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake, especially given the immense legacy of the original game. From new enemies and fresh new gameplay mechanics to changes to the story and more, it certainly seems like the remake is improving upon the original game in a variety of ways, and another aspect that the development team has tried to enhance is the scariness of the experience.

In an interview with Game Informer, the remake’s co-director Yasuhiro Ampo explained that heightening the tension by honing in on survival horror gameplay mechanics was one of the biggest goals for the development team, especially since they felt the general structure and flow of the original game weren’t areas that needed much improvement.

“The flow of the original game itself is incredibly well done,” Ampo said. “For instance, the structure, like [the] way and order enemies appear. For that general framework, there wasn’t a lot we wanted to change. But we felt we could take each element and go deeper. So our approach was, ‘could we make the horror elements of the original scarier?’ In short, we were always conscious of how to implement more variation.”

Ampo went on to say that the team never set out to replicate the freshness and novelty of the original Resident Evil 4, and knowing that doing so wouldn’t be possible in today’s landscape anyway, they instead set out to “create a new form of RE game.”

“When the original came out, I think one of the biggest factors was how fresh the mechanics were,” he said. “We knew from the start that in today’s landscape, it wouldn’t be possible to duplicate that. We never set that as a goal. Instead, our goal was to implement evolutions that have occurred since the original released, and create a new form of RE game. If we could do that, we felt players would enjoy it. That’s the direction we decided on.”

Resident Evil 4 is due out on March 24 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PC.