Capcom recently officially announced that the remake of Resident Evil 3 is coming out in April 2020, which has taken many by surprise because it’s coming so quickly after this year’s excellent Resident Evil 2, with the two being separated by just fourteen months. But if this new report is to be be be believed, the two remakes were originally meant to launch together, as a single release in one package.
Speaking after yesterday’s State of Play on Kinda Funny Games, Imran Khan – formerly of Game Informer – said that according to people he knows at Capcom, the remakes for Resident Evil 2 and 3 were originally meant to be released together, but that the project started suffering multiple delays- Resident Evil 2 was supposed to be out a whole year earlier, in fact. In order to avoid any more delays, Capcom decided to split the two releases, and also decided to add Resident Evil: Resistance to Resident Evil 3, so they could bette justify it as a separate release.
“Talking to people who are close to Capcom, from what I understand, [RE3] and Resident Evil 2 were originally a part of one package, but it was too much work,” he said. “The games were getting delayed and Resident Evil 2 was supposed to be released a year earlier than it did. So they split them up. That’s why [RE3’s remake] is coming so quickly.”
“I think this has been worked on for three years,” Khan added. “It was part of that initial package originally, that’s why they’re combining it with Project Resistance, [which was] initially another game that Capcom picked up and put the Resident Evil license on. They were like, ‘well, if we can justify [RE3] coming so soon…’ So they’re putting it together.”
It certainly explains how Resident Evil 3 is coming so quickly after 2, and still managing to look as polished as it did in the little we saw of it yesterday. It also makes sense because the two games are so similar in nature, and remaking them together as one project doesn’t seem like such an outlandish idea. This is unconfirmed, of course, but Khan has a proven track record with industry news, so there’s credibility to this for sure.
Resident Evil 3 is out on April 3, 2020 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and it’s apparently being co-developed by an entirely new studio backed by Capcom. Check out some more details and bit of new gameplay footage through here.