Resident Evil 7 is so far the best – and for many only – example of how great VR can be for gaming. It’s especially surprising, since the game wasn’t actually conceived with VR in mind- the decision to add VR to it came later into development. Adding VR to the proceedings also ended up complicating the game’s development quite a bit.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Capcom’s Lead VR Engineer Kazuhiro Takahara discussed what VR development was like. “We ran into a variety of challenges: not being able to use prior development experience as a foundation, not being able to lean on still-camera cut-scenes, not being able to rely on old control scheme conventions,” he said. “Because of this, ‘it feels like working on two games’ was a pretty common sentiment felt by the development staff.”
And indeed, in VR, traditional game design paradigms no longer hold- so one can see how this must have been difficult for Capcom. One must also give them credit for tackling this head on when no one else in the industry would, and for doing such a stellar job with it. Resident Evil 7 is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation VR.
