Resident Evil 7: Biohazard [Review: 9/10] is a great game full of awesome scares and absolutely disgusting moments of skin-crawling terror. Put a PSVR headset on and it cranks the horror all the way up to 11. and keeps it there. With approximately 10% of all players experiencing the game in VR, it’s no exaggeration to call it one of the most important triumphs for our young industry to date. But it wasn’t always going to be a VR game.
Last year before the game released we had the chance to speak with long-time series Producer, Masachika Kawata about not only the move to first-person, but also the inclusion of VR support in this latest entry and what it all means for the future of the franchise.
“Once we saw the success of our Kitchen tech demo and how it proved that horror and VR worked well together, we pursued making the entire game optionally playable in VR,” said Kawata in that interview. Now, with the release of a new behind-the-scenes video (embedded below), we get to see more about that decision and how the Kitchen demo influenced the overall game’s production.
“Since 2012, we’d been researching VR and wanted to make all kinds of content,” said Kazuhiro Takahara, Lead VR Engineer, in the video above. “We were passionate about bringing VR to a big audience with a brand such as Resident Evil and a title like Resident Evil 7.”
After trying out various different experiments with the technology, Capcom tested out the Kitchen demo for the first time at E3 2015. In a brilliant marketing move, Capcom never showed footage of the demo during or after E3 that year, instead only showing players’ reactions to how terrifying and visceral the experience was. In fact, Takahara explains that they even hired an actor to recreate the scene on him in real life so that he could experience everything — such as a knife being held to his face — and make sure the VR version was as accurate (and terrifying) as possible.
Have you played Resident Evil 7 in VR yet? Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
David Jagneaux is UploadVR’s Games Editor. He played the entirety of Resident Evil 7 in VR and totally did not pee his pants. Follow him on Twitter for more.
