Why Capcom Brought Zombies Back For Resident Evil 6

While zombies were once the main enemy in the Resident Evil series, more recent Resident Evil games introduced fodder like the Ganado in Resident Evil 4 and the Ooze from Resident Evil: Revelations. Why did Capcom bring zombies back for Resident Evil 6?

"We brought zombies back because they’re popular. Everyone loves ’em, that’s why we brought them back," laughed executive producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi when he was speaking to Siliconera."Based on feedback from Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, the fact that there weren’t classic zombies in those games and people really wanted them. We tried to respond to the requests and put them in this game. We tweaked them a bit so they aren’t the same zombies you would expect."

Zombies in say Dead Rising and The Walking Dead tend to be passive until you disturb them. The zombies in Resident Evil 6 are faster and can use weapons if they find them.

"The zombies when you first see them, they shamble around slowly. But, if they spot you or they get closer they break out into a sudden dash and try to grab you. We tried to make this as instantaneous as possible. Some of them will leap out at you," producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi added. For the most part, they are zombies, but they have a bursts of energy here and there that give them a little extra oomph." Resident Evil 6 gives a bit of "oomph" to the playable characters too. You can do an evasive roll to get out of the way and slide to close distance between you and a zombie horde faster.

Hirabayashi continued, "Also for the weapons they use in the game, it’s not that we decided zombies should use weapons per se. It’s just that we wanted to get across the feeling that these used to be people and people either picked up weapons when they were fighting or they used certain objects when they were alive. They have this instinctual ability to pick up these things and use them. It’s not that they are purposely using weapons, it’s in the back of their mind because they used to use weapons before they became zombies."

"There’s another way you can interact with zombies that we haven’t really shown yet. That’s something when you’re fighting zombies that will be a key component and it’s something we’ll show going forward," Hirabayashi teased.