How Resident Evil 6 Blends Elements From Past Games (Plus Skill Point Details)

Siliconera recently met up with Resident Evil 6 producers Yoshiaki Hirabayashi and Hiroyuki Kobayashi. The meeting started with a peek at Chris fighting a new B.O.W. with his partner Piers. This snake-like creature can turn invisible (or "cloak") and chases players even if you try to escape by running into another room. Afterwards, we talked about how Resident Evil 6 pulls elements from past Resident Evil games and how they designed the partner characters interesting to play as.

After seeing Chris hunt down the snake B.O.W., it kind of feels like his part is more like Resident Evil 5 and Leon’s route is more like the classic Resident Evil games.

Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, Producer: What you saw in this stage, I think it brings back the horror feeling from earlier Resident Evil titles, even though it is in Chris’ stage. I’m sure, as you said, when fans see this they will consider the Leon part of the campaign, the more traditional Resident Evil style horror setting and Chris’ campaign will feel a little more like Resident Evil 5. I think there are horror elements from the older Resident Evil titles and Resident Evil 5.

We tried to make sure that we can incorporate horror elements into all of the campaigns, but there are different types of horror for everyone. There is not one kind of monolithic horror that unites them all. What does unite the campaigns is the fact that they are Resident Evil and we wanted to make sure they all feel like Resident Evil. When people play the game, since they are fans from different entries in the series – some people like [Resident Evil] 5 and some people like [Resident Evil] 1. We wanted to make sure we put stuff in the game that pleases everyone.

When you play Chris’ campaign you may feel its more action oriented and it is, but there are still horror elements in that so it isn’t a straight up shooting campaign.

Yeah, I see the Resident Evil 1 influence with the way the snake appears before the battle begins and hints that a fight is coming, but where does Jake fit in with respect to gameplay?

Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Executive Producer: For Jake’s story, he’s being pursued by a creature called Ustanak. This gigantic creature doesn’t stop for anything, it relentlessly pursues you. We’re hoping to bring back the feeling from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis where the Nemesis creature pursued Jill the whole time. What sets this game apart, is you’re not alone now. You have to escape with Sherry, the creature is pursuing Sherry both of you.

I see you’ve done a lot to differentiate Jake with his hand to hand fighting and grappling attacks from Chris, but what about the partner characters. How are you going to make sure being Sherry is say as fun as playing Jake?

YH: I have to say that even though Sherry is a partner character, we treat all of them as main characters. As you said, we want to make sure there is something fun for each of them. We gave Sherry a stun baton, a special weapon only she can use in the game. It puts her on the same level as Jake in terms of the martial arts techniques that he uses to fight, she can use the stun baton in fights as well to the same effect.

All of the other characters including Helena and Piers, they have unique abilities on they can use so it will be a different experience when playing as one of them.

Piers is supposed to be a sniper, but what about Helena?

HK: Yeah, Piers is a sniper.

YH: Personally, Helena is my favorite character in the group. [Laughs.] I suppose her most prominent feature is her bust size. [Laughs.] If we’re talking about action, she does have special traits. One of the items she can use is the shotgun. When Leon uses the quick shot feature, he uses two handguns for rapid fire. Helena uses a shotgun, which Leon can’t, and when she uses the shotgun for quick fire she can do that multiple times in a row. That’s one feature Helena has that other characters don’t have.

Also, the physical attacks she does are different from Leon’s. There is some overlap of what they can do and out of all the characters they are the closest in resembling each other in terms of what they can do. But, she has a different set of physical attacks, so when you are playing as her you can do different things and it will feel like a different character.

With all of these characters, how is the skill point system going to work? Will you be able to distribute these between characters?

YH: The skill points you gather will be shared across all of the characters. It’s not like you pick them up with Leon and can only use them for Leon. You can them across all of the characters and when you do that you have a list of skills you can unlock. Then you can add those on to characters. You can also change them at anytime during the game.

Let’s say you’re playing Leon’s campaign and you reach a certain point in his campaign where the skills you have equipped aren’t really suitable to what’s going on that moment. You can swap them out for something more useful or advantageous for that point in the game. We envision it that you can take these skill sets and assign them to different characters and say this is how I’m want to use them and we also want to give players the freedom to change them as they will.

To clarify about unlocking skills, if you unlock a skill in Leon’s campaign and it’s available to choose for the characters, you don’t have to re-unlock it for Chris’ campaign.

Resident Evil feels more action packed these days. Do you think we’ll see a traditional horror Resident Evil again or more portable Resident Evil games like Revelations?

HK: We really want to make sure whatever platform we put it on or what system we put it on the Resident Evil game matches that system. We want to be able to fully utilize what that device does for that Resident Evil game. I can’t speak to specifically right now, but when we make announcements in the future you’ll see.