Platinum Games’ Hideki Kamiya Reminisces About The Making Of The Original Resident Evil 2

PlatinumGames’ Hideki Kamiya, who was the director of the original Resident Evil 2, recently revealed some behind-the-scenes development stories about the original game in light of its remake. [Thanks, Hachima Kikou!]

Here are the highlights below:

• • Kenichi Iwao, who came up with the story of Resident Evil 2, was also heavily involved with the first game, where he named every single key term in the game that is known today, like ‘Raccoon City’, ‘T Virus’, ‘Tyrant’, and ‘Umbrella’. Iwao also was the main factor for the creation of Alpha and Bravo team in S.T.A.R.S. instead of one whole team. Even the famous ‘Itchy, tasty’ line of text was written by Iwao.

• • Around the time the story for Resident Evil 2 was written, Iwao ended up leaving Capcom, leaving Kamiya and scenario writer Noboru Sugimura to complete the plot based on what Iwao wrote. If Iwao had stayed to complete it, the world of Resident Evil might be very different right now.

• • The current director of the Resident Evil 2 remake, Kazunori Kadoi, was the one who came up with Ada’s name in the first game. When it came for the time to make 2, where Kamiya and the key staff wanted to turn Ada into her own character, they dragged Kadoi into the development meeting to ask what sort of person she was. Kadoi answered that he just randomly wrote ‘Ada’ without much thought.

• • Story writer Sugimura played the first game as an average player, and so loved the world of Resident Evil a lot. He was the one who came up with the story that Ada was a spy sent to infiltrate Umbrella, as well as create Clair as Chris’ sister as a way to connect the two games.

• • While writing the plot for the game, Kamiya stated that Umbrella should be destroyed by this game, “or else it won’t feel complete”. Sugimura told Kamiya, “You can’t destroy Umbrella! We’ve got to make them the series’ biggest villain, just like Spectre in the James Bond series.”

Resident Evil 2 was originally released on the PlayStation.