Dead Rising 4 - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] i've covered wars you know well that's great frank because we'll be covering another war on this week's episode of what happened a war of dueling ideologies of dwindling resources and a war of sadly big dumb mistakes this was the war between capcom vancouver formerly blue castle games and capcom japan formerly of capcom japan hot off the heels of the xbox 360's launch the blue and yellow logo showed up in the right place at the right time on the right games putting out both lost planet and dead rising for the first high definition console on the market the warts and all while both were made in house at capcom vancouver's blue castle games were contracted to follow up with a sequel to dead rising after having impressed inafune with their engine tech shortly thereafter 2010 brought us dead rising ii and then case west and then k-0 and then off the record and by then they were probably getting a little tired of dead rising that being said their work on the series was a big success and capcom even bought the company outright re-christening them to capcom vancouver which is certainly a distinction after all the other failed this stuff wanting to transition to making other projects the heads of the studio assigned smaller teams to begin making prototypes for potential ips to pitch to capcom one of these games was codenamed brazil an action horror game that showed more than a passing similarity to dead space after close to two years of work disagreements arose between the production staff and the capcom higher-ups which eventually saw them shutting the whole thing down and the team were then shuffled onto dead rising 3 which was then entering production now unlike the dead rising 3 we know today this early version began life with the intention of it being a 360 and ps3 title as a sort of send-off to both machines this is what happened though and complications quickly arose with this particular title complications that would set off a chain reaction of decisions communication and miscommunication that would have dire consequences down the line vancouver had some big ideas for dr3 but their technology was lagging behind them as their game was supposed to be pushing a seamless no loading open world and a large variety of zombie shredding combo vehicles now while both consoles were struggling to do these features justice the ps3 was being particularly nasty about it and performance was stated to be so unstable that the entire project had a good chance of getting a bullet into the brain fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it microsoft began investing in third-party exclusives for the all-in-one entertainment system the xbox one which saw such classics as ryze son of rome fighter within and other used game ben fodder anyway since the ps3 version was being the primary source of the project's woes capcom took the deal microsoft funneled more money into the project and an extra year in development was given so it would be an exclusive launch title for the one around the same time vancouver again tried pitching a brand new ip to capcom no doubt wanting to diversify their portfolio a little bit because it was starting to really smell like a zombie new frontier was a wildly ambitious space faring action rpg that focused on high-speed vehicles planetary discovery and melee combat six months was spent making a vertical slice which was then presented to capcom unfortunately the project was deemed too ambitious and expensive to produce and since they were unwilling to invest in it the pitch was rejected by the way get used to the words the pitch was rejected that can't be good it's also around the same time that capcom vancouver's original president and founder rob barrett decided to step down from the company for unspecified reasons blue castle had only started producing games around 2007 so barrett's sudden departure was a bit odd and very very foreshadowing in his wake the producers who had brought dead rising 3 to market have been elevated up the company ranks in the interim which is certainly the best option they had at the time but it also marks another important point in this story from here on out the studio was lacking solid leadership now with dr3 in the rear view the team needed to push forward with a new game and in the exclusivity deal with microsoft the computing giant was also given a first refusal of whatever came next for the zombie franchise meaning if capcom was to make a sequel microsoft would get offered it first however in a post the last of us world the xbox would need its own exclusive zombie survival franchise to compete and hey would you look at that we kind of already have one with microsoft producers now on the ground floor and with both them and vancouver enthusiastically embracing change dead rising 4 or known by its codename climber was set to turn the series on its decomposing head after three technically four games back to back all being very similar in design and tone vancouver was thankful to finally work on something fresh now the only people not aware of this sudden change in direction was capcom japan who didn't really oversee vancouver's work on a day-to-day basis only touching base every few months and since they only seemed interested in having the studio pump out more dead rising coupled with one of these long periods of silence between the two led to microsoft and the new head of the climber project josh bridge to start getting very very chummy with each other climber's narrative was going to be unconnected to the previous entries and be far more grounded overall it was also going to place a greater focus on true open world design and not be under the roof of a mall or casino or water park or whatever you'd be stealth killing zombies rather than mowing down hordes of them and while you could still craft and create combo weapons you couldn't make a spike encrusted super soaker that shot electrified fire aside from just the last of us climber was going to take inspiration from other popular zombie media at the time for example the walking dead which would have been on only its fourth season at this time god that feels like centuries ago the team plugged away at an ambitious prototype for most of 2014 with microsoft very much hands-on during its creation eventually however capcom japan wanted to check in and confident in what they had created vancouver presented them the playable prototype which was met with mouths a gape and not the good type of gaping mouse no the uh the the bad one yeah so capcom japan expected a dead rising four to be pretty much like all the other dead risings and since they were not consulted on this new direction they hated it and asked for the brakes to be slammed down on they then ordered vancouver to start over again from scratch i guess the thought process here for josh bridge and the rest of the team was that was better to ask for forgiveness than permission because if they had asked for permission to sort of soft reboot the franchise it would have been rejected like so many times before all three companies then begrudgingly agreed to just make a far safer sequel so josh bridge decided to pitch the safest idea he could think of bringing back frank west placing it in willamette and instituting combo mech suits as the game's big new feature this of course pleased capcom japan who was given the green light to move forward and that's when the disaster really took off now why did this disaster take off i don't know well the main reason was despite vancouver having to start over from square one capcom refused to allocate additional funding or time and microsoft wasn't really in a position to offer that either vancouver had to then use the remaining budget and working days they had spent on climber six months worth on essentially a brand new game this left them roughly a year and a half of real production time as very little work on climber could be reused come october of 2014 capcom decided to take a slightly more aggressive action firing several major producers of the little misbehaving canadian studio including josh bridge essentially punishment for making climber without their knowledge well [ __ ] this was a massive blow to the company and put the rest of the staff on high notice with many fearing that with such major firings the company's days were numbered complicating matters is that those same firings were the leads on frank west's big return leaving the game without any focus for months now due to all these factors much of the staff saw the bloody writing on the wall and decided to leave the company before its inevitable closure with roughly 40 of the original staff cleaning out their desks vancouver's remaining troops assuming that dr4 was going to be cancelled tried pitching other safe projects including but not limited to a small prototype for resident evil x a action-flavored spin-off on capcom's crown jewel this pitch was again rejected by capcom japan as the lukewarm reception of re-6 fanned away the distinct michael bay-esque smell that the series was starting to emanate and here's the devastating one capcom vancouver also pitched a new entry in the long abandoned ip dino crisis for then next-gen machines this didn't even get into the prototyping phase as capcom japan yep you guessed it rejected it outright because this story wasn't sad enough i guess but it doesn't stop there capcom reportedly also had no interest in reviving either on a musha with a brand new game or a side-scrolling action title set in the mega man universe no surprises there no one knows what it's like to be hated with none of these projects getting picked up the remaining staff was resigned to just try and focus on dead rising four with designer joe nichols reportedly stepping up to lead the project even with that though things were very tough going as the studio was still bleeding talent out of every oozing orifice every single month dr4 dragged on one of those talents was annie reed long time writer of the series who left near the start of 2015 with all her work up to that point being rewritten by others which explains the problems that fans had with frank and pretty much every other character can you believe that how [ __ ] naive are you oh that's nice tank bus holy [ __ ] frank this is some atrocity level [ __ ] going on here and the best you can do is crack wise that is unfair i have photographed things and thought about things what in the world [Music] from this point on with the budget and time rapidly draining away many features from previous entries had to be cut or if they were extremely lucky greatly simplified one of these features was psychopaths the studio was struggling with how to implement them because as of 2015 cartoonish parodies of mental illness were seen as a tricky subject to tackle ultimately though it was really the lack of time that killed their inclusion as designing several compelling boss fights would eat up precious time and resources as a compromise maniacs were shoved into the game at the 11th hour mini boss encounters that were greatly scaled back in presentation and ai compared to the psychopaths of old frank west's photography skills increased however as a direct emulation of popular assorted detective visions from batman and a bunch of others vancouver wanted to do even more with this feature designing an almost metroid prime-like search view that would activate certain paths and objects but with time very much not on their side it was cut but wait there's more things that didn't exist at one point there were side stories which focused around serial killers with frank having discovered clues and various crime scenes with the help of his camera any guesses on what happened to this feature any guesses at all cut man another big and some would say biggest missing feature indicative of dead rising was the timer which was a source of tension throughout the games while the decision to cut it was partially due to vancouver microsoft and capcom all not wanting to restrict players anymore from experiencing all of the game the main reason it was cut from the game is that it simply didn't offer enough game all the things we've discussed thus far that were cut while that fed into the staff's inability to craft multiple endings there just wasn't enough stuff to really do in dr4 to warrant it and no time to do it in that's actually pretty meta when you think about it because vancouver themselves had their own big scary timer always counting down all of these massive problems resulted in microsoft taking a good hard look and petitioning for the game to be granted a few extra months unfortunately this time could only be used to reiterate and polish what was in the game rather than add more content into it the dead rising 4 team knew the game would not be embraced by fans due to all the missing um everything but not really being a position to argue kept plugging away with the few precious months they had left okay now this part this this is the part where it actually gets insane during all of this the development of dr4 in fact most of 2015 a small team broke away and began prototyping a dead rising five now i know what some of you are gonna say one why and two why the [ __ ] as we explained in the sonic boom episode if a big studio doesn't have a secondary project lined up and ready to enter full production by the time their current project is done then more firings are expected you need to constantly be grabbing hold of the next branch just as you're letting go of the last one and since capcom japan clearly had no interest in green lighting anything else from the studio it wasn't a carbon copy of the last dead rising the safest bet was more dead rising at this point vancouver's main goal was to just keep everyone working but we are not done yet with good old frank west because unfortunately capcom vancouver made their own decisions that did no favors amongst fans oh [ __ ] [ __ ] perhaps even more so than missing side quests boss fights or a timer recasting the voice actor for frank west tj rotolo in favor of a slightly older sounding voice actor was uh another big misfire for the game the official company line on the matter was given by dead rising product and license manager trent lee amy's we wanted to work with someone to provide a more grizzled older take on frank at this stage dead rising 4 takes place 16 years after the events of the first game as such we decided to cast a new actor for the role that reflected his age while still retaining the charm and humor that made him such a hit with fans we think frank's new voice actor has done a phenomenal job and we can't wait to share more of him with you in the future it's no disrespect to history or previous actors tj has done a bang-up job it was a chance with a new game to progress the franchise as best we can with a different vision just as we see new james bonds over the years now what is the real story on this the backstage sky well it turns out capcom wanted to cast a new actor in the role of frank west yes no money disputes or creative differences here since the team so desperately wanted to try and break away from series trappings wherever they could they simply made changes in areas that wouldn't ruffle feathers at capcom japan uh this was a mistake but it wasn't the last one they would make dr4 stumbled onto the xbox one that holiday season and it was not met with much enthusiasm especially in the already crowded holiday marketplace while series fans view it as some sort of a front to gaming it still posted some respectable reviews but in terms of a standalone main line release it is amongst the lowest rated of the entire franchise just a few notches above the amazingly bad chop to you drop stop skeletons please cover this game soon capcom vancouver then attempted to address the many criticisms the game received through both free and paid dlc this included harder difficulty modes and kooky capcom costumes that had their own move sets all things which didn't really make the game any better the timer was brought back in frank's big package dlc that oh i get it a penis and knowing it might be tough to recoup costs based on only one console's skew dr4 made its way onto the ps quadruple ballin after one year of being an xbox exclusive unfortunately even with all these updates it did little to salvage the dearth of content the bugs the inconsistent performance the hurried and kind of weird writing and characterization of frank as well as countless other smaller things despite all that dead rising 4 was able to amass sales of over a million copies but unfortunately due to the realities of then next-gen development the money lost on the failed climber pitch and the delay the game suffered it didn't come close to achieving a healthy profit the lost goodwill from fans those lower reviews and sales and with a whole host of its own unique problems caused capcom to then pull the plug on dead rising 5 which was a whole other thing if you want more details on that then i urge you to check out liam robertson's fall of capcom vancouver video over at did you know gaming as he goes in depth on dr5 as well as more rejected capcom ip revivals yes folks there's somehow even more anyway we're almost done in 2017 capcom japan finally greenlit a project from the studio and for the first time in its history wasn't dead rising this of course was the massively disliked reboot of puzzle fighter which was massively disliked due to well i mean look at it capcom japan a few months after puzzle fighter's release but before a switchport could be completed finally swung the axe that was floating above vancouver's head and officially shut down the studio the only public statement regarding this was as a result of reviewing titles in development at capcom vancouver capcom has decided to cancel the development projects at this studio and will concentrate development of major titles in japan ever since then there's been neri a gurgle about dead rising returning as capcom has been focusing on their own internal japanese teams which is a good thing of course but it would have been nice if capcom vancouver could have been turned back into blue castle games and have continued to make their own ips from then on out okay i'm gonna be real no one looks great here the vancouver studio should have kept capcom in the loop microsoft maybe shouldn't have butted in capcom japan should have had faith in the studio and maybe allowed the staff to stretch their wings like a little bit this was a disaster that everyone helped to create so after seven years and seven stand-alone dead rising releases the studio behind dead rising was uh dead it's over for us thanks again to liam robertson for his help with this video and if you know of any other shambling husks of video games or movies that have been put through the ringer you'd like to see on the show moan it out in the comments below start grasping and clawing at my twitter or bite into the arteries of the flophouse vip patreon and become a big zombie boss to nominate the subject we'll be targeting next see you next time thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 967,180

Keywords: What Happened, wha happun, Dead Rising 4, Capcom, Matt McMuscles

Id: 6FztJTSrqB8

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020