Resident Evil 4 : Complete History & Cut Content

a beloved classic and one of the best Resident Evil games to date Resident Evil 4 a game that spans multiple generations and numerous consoles considered by many one of the best games ever made in fact but the Beloved horror game had a deep history of constantly changing this leading it to have four prior builds before coming to what we know two of which even spun off into their own games and all leading into drama around a failed GameCube exclusivity deal a phase that sets it so far apart from the final game that many even call it Resident Evil 3.5 and so in this special we shall look back on the history and beta unused content of Resident Evil 4 following the near end of Resident Evil 2's development in late 1997 plans were in place to make several new Resident Evil games one being branded as a true sequel featuring Claire Redfield one of the two protagonists of resident Evil 2 the other being a spin-off entry called Resident Evil 1.9 featuring Jill Valentine of Resident Evil 1 but in addition another Resident Evil was planned to portray the soldier hunk from the fourth survival scenario of Resident Evil 2 on a cruise ship as an alternate sequel to Resident Evil 2 all planned for the PlayStation 1 except for the true sequel that was being made for the Dreamcast but there was one problem Sony had bared for the limited rights of the Resident Evil 3 name for its own console already this posed a problem for Capcom as the true sequel which was being made for the Sega Dreamcast couldn't be called that at that point the alternate sequel was to be given that title instead while the Dreamcast game was now simply titled as Resident Evil Code Veronica the game was to take place this time on a cruise ship with hunk being caught in a viral outbreak while on a mission to retrieve the G virus this setting was being made as a means to keep the series fresh after exploring a mansion and the city as its setting however by mid 1998 the Sony PlayStation 2 was revealed this put pressure on Capcom on the idea of releasing this alternate sequel so close to the PlayStation 2's launch due to how far behind it was in development as it could kill its sails as such the series creator and producer Shinji Mami was tasked with pushing the game to the PlayStation 2 Hideki cama who was the director of this alternate Sequel and also the director of Resident Evil 2 followed suit with this push to the Next Generation Hardware however instead of continuing the same story it was scrapped all together as hii chya wish to start over with the idea of utilizing the PlayStation 2's hardware for the story of this Resident Evil 3 game but with this game restarting development as of mid 1998 it would mean that it could take a while for a main entry to hit the market as a result Capcom instead rebranded Resident Evil 1.9 as Resident Evil 3 Nemesis and so the brainchild of Hideki CIA was now officially going to be called Resident Evil 4 the new Resident Evil 4 was officially announced to exist to the public by Shinji mikami in December of 1999 along with this development for the PlayStation 2 the team start to plan out the potential of this new game with Code Veronica story already somewhat exploring the inner workings of the Umbrella Corporation the company that had plagued the cast in the series up to then an idea was being made to further expand on it by directly tackling the family that runs the company the Spencers the story was being penned by noboru sugimura who wrote A critically claimed Resident Evil 2 and it featured a story that involved the protagonist Tony Redgraves a police officer who is seemingly an invincible man with superhuman strength and intellect all of which was attained due to the progenitor virus by umbrella's biotechnology a virus believed to be Millions if not billions of years old the story would involve Tony uncovering the mysteries of his character that would lead him to Malay Island the home of the umbrella facility this would eventually lead into the revelation of Tony being the son of Oswell e Spencer the founder of umbrella as well as a plotline featuring Tony's twin brother Paul Redgraves the major catch for all this however was that Hideki kmya wanted Tony and the game to be a cool and stylish action game instead the departure went as far as to get rid of the fixed camera angles and the pre-rendered backgrounds that the series had been known for as it just would not look cool enough for Tony Redgraves on screen in fact he was designed to have a strong appearance dressed in red and black and employed a heroic look with his trench coat topped that off with not only we wiing regular Firearms but also demonic weapons all in an attempt to make the player feel even cooler when wielding them against the enemy for inspiration the team visited Europe to study Gothic architecture through Spade England and Welsh castles all in order to build the maps of the game of course the team soon took notice of how much of a departure this was from regular Resident Evil convention this even included series producer Shinji Mami who felt it had strayed too far off course from being a survival horror game eventually mikami convinced the staff and Hideki Kamya to make this into a brand new franchise instead and so this version of Resident Evil 4 was now rebranded as Devil May Cry with the game now being its own series Tony redg Graves became Dante who is now written as a half demon and was incredibly strong and Invincible due to his demonic powers and seemingly Paul Redgraves became Virgil or in this case Neo on Angelo the rest of the cast stayed the same safe for some redesigns especially the female lead Trish who had many designs from rather refined to something a lot closer to the final DMC design meanwhile Dante's parents and any plots around the Umbrella Corporation were written out entirely for a more demonic story about the sons of Sparta with that many of the enemies that did appear in the build also did appear in Devil May Cry but prior to that they had many ties to the Resident Evil Mythos 2 such as the blades which were to be a hunter variant this cut G crow that was to be a g virus infected Crow and the undead humans as with series tradition except even more monstrous many of the others were cut all together and so with Resident Evil 4 becoming Devil May Cry development had to restart again in 2001 this time with designer Hiroshi shibat taking the director chair despite sugiura's story becoming Devil May Cry he was brought back to write the story of Resident Evil 4 again and this time one that was much more in line with previous entries however sugur kept a lot of the major plot points from that take including the Spencer castle and the progenitor virus the protagonist this time being the return of the resid eval 2 protagonist Leon S Kennedy who had since been conscripted into the US Army and specifically within an elite anti- umbrella team participating in raiding the Spencer castle where umbrella's headquarters are are located the operation however goes in the wrong direction as the team encounters a new B called the black fog surprisingly not made by umbrella but by their competition hcf which is run by the serious antagonist Albert Wesker as a means of an attack on umbrella and with this anti- umbrella team getting caught up in their Feud Leon in this process is the one so Survivor but gets infected with a retrov virus as such Leon's battle is to survive Ive and resist mutation while exploring the castle in his exploration many of umbrella's secrets are revealed amongst which is Leon finding a girl who was being experimented on and protected by a b dog she could control and would end up joining as a second playable character along with those further secrets are explored including the remains of an ancient underground civilization where the progenitor virus is isolated within its superhuman King this all pointing to how umbrella was just a cover for Oswell Spencer as an attempt to utilize the progenitor virus to achieve immortality the Leon of this build looks quite evolved from his Resident Evil 2 build by sporting his famous leather coat and black clothing looking very similar to his final take but at this point his coat had a rather distinct puffy collar as opposed to the final games in addition it appears further remnants of kamama stylish build did stay here as the use of 3D backgrounds as opposed to pre-rendered ones were now a Mainstay while the game was initially being built to be ported to other consoles down the road Shinji mukami had plans to make this game a Nintendo GameCube exclusive mami's view on the PlayStation 2 at the time were that Sony was focusing less and less on gaming due to the incorporation of the DVD functionality as such mikami wished to support Nintendo as they not only were making a gaming only machine but even using proprietory mini discs opposite of regular video DVDs with development shifting to the GameCube developers were entering unfamiliar ground and had a tough time as a result Nintendo did however assist them in learning the development tools something that bolstered mami's support for the company concurrently the old cancel Resident Evil 0 from the 64 disc drive and a remake of Resident Evil one were being made for the GameCube the Remake specifically became grounds to test game assets from Resident Evil for on eventually on September 13 2001 Shinji mukami held a press conference where he announced that the Resident Evil numbered series was now to be made exclusive to the GameCube with ports of Resident Evil 2 3 and code Veronica to follow with such a strong tied to Nintendo now Capcom doubled down on mami's push forward the GameCube support by announcing the Capcom 5 deal this was a deal that would make five Capcom games exclusive to the GameCube in addition to Resident Evil 4 these included Beautiful Joe dead Phoenix p03 and killer 7 in fact Shinji mikami was so confident about keeping the series exclusive to the GameCube that in an interview in 2002 he literally stated that Resident Evil 4 will definitely release only on the GameCube if it comes out to another console I will cut my head off but as the team continued with developing what many dub as the castle build problems were coming up with the star of the game the black fog Enemy being that it was a mass of floating tentacles it was too much for the GameCube to handle and they scrambled to find the work around they devis to change the story entirely once again this time to one featuring Leon entering hallucinations and encountering enemies through a side effect of his mutation this would lead into the next build of the game hallucination and if you've been enjoying this video so far give it a thumbs up and subscribe to further support us and keep creating new videos the castle build was now being scrapped with the script in fact being given to another Capcom production team that utilized it to make the game called Haunting Ground a spin-off entry of the Clock Tower series the second game that spawned from Resident Evil 4's development in place of sugiura Resident Evil 3's writer yasuhisa kawamura stepped in to write the next take of this game with inspiration taken from the film Lost Souls which featured hallucination upon entering a restroom and having the room changed drastically hallucinations were to take the place of the black fog B this time around in this case much like the previous build Leon was still infected with the virus but the effects are what lead to Leon seeing the hallucination with this early story ideas in mind 2003 kicked off with the hallucination build the story would still appear to take place in a castle-like structure which may be the Spencer estate during exploration hallucinations would suddenly spring up which would tint the room in a Blue Fog an inspiration taken from John Carpenters the fog in the state of hallucination the room would warp and lead to monsters and paranormal beings to be seen and encountered these include everything from killer dolls a knight with an axe and even a ghost with a hooked arm which popularly has given this the fan name of hookman the interesting part is that this build used a traditional fixed camera angles when simply exploring but switched to an over the-shoulder angle when aiming your gun however another round of technical problems came up with this build in order to quickly switch between a regular room and a hallucinated version of the room as both were in fact two separately designed rooms both had to be loaded at once this was made with the idea of using up all of the gamecube's ram but what wasn't factored in were the enemies at most they were able to load in only one enemy something the demo alone showed far more of therefore this was another build that had to be scrapped by late 2003 with many of these fresh ideas failing for either being too technically demanding or outright different the team start to look back to the past back to using zombies again up to this point zombies were nowhere to be seen as it was just purely wild BS or even ghosts but this was an idea that Shinji Mami despised he felt that zombies were becoming too boring for the established fan base at this point and you know what he may have been right during development up to then the Resident Evil 1 remake was released on the GameCube and met with critical success but commercially it was an absolute failure becoming the worst selling game in the franchise to date matters only grew worse as Resident Evil Zero sold even worse while some may blame the exclusivity to the GameCube a console with a small install base as a reason to Shinji Mami this was evidence enough that the series was growing stagnant and losing its audience due to the repetition of zombies this as such led to Shinji Mami once again hitting the brakes and restarting development while not much more is known about the build there was one crucial enemy made for this build that would impact development later called the daba man which was in fact a non-zombie human enemy daba which means pack horse which might have meant that these humans were carrying something whether it be a virus or or maybe even a parasite something that is Sinister with Shinji Mami back to the idea of Reinventing the series it became a welcome change to much of the staff who also had felt the series was getting too stagnant as the game producer hero Yuki Kobayashi stated the game was stuck in a cookie cutter mold with shackles holding us down in only 3 weeks mikami wrote the story himself removing the focus from umbrella this time and bringing more of an action Focus to the series while making the camera entirely over the shoulder while many were glad some staff members weren't thrilled about the series changing so much while Leon was kept from the previous builds the other element that was brought over were the human elements from the zombie build called the daaman or now known as the ganados gonado translates to livestock a meaning that follows a similar illusion to daba which means pack horse in this context in this case both were potentially referenced as the carrier of something such as a parasite that would be eating them alive the parasite called L plaga is a virus developed by the new organization of the game lost illuminato a company that wasn't umbrella for a change and a clear departure from the normal viral infections of the series even so the human enemy still would be very aggressive much like zombies but the major difference being that they would still retain their human intelligence leaning them to work collectively use weapons and even be able to dodge and run on top of that there are a lot more of them at once in comparison to any zombie horde prior but that one may be more attributed to the power of the Next Generation consoles the earliest iteration of them might have been these parasite humans looking very zombie like but still called humans here this may in fact even be a carryover from the zombie build that they had called ad daam man and apparently it was going to have some very wild mutations at that reminding one of the mutations that William Burkin faced in Resident Evil 2 when infected with the G virus everything from multiple eyes and random spots of the body to heavy tentacles bulky bodies and even an insectoid design on the bottom with the human on top a female variant also existed with four pieces of art available starting with a regular human but followed by three mutations that included one with a giant bone arm to an armless design with a massively dangerous mouth and even a twin-headed version with forearms these designs might have been inspired by the transformations of Lisa Trevor in the Resident Evil 1 remake with how similar the mutations are showcasing how both the male and female variety may have been a throwback to such mutations eventually though the modern gonado designs were made that looked far more human and nowhere near as grotesque or deformed however the modern gados themselves even had many designs that were considered But ultimately rejected many which were rather out of this world first is the beta version of the garador enemies which in fact were two different enemies at first one is an armored gonado which had both a Slimmer and a bulkier design and complete with the Lost illuminados Insignia the other being the Assassin bear claw man a shirtless gonado featuring Long Claws of the final garador enemy a rather insane one is the one called the super Dynamite Man a gonado strapped with many explosives that would rush in for a ComiCon attack with Leon another is The Arcanist an enemy with two designs both featuring three heads but one with a black robe and the other with a white one the white robed one appearing to have a tentacle capable of spraying gas next are a pair of Arabic styled ones one featuring a rugged male with a turban called the bound slave and the other a female one with a veil tight clothes and a tentacle coming for her right arm then we have this Harlequin looking gonado another female and this one with with a flamberg sword but moving on to the Zealot variety of the granados there are also some female zealots in Lally plan 2 featuring an elaborate mask that covered their face this followed by the mouth hidden Zealot that also appeared to be another cut female variety carrying a scythe like many of the lower level zealots from the final game now what is interesting is that a higher level cultist such as this one here was even planned to have a scythe too a tattooed variety was also planned whereby they had their arms exposed but with the Insignia tattooed all over it a Showcase of their devotion this one however weared a Bine skull instead the typical ram skull that the other higher ranking zealots do and then there is one higher ranking Zealot who would be wielding a torch now aside from gonad other enemies were being planned too all of course in some ways incorporating the L plaga parasite one such enemy is the regenerators which were designed as a b of the Lost illuminat cult featuring many plaga parasites as the name suggests these enemies were ones that would regenerate continuously until all the parasites were killed using the inferred scope these were designed as a means to truly keep the survival horror mechanic of the series alive however the regenerator had a prototype that were heavily shaped shifters too called the lurching man looking a lot bulkier than their final counterpart related to another B looking enemy is one called the Electric Man based on the name alone it might have been one that would grab Leon electrocute him dead might even have been another variation of the regenerator much as the Iron Maidens were but aside from the enemies Leon himself at this point had come a fair waste with his coat now being changed up to have no fur on the outside collar the more interesting bit comes from the new female character Ashley Graham Ashley being a character now introduced as a plot point of the story the president's daughter who had been kidnapped with Leon now instead of being tasked to investigate umbrella is being sent to locate and rescue her technically this was concerned Evolution to the girl that Leon found that was a test subject back in the castle build of the game that was set to be a second playable character who would have a b dog that would follow her orders this concept stayed all the way till the zombie build until Rewritten as the president's daughter however the modern Ashley originally also had a different design wearing a coat leggings and a checkered scarf before being redesigned to have an orange sleeveless turtleneck shirt a plaid skirt and a sweater draped over her neck with Shinji Mami being the longtime creator of the series and now the director of Resident Evil 4 the team wished to include an homage for him in the game this came in the form of a special watch that they wish to include due to his love of watches and So within an internal demo that the team made this watch me it in and eventually was removed altogether in the final game the demo itself however was never made public but time found its way into the hands of a few people in this day and age but in terms of public demos two more were at least released the first of which being the Japanese trial disc from September of 2004 which contained a few differences the first of which being that the bonfire scene in the main village wasn't there but the more interesting one is a painting of the iconic enemy the chainsaw man this painting depicted him without his mask on the only time to be depicted as such before being removed all together another demo was the North American preview disc from December of 2004 while released after it was from an earlier build with some major differences most notably the knife was in the briefcase that you need to equip rather than Leon having it on at all times in addition within the demo build the binoculars were an item that Leon could use at any point much like the knife unlike the final game which switched with only during certain cutscenes but with the update to this version of Resident Evil 4 the over theh shoulder perspective that Leon took when aiming was Now the default for the whole game gone were to fix cameras for good from the series and in was the camera staying permanently behind Leon in addition all ballistic weapons in the game now carried a laser pointer to better assist in aiming aiming which was in many ways one of the major weaknesses of the series prior to this and it's not just the precise controls but shooting enemies in certain locations had them even react differently too but an even bigger addition was how was now a lot more plentiful this time around a trait that previously didn't exist to emphasize that survival aspect of survival horror and all these items of weapons being stored within a now robust briefcase that you can piece together in a tetris-like fashion however there were even a number of weapons and items planned that were cut at this stage two the most famous being the silencer two of them in fact one being for the red n and the Matilda handguns and the other for the TMP both of the stayed in as usable items up to the Resident Evil 4 public beta where with cheats one can buy them from the merchant it is also worth noting that Wesker in the mercenaries mode had the silencer equipped to his handgun by default another cut weapon is the Homing M darts darts meant for the mine thrower if one uses the walkth through wall sheet it can even be found just outside of the map of the first area the description for it is rather broken to indicating its unfinished State a few cut miscellaneous items were were also found within the data of the game too one being the Onyx Stone the other being the empys stone both of these having an unknown purpose and come in a large and small form potentially might have been gems that you could sell for money in addition two unnamed Stones were also found but didn't have a name yet associated with them as the series progressed The Game's Maps had gotten more expressive and grander Resident Evil 4 was to take that even further with environmental hazards and interactions on top of fully 3D environment utilizing various test maps to work this system in and making it work as well as various early maps that were very simple in design and textureless before going on to the final versions this very map in fact being a very interesting one that even in its final state had an all 2D cutout of a woman in the distance that you normally couldn't see whether that was a staff member or an instaff joke is hard to describe but there were even a few areas that were cut all together that looked somewhat complete the game was bringing in a new version of The Mercenaries from Resident Evil 3 here whereby you could control one of various characters and collect points for each kill much of which using existing maps from the game however one map that was cut all together was this one that looked to be a desert city looking very unfinished with a lot of placeholder textures rough polygons and even a sane goal on it in Japanese potentially A variation of the mercenaries where one had to reach a location as development was tracking along strong in 2004 voice acting was well underway and with detailed care and representing the character's facial expressions to the tone of their voice actor even being shown at e304 together with the gamecube's other killer apps including Metroid Prime 2 and Twilight Princess everything looking very clear and strong for what was a killer app 40 Gamecube or so it seemed Resident Evil 4 will definitely release only on the GameCube if it comes to another console I will cut my head off with less than 3 months left to launch on October 31st 2004 Capcom came forward with the sudden announcement of not only Resident Evil Dead aim and outbreak coming to the PlayStation 2 which never fell under the original deal but as well a port a resident 4 in late 2005 it was a shock to many many felt that Capcom had practically shot any chance of it selling well on the GameCube since many would just wait for the PlayStation 2 version however Capcom cited that due to the strong demand from resil fans and Capcom also wishing to maximize the audience of the series with new players they wish to bring it to what was the bestselling console in gaming yet in fact by then the whole Capcom 5 deal that Capcom announced back in 2002 which would bring five games exclusively to the GameCube was a failure dead Phoenix was cancelled Beautiful Joe was already reported to the PS2 and only pn03 had stayed exclusive but was a commercial failure killer 7 was still on its way but that was also going multiplatform with a PlayStation TW port at launch despite mami's comments through 2002 he most definitely never cut his head off he mainly stayed silent when all this came out and in fact personally did go on to work on this port too the PS2 version however was a challenge in itself the version being made on the GameCube was considered Cutting Edge at the time with it taking full advantage of the gamecube's power the PlayStation 2 was a more underpowered console next to it and several cutbacks had to be made including lowering the polygon count on virtually everything removing various lighting effects and even the water effects had to be changed to have no reflection top that off with all the cut scenes being made into pre-rendered video files meaning that even if you were to have Leon and Ashley dressed differently it would not be reflected in the cutcenes however to make up for this Capcom decided to include several additions including new costumes a true 16x9 mode as opposed to the gamecube's faked resolution the PRL 412 12 which could One-Shot enemies only unlocked when beating on professional a five-part documentary called A's report an amateur mode and a movie browser but biggest of all a second short playable Mode called separate waste that would follow the returning Resident Evil supporting character adah Wong's perspective of the game and at long last the GameCube version of Resident Evil 4 released on January 11th 2005 in addition to the regular version it came in two collector editions one that comes with a prologue art book and t-shirt the other being a steel version exclusively from Gamestop as the Box States but in addition comes with an art book a cell of leyon and the soundtrack as well Capcom released a special chainsaw controller for the GameCube that one could buy off their websites for roughly $50 a controller that only made the game tougher to play following the GameCube released the PlayStation 2 version was released a while later on October 25th 2005 Resident Evil 4 received Universal praise for its Story gameplay and characters some even declaring it as the best game ever made and even the PlayStation 2 Port was loved and to many looked very very similar to the GameCube version despite the technical cutbacks that had to be made and in fact as Capcom expected the PS2 version even did outsell the GameCube version in the end 1.6 million units versus 2 million copies sold and so after many many years of development with some of the ideas turning into other games and some scrapped altogether much of these ideas did snowball into a final game from the process of having an infected Leon to the castle becoming a major part of the game the game taking place in a remote location and even Leon in the end becoming that tough but cool protagonist that Hideki cya wanted for this entry originally too and ironically over time the game even became the most ported Resident Evil game of all times from a PC port to a Wii Port that introduced motion controls a unique mobile edition an HD version on the PS2 at 360 followed by a PS4 and Xbox One version a newer PC version an Oculus version with firstperson controls and lastly being able to play it portably on the switch it's Legacy carried on with future entries taking on much of the influence from the overto shoulder gameplay while maintaining the horror themes of the series whether For Better or For Worse and eventually the game even start getting a remake down the road one that even brought back the beta designs of both Leon's fur jacket and Ashley's whole coat and black legging design and once again this revival became a massive hit and considered as one of the best entries in the series Once More while Resident Evil 4 still impacts the series with the rest of the series even taking on its play style including the remakes the impact of the series to gaming as a whole was phenomenal and continues to be so to this day in fact even some of the cut ideas from the Spencer Mansion the progenitor virus and even the cut desert city made their way into the series eventually by the ways of Resident Evil 5 but Resident Evil as a whole has a long history history of trouble development and plans that never came about content that I plan to explore eventually so hit the Subscribe button for I'll plan to be back with more Resident Evil and other games Cut content soon hit the like button and comment below on if you wished for any of the Resident Evil cut content to have made it in so everyone thank you for [Music] watching

Channel: The Obsessive Gamer

Views: 42,154

Keywords: resident evil 4, resident evil 4 remake, re4, re4 remake, resident evil, leon kennedy, leon s kennedy, ada wong, resident evil remake, resident evil 4 demo, resident evil 4 chainsaw, capcom, resident evil 4 facts, resident evil 4 cut content, gaming, Biohazard, Biohazard 4, Resident Evil 4 Beta Content, Resident Evil 4 Hookman, Devil May Cry Beta, Ashley Graham, The Obsessive Gamer, Resident Evil 4 Castle, resident evil 4 hallucination, Resident Evil 4 History, RE4 Mystery

Id: __Sh8rb_sgU

Length: 31min 50sec (1910 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024