Resident Evil 6 - What Happened?

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] lots of you have been asking me to cover Resident Evil games ever since I started this show with these suggestions running the gamut from Resident Evil Gaiden operation Raccoon City and oh I haven't forgotten about you umbrella core but there's one particular title that stands above the rest in terms of fan outcry the game that was too big to be contained to Spain Africa or even Terra grisha the game that needed a 600 employees strong workforce cost more money than any other Capcom published title before it and have the distinction of being the most divisive entry in the franchise this of course is Resident Evil and that is the keyword divisive because make no mistake resin evil 6 has its fans and looking back on it nowadays many people have come to appreciate its ascent Rissa t's critically it also holds a spectacularly average Metacritic average which plays right in line with the general zeitgeist around the game oh but it was a huge sales disaster though Capcom lost like a billion bison dollars on it right no that's not true either resin Evil 6 is indeed one of if not the most interesting game in the long-running series well aside from GBA re - of course oh man that looks so [ __ ] good all this to say we are not here to discuss whether re six is the worst Deus game of all time I mean you can do that in the comments if you must but rather find out the who the why and the what the hell happened it's 2009 and resen evil five is a certified blockbuster that busted the [ __ ] out of said blocks it was Capcom's highest selling single title for almost 10 years until rathalos and friends took that crown from it now the lesson that Capcom learned from that success was well we put a thousand more explosions and way more set pieces in coop and re5 and it's sold better than the last one so let's do that again what they wound up doing was making an action movie so bombastic and over-the-top that it makes Michael Bay films look like Downton [ __ ] Abbey what's that I'm exaggerating okay okay well here's an exploding Barrel in re 5 and here's re 6 the director of this insanity was Ichiro Sasaki who previously held both outbreak titles on the ps2 which when compared to other mainline Resident Evil's are distinctly smaller scale but it's his last game right before helming the globe-trotting horror venture which was re 6 that is far more interesting Zach and wiki or as most mainstream gamers have come to know it as uh Zach and the Wikipedia I don't know it's that thing I didn't buy cause I'm a Philistine now I love me some zlw but I don't think it's a project that adequately prepared Sasaki for the immense task he was about to take on but why was he chosen to begin with well unfortunately experienced directors were slim pickings at Capcom in this timeframe it suno was busy with Dragon's Dogma & Mikami's hands were full with being bitter and of course not even working there to hopefully guide Sasaki was Resident Evil Shepard Hiroyuki Kobayashi whose claim to fame was producing just about everything and it's with him or we'll start our journey to see just how are you six started to fall so hilariously off the rails one of our original goals was to create a horror game of course but we wanted to create what we're calling horror entertain stop right there like I said in our brink episode game devs please refrain from using terms like genre breaker and blank killer so with that let's add horror entertainment to the list alright there we go let's continue we realize that there's a segment of the population out there that likes entertainment but not necessarily horror they're put off by [ __ ] so how can we combine the two in a way they would bring in people usually have an aversion to horror related things how could we bring them in and allow them to enjoy it this was the first goal of the game red flags are waving and I know that when I explain it like that it seems like those ideas are contradictory and that will be hard to achieve something like that and I don't necessarily disagree which is a sign you shouldn't do it for those that are maybe not familiar or need a refresher re4 was a more action orientated push for the series RFI mixed an even more spicy action and the addition of co-op and re six offered four completely separate campaigns each with their own gameplay style and tone which was them trying to appeal to absolutely everyone but when you attempt to do that you're not actually appealing to anyone at all this is where the divisive nosov six comes into play because Capcom wanted slash needed for not to only bus blocks but to absolutely obliterate them truth be told in terms of other franchises Capcom lacked many big hits during the seventh generation outside a few exceptions so a lot was riding on the success of the Resident Evil team's gamble to appeal to those people who didn't really like Resident Evil hmm does that sound familiar at all so hey did you kind of like re four or five play Leon's campaign he's cooler than ever and not a dork like he was in the past oh you like Call of Duty not so much [ __ ] well drunken amnesiac crystal and this this guy they got what you need no way you look like an R III sort of person MRA well go on a punch venture with Jake and sherry like spy [ __ ] and scarves a de Wong's got that [ __ ] ah Glock the problem here is that every campaign had contrasting tones pacing and gameplay styles but without a unifying vision gluing them together each one individually felt a little rushed and slapped together while taking lots of QTE and non interactive shortcuts to pad it out of course to craft all these campaigns don't get me wrong took a lot of hard work as Capcom did at one point have 600 employees spread over multiple companies to get all these assets made this was doubly impressive as they were still using their aging MT framework engine with the ambitious design maybe out stripping its technological prowess logically this also resulted in the law this game in the re franchise pIEF are talking in at around 21 hours compared to re fours already beefy 16 now while some can certainly argue that it offers the most proverbial bang for your buck others call it bloated and unnecessary what is this wow what a mansion instead of having a singular adventure pasted to fit that story it's four separate stories that try to converge at specific points which is ambitious yes but maybe not the best spend ature of developmental resources the whole idea of multiple campaigns was risky and Kobayashi was well aware that Phan desires sometimes clash with Capcom's intentions and leading up to the game's launch said as such the way I always think of it is that if Resident Evil represents a child then the fans and us as creators are the two parents the resulting games are like the children that are born between both of us and just like real parents you're not always going to agree on what is best for raising that child now we do always have our ear to the ground and listen to what the fans are saying and we try to take that into account when we are making the game but it's our job to create a new gaming experience and to offer something that's fresh and challenging we want to make sure that what we do pleases them but the initial reaction might not always be positive it wasn't while the initial trailer for re six set the census ablaze featuring tons of characters both crusty and fresh epic set pieces horrendous new monsters and what clearly seemed to be a planet-wide threat things took a turn for the worse when Capcom released a playable demo bundled with Dragon's Dogma in that summer honestly this might have been the most damaging thing to the game's reputation more than anything else at least amongst the hardcore now Capcom wasn't wrong to do this as the demo for re 5 stoked the fires for that release all the more but it seemed like it had the opposite effect for re 6 displeasure almost immediately arose with many fans and publications citing problems with the awkward camera which was changed to be more in-your-face I guess to various other core issues like screen tearing and absurdly long load times it also gave people a window into the action focus this series was steering hard into which survival horror fans were already a bit wary of after resin and evil 5 in fact the demo was so poorly received kal calm immediately took steps to mitigate the damage by saying they were taking the feedback from the demo will be improving the base game with it Kobayashi's official announcement of this came only days after the demos initial frosty reception we've heard a lot of feedback based on the demo we released the team is still working hard to fine-tune it we understand that parts of the demo were not received favorably to put it mildly we want to make sure we could try to improve on these things the camera angles the tearing and other issues now this was great to hear because while many companies often say they're taking feedback into consideration very few actually do the character positions were changed to be on the outer edges of the screen while aiming rather than hogging up the middle portion of the screen the HUD was now completely customisable and even the obtrusive Call of Duty like waypoints could be turned off there was another unforeseen issue with this demo however as modders were able to mine data revealing that ada wong would be the fourth campaign which hadn't been announced yet as well as other various monster names modes and difficulty settings fans were so very hesitant when it came to Capcom and on disk data and DLC as the controversy that surrounded Street Fighter cross Tekken was still fresh in people's minds as that released just earlier in the year this unfortunately as something will need to loop back on now despite Capcom's assurances that fixes we're coming make no mistake this demo hurts Resident Evil 6 especially from a longtime fan perspective the technical shortcomings and the quadruple-double downing on increased action and qtes had many people worried and thus the game released on october 2nd 2012 after shifting away from the initial competition filled November 20th release date re6 touted in its debut trailer again to Capcom's credit the main game indeed was improved from what the demo had offered months earlier however the issues we outlined before about the game's bloated hedonistic campaigns its increased action focus and chanwoo shooting mechanics were not things that could have changed when it was so late in development these were the fundamental pillars that resulted in that astonishingly average Metascore the director Akira Sasaki on the eve of launch even stated how he was nervous about the game's length fearing some players wouldn't even bother finishing it yes I'm just a little worried about that however because of that we have developed this new service that ties into resin evil 6 called re net we hope this service will really motivate people to keep playing the game it's for you and your friends it will help keep all of you connected and looking forward to clearing the game hopefully it will spur people to continue playing and make it to the end what oh sorry I was just checking to see what are you donít even was i completely forgot about this anyway things unfortunately don't end there much like cross tekken on disc dlc was found by hackers and modders in the guise of the no hope difficulty essentially the Lian must die mode for the game it was partially on the disc but did need additional data to function whoever Matt packs and ADA's co-op partner we're all listed on the disc as well just not the actual data this still resulted in multiple articles posted across the internet that had re sixes [ __ ] on disc DLC in the bye lines despite it not being 100% accurate regardless this coupled with the games already mixed response well it didn't really help Capcom again we're going into damage control over this saying that all of our e6 is DLC needs that additional data to work and this situation wasn't close to all that on disk character DLC of cross Tekken to further smooth things over the first major title update to the game was 100% free and included the no hope difficulty a - story automatically being unlocked you needed to beat all the other campaigns to access it at launch and various other fixes and quality of life improvements unfortunately all these little measures were band-aids on bullet holes and didn't really result in their main goal to make this the best-selling resin evil game of all time in two months re5 sold 5 million copies back in 2009 capcom stated in their projections earlier in 2012 but the expected re sixth assault seven million copies in that same time frame this did not occur only 4.5 million copies of re six were sold in its launch period which is pretty shocking considering the additional ps3 and xbox consoles that were sold over that three-year span between releases in addition when you take into account the project's exponentially increased budget it went a long way into painting re 6 as a failure Capcom even needed to explain to its shareholders why profits were down for the year and cited re sixes under performance as the main culprit we believe the new challenges we tackled at the developmental stage were unable to sufficiently appeal to users in addition we believe that there was inadequate organizational collaboration across our entire company with regards to marketing promotions the creation of plans and other activities we will re-examine our eternal operating frameworks in order to identify areas that need to be improved concerning development as well as sales and administrative operations that's business speak for we [ __ ] up [Music] ah they essentially tried to make four games in three years but still sell it for $60 and just through an army of people at it to get it done coordinating all those employees across several smaller studios resulted in a shaky unfocused title headed up by a director that wasn't really ready for it I mean it took seasoned veteran Shinji Mikami a good five years to perfect re for reiterating it again and again burning through various versions until he got what he wanted Sasaki though wasn't afforded that same luxury Capcom was attempting way too much in too little time and resulted in this giant expensive homunculus they didn't really know what it wanted to be it failed to please some longtime fans and also didn't really rake in any new ones that's why it still lags behind re five in lifetime sales as of 2019 for reference it took re six seven years to sell what Capcom wanted it to sell in two months we've obviously seen the consumer and critical response there was some great positives out of re six but it was a mixed bag as we saw from the review scores you probably put too much content in there there are some comments from consumers that sided felt bloated luli on missions went down very well and because we did Resident Evil Revelations there was an outcry for us to focus on survival horror rather than be too many things to all people you'll find where we go next will likely be more targeted at our core fanbase said former senior vice president marketing Michael Patterson his statement at the end there also turned out to be extremely true as both the re to remake and re 7 returned to a more focused horror based experience along with of course more realistic budgets and projections Capcom has since stated that both titles have exceeded expectations and hoped to build on that further with the resin evil 3 nemesis remake which releases in just a few weeks I honestly can't wait but when you think about it in a weird way this new Resident Evil Renaissance we now find ourselves in might have only been possible because of our East muted response and sluggish sales numbers it's quote unquote failures showed to Capcom it wasn't exactly the best path for the series to take we're now probably better off for it in the continuing evolution of this legendary franchise you could say that re 6 was a necessary evil and with that bad pun staining your mind if you know of any other inadvisable idiocy you'd like to avoid let me know in the comments below or drag your rotting corpse over to the flophouse VIP patreon to nominate your chosen game or movie to be our next subject see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 874,078

Keywords: Resident Evil 6, Capcom, Resident Evil, Matt McMuscles, What Happened?, Wha Happun, Survival Horror, Video Game Disasters, Video Game Documentaries

Id: x_uV6vCrBNY

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Abunchofpotatoes]

RE6 becomes better if you see it as Mercenaries 3D 2, bundled with some non-canon campaigns or side stories.

Honestly, I woudn't mind a Mercenaries 2 with RE6 gameplay.

[u/bvanbove]

I'm highly uncomfortable with the amount of RE6 content between the guys lately.

[u/Dead-Brain]

You know what? Here's my sizzling hot take: whatever you say about RE6 (and I know it had a LOT of flaws), I think the J'avo are a radical fucking enemy concept. Not only with the multiple eyes but the fact they can transform mid-fight depending on damage dealt was honestly the highlight of the game for me. I just love unconventional enemy design and these guys are one of my favorite instances of that.

[u/Karkadinn]

While very unconventional, I don't think the idea of having different campaign styles appealing to different gameplay types and atmospheres is inherently unworkable in a single game. But it's definitely something that's easy to have accidentally spiral out of control. When I look at RE6, I see the same thing I see in Kingdoms of Amalur: a project that became a lavish resource glutton, sprawling out in all directions without quite nailing down the fundamentals first. They could have cut each campaign... maybe not quite in half, but trimmed a good third off, and lost little of value.

[u/Perrin-Nighthawk]

The helicopter chase through Hong Kong in Jake’s campaign made me GUFFAW

[u/SilverKry]

That wasnt an exploding barrel in RE5 Matt...

[u/NorrisOBE]

Why did it took until the current console generation for Japanese game publishers to realise that you can't really please everyone?

"You can't please everyone" is the motto of everything in business.

[u/The_Draigg]

You know, this is actually probably one of the happier endings for a What Happened? episode. At least we know that Capcom learned their lesson and went to make some great RE games because of it. It’s a lot better than what happened to other companies in this series.

[u/M7S4i5l8v2a]

They should get the guy who did this to do a DMC spin-off focused on Lady. My first time seeing RE6 was the SBFP Machinama video and the second was a DMC 4 Lady mod video. I think it could be really successful if they do that.