The Rise and Fall of Dead Rising

ah few video game villains are as versatile as zombies the number of settings that they can appear in are unlimited the range of powers and attributes that they can possess are vast and because they lack a pulse the ramifications of killing them are non-existent the only major downside to zombies is that because of this versatility there are no shortage of games that feature them and because there are no shortage of games that feature them their presence alone is rarely enough to make whatever they're part of feel special few games from the mid-2000s were more acutely aware of this than dead rising the brainchild of capcom's keiji inufune dead rising cast players in the role of frank west a photojournalist turned vigilante who tasks himself with discovering the scoop of a lifetime in a zombie-infested shopping mall while many players picked it up because of this premise alone most stayed with it when they discovered that underneath laid a challenging yet deeply rewarding gameplay experience one that exacerbated the danger of its zombies with a stringent time limit and an unforgiving safe system when the dust around its release settled the industry had crowned it one of the most unique takes on the genre and a solid demonstration of how the seventh console generation would be able to take the medium to new heights yet capcom was dissatisfied it felt that dead rising could have been better had it leaned more deeply into its western design elements and that its development team had been unable to do so because it was almost entirely japanese as a result the company would enlist vancouver based developer blue castle games to take over the series instead a decision that helped improve it in the short term yet stripped it of everything that made it unique in the long term this is the rise and fall of dead rising [Music] i'd like now to introduce a very special guest from capcom uh capcom is company best known for uh blockbuster franchises like resident evil and mega man and also uh dino crisis more recently um i'd like to uh introduce shinji nikami who was uh in the early 2000s capcom was in crisis after rising to glory with industry defining hits like mega man and street fighter during the 80s and 90s the japanese juggernauts finances had become precariously unsteady its development houses were producing no fewer number of well-received games but many of these games were repeatedly failing to sell through to the masses while its executives held no fear of becoming irrelevant or bought out by a rival they knew that something needed to change and fast it was during this time that keiji inafune proposed an ambitious yet simple solution to the company's predicament globalization the mega man maestro believed that if capcom wanted to dig itself out of its pit it needed to focus on the western market more strongly than ever before and he believed that in order to do so the company would need to focus on making games that said market would want most capcom saw reason and inafune began producing a variety of projects to help jump start this western initiative one of the earliest of these projects was shadow of rome released in 2005 shadow of rome provided players with a two-pronged epic set shortly after julius caesar's assassination alternating between levels that emphasized combat and levels that emphasized stealth and puzzle solving in equal measure while it managed to net a decent number of positive reviews most critics agreed that the sum of the experience ultimately felt a little half-baked and its sales ended up failing to pay dividends in an interview with ign shortly after its release inafune would blame a degree of the title shortcomings on himself explaining how seemingly everyone within capcom had an opinion on what it needed to contain during its development and that he'd made the mistake of taking everything they'd said as gospel instead of trying to figure out what worked best with what was being made he threw all of their suggestions and the kitchen sink into its design and the end product suffered as a result at the end of the day however inafune felt that its development had been a beneficial experience it taught him personally how to be a better more decisive producer and provided the team as a whole with a deeper understanding of what american and european gamers liked along with animusha 3 demon siege which made its own attempt to appeal to a more global audience the year prior inafune believed that shadow of rome was a stepping stone on the road to a far stronger western oriented game and that game was dead rising [Music] inafune had been interested in making dead rising since the day he first laid his eyes on resident evil 4 zombies the walking dead had long served as a mainstay of the resident evil series with their slow yet murderous shamble imbuing each entry of the series with a quintessential sense of dread with resident evil 4 however director shinji makami decided to imbue it zombie's newfound vigor giving them the ability to attack players with speed and intelligence unknown to the masses that preceded them this decision appeased many both before and after the game's release yet inafune was not among them speaking with dengeki online in 2010 the producer would explain that while he had incredible respect for the experience that four wound up being he felt that makami shouldn't have made its most archetypal enemy any faster zombies heal pined were plenty terrifying in their traditional slow-moving form and if resident evil wasn't going to showcase this anymore then perhaps he needed to do so with a game of his own as a result once it became apparent that shadow of rome 2 wasn't happening inafune decided to task the team responsible for the first shadow of rome with bringing this game into existence and positioning it to be capcom's next major western focused experience dead rising was born and from the get-go the team agreed that its atmosphere would benefit immensely if it were modeled after classic zombie cinema like george a romero's night of the living dead it was apparent to them that if they were going to make a game about going back to how zombies originally acted and provide players with an experience unlike anything else on the market then it only made sense for them to base said game on the very first media that the walking dead appeared in while the works of romero were rife with moments of genuine terror they were also unabashedly schlocky often relying on hammy special effects that made it difficult for them to be taken completely seriously they embodied an intersection of frightfulness and comedy unique to the era they debuted and if they could translate this intersection into an interactive experience they would be able to greatly set themselves apart from their competitors as well as justify capcom having two video game series centered on the undead before long dead rising setting and cast had fallen into place the entire game was to take place in a shopping mall based in willamette colorado days after being overrun by an outbreak of zombies its premises were to contain an extravagant selection of stores and impromptu weapons begging to be taken advantage of by a brave passerby and that passerby was to be an average middle-aged photojournalist called frank west as a journalist west would have a motor for wanting to visit willamette parkview mall as he would want to investigate what was happening there and as an average middle-aged man west would have a motive for wanting to use anything he came across within the mall as he would want to make up for his lack of physical strength his experience in photography also allowed capcom to justify inserting a photography system in the game in which players would be able to take pictures of interesting sites to earn points and level up their abilities even after most of these pieces came into being however it would take time for capcom to figure out exactly how they'd make for a truly unique gameplay experience luckily everyone within the team had worked on an assortment of other projects that they could pull from to help inspire dead rising's design including a role-playing game called breath of fire dragon quarter released in 2003 dragon quarter had offered fans of its series a highly unusual experience instead of guiding players through a linear adventure that only needed to be finished once the game offered an open-ended experience that encouraged players to continually restart it with each restart allowing them to carry over items and skills they'd earned in prior playthroughs as well as access new story beats and areas many players had been left befuddled by it upon its release but those who had worked on dragon quarter before joining dead rising's development team believed that they had hit on something special and that dead rising could benefit from this specialness thus the team decided to adapt dragon quarters systems to fit the zombie game's mold instead of being able to explore willamette mall freely players would only be able to explore it over the course of three days and be encouraged to continually restart their progress doing so would allow them to carry over items and experience obtained in prior playthroughs as well as access previously unreachable sections of the game saving would only be able to be done manually in certain areas of the mall and every save made by the player would overwrite all previous saves making it impossible for one to reattempt an earlier playthrough making all of these features and systems a reality proved difficult for the team but thankfully such difficulty wouldn't be present when they agreed to make it exclusive to the xbox 360. in an interview with ign ahead of the game's release inifune would explain that microsoft got them the tools they needed to get it on the 360 the quickest and that when evaluating where the video game market seemed to be heading sticking with it seemed the most logical move the 360 wasn't a huge seller in japan but it was considerably popular in all the territories where they wanted dead rising to succeed and seemed on track to remain popular when dead rising finally arrived on the xbox 360 in august of 2006 players opinions ran the gamut some found the game's stringent time limit save system and overall oddness a tough pill to swallow and a tougher pill to love but others found that all of this made for a gameplay experience that was as arduous as it was sublime even looking outside of the realm of zombie games there were few other action games that felt as unique as what capcom had cooked up and for them that alone made up for its rough edges it didn't hurt that the game's characters in writing while not the greatest ever committed to the medium and prone to having bad artificial intelligence were also incredibly enjoyable frank west was disarmingly entertaining to watch become the unlikely hero that willamette mall needed and all of the characters around him did a good job of providing an ample balance between seriousness and comedy as capcom had originally intended but perhaps the single biggest aspect about dead rising that captivated players the most at the time of its release was that it felt like a true next generation experience at a time when such games were few and far between while the xbox 360's catalog had been slowly increasing in quantity and quality since its launch the sheer vastness of dead rising zombie invasion was one of the few elements that felt like it was only possible on its hardware it demonstrated how the seventh console generation's bump in processing power could allow for technological feats that had been impossible on the sixth and how these feats in turn could allow for exciting new gameplay possibilities dead rising wasn't an absolute masterpiece but it managed to do just enough right and do so with just enough heart to carve out a tremendous place for itself amongst many in its player base retreat wayne following year capcom would double down on the xbox 360 with lost planet extreme condition an atmospheric third-person shooter set within a hostile tundra lost planet had come into being within capcom after inafune became interested in making a halo competitor for the western market and had dealt with many of the same struggles as dead rising over the course of its development reviews were slightly more critical of its offerings yet its sales ultimately proved even stronger than frank west's opus and would help kick capcom's already lofty global ambitions even further into high gear while the company would continue to produce its share of japanese-centric content after this point its output as a whole would become increasingly characterized by titles that modeled themselves after western made games or were developed outright by western studios a situation that paid off well in some cases and not so well in others capcom would also make an effort during this year to branch out onto the nintendo wii with games like zack and wiki and resident evil 4 wii edition while the latter title possessed a far more mature outlook than almost anything else that was on the console at the time it would end up performing surprisingly well at retail so much so that capcom would decide to use resident evil 4's engine to pour dead rising to the wii as well this port which became known as dead rising chopped till you drop proved a difficult undertaking in an interview with gama sutra in early 2009 capcom's minoru nakai would reveal that in order to get chopped till you drop working on the wii's underpowered hardware the team assigned to it was effectively forced to remake frank west's adventures from the ground up polygon counts were reduced zombies were removed on mass and the game's overall structure and pacing were drastically reworked instead of being able to freely explore willamette mall over a three-day period players progressed through frank west's journey by accepting missions from willamette's security room with each mission taking them through a single secluded section of the mall and featuring its own individual time limit chop till you drop became a zombified version of the game it was based on and when it released in february of 2009 most gamers were likewise slow to take to it many concurred that its environments and characters had plenty of charm and that bashing zombies to bits was still decently satisfying but those aspects alone couldn't mask the fact that its visuals and overall gameplay were rough rougher than many other homegrown wii experiences and significantly rougher than what 360 owners had been treated to with the original version of the game years prior there was little disagreement removing the extra processing power that allowed dead rising to function as it did in 2006 had robbed it of much of its quality and personality around in here it's loud in here i hope you can hear me but we got a stage we got some kind of some kind of dancer you getting this and uh you drop was a miss but capcom had no reason to be concerned about dead rising's future because dead rising 2 was already well underway by this point in time and being helmed by a promising new studio in canada called blue castle games the latter had come to be involved in this series through a mixture of circumstance and opportunity after the original dead risings development concluded inafune and many others within capcom decided to pass its sequel on to a non-japanese developer in the hopes that doing so would lead to its betterment they were pleased with what they'd accomplished but they believed that the lack of non-japanese on their team had prevented them from making it more appealing to gamers outside of their home country a studio made up of western or european talent was needed not so that they could utterly westernize dead rising but so that they could use their understanding of what made their own games tick to enrich in its western sensibilities from an outside glance blue castle didn't seem like the most apt candidate for such a task established in 2005 by a group of former baseball game developers the studio spent most of its existence up until this point working on an arcade style baseball game called the biggs for 2k and all signs suggested it was going to continue working with this sport for years to come internally however blue castle staff had no interest in being pigeonholed into this forever they wanted to show the world that they could make action games as renowned as dead rising and when inafune paid the studio a visit during this period he walked away convinced that they could do so if given the opportunity in interviews years later the producer would explain that he had been impressed with how blue castle staff not only loved capcom's zombie title but also cited its japanese sensibilities as one of the main reasons why they loved it it had been apparent to him that the studio would be able to respect and honor his company's cultural differences if they were working together one thing led to another and blue castle found itself at the helm of dead rising 2's development eager to show to both capcom and the world that it was worthy of this task the studio subsequently spent the first few months of the sequel's development cataloging everything they'd liked and didn't like about the first game and attempting to figure out how they were going to go about improving it everyone was in agreement that its three-day countdown timer was an essential part of its design and needed no change but other parts of its design such as its shooting controls were in need of a cleanup the latter had followed in resident evil 4's footsteps and forced players to press a trigger button to aim followed by a face button to fire it worked at the time but the team knew they could improve upon it they also came to agree alongside inafune that the game's safe system could benefit from having two additional save slots for players who wanted to have a little extra insurance and be able to save multiple times if unsure what direction to take from there the sequel setting and characters fell into place instead of returning to willamette the undead would invade fortune city a hedonistic cross between disneyland and las vegas and instead of following frank west players would follow chuck greene a former motocross champion who would compete for prize money in the city to obtain a drug known as zombrex that would prevent his daughter from turning undead blue castle's decision to go with chuck over west was multifaceted in large part the studio wanted to put their own mark on the sequel and felt that inserting chuck represented a good way to do so while being respectful of the series's past chuck's motocross experience made him slightly more outlandish than west but at his core he was still an everyman with the same motivations and fears as every other human being capcom was also concerned about making sure that dead rising 2 would appeal to newcomers as it intended this time around to release it on the playstation 3 and pc as well as the 360. they didn't want to confuse players hailing from the former two platforms with characters that they were unfamiliar with and thus were fully supportive of blue castle shaking up the sequel's cast finally much in the same way that west had facilitated the first dead rising's photography system chuck allowed blue castle to narratively justify including a new combo system in the sequel in which chuck would use his hardware knowledge to kit-bash all manner of bizarre new weapons [Music] all of this proved a tremendous undertaking and in no small part because blue castle was forced to build it all from the ground up outside of a few assets the team effectively had to recreate much of the first game's visuals and gameplay entirely from scratch relying on videos to help inform themselves of how it looked and felt however they also received a tremendous amount of support from capcom throughout the entire process with the latter keeping in touch with blue castle on a continual basis to help guide it through every aspect of the project it's through this relationship that both parties decided to experiment and release a prelude to dead rising 2's events titled case 0 in place of a paint by numbers demo while short case 0 proved considerably popular and helped build anticipation for blue castle's main event and when said event finally released in september of 2010 players were satisfied with the studio's efforts for the most part fans and critics alike generally agreed that dead rising 2 did a good job of emulating what the first dead rising had done on a larger more polished scale its atmosphere and sense of realism were beat off from what its predecessor had offered and the inclusion of certain new features like its two additional safe slots provided it with an unmistakably mainstream feel that hadn't been present before but these slight concessions were easily excusable in the face of how much more enjoyable its gameplay was less popular was dead rising 2's new online multiplayer mode which tasked players with completing zombie-filled mini-games and parties of four while few outright hated what it had to offer most concurred that it paled in comparison to the thrills found in the game's single-player opinions were similarly divided when it came to the subject of chuck greene some found chuck's motivations and narrative enjoyable as well as more sympathetic than frank west's more self-serving escapades in the first game yet others felt that he just couldn't compare with west's charisma and that even though capcom and blue castle both had valid reasons for wanting to exclude him his absence was still odd by 2010 west had become one of capcom's most recognizable mascots appearing in lost planet and fighting games alike much like mega man or dante before him he seemed like the kind of character capcom would want to headline more titles rather than remain benched both this and the many other incremental ways dead rising 2 set itself apart from its predecessor would continue to remain sticking points with a sizable number of fans for years to come in capcom's mind however these issues were negligible in the face of everything blue castle had accomplished with the sequel it had shown itself to be just as capable of studio as the team that had crafted the original dead rising and as thanks for doing so a promotion was an order not only was the studio going to be permanently put in charge of the series it was also going to be made an official subsidiary of capcom with the latter announcing in september of 2010 that it had purchased blue castle games and rechristened it capcom vancouver any remaining doubts that capcom vancouver might have had about dead rising's future quickly washed away the following month when kg inafune announced out of the blue that he was departing capcom the series was now utterly under vancouver's control over the course of the next 12 months fans who had been dissatisfied with frank west's exclusion from the sequel would be sated over twice by the release of dead rising 2 case west in december and dead rising 2 off the record the following year the former united west and chuck in a short cooperative adventure set after the shenanigans of fortune city concluding two's narrative in a similar fashion to how case zero had set it up and the latter offered dead rising fans a full-blown reimagining of dead rising 2 with west at the center of its action in interviews leading up to off the records release creative director jason lee would reveal that when capcom signed the studio up to develop the base version of the sequel it mandated that they also produce a director's cut version of it afterwards the studio originally expected that this director's cut version would amount to a low-key re-release with a small amount of new content but after seeing how many people were sad about frank west's absence from dead rising 2 it decided that the director's cut would buck with capcom tradition and show how the sequel story would have gone down had it followed west instead of chuck that's a real good way to get yourself killed son hey i just like crawling around in vents before long this decision resulted in the team bringing west photography mechanics back into the fold as well as making a slew of additional improvements to the experience including adding in a new autosave system upon its release in october of 2011 most who got their hands on it agreed that its additions to dead rising 2's world and modes were enjoyable despite its single largest edition a sandbox mode being a little bare bones opinions were more divided when it came to off the records returning protagonists as satisfying as it was to see wes back in action many felt that his motivations for wanting to be in fortune city paled in comparison to greens and didn't feature many surprises others also felt that off the records overall lack of new mechanics and systems over what dead rising 2 had offered its auto saving notwithstanding was a double-edged sword as a year and some change onward it was now harder than it had been before to ignore the ways in which said mechanics and systems were flawed to some players off the record was a great example of how just a little extra content could go a long way and make an even better game out of an already great one to others it was a sorted example of how not enough extra content could bring down a game and inadvertently highlight its faults the period that followed off the record's release would see capcom undergo a low-key reckoning and begin reconsidering its western ambitions what had previously been a profitable business venture one that forced its existing developers to learn new habits and brought many new studios into the company's sphere of influence was now failing to pay dividends as well as leaving gamers more divided than ever before even when it produced a critical darling like ninja theory's devil may cry or a massive commercial blockbuster like resident evil 6 the company found itself unable to shake him a laze of discontent that had settled amongst fans and critics alike a feeling that it was a has been on its way out the door one by one the company started cutting ties with or outright closed its western studios shifting work that previously would have been outsourced to them back home to japan it was ready to turn over a new leaf and carve out a new identity for itself that wasn't defined by an over-reliance on appealing to the west but it wasn't quite ready to part ways with capcom vancouver partially because it represented a significant investment of time and money that it felt uncomfortable letting go of but also because it was already deeply busy preparing dead rising 3 exclusively for the xbox one's launch oh [ __ ] come on come on well money undoubtedly played a part in capcom's decision to have the threequel be exclusive to the xbox one technology played another like many other developers towards the end of the seventh console generation the company initially wanted its games available to as wide of an audience as possible and allow players to enjoy dead rising's third entry on the same console generation they'd enjoyed the series first to but it also wanted the game to be able to outdo its predecessors in every conceivable way it wanted its surface area to be bigger its zombies to be far more numerous and its loading screens to be virtually non-existent and because of this it hit a brick wall in an interview with siliconaire in 2013 producer mike jones would explain how after prototyping an early version of this experience on the pc the studio attempted to bring it over to the 360 and quickly discovered that it just didn't work on the ladder's hardware it was running but it was practically bursting at the seams they needed a far more powerful console to realize its ambitions and microsoft was willing to provide them with all the specs and tools they needed to get it working on xbox one much in the same way that it had previously helped the team responsible for the first dead rising get its own project on the 360. thus not wanting the threequel to blow up on the launch pad capcom vancouver agreed to partner itself with microsoft to bring three over to the eighth generation platform fans who had been introduced to the series through dead rising's playstation entries were dismayed when word broke of the deal but their dismay couldn't compare to the surprise that all fans expressed when capcom vancouver showed off the game for the first time at e3 2013. the vibrant color palettes and cheeriness that typified the series former settings were gone replaced by a dark dismal atmosphere that hung in the air even in moments of comedy dead rising was no longer in the most indulgent pockets of colorado or nevada it was in a gloomy urban jungle in california called los perdidos and its newest protagonist a mechanic with a mysterious past named nick ramos only had one goal in mind survival to fans who had come to love the series for its deft balance of humor and sobriety dead rising 3's lack of the former was disappointing capcom vancouver however believed that this change would help the series mature and evolve after releasing two zombie games where the actual zombies existed solely to slow players down and be toyed around with the studio felt that the sense of threat they posed had evaporated it wanted to change this to make dead rising's primary antagonist be legitimately terrifying again and felt that as a result the series's overall tone and aesthetic needed to follow suit it wasn't trying to appease a corporate mandate that had been issued by capcom or microsoft it was doing its best to entrench players in an atmosphere that would remind them of the danger they were now in as well as make the game's few remaining moments of comedy feel all the more impactful oh yeah you're dead [Music] the gamble wouldn't quite pay off while dead rising 3 still featured plenty of goofiness when it launched alongside the xbox one most agreed that its darker tone had left the experience as a whole feeling significantly more muted its locales and characters were far less compelling than those that had been featured in one or two and its scale did little to help make up for this there was no denying that capcom vancouver had made a tremendously large world but when there were so few interesting things to do or see it was hard to look at it with much admiration compounding the three equals issues even more was that killing zombies within said world just wasn't that exciting anymore while the game featured no shortage of cool new weapons and vehicles that ramos could use in combat it also featured off the records auto saving in addition to manual saving and a host of other changes that made many of its pricklier gameplay systems including its time limit significantly more forgiving with these new parameters in place there was simply no longer much fear that an encounter with the undead could go badly or that even if it did one might fail a critical mission and be forced to restart the game many players also found the quantity of zombies that three hurled at them hard to appreciate partially because they weren't as visually impressive as some of the xbox one's other launch offerings but also because by 2013 seeing hundreds of enemies on screen just wasn't all that special anymore capcom vancouver would spend the next half year supporting dead rising 3 with a smattering of downloadable content the first four pieces of content that saw released explored los perdidos's zombie outbreak from the perspective of four other survivors and kept with the base game's tone the fifth one however threw a wrench in three seriousness and united all of the series's prior protagonists to fight the undead while impersonating classic capcom characters while none of these pieces of content were able to utterly turn around people's opinions on dead rising 3 most agree that the last one made for a fun romp the same couldn't quite be said for dead rising watchtower a feature-length movie that released directly on streaming services in 2015 watchtower received middling reviews for sticking too closely to its source material but managed to attract a decent enough viewership enough at least to usher in a sequel titled dead rising end game the following year the latter deviated more deeply from its source material and proved more popular as a result but not by much in the long run however endgame would arguably end up being the least controversial addition to the dead rising franchise to release in 2016. [Music] [Music] at e3 2016 capcom vancouver announced dead rising 4 and with it the promise of a bright new future for the series frank west was back and he was returning to the town of willamette in a brand new adventure one that would wash away the downtrodden atmosphere of los perditos with a lighthearted mixture of comedy and camp it had only been a year since west had last appeared in three's downloadable content but it had been longer than a decade since his first appearance in the original dead rising and the studio felt there to be no better way to celebrate this milestone than to bring back what had made the first game iconic once the dust surrounding dead rising 4's announcement settled however it was revealed that there were many other elements iconic to the first game that were being left by the wayside manual saving was gone replaced entirely by autosaves terence rotolo frank west's longtime voice actor was gone substituted by canadian actor ty olsen and perhaps most significantly of all the time limit was gone relegated exclusively to the game's episodic multiplayer mode many within capcom vancouver would try their best to justify the latter change in the months leading up to the game's release with studio head joe nichols telling gamespot in august that they did an exhaustive amount of focus testing and found that the majority of people they surveyed didn't like the timer they wanted to enjoy the game's premises to their fullest and explore them without fear of having their adventures prematurely cut short thus in order to help fuel this want and offer a much denser world than was previously possible in the series has passed the timer was taken out executive producer bryce cochran would echo these sentiments in an interview with games industry dot biz a few months later explaining that the studio eventually wanted to make dead rising 5 6 and 7 and felt that it needed to shake up the series in order to ensure these future sequels would come to pass this same interview also revealed that dead rising force time limit wasn't the only feature that capcom vancouver had focus tested almost every other aspect of the game had received the same treatment with nickels detailing how microsoft helped them access a gigantic pool of play testers willing to offer up their opinions on whatever they needed feedback on they intimately believed that this process had helped them arrive at the best possible product but they also made it clear that there had been times during development where they felt it necessary to go with their guts and ignore what testing suggested would be best in the end however fans were better off trusting their own guts and not indulging in dead rising four most agreed that while it wasn't a poor game period it was a poor dead rising game and the culmination of the road to mundanity that dead rising three had set the series down its combat and story had their bright moments but without the threat of a countdown timer making each encounter with the undead feel that much more meaningful it was hard to become invested in most of the game's world or systems and all of the various other changes that capcom vancouver had made to the series to make it as stress-free as possible both in the years leading up to dead rising 4's release and specifically for its fourth title only served to exacerbate this lack of investment many were also disappointed in the game's portrayal of frank west finding him crass and vulgar in ways that were at odds with the photojournalists that had been introduced in 2006. oh hey hold up oh my gosh i'm taking a hit they need a ride back to tom yeah sorry i wish i could have things to do oh he really is an [ __ ] over a decade prior shinji makami had demonstrated with resident evil 4 that one could make a number of fundamental changes to a video game series and still be able to retain its essence dead rising 4 could have followed suit and figured out a way to retain the essence of the dead rising series in the face of such drastic changes but instead it effectively chose to become a different series entirely dead rising 4 was followed shortly after its release by frank rising a downloadable expansion that saw west attempt to escape willamette once and for all after being converted into a zombie himself despite featuring a time limit and a handful of quirky new mechanics centered around west's undead nature critics found frank rising too limited and short of an experience to wholeheartedly enjoy let alone recommend to the rest of the community even after dead rising force playstation 4 version arrived the following year with a few extra bells and whistles sales were low and morale was even lower dead rising was a far cry from what it once was and there was no concrete evidence to suggest that capcom vancouver was planning on taking the series back to its roots with its next entry unfortunately exactly what the studio wanted to do next would become a moot point altogether in september of 2018 when capcom announced that it was closing its vancouver-based subsidiary and cancelling everything it was incubating in a press release issued at the time the company explained that it wanted to continue focusing more on strengthening its domestic operations in japan and didn't feel strongly enough about what capcom vancouver was working on to make it an exception to this focus [Music] okay exactly what will become of dead rising in the future remains to be seen in its financial presentation for the year of 2019 capcom listed dead rising as being part of its superior proprietary content alongside such series as resident evil street fighter and devil may cry its ambitions to conquer the market with exclusively western style games are over yet there's no doubt it still views the zombie series with a high level of regard higher than almost anything else it debuted during the seventh console generation with the scent of dead rising force disappointment still in the air however it's unlikely that capcom has any plans to bring it back soon and even if it does the company will undoubtedly want to take its time in order to ensure that whatever it produces next will be able to return the series to its former stature much like frank west himself dead rising may yet discover that it has another adventure in it and venture out into the world once more in search of glory but only if it senses that the reward is worth it [Music] thank you for watching our video our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by your continued support for us we'd like to thank by name the generous patrons who have pledged to our highest reward tier amethyst bratz caleb shishkivich daddy rap secretson emumovies.com jefferson dos santos oliveira maktoum saeed al-maktoum matt allen milkshake nick timur tourist bake off viper n95 if you enjoy our content please consider subscribing to our channel and joining us on patreon thank you so you

Channel: GVMERS

Views: 777,855

Keywords: Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2, Off The Record, Dead Rising 3, Dead Rising 4, Dead Rising 5, Capcom Vancouver, Capcom, Keiji Inafune, Chop Till You Drip, Lost Planet

Id: Et-cKSrWucU

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/datlinus]

I still liked DR3, especially as a launch title. I felt that it retained enough of DR1/2 to still feel like a DR game. Plus, it actually connected with the story/lore of DR 1 pretty well (I know most people don't give a shit about DR's story but I thought that was neat).

However, 4 was a disaster. Sure, it wasnt a "bad" game, but.... focus testing is one thing, strippin game of all its features is another. Like, everyone that I know that likes Dead Rising LOVES psychopaths. Their intros are usually the best thing about each game. THey're funny, gross, disturbing, ridiculous, whatever. And DR3 nailed this too, by the way.

And then DR4....... removed them. You still have "maniacs" which are basically survivors that act like psychos but there's no cutsceen for them or anything. What a letdown.

[u/lovesai]

Oh man the memories.

I worked on DR3 as essentially 1 of the 2 people that made up the zombie engineering team. I spent an insane number of hours (as in 7 days a week, often until 3 am in the office) implementing the ragdolls, dismemberment, and car-clinging mechanics. Prior to this, I didn't know anything about game physics or the Havok engine. The physics guy on DR2 had also left the company so I had to figure everything out the hard way.

The car-clingers were a form of powered ragdolls, which were one of the first in the industry. Prior to that, most games used loose ragdolls. In DR3, we wanted the zombies to swipe at the car but also to be shaken off. Havok physics had minimal support for powered ragdolls at the time, so I had to invent some crappy "engineer physics" to approximate it.

Ultimately, I know it's not the most accurate but I'm pretty proud of what I accomplished given that I literally went from knowing nothing about physics to implementing the entire ragdoll + dismemberment system (and that's not the only thing I worked on - as I said, I was 50% of the zombie team).

AMA, I suppose, if anyone's interested. The game came out a long time ago and modern game tech is way more advanced, so I'm not sure how much you can learn from my experience anymore.

[u/lazydogjumper]

What killed DR4 for me was New Frank. Frank was always a wisecracking kinda guy, and a bit tactless at times, but New Frank is an ASSHOLE. Like, TREMENDOUSLY. I couldn't play for more than an hour listening to his one liners and all his dialogue comes off as the biggest prick around. I get he's supposed to have gone through this multiple times but jeez.

[u/SimplyPuzzles]

I really feel Dead Rising was a game ruined by pandering to people who didn't actually want a Dead Rising game, they just wanted a zombie game.

Removing the timer, or diminishing the importance of it, was the start

[u/MortifiedPenguins]

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of Dead Rising among non fans. Despite the title, Dead Rising isn’t a “zombie” game, it’s a time management rogue-like meant to be played over and over. The time constraints, level up system and the near impossibility of doing, and learning, everything in a single go should make this clear, and all of the tension in the game comes from the timer.

Thematically, the game is about three things, consumerism, mass shopping centers and journalism.

The game perfectly captures the mall experience and all of its associated frustrations, time constraints, store closings, construction detours, constant interruptions, people in your group WHO JUST WON’T LISTEN, getting hungry, goofing off during downtime, random psychos, and hordes of brain dead idiots constantly in the way. It literally is “A Day at the Mall”. Frustration isn’t a bug here, it’s an INTEGRAL part of the game.

The journalism angle provides the game with a bold tabloid style (AARON SWOOP IS DEAD!) and a thematic excuse for multiple play throughs (uncovering all the secrets of incident and the stories of survivors), as well as justifying the photography subgame for Westerners and a zaney, creative type as the main character.

Story wise, the mass consumerism theme is also echoed in the zombies, which are a literal stand in for mindless consumers as in Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead”, and in the viruses origin, “Do you have ANY idea what’s involved with meeting demand for beef?!” The game isn’t too serious or deep here, nor does it need to be, and frankly I’m surprised at just how well everything is interwoven.

Killing zombies, fighting bosses, all that stuff is just the icing on the cake, not the main meal. It’s a male shopping simulator, journalism cosplay, rogue like with zombie speed bumps. Like many Japanese arcade games, it’s meant to be played over and over to achieve mastery. Removing the timer kills this.

So yeah, there’s plenty of games out there if you just want to Kill Zombiez TM lol. I enjoy those games, too. But please, leave Dead Rising alone. Not every game is meant for mass consumption. 😉

[u/walterdog12]

IMO Dead Rising 1 and 2 are the only "true" Dead Rising games that captured the feeling Dead Rising 1 had.

3 was decent... But something about going into the streets of a massive semi-open world just felt wrong compared to the enclosed mall and vegas strip 1 and 2 had.

---

After the utter failure 4 was, I really wouldn't be shocked if we saw another remaster/rerelease of 1 and 2 come out with the next gen consoles.

[u/usaokay]

I've played Dead Rising ever since the first game, even bought it during the first month it came out. Since then, I've played nearly every single DR game (except for the downgraded Wii version lol), including the DLCs and DR2's prequel and epilogue. I also read the DR2 pre-prequel comic and watched that terrible Crackle movie. You get the point.

Totally would have been fine if DR3 was the final game in the series since the ending perfectly capsized the plot. It even felt like a finale too, but as such with media franchise tradition, DR4 was soft-rebooting the series (or soft-remake?).

It could have potentially worked too, but they fucked up, especially in the period where Capcom wanted to get back on fans' good graces after the likes of DmC and Resident Evil 6.

DR4 is weird since the many changes (mainly the timer and inventory) are streamlining the gameplay for a larger audience, which is understandable. But when the developer keep saying that "we wanted to go back to our roots" despite the many major changes that series fans have enjoyed, it set off a ton of red flags that these devs (or the marketing) were desperately trying to reassure series fans.

They somehow found a way to do "fan-service but not really fan-service." I said my piece about Frank West's bastardization of a character here (see top comment).

[u/BryanWithoutB]

The first game’s attention to visual detail has not been matched in any of the sequels which is a shame. In the sequels there’s almost a sense that the level designs were an afterthought, like these places were put together quickly in order to serve the gameplay. But the mall in the first game felt well crafted and photorealistic. The shiny and polished aesthetic of that game has not returned in the later games and I miss it.

[u/YUNOMANRETURNS]

I still hold out hope Capcom eventually brings back something akin to DR2/Off the Record. Easier said than done as there will be the push to modernize but as long as they can mesh the core features well (timers and opportunity cost, constant need to explore for weapons/items/survivors, B-tier movie schlock, ideally in a closed setting rather than too open worldy)

As someone who loved most of the original more in concept than execution, 2/OTR felt like the ideal incremental improvement, just enough edges smoothed while retaining most of its quirks. Also, I'm torn on what the weapon combo system became by the time DR4 came around.