The developers at Capcom are feeling the heat to make sure Resident Evil 6 lives up to its predecessor, Resident Evil 4. The latter Resident Evil 5 was panned by critics for its shooting mechanics and removal of whatever horror elements the first four games had in favor of action.
In a new interview with Ausgamers, the trio behind Resident Evil 6's development—Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, and Eiichiro Sasaki—admitted that the team is feeling the pressure to live up to the high standards of RE4, which was directed by Shinji Mikami, who moved on to Grasshopper Manufacture.
“As you said, RE4 is a critically-acclaimed game and there is always the pressure to live up to that,” they said.
"It was very well-recieved, but then if you look at RE5 it was actually our biggest Resident Evil game ever. So in that sense we were able to get the game into the hands of more players out there – probably a lot of new players as well.”
“So there’s a lot of expectation from fans of both games really, so we’ve tried to listen to the feedback about what people liked about [Resident Evil] 4, and what they liked about 5, and follow up on that and try and incorporate that into the production of Resident Evil 6 and make something that really is appealing to all the fans.”
Resident Evil 6 will be out on October 2 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this year.