A few days before the release of what’s looking like the most controversial Resident Evil game ever — liked by some critics, loathed by others — we had the chance to sit down with two of its key creators: Producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi and Director Eiichiro Sasaki. What were their goals? What are they proud of, and what do they wish they’d had more time to work on? For answers to these and other questions, read on…

(Note: Because the two men's answers were at times translated collectively — making it difficult to tell which person had expressed which thought — we've attributed all answers to both of them, despite the use of first-person in some responses.)

OXM: Let’s start off by discussing your general goals for the game. Resident Evil 6 is obviously hugely ambitious, with seven playable characters, four campaigns, multiplayer, and even the four-player crossovers. Was the goal to pack in as much content as possible? Did you ever think about dividing all this stuff into multiple games?

Hirabayashi & Sasaki: One of the things I set out to do from the beginning was to create this drama with this ensemble cast; you have a big, horrific event in this world, and [the game shows how] everyone is involved and how they interact with each other in regards to that event. Also, we did some research on Resident Evil 5 after it came out, and…our surveys showed that only about half the people who played RE5 actually finished it, so I thought, “Well, I want to make something that people will want to finish.”

That’s why we created these different campaigns….Each of the campaigns offers something different — different horror elements, different tastes — so there’s variation there. But hopefully a player will take the seven hours to finish, say, Leon’s campaign (if you’re going really fast) and be like, “Okay, that was good and I had so much fun, I’m kind of curious what one of these other campaigns are about, maybe I’ll check that one out next.” So each one’s offering something a little different and hopefully in a more compact package that’ll make people want to play through to the end.

There was talk during development that maybe we should split up [the four campaigns], but in the end we decided, “No, we want to keep them as-is because this is the story we’re trying to tell with RE6.” So we put all our efforts behind that; we wanted to make sure that in the end, RE6 had all four campaigns in it — sort of like an omnibus collection.

OXM: Gameplay-wise, what are some things that changed between Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 besides being able to run and shoot at the same time? And were those in response to fan feedback, things the developers just wanted to do, or…?

H&S: Being able to shoot while you move is something that definitely came from the fans — they’ve been clamoring for it for a while now. So we had to take that feedback and say, “Well, how can we make the horror game that we want to make by incorporating that type of gameplay into it?” Once we got over that challenge, I think the end result is cool. It’s still scary to see your character with their gun up, walking slowly toward a corner, not knowing what’s going to come around it, and so that still works. Also, fighting with the enemies, we wanted as much variation in there as possible, and I believe we were able to get that into the game. Finally, if you remember how in RE5 you were able to upgrade your weapons — well, this time we’ve abandoned that system in favor of a skill system, so now you’re upgrading your character, not the weapons. And I think that makes it more open-ended in terms of your involvement, because with weapon upgrades, your only purpose is upgrading the weapons. But with skills you can match those to what you’re trying to do and how you want to play, so a more offensive player can upgrade all the attack skills, while a more defensive player can upgrade all the defensive skills. So ultimately, not everyone’s creating the same type of character; you create a character that matches the way you play. Another aspect is [your A.I.] partner, which is something we didn’t change from Resident Evil 5 so much as overhauled it in a way. I mean, when you’re playing with a live partner, whether it’s RE5 or RE6, I don’t think that experience changes — I think it’s still fun — but we got a lot of feedback from people on what makes the experience of playing by yourself good…and how can we make that experience better. And I think we put a lot effort into fine-tuning that aspect of the game to make it just work well in RE6.

OXM: What are some things that you knew you didn’t want to do with the game? How about some things that you planned to do, but then abandoned partway through development?

H&S: As far as things that we kind of abandoned during the process of development, we were thinking of different things we could do to make the combat scarier, and one thing we came up with is if you get knocked to the ground, a zombie comes and grabs you by the leg and drags you away, and then your partner — whether it’s an A.I. partner or a real person — would see that and their reaction would be “Oh my god, what’s happening?” So then we thought: “What are we doing with this? So the zombie drags you away, and then what? Eats you calmly in the corner?” It didn’t seem to fit with what we know of zombies, and it seemed like we were ascribing an intelligence to them that they shouldn’t have. So we got rid of that.

OXM: In an interview with website AUS Gamers back in March, RE6 Executive Producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi, when asked if Resident Evil development would ever be handed over to a western studio, replied: “We don’t really see that happening right now. I think this is something only Capcom here in Japan can make.” Why is that? What unique perspective do you have that makes that so?

H&S: Well, just so you know, this isn’t Capcom’s company policy or opinion or anything; this is just me [giving] my personal opinion on the matter. But I think we have a lot of people in Japan in Capcom who really love the series and they’re really creative when it comes to making this series, and it’s that love that they pour into it that makes them so creative and allows them to make such a good product. In Japan, we kind of have a saying — and I don’t know how well it translates, but — “you’re good at what you like.” So because they have this kind of love for the series, it really gets their creative juices flowing and they’re really good at just bringing their best game when designing Resident Evil games and I think that as long as they have a love for the series, they’re going to be good at creating Resident Evil games. And that’s not to say that we would ignore the opinion of people outside of Japan, because there’s a lot of fans outside of Japan, people who have good ideas about Resident Evil, and we always listen to that. But I think as long as the people in Japan are really into the series and really give their all to it, they can keep doing a good job of creating it.