"Flip the script": Capcom veteran casually pitches a Resident Evil 'creature collector' about curing the undead

The spirit of Monster Hunter Stories could be applied elsewhere

Capcom director Kenji Oguro has been chatting to Very Gary Computing about new spin-off Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, which he describes as “the JRPG the team always wanted to make”. It's an interesting chinwag, not least for how it maps out differences between expectations aimed at Capcom's role-playing efforts and the older Final Fantasy series (short version: older fans are more set in their ways).

There's also a fun segment where Oguro bandies around the idea of a comparable spin-off for Resident Evil. He envisages it as something of a creature collector, like Monster Hunter Stories, but instead of collecting monsters, you're curing them.

“Off the top of my head, I think Stories took the fundamental concept of the monster as a creature you’re going to battle and slay, and then flipped it on its head and said, the monster is now a creature you’re going to befriend and develop a kinship bond with," Oguro told the site, through a translator.

“If that’s the fundamental approach of a Stories game, to flip the script on the basic interaction with the enemy, then I think that a Resident Evil Stories game would probably be about… I don’t think you’re ever going to be befriending zombies as such, but you know, perhaps you’d be taking the approach that, ‘I want to find a way to cure these zombies, so these people who’ve been turned into these monsters and get them back to being human’.

“I mean, you almost might end up going in more of a Dead Rising direction in that sense," he went on. "but you’d be trying to take them and get them back to normal or figure out a way in real time to develop a cure for them. But what sort of game would that be, and whether it would work or not, I don’t know. It’s just as a response to your prompt, that’s how I would see Stories working, is taking a completely different angle on the same universe and developing the gameplay based on that.”

I'm writing this up because Oguro's remarks have taken me on an exciting mental journey. That journey began with scorn. Making the zombies human again? This is some 1994 Edge Magazine-tier bullshit, Oguro. But then I thought about it more and, well, imagine an open worldy affair like Dead Rising where each T-viral mutant has to be cured and added to your party through some form of action-puzzling, in order to obtain the means to explore later areas.

To those who fret about not being able to do a boomy-shoot on those mutants, I say 1) Resident Evil doesn't have to be about shooty-booming - Requiem's stealth segments are pretty compelling, for example. And 2) I'm sure Capcom could design any number of kinetic puzzling/curing mechanics that approximate the experience of gunplay, without perforating anybody's decrepit grey matter beyond repair.

We didn't review Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, but Ed Thorn (RPS in peace) got on quite well with the previous game. "The story isn't going to make your jaw drop, the world's rather bland, and it lacks in-depth crafting options," he concluded. "But - and it's a big but - the combat is genuinely a lot of fun, and collecting monsties is very moreish. Plus, I like being able to ride my monstie in battle and pull off special moves that practically nuke monsters from orbit."