Info about Resident Evil 1.5

It could have been recorded at different times, resulting in the blood sprite effects applying two different colors depending on the build revisions they've used. After all CAPCOM did have footage archives for most resources even back in 1996-1998.

 

this could support the theory that there MIGHT be different builds in the videos(video 1 has Elza shooting at civilian zombies in the lobby,and the 4.1 build clearly shows that was changed to police zombies,though,who knows,maybe they changed it back to civilian zombies or,they had Leon facing cop zombies in the lobby,and Elza would have to face civilian zombies,i don't know. We really need a later build to confirm this one),or it could be as Geluda said.
On retrospective,i find it funny that the frag grenades work perfectly on nearly all the enemies except zombies(when they are not lying down on the floor) and Birkin 1(doesn't work for some odd reason) Hell,spiders even blow up when they get hit by the grenade's explosion! Although they are insanely cumbersome to use,they kill in 1 hit. wonder how the acid and flame grenades would have been like. I mean,the grenade launcher,at least the frag one,is identical to RE1's(notice how it doesn't kill enemies in 1 hit,unlike the frag grenades)so it's likely how the acid and flame launcher would have fared out(we still need official confirmation on this,either by a 1.5 dev confirming this or a later 1.5 build) but how the hand acid and flame grenades would have worked is still a mystery(who knows,maybe they didn't even get past concept art and only finished 1 grenade). Any theories as to how they would have worked out?

 

Draw inspiration from real-life grenades and you probably have the answer to that. Incendiary grenades start a fire and keep burning in place for a while, reaching extremely high temperatures. Smoke grenades work on a similar basis, but release a gas instead. Make the gas something like Cyanogen chloride or anything used in chemical warfare and you have a killer bomb with a vast range.

 

good idea.
i've just noticed something from retail RE2: go to the alley,right at the start of Scenario A,and,pay attention to the ambience(you might need to kill all the zombies in order to hear it properly) The ambience clearly features one of the moans of the 1.5 civilian sewer zombies. Here,watch 0:20 to 0:23 of this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnOAvs-b0XM that zombie moan can be heard in the previously stated RE2 ambience song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KCYPaPQ4bA in this video,at 12:45,you can hear a faint moan in the ambience background(kinda hard to hear thanks to the zombie that moans just as that sound occurs) that sounds identical to the 1.5 one,or at least very similar(or maybe i'm just crazy) i should fire up RE2 and check if it's the same as the 1.5 one. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it is the same one,or a different take of that moan,as RE2 did recycle several zombie moans from 1.5(most notably,the laboratory zombie moans)

 

Recycling assets isn't that weird or uncommon.

PS: I think your second link is broken. It redirects to exactly the same video as the first one.

 

In the Leon's intro you can hear one of the 1.5 moanings, its from the zombie that put his hand on the wall.

 

Like other assets from the intro, that voice sample comes indeed from 1.5, but it's really no news.

 

These guys are sick ... a new video, this time with voice overs for the characters !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNO4t1GAtrE

 

Leon sounds black with the 'Now what am I gonna do?' line ... haha

Chief Irons is much more fitting and works better!

 

Afaik it's only a placeholder .... the infobox says something about that.

 

hey gemini,here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KCYPaPQ4bA
updated the post,sorry,didn't notice my screwup until much later. better late than never i suppose.

 

I can't say that zombie shout sounds very similar to the 1.5 ones. The one in the intro is however a perfect match.

 

i should extract the ambience song and highlight the zombie moan i was talking about,it's hard to hear with the other zombie moaning(the one that atttacks leon at that point of the video)
another thing,what do you mean with the one in the intro? care to point at what time in the video it pops up?(for curiosity's sake)
btw,here's something regarding RE2's fmvs,specifically,their making of(warning,it's not in english): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXTkcEcgYHU
keeping in mind 1.5 supposedly had it's fmvs done but not implemented,i'm wondering if they were done in the same style as RE2.

 

Well, there is no real information given that you couldn't guess watching the video. The footage says that kinematics scenes of RE2 (and also RE3) were made by a japanese firm named 'Impression'. It took them 6 months doing all this. Like a movie, they started building a storyboard, then had to prepare the scenes (they made short movies to check all the details like view angles) and finally used motion capture. After a 'rough', they used textures to render the final video, that we all know.
I had to sum up but hope that helps !

 

it's interesting how they made the cgi scenes nevertheless(i'm pretty certain RE1's cgs weren't made this way.) i wish the 1.5 fmvs would leak someday,if they still exist. would be interesting to see how they look and what insight could they give on the story overall.

 

The full motion sequences were probably nothing more than sketches and bare renders. Still, they would provide a nice and better overview of the story, if they contained relevant pieces of information straight out of Kamiya's storyboards.

 

i thought the rmandel document said they were completed(by imagica studios)? hold on,let me look again.
EDIT:Extracted from the latest document revision regarding RE1.5 by rmandel:
" January 1997

- Imagica Studios, the company charged with making RE15's prerendered FMV
cutscenes, returns from the holidays to finish its task. They quickly produce
the final, fully rendered versions of all of them. They are also all synched
up with the FMV cutscene dialogue recorded before the holidays. In other
words, by this date all of RE15's FMV cutscenes are finished, complete with
dialogue, and ready to be inserted into the game. This is planned for the
next build to be burned ... which, unfortunately, never happens.


[From numerous statements made by Imagica itself on the matter.] "

 

I'd be curious to see for myself where the original statements from Imagica come from, since all I can remember is more like "we had X amount of full motion videos 'done', our greatest challenge with RE2 was that we had to redo a lot of work when they switched to a different concept". Now, with the prototype Leon and all the zombies looking nothing more than a bunch of colored polygons in that documentary posted above, I can't see exactly how the 1.5 videos could be anything close to finalized or even in a state of rough draft (unless they lied, their information was misinterpreted, or the whole story is simply made up). There would be at least some proof of concept somewhere, like the astounding amount of unused assets showed in the Biohazard Archive artbook. Better always take this kind of information with a whole truck full of salt.

 

Probably slightly off-topic but given the new video using some voice acting for it, if they were aiming for a close sound to the RE2 Brian Irons, they could also use REmaster96 (has done some parody stuff as Irons before) should the current VA be unavailable.

However, given that the footage of 1.5 where we can hear the sounds for Elza sound like the RE1 Jill audio... The only person that I know that sounds like (and may actually have been the RE1 Jill VA despite everything thinking it was Una) would be Lisle Wilkerson (she also knows Barry Gjerde, Lynn Harris and the like) and she does do freelance VO/VA work and does make an effort to follow up with fans, should they be going for a similar sound to match the initial sound effects for the characters then I'd recommend her.

(I've already asked her about RE1, she did a lot of games with Barry and Lynn at the same time and she can't remember. She thinks if she did it then they had a few different names for the characters and/or the title of the game).

 

The information I had on the lost RE15 FMVs is that, like most such projects, it was a two-pass process. As someone already mentioned, they first did rough work-ups. Pencil tests, early incomplete renders, so on. If you've ever seen the Heavy Metal work print or similar, that gives you an idea of what you would have had at that point. It was just enough for the voice actors to do their lines and the music people to score. After that, they would have taken the rough footage and the new audio back into development, tweaked the CGI (and the 3D models) as necessary, done the finished renders - and then added the voices, foley work (footsteps, background sounds, etc.,), and music.

It's been stated several times over the years that Capcom had the finished footage in hand (note the word "finished") ready for the FMV cutscenes and all they needed to do was add the audio. Most of us fans have always interpreted that word "finished" as meaning all of the CGI work was done and that it was up to, say, the same quality as the RE2 FMV cutscenes. I'm sure Gemini and those of you who are into 3D CGI work will be quick to point out that "finished" might mean one of any several things, but that's the way the fanbase has long interpreted it.

I for one have always found it hard to believe that practically nothing appears to exist anyore of the work on the lost RE15 cutscenes. You would think that storyboards or something like them at least might have survived. Then again, all that material would be still over in Japan, and it's been almost two decades. It's probably just a question of getting in touch with the right person. Even a hump Japanese animator who worked on the project would be as good as a gold mine to us nowadays, since we know practically nothing about the lost RE15 cutscenes - besides that lone scrap Kamiya himself mentioned about Leon having a helicopter in his opening cutscene. All KINDS of fan conjecture has come from that one remark. Who knows what else that "hump animator" might be able to reveal?

One thing you have to keep in mind about my RE15 History: it's only as good as the data that I had at the time. Perhaps, as more is learned, I might get back to it someday, but I dunno. I kept it updated there for a while as the occasional small error here and there was corrected, but real-life issues now pull more and more at my spare time. Then again, it was always meant as a starting point - for folks like you, and like me at the time - who came late to "this whole RE15 thing." You're only reading about two-thirds of the whole story (some might say three-fifths), and even that is summarized. I'm just a guide, not an authority. The "old hands," as I call them (out of respect) are the REAL authorities on RE15. So ... I'm glad it's helping folks out as I intended, but never be afraid to ask the real experts about something. They most likely know something I don't. (grin)