Resident Evil was first a FPS, and then a "Paranormal Activity-ish" game with ghosts

Mikami has revealed in a French interview that Resident Evil was first a FPS (they even built a prototype), and then, after playing Alone in the Dark, RE adopted its gameplay. Also, first it was a "Paranormal Activity-ish" game with Japanese ghosts, based on psychological horror. Then he felt it needed combat, so he introduced zombies.

More info, here.

PS: I get the feeling the Paranormal Activity-ish idea was the one that inspired RE3.5, but was also canned. Oh well.

 

There is a piece of concept art floating around from the FPS version http://residentevilpro.skyrock.com/photo.html?id_article=425256299&id_article_media=-1

 

That is kinda weird, taking into account the zombies came after the ghosts, and the ghosts came after the FPS concept?

 

It was supposed to be some kind of Sweet Home remake, and Sweet Home is about a haunted mansion.

 

Very interesting. RE would be quite different today if those routes were taken. Alone in the Dark is IMO one of the best survival horror games ever. That game still scares me today. Playing it you can see a lot of what made it into RE.

Speaking of Sweet Home, has anything else been done with the game/franchise?

 

Pretty well known, RE went through a bunch of ideas, first person, 2 player, cyborgs. Even though it's in French and every piece of text is an image (meaning you can't Google Translate) Survivhor has a pretty well kept stock of information on the development cycle for games going up to RE4, check the Dossiers section on the bottom right of the page - http://survivhor.biohazardfrance.net/

 

i can translate most of the interview if anybody is interested

 

yes please

 

That would be awesome! Thanks a bunch. Looking forward to reading it.

 

Nice find, +1 on translation

 

According to the guy who conducted this interview, Mikami told him that he knew Alone in the Dark back in the day but he had to keep this fact secret due to an agreement Capcom reached with Infogrames.
https://twitter.com/Willvs/status/521977853756588032

 

I'm confused, he knew AITD? Hopefully I'm not being thick or stupid here.

 

"""
Information bonus : Mikami ne pouvait pas parler de l'influence d'Alone avant de quitter Capcom, car Capcom s'était arrangé avec Infogrammes
"""
Translates to:
Bonus information: Mikami could not talk about the influence of Alone in the Dark [on Biohazard/RE] until he left Capcom, since Capcom had made arrangements [e.g. deal/settlement] with Infogrammes.

I added the [] as it's kind of implied in the french sentence. Sounds like Capcom and Infogrammes had a legal deal, maybe the latter threatened to sue Capcom for plagiarism over the gameplay, but they found an agreement?

 

That's pretty interesting. I would love to see the details behind that agreement. I would think that mentioning AITF would help out. Considering how big RE was, you'd think an association would help AITD's sales/penetration.