Skip to main content

Resident Evil 4’s remake might be scarier than the original

According to a report from Fanbyte, which correctly reported on both Final Fantasy Origins and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 before their official announcements, Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 remake will be revealed this year.

Calls to remake the beloved title, a horror classic that was released in 2005 and has since seen numerous ports and HD remasters, have been common since Capcom released remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3. According to Fanbyte’s report, Capcom began work on a remake of Resident Evil 4 after Resident Evil 2‘s extremely positive reception. The game is tentatively planned to be revealed to the public early this year.

Recommended Videos

However, the Resident Evil 4 remake, or whatever the project is eventually titled, won’t be a one-to-one recreation of the original game. Instead, Capcom is reportedly looking to shift the game’s entire tone to something much spookier. Instead of heading into the game’s iconic village during the day, for instance, Leon’s entrance will take place at night. Additional changes that give other characters more prominent roles, along with more screen time, are also reportedly planned.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

One of the biggest changes that could come to Resident Evil 4 wouldn’t even affect the main part of the game. Capcom is instead looking to flesh out two of the game’s side stories: Assignment: Ada and Separate Ways. Both focus on Ada Wong, a minor character in Resident Evil 4 who shows up throughout the franchise. The two mini-adventures are planned to be merged into one expansion, although sources cited throughout the report could not confirm if it would be a paid DLC.

Otto Kratky
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…
Why do we love horror games? Psychologists explain our morbid curiosity
Leon facing El Gigante in Resident Evil 4 Remake.

True horror is something no human wants to experience. Few would actively want to throw themselves in a powerless position against some life-threatening situation or fearsome creature. Isn’t it much easier to watch these things through the TV screen with scary movies or auditory creepypastas? It's through that outside curiosity that humanity has created so many ways to witness nightmares without having to really put ourselves through actual hell. And one of those ways is through video games, one of the most interactive and immersive ways to take terror trips in a much safer way.

Resident Evil 4 Remake Ada Wong DLC Separate Ways Official Reveal Trailer

Read more
Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways leaves me hopeful for a Resident Evil 6 remake
Ada Wong holds a gun in Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways.

This year’s Resident Evil 4 remake was an important victory for the horror series. Not only did it successfully reimagine a beloved classic, but it finally concocted the perfect action formula for the series at large. That’s an important milestone considering that Resident Evil has historically run into trouble when fully dropping survival horror in favor of blockbuster action (see the misunderstood, but undeniably sloppy Resident Evil 6). The remake paves the way for Capcom to once again evolve its series, taking another crack at the third-person shooter genre it struggled to nail.

In that sense, Resident Evil 4’s new Separate Ways DLC feels like a taste of what’s to come. Capcom uses Ada Wong’s solo chapter to push its action formula even further, weaving in some exciting new tricks that are already leaving me hungry for a true spinoff. It’s not the series’ finest DLC, playing more as an asset-reusing victory lap, but it gives me hope that Resident Evil’s second decent into pure action will be much more successful this time.
Grappling forward
Separate Ways follows Ada Wong, the anti-hero mercenary on a quest to retrieve a Plaga sample for Albert Wesker during the main game. The lengthy bonus episode is a remake in itself, but it's perhaps even more radical than the base game’s reinvention. Right from its completely new opening scene, it's clear that Separate Ways is diverting pretty far from the original DLC. That’s a sensible decision considering how much the new version of Resident Evil 4 reworks Ada Wong. She’s no longer a careless hired gun, but a nuanced character struggling to balance her professional responsibilities with her moral ones.

Read more
iPhone 15 Pro can natively run the latest Resident Evil and Assassin’s Creed games
Leon and Ashley in the Resident Evil 4 remake.

In a major stride forward for mobile gaming, Apple announced during today's event that console games like Assassin's Creed Mirage, Resident Evil 4's remake, and Resident Evil Village are coming to the iPhone 15 Pro. These aren't watered-down mobile spinoffs or cloud-streamed games either; they're running natively with the help of the A17 Pro chip.

During the gaming segment of Tuesday's Apple event, the power of the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip was highlighted. The 3-nanometer chip has 19 billion transistors, a six-core CPU, a 16-core Neural Engine that can handle 35 trillion operations per second, and a six-core GPU that supports things like mesh shading and hardware-accelerated ray tracing in video games. Several game developers were featured following its introduction to explain and show off just how powerful the A17 Pro Chip is. While this segment started with games already native to mobile, like The Division Resurgence, Honkai: Star Rail, and Genshin Impact, it didn't take long for some games made for systems like PS5 and Xbox Series X to appear.
Capcom's Tsuyoshi Kanda showed up and revealed that natively running versions of Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4 are coming to the iPhone 15 Pro before the end of the year. Later, Apple confirmed that Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Mirage, which launches next month on PC and consoles, will also get a native iPhone 15 Pro port in early 2024, while Death Stranding is slated for a 2023 iPhone 15 Pro launch.
Historically, console-quality games like these have been impossible to get running on a mobile phone without the use of cloud gaming. Confirming that these three AAA games can all run natively on iPhone 15 Pro is certainly an impactful way for Apple to show just how powerful the A17 Pro chip is.

Read more