Capcom Reveals Why They Removed Live Choices From Resident Evil 3 Remake

Enter the police station? Fight with the monster? Let a bunch of boxes hit you in the face as you dangle over a sinkhole in an auto body shop? Those were just some of the live choices one could make in the original Resident Evil 3‘s dynamic situations. They offered players more replayability in the game, which was shorter than its predecessor, Resident Evil 2, due to an abbreviated development cycle. In the remake, however, Capcom’s decided to do away with the original system. But why? Well, now we know.

Speaking to IGN recently, producer Peter Fabiano explained the decision while giving some background on the concept of live selection as a whole. Since game development has advanced so much, time crunch really wasn’t an issue for the remake. Removing the live choice selection system allowed Capcom to “tell a more consistent story,” too, which allows for all players to experience the game in the same way, just as the company intended. Fabiano also said that, to compensate for the lack of the original system, fans will have an expanded story and character development.

That’s kind of a bummer, if I’m being honest, as I really liked the live choices. My small child brain confused the “fight with the monster” choice as literally teaming up with Nemesis the first time I encountered him, and I promptly got my face flesh-spiked. I’m also wondering how, exactly, they’re expanding the story.

While Resident Evil 2‘s remake took us to some new locations and threw a couple of new enemies and weapon variants at us, I saw that this remake is going to be only about five hours long, which is half the length of RE2. How expanded can it really be then?

Other than that, the title seems to be shaping up to be something pretty special. We’ll find out soon enough how it stacks up to RE2 as well, with a promised demo arriving shortly. I totally understand why Resident Evil Resistance exists now, too, because a five hour game at full price would be Dumb with a capital D.

In any case, the remake looks gorgeous, Nemesis seems and is promised to be more intimidating than the already pants-poopingly scary Mr. X, and Resistance may be a fun post-game extension hopefully rivaling the dearly-missed Mercenaries mode. Either way, I’ve already pre-ordered Resident Evil 3 anyway, so I’m stuck with it, no matter its length or content.