Resident Evil 6

Summary	Plot	Gameplay	Development	Marketing	Reception	Credits	Gallery	Translation errors	Further notes

Resident Evil 6 entered pre-production after the release of Resident Evil 5. It had an original release date scheduled for 20 November 2012, but following reports by Hiroyuki Kobayashi that development was sped up, this was changed to 2 October 2012. The game is one of Capcom's largest-development games, with some 600 people involved in production.

Pre-production

Resident Evil 6 entered pre-production soon after the release of Resident Evil 5 to favourable sales and reviews. Producers Hiroyuki Kobayashi and Yoshiaki Hirabayashi began preparing for a game similar to it.

Writing

Director Eiichiro Sasaki - director of Resident Evil Outbreak - devised an ambitious, massive-scale scenario which would be told in the form of a "hero's journey". This idea was expanded to be multiple hero journeys, and it was agreed there would be an ensemble cast of protagonists rather than one, each going through their own thematic journey. This idea evolved to give each character's story its own style of horror to make them stand-out, as Sasaki felt these characters would naturally react differently even to the same conditions. Leon's story was planned out as calling back to ideas from the original Resident Evil with the cast focused on investigating a case. Chris' story was planned with Resident Evil 5 in mind, being more military focused with Chris confronted with the deaths of his teammates and being made alone and vulnerable. Jake's story was given the fear of being pursued, leading to the creation of Ustanak as a recurring boss. Ada's story was planned out to tie together loose threads from the first three stories.

Design

Art designs were led by art director Tomonori Takano.

Environments

Environment art was led by Toshihiko Tsuda, with partial outsourcing to Digital Works Entertainment. As with Resident Evil Outbreak, the decision was made that environment design be divided into teams, with four main teams each handling the five stages of their respective campaign, with a team each for Ada, Chris, Jake, and Leon.

Tall Oaks was portrayed as peaceful until recently, with signs of every-day life planned out-for example, a section was planned that would have the player interrupt a Zombie family watching TV. Designs for the Ivy University campus made sure as to remind players of its nature as a thriving community in and of itself, with classrooms, a sports field and the dining hall for special events. The party room itself, while planned early in the script, was not designed until mid-way into production, and altered in the final months. The subway, meanwhile, was completed much earlier on in development, and was designed to rely on the contrasting light and dark in the tunnels, where mutants are spotted by their shadows first.

The Tall Oaks Cathedral was designed with radically different approaches for each section. Already intended for the inside of the building to be full of survivors clustered for safety, the cemetery was designed to be a dark and rainy environment caught up in a lightning storm, which would have a Gothic horrorn feel when juxtaposed with the stone cathedral. As there were plans in the game for various laboratory environments, The Family's lab under the cathedral was designed to appear like a very old facility being repurposed with modern equipment juxtaposed with old.

Edonia, present in the Chris and Jake chapters, was planned as an existing war zone, unlike Tall Oaks. Accordingly, there was little effort made to suggest normal life was going on there. Colours like grey were heavily used to create an "inorganic" atmosphere.

For insight into how to design Lanshiang, Sasaki and Hirabayashi went to China for inspiration, with photographs given to the artists. The Jake team introduced Lanshiang first through an elaborate mansion built for a rich Chinese man, revealed to be a Neo Umbrella facility. Contrast was given between the sterile laboratory section and the mansion itself, which is richer in colour. It was planned for a while that the mansion would be destroyed, but this was initially by Ustanak. A later decision was made that a tank would crash through it. With the city itself, the artists made sure to include scaffolding around the city, which is what they saw in the photographs. A multitude of billboards close to one another, and roofs made with bamboo were also designed based on these photographs. The Quad Tower was planned out early on, drawing inspiration from photographs of towering skyscrapers overlooking older residential areas. The building was designed in the octagonal shape of the Umbrella logo. The tower was initially planned to feature a number of offices and stairwells, but a change in planning out the Simmons boss fights scrapped these.

The submarine was designed to include a number of signs, which could be used to properly demonstrate to the player just how much it is listing. Problems were met with the portions planned to be most realistic looking like the cargo area, as it was felt too confusing for players. The aircraft carrier meanwhile was also designed to look realistic while fun for Resident Evil.

The final environment, the seabed facility seen in Jake Chapter 5 and Chris Chapter 5, was built around the idea of Haos being hatched in an enormous lab room. Around this, various rooms were planned out that would give explanation for how the facility operates and what the employees would do. The exception to this realism-in-fantasy idea was that of the lava pit where Jake would fight Ustanak.

Character

Character designs were led by Makoto Fukui, and was partially outsourced to artists from Sirogumi Inc. and Digital Works Entertainment.

Creature

According to lead cinematic artist Masato Miyazaki, the separation between Zombie and J'avo creature designs between Leon and Chris' stories led to competition between the two for the best looking designs. Tomonori Takano served as art director for the game; enemy designs were developed based around gameplay requirements and how it could be killed, and later tailored to fit the game. After the concept stage, audio director Watauru Hachisako would discuss with Takano what the overall size and motion style the creature should have so that sound effects could be appropriately designed.

Demo

Soon after the game's announcement, Capcom announced that there would be a demo for Resident Evil 6, which can be downloaded with codes when purchasing the Xbox port of Dragon's Dogma, which was released in May, with the beta starting on July 3. A demo for PlayStation 3 owners of Dragon's Dogma came out on September 4, 2012.

Capcom announced that a fully public demo will be available on September 18 for Xbox Live Gold members and the PlayStation Network. The demo will be available to Xbox Live Silver members on September 25. Unlike the Dragon's Dogma demo, which is taken from the demo shown at E3 2012, the public demo will be the one that was presented at San Diego Comic-Con.