Small revolution in the world of TPS when it was released in 2005 on GameCube and PS2, Resident Evil 4 owes part of its success to its camera. Its director reveals some anecdotes about it.
Many gamers remember the notable change in the Resident Evil series when the episode Resident Evil 4 was released. The camera placement was one of the reasons why the game became a success over time and the saga. And at the same time, it has defined a new standard of survival-horrorwith this shoulder-mounted viewpoint adopted by everyone afterwards.
In a discussion about the 25th anniversary of the license, the game’s director, Shinji Mikamideclared that the camera had never been thought to be revolutionary. The design was natural for the game team.
We didn’t set out to do anything innovative, but in the end, everyone tells us it is. […] We just thought it was the best angle we could get. We weren’t trying to do anything new or revolutionary, there was none of that.
But in the end, internally, several people praised the camera. Mikami explains that Masahiro Sakuraithe creator of Super Smash Bros, met him to tell him all the good things he thought of this innovation.
He came to see the game in development and asked me “who invented this camera system”. I said, “Well, it was me,” and he said, “That’s great.”
From his side, Jun Takeuchi, producer of RE5 recalls the E3 2007 where the Gears of War team criticized Capcom’s TPS, Lost Planet, because of the lack of this kind of camera. “We told them, ‘It’s not the same kind of game at all,'” he says. To which the team responded: “we based the cameras in our game on the ones in RE4!”
