Capcom has announced that Vancouver video-game developer Slant Six Games is working on Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, which is being made for the PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360.
In a Monday (March 28) news release, Capcom said the new game would be released this winter, but Slant Six director of development Dan McBride told me that it would likely hit shelves before the end of the year.
This is good news for a Vancouver industry that has been staggered by recent title cancellations and studio closures.
At an IGDA Vancouver event on Monday night, McBride explained that Capcom, looking to make a Resident Evil game that had greater appeal to North American audiences, came to Slant Six while looking for a North American studio to work with.
Slant Six, which has developed three SOCOM tactical shooter games for Sony, is creating a completely new Resident Evil game on the company’s own Big Brain engine, he said. While previous Resident Evil games have been third-person survival horror games, Operation Raccoon City is a modern, third-person, team-based shooter.
McBride said the story intersects with the events of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 and lets players portray either a member of Umbrella Security Services or a U.S. special ops soldier. In that way, he said, they will be engaged in a cover up or a fact-finding mission.
The zombie and bio-organic weapons that are key to the Resident Evil stories are an indiscriminate third party, McBride explained, and can become a tactical element for players that can find ways to turn them against opponents.
Operation Raccoon City’s story mode can be played alone or in four-player co-op. McBride said that other multiplayer experiences will be revealed at E3 in L.A. this June.
Capcom, based in Osaka, Japan, has been very bullish on Vancouver lately. Last fall, the company acquired Burnaby’s Blue Castle Games , just as the studio’s Dead Rising 2 was about to be released.
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