The Resident Evil Game That Died so That RE2 Could Live - IGN

Between unusually candid developers and an obsessive fan community that has spent years unearthing franchise history, we know that the classic Resident Evil games we love and cherish are the final survivors of a wild, iterative development process. The road to the 1996 original BIOHAZARD is practically unrecognizable, thanks to first person perspectives and cyborg supersoldiers. The creative partnership between director Shinji Mikami and his collaborator Hideki Kamiya would both shape and derail some of the most fascinating games Capcom never released. Games like Resident Evil 1.5. It wasn’t actually called that, of course. Back in 1996 it would have been considered Resident Evil 2 within the offices of Capcom. The studio had quickly greenlit a sequel following the surprise success of the first game, and tapped Kamiya to take the lead. For this second chapter, he envisioned Raccoon City itself under siege from the zombie swarms, with rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy trapped inside the police headquarters with a motorcycle-riding college student as his co-protagonist. Sounds familiar, right? But that’s about where the similarities between it and the Resident Evil 2 we’ve played end. The p