Posted August 23, 2021
While playing Kenji Eno's "D" for the first time a few months ago, I started to recognize many similarities to the original Resident Evil... so much so that I feel like Capcom may have directly drawn some inspiration/design assets from Kenji's work while developing their title. Some of it might be chalked up to the lure of creating a "realistic" haunted house atmosphere on next generation machines with the similar genre tropes that accompany it, but it feels like more than coincidence. I'll list out the ones I can think of.
Both titles:
-Take place in a "haunted" house of sorts (mansion/castle)
-Star female leads as a main character
-Feature a dining room/table as one of their first scenes
-Feature a room full of suits of medieval armor
-Feature a chase scene with a giant boulder
-Feature an outside garden area with similar background sound effects (wolf howling)
-Feature a pool of water that you need to raise/lower to proceed
-Feature a statue of a woman carrying a container of water (Aquarius in "D")
-Feature a book/bookcase puzzle to open a door
-Feature a crushing/spike room puzzle
-Feature multiple endings based on the decisions you make in the game
-Feature a time-based element (2 hours in "D", 3 hours to unlock Rocket Launcher in "RE")
-Have an entrance that can not be exited (trapped in the house)
-Feature general elements like keys, fireplaces, opening drawers, passcodes, etc.
These are the obvious ones that I could remember off the top of my head. I know that this was the era when haunted house type games were quite en vogue (Alone in the Dark, 7th Guest, Mansion of Hidden Souls, Monster Manor, Killing Time, Phantasmagoria, etc), so I'm sure that some of the similarities are just a result of foundational horror cliches. But I think it's an interesting possibility that certain elements may have inspired Resident Evil directly. As the title released in early 1995, some of those creative juices may have spilled over to the mind of Shinji Mikami and his team.
What do you all think? Was D's setting, puzzles, and design an inspiration for RE, or is it just coincidence?
Both titles:
-Take place in a "haunted" house of sorts (mansion/castle)
-Star female leads as a main character
-Feature a dining room/table as one of their first scenes
-Feature a room full of suits of medieval armor
-Feature a chase scene with a giant boulder
-Feature an outside garden area with similar background sound effects (wolf howling)
-Feature a pool of water that you need to raise/lower to proceed
-Feature a statue of a woman carrying a container of water (Aquarius in "D")
-Feature a book/bookcase puzzle to open a door
-Feature a crushing/spike room puzzle
-Feature multiple endings based on the decisions you make in the game
-Feature a time-based element (2 hours in "D", 3 hours to unlock Rocket Launcher in "RE")
-Have an entrance that can not be exited (trapped in the house)
-Feature general elements like keys, fireplaces, opening drawers, passcodes, etc.
These are the obvious ones that I could remember off the top of my head. I know that this was the era when haunted house type games were quite en vogue (Alone in the Dark, 7th Guest, Mansion of Hidden Souls, Monster Manor, Killing Time, Phantasmagoria, etc), so I'm sure that some of the similarities are just a result of foundational horror cliches. But I think it's an interesting possibility that certain elements may have inspired Resident Evil directly. As the title released in early 1995, some of those creative juices may have spilled over to the mind of Shinji Mikami and his team.
What do you all think? Was D's setting, puzzles, and design an inspiration for RE, or is it just coincidence?
Post edited August 23, 2021 by atomic837