A key Resident Evil 4 boss battle reveals Capcom’s ambitions to recast RCPD officer Leon S. Kennedy into a cool action hero in the increasingly over-the top cinematic franchise: the knife fight against his urban warfighter mentor, Jack Krauser. Until then, his mission to save the U.S. President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, from a cult of smart, reactive Los Ganados enemies had been supported with a fully-loaded arsenal and a new fast-paced, trick shot gameplay. Here, Leon and Krauser unleash precise slashes and stabs, execute intense parries, with life and death inches apart. But where technology limited Shinji Mikami’s 2005 original to only script this as a QTE scene, the 2023 remake, rebuilt with a comprehensive knife-based melee system, turns it into a real-time, personal brawl. By scaling the knife play down where the original scaled the gunplay up, Yasuhiro Anpo and Kazunori Kadoi continued using their Revelations 2 design experience to retrain Leon into an expert in guerilla warfare, reworking the combat economy, and fully transforming the rookie into a battle-hardened veteran.
Continue reading “Retraining Leon S. Kennedy: The Art of War in Resident Evil 4 Remake”
