A virtual reality version of Resident Evil 4 will launch October 21st on Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset. Resident Evil 4 VR was announced earlier this year.
But Facebook and Capcom — as well as third-party development studio Armature — have only offered glimpses of its gameplay, including a short trailer. It adapts the original game’s content with a (mostly) first-person point of view, re-engineering it to take advantage of VR motion controls.
Armature’s Resident Evil 4 makes a somewhat complicated series of small changes the original 2005 horror game. It’s supposed to feature the same narrative content and world design, rather than getting the kind of overhaul Resident Evil 2 did in 2019. But it’s been re-engineered to work as a first-person VR game with motion controllers. You’ll interact with weapons, items, and puzzles using your hands.
Your health will be visible on a wristwatch instead of a screen overlay. And in addition to moving with the analog stick on an Oculus Touch controller, you’ll be able to teleport or walk in room-scale VR.
The new design could affect gameplay in some notable ways. You can wield weapons in each hand, for instance, and switching between them looks a lot easier. You’ll use a knife by physically slashing your controller at enemies instead of hitting a button. And a gameplay video shows you moving around while shooting, a major change from the original design.
The game’s not fully first-person, though. All its cutscenes will be presented in their original third-person format, including ones tied to Resident Evil 4’s many quick time events, according to Facebook. Based on Facebook’s description, the game features some surprisingly fast-sounding camera shifts — you can apparently kick a door down with a button, for instance, and see a short third-person animation as it opens.
Facebook says the original quicktime event placements and animations are going to stay the same, although some of the actions have been “updated” to work better in VR. (We’ll be waiting to see how the game’s more acrobatic sections translate to a headset.) Some of the quick time events will involve quickly moving the controllers, while others will ask you to pull their triggers at the same time.
Other tweaks would make sense in any remaster. The game’s textures have been updated, and Armature has made enemies less likely to target your partner Ashley, who you’ll spend a lot of time protecting in either version of the game.
Unlike most Quest games, Resident Evil 4 VR isn’t compatible with the original 2019 Quest — it’s completely exclusive to the 2020 Quest 2. Facebook also isn’t sharing any potential plans to bring it to Oculus’ desktop platform, nor has it discussed the game coming to desktop PC or consoles, the way Myst’s Oculus Quest version later launched outside VR.
But if you’re just interested in a better-looking version of the original Resident Evil 4, there’s always the game’s unofficial HD remaster.
