It seems like there was a very long time where VR was just something I’d never be able to have for myself. It needs a huge room, an expensive headset, an even more expensive computer… There were just so many barriers to entry that I just ignored VR as a thing that existed.
Then Facebook started bombarding me with Oculus Quest 2 ads, and at some point I decided to see what it was all about. Now here we are a year later, and I’m enjoying a… fairly limited library of VR games. There just aren’t all that many games available for Quest 2. But that actually doesn’t matter, because it has the best game of them all: Resident Evil 4.
Suffice to say, I’m over the moon for this particular port of RE4. One of the best games ever, but completely reworked so that you are Leon. It’s an incredible new way to experience a game that I’ve played through dozens of times, and I’ll probably play it dozens more times in VR.
But of course, if you give Ryan an incredible VR port of one Resident Evil game, he’s going to want another to go with it. And honestly, I think that a VR remake of the original Resident Evil would be amazing. Imagine being able to actually walk through that iconic mansion! To go mano-a-monstero with all the beasties that roam the grounds! To hang out with Barry! I haven’t really thought it through enough yet to consider all the potential issues that remaking the game in VR would cause, but I have decided that it’s something I absolutely need to play nonetheless.
Now you may be wondering: which version of Resident Evil would I want to see in VR? Well, this is already a pretty outlandish ask, so while I’m at it, can’t I have both? As great as the REmake version of the game would be, there’s so much charm in the original version that I’d really enjoy being able to experience it from a new perspective as well. But if I were forced to choose one or the other? REmake, obviously. It’s just a richer, fuller game all around. It takes the original game, makes it prettier, and adds a ton of content that never feels out of place or tacked-on.
Even though RE4VR is selling like hotcakes and being praised as the definitive version of the game (by me, at least), I don’t believe that we’ll ever actually see any of the “classic-style” RE games ported to VR. While Armature was basically able to build RE4VR on existing assets, it would be a heck of a lot more work to create an entire game’s worth of new environments, since REs 1 to 3 all originally used pre-rendered backgrounds. But it’s a fun dream I have! And not even Zuckerberg can take that away from me!