Dynamic difficulty scaling will find its way in Capcom’s upcoming Resident Evil 2 Remake.
For those unaware, dynamic difficulty scaling was secretly introduced in Resident Evil 4 and used in almost every game in the series since then. It makes the game either easier or more difficult based on player performance, all without the need to manually toggle the difficulty option. The Resident Evil series scales difficulty based on recorded player deaths, which means you can simply die over and over again to make zombie encounters less nerve-wracking.
In an interview with VG247, producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi said they have calibrated the dynamic difficulty scaling to ensure players always feel uneasy and unsafe through the whole game. “I’d like to believe that you were doing really well and so the difficulty ramped up even more,” said Hirabayashi. “But we have tuned it so that no matter how well you’re doing, there’s always going to be that sense of dread and tension there.”
Arguably, opinion is mixed regarding adaptive difficulty scaling in the gaming community. Some gamers simply want to find satisfaction in conquering a seemingly undefeatable foe without adaptive difficulty scaling kicking into gear. However, difficulty scaling also seems crucial for Capcom’s survival horror game, as you can easily run out resources and ammunition to defeat foes.
Proper utilization of resources also seem more important this times around because zombies are more aggressive and difficult to run past through. Additionally, Resident Evil 2 Remake will allow users to board up and block windows using their resources, which means those who neglect these zombie spawn points can accidentally make their game extremely difficult and nearly impossible to overcome.
“So, at one point I was talking to the director and I was like… ‘Hey, what’s going on here?! There’s tons of zombies coming through here.’ He actually laughed at me. He said, ‘You should’ve been careful, you should’ve gone this route, you should’ve boarded windows up…’ So yeah, things you do earlier like with the windows does have a heavy impact on what you might encounter later on.”
Resident Evil 2 Remake launches on Jan. 25, 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
