The 'Resident Evil 4' camera wasn't intended to be "ground-breaking".
The director of the first instalment of the 'Resident Evil' series, Shinji Mikami, has reflected on the 25th anniversary of the 1996 original game, and how they never anticipated being applauded for the over-the-shoulder camera.
Mikami said in a video interview on Biohazard's YouTube channel: “It felt natural, oddly enough, we weren’t planning on doing something innovative, but in the end, everyone kept saying we did.
“To us personally, we just thought that angle was better. We weren’t trying to do something new or ground-breaking, there was none of that.”
He added: “It’s weird. It doesn’t really hit you, even with all that praise. You’re not like, ‘I did it!’, it’s more like ‘this ought to work, I guess.'
“Like, in a fight when you punch them in the gut, even if you were holding back, when you see the other guy keel over in pain you think ‘woah, that got him, that did it. That actually did it.'”
'Super Smash Bros.' creator Masahiro Sakurai led the praise.
Mikami said: “He came to check out the game in development and asked, ‘Who came up with this camera system? ‘Hey, yeah, that was me.’ ‘This is great,’ he said. ‘Woah, really?’ I responded.”
It also inspired the camera used in 'Gears of War'.
Jun Takeuch, the producer for 'Lost Planet' and chief producer for 'Resident Evil 5', said in their chat: "During the development of 'Lost Planet', at our first E3, we were approached by the 'Gears of War' team. They were all around us, checking out the Lost Planet camera. A bunch of them were asking why we weren’t using the 'Resident Evil 4' camera in the game. We were like: ‘Well, it’s a completely different game.’"
