Hideki Kamiya, who was a game designer on the original Resident Evil and the director of Resident Evil 2, recently congratulated the series on its 30th anniversary, expressing awe at how big the franchise that kickstarted his career in the game industry has become over the years. He cheered on the development team at Capcom for their hard work and, as customary, jokingly asked them to add a non-scary mode.
Although Kamiya’s dislike of the horror genre is well known at this point, that didn’t stop his fans from asking him to return to direct a new Resident Evil game, preferably one in which he’d give his own take on Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield’s story as they grow older. “You can even make all the enemies look like tofu or something,” one desperate fan said.
While Kamiya didn’t entertain the idea of making a survival horror game, he responded with an unexpectedly detailed concept for a kind of cozy, slow-life Resident Evil game starring a retired Leon.
“If I made it,” he says “it’d be a game where a retired Leon spends his days in the countryside fishing, gathering wild vegetables, baking bread, walking his dog, tending to his garden, driving 50 kilometers to the nearest general store, inviting his old friends over for barbecues, fixing his elderly neighbor’s oven, and selling homemade lemonade at the local festival. Would you still be okay with that?”
In response, Kamiya’s fans gave a rather unanimous “yes, we would be more than okay with that,” with Japanese commenters expressing interest in playing a “Resident Evil Pokopia” and the general idea of seeing Leon finally enjoy a peaceful life after everything he’s been through.
Seeing the positive response, Kamiya jokingly addressed Capcom directly in another post, commenting, “Capcom, there seem to be a lot of people asking for a Resident not-Evil game like this. If you ever have the time, please consider making it… I’d like to play it too…”
