Capcom has released a new Resident Evil Village Behind The Scenes video detailing the game’s struggles during development. Appropriately titled “The Internal Struggle,” the seven-minute-long video explains how the COVID-19 pandemic halted development for a period of time, and how the game’s combat was initially considered a “slog” by the company’s QA team. It includes interviews with various members of the development team, such as director Morimasa Sato and producer Tsuyoshi Kanda.
Director Morimasa Sato stated that, because of the pandemic, development for Resident Evil Village was halted for over a month. During that time, employees were unable to work from home, and all Sato could do “was worry about Resident Evil Village.” Sato says that the core theme of the game focused on “the struggle to survive.” The team aimed to accomplish this by making enemies “very aggressive,” in order to instill this sense of fear and survival. After coming back into the office, the team decided to conduct a focus test with a group of players. However, it was then that the Quality Assurance team found that many players did not feel this sense of fear. Instead, Quality Assurance Manager Shuntaro Kobayashi noted, many of the playtesters felt that “the game’s content was completely divorced” from the original vision. Kobayashi continued:

The playtesters’ first impressions of Resident Evil Vil...