Resident Evil 2 Remake News: Release Date & Gameplay

After reinventing the franchise with Resident Evil 7, Capcom is going back to its roots with a remake of Resident Evil 2, one of the most popular games in the series and the first to introduce iconic characters like Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield – not to mention Raccoon City.

First officially unveiled at E3 2018, we finally got the chance to play it ourselves at Gamescom in August – check out our RE2 preview to find out what we thought, or stay here for more info on the game.

When is the release date?

Resident Evil 2 is due in early 2019 – 25 January to be precise.

Which platforms is it on?

The game will release simultaneously on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can pre-order the game, which is currently priced at £44.99 from Game in the UK or $59.99 from Amazon US.

Remake or remaster?

This is a total remake of Resident Evil 2, rather than a remaster, meaning it’s basically been built from scratch. That also means there are some pretty big changes to the game too.

Graphically, this is closest to 2017’s Resident Evil 7, taking advantage of that graphical overhaul (and using the same RE Engine) to deliver the most realistic take yet on the franchise’s classic zombies. It doesn’t use that game’s first-person perspective though – and nor does it stick to the original’s fixed camera angles – but instead borrows the over-the-shoulder camera from Resident Evil 4, still considered by many to be the series high point.

Producer Yoshiaki “H” Hirabayashi told Gamespot that the camera angle was chosen because they “wanted it to be intimately terrifying in nature, to [have] up-close and personal zombie encounters that you can only get, I think, with that kind of camera view.”

You can see what it looks like in action in the first official gameplay footage, which was released during E3 2018 and shows off a few minutes of Leon’s campaign. As you can see, the camera angle keeps things feeling very claustrophobic, especially paired with the limited lighting, making for an impressively intense bit of gameplay:

This was followed up in August with a gameplay video appearing on YouTube, showcasing a boss fight between Claire Redfield and a reinvented (but definitely still mutated) G-Virus Birkin, the boss from the B Scenario in the original game. 

With the new engine and camera angle come new puzzles and locations, so anyone who’s played the original won’t find themselves running through the exact same scenarios. We don’t know yet quite how closely it will stick to the overall story structure of the original – which saw cop Leon Kennedy and student Claire Redfield fight to survive a zombie outbreak in the city – but expect the minute-to-minute gameplay to be very different.

There will still be two separate campaigns for the characters, though we also don’t know how much variation you can expect to see between the two scenarios.

Is there VR support?

While Resident Evil 7 could be played in its entirety in virtual reality on the PS4, the producers decided not to include the same option this time around, attributing the choice to the over-the-shoulder camera angle, which isn’t as well-suited to a VR adaptation as RE7’s first-person perspective.

Watch the trailers

In addition to the gameplay video above, there have been three trailers for the game so far, revealed at E3 2018 and later at the Tokyo Game Show. The first is the announcement trailer – also embedded at the top of the page – which introduces the engine and shows off a few of Leon’s close calls.

The second trailer, unveiled at Sony’s E3 event, is longer and teases more of the plot. After a tone-setting intro it dives straight into the action, including more gameplay footage, hints of a few of the non-zombie monsters, and a proper look at Claire, the game’s second protagonist.

The Tokyo Game Show trailer is more story-focused, flitting around between all of the main characters and a few locations, while also giving us our first proper look at the redesign of fan-favourite Ada Wong: