When we enter the room, Keiji Inafune, director of Capcom’s forthcoming Xbox 360 title Dead Rising, is sitting at the conference table wearing a Dawn of the Dead t-shirt. And after giving an early version a workout and posing some questions about the game to Inafune, it’s clear that this was a conscious wardrobe choice.
Though Dead Rising may or may not be a direct tribute to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead series, there’s no question that Inafune was inspired by it. In fact, as a result of his love for zombie movies, he notes that his goal is to make a zombie game like no other before it.
"Even though there are other zombie games out there," Inafune says through a translator, "Dead Rising more accurately depicts what zombie movies were supposed to be like, and what a zombie game should be. Zombies in general aren’t these evil monsters. They should be more considered like props or at least something that just gets in the way."
Through that, Inafune has envisioned the game as being more than just fighting against the walking corpses—though there seems to be an endless flow of them at every corner of the mall you’re working to move trapped journalist Frank through. The shadow of the game’s biggest boss battle hangs over you throughout. It’s a foe that is always nerve wracking to face, and there’s no weapon provided or discovered that can adequately combat it.
The clock.
“With this game, you are fighting against time and it’s an enemy of sorts, and the second you take a stance of, ‘Okay, time is going to become an enemy in the game and is going to be something you’re racing against,’ that instantly sets you up in the framework that the more time you give the player, the less of a challenge it is,” Inafune explains. “The less time you have to complete a challenge, the more you feel the pressure, the stress of having to complete that task, so you have to make a game that’s shorter. The second you say [it’s a] shorter game, people are like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to get my money’s worth. I’m going to finish it and it’s going to be done with or it’s going to be boring.’
“So, what you have to do is make sure there are enough different things to do in this world—enough different options, different paths to take, but that person is going to invariably make a lot of mistakes along the way and may not complete the game until the seventh or eighth time they’re playing through. You will maybe not rescue a character. You may say they’re not important or too important that you’ll get to this other location first, only then later to realize that, ‘Wait a second…had I’d rescued that character, they would give me this other weapon or taught me a skill I’d need in order to complete that area.’
“By that rationale, we’re kind of changing what games used to be,” Inafune continues, “which was one way to beat the game and it used to be 15 hours of standard action. Now you’ll play for less time in one playthrough, but there are so many different things to do that it’s not just a thin, long-playing experience."
Deadlier Than an Old Navy Sale
The premise of Dead Rising’s storyline is that Frank has gone to the mall to investigate what could be the story of a lifetime. He ends up stranded in the giant shopping area as the zombie population grows without explanation. It’s from that point that Frank (and you) realizes that there’s a 72-hour window in which he can stick it out and pull together his story, though at the risk of falling victim to the zombies, or escape the dangers by getting outside and catching the rescue helicopter, but lacking the clues that will enable him to write his Pulitzer Prize article. It’s a classic scenario of fight-or-flight—well, more like fight-and-write-or-flight.
While it would be great to have an epic game with an actual 72 hours of thrilling gameplay, Capcom is quick to note that the clock is accelerated so it’s not 72 “real” hours. Inafune says that if you don’t do anything, the game could last about two hours, but once you start making your way through the mall for clues and your sheer survival, the adventure stretches out. Of course, the nature of the game—which contains a non-linear “sandbox” design, lots of places where you can make a different decision to alter how the game flows and multiple endings—lends itself to replayability, so you can try out other theories.
Swings and Slides Were Never More Fun
The most enjoyment in Dead Rising comes from this bizarre playground, the freewheeling style of game that evolved from the Grand Theft Auto series. The mall is loaded with different stores, and each store offers a slew of items that can be used as weapons. The antique store has vases and swords; and the sporting goods store has golf clubs and hockey sticks (each of which when swung serves up a golf ball or puck as an offensive projectile).
Even the main halls provide myriad objects, which have certainly powerful and often laugh-out-loud results when wielded: big plants, chairs and sale signs are frequently available weapons. Though not as damaging, picking up a large beach-type umbrella and running through the zombies clears them out of your way like a snowplow carving through the remnants of a blizzard.
Though the action is hardly boring, there’s more than just slaying the undead. You’ll encounter other people stuck in the mall, and accomplishing a task (such as reuniting a man with his wife, who’s on the other side of the pavilion) can benefit you with a scoop that takes you closer to writing the blockbuster story. Then again, these pursuits also take time, and the limited amount of that resource will have you making difficult choices.
With a bit of RPG-ish gameplay, you can take pictures that will help illustrate the reporting in your story. Particularly good pictures—such as those with large numbers of zombies and in close range—give you Prestige Points that boost Frank’s “level,” which in turn helps improve your skills so you can accomplish more in your trek.
Graphic In-Sight
Dead Rising’s look is coming along quite nicely. Inafune credits the power contained in the Xbox 360 hardware with offering his development team the ability to craft fast-paced gameplay and a cool appearance. When Frank gets into a zombie’s clutches—and gnashing teeth—the camera zooms in and blurs with the motion enhancing the tension of the situation. Inafune and his team have used the hardware to make it look much like a movie. In fact, they’re still learning how to maximize the game’s elements with the hardware, so it should only get better.
"With the Xbox 360, [we] received the tools and the development kit rather early compared to a lot of other developers, so [we] had a lot of time to use them," Inafune states. "And, of course, as a system is getting geared up for launch, we receive it in different parts—alpha, beta, etc. As we’re working with trying to understand what the system can do, what a piece of hardware can do, there are a lot of areas in which it’s very difficult, because you’re in the unknown. You have no idea what you’re going to be able to do with that hardware."
"But, on the other hand, if you look at it positively, there are a lot of new things that you’re seeing, understanding about it all the time. ‘Oh, wow…we can do this. We can put this many enemies on the screen.’ There are lots of really cool things you can do that can’t be done with the current-generation hardware. So there’s definitely that side of it that makes it very exciting to be able to work with something like this."
“The 360 for [us] has been a fun piece of technology to work with, especially since the more [we] work with it, the better [our] games are getting and technology can be shared between titles. You’re seeing that in Dead Rising and Lost Planet alone.
Mall Residents Are Evil, But…
Many will make what seems to be an obvious comparison between Dead Rising and another of Capcom’s Resident Evil series—perhaps going so far as to suggest that it be a part of the more established franchise. However, Inafune discounts any such judgment that this should be thought of as Resident Evil Goes Shopping.
“Unfortunately, those two worlds are so different, when you think about it,” Inafune says. “Resident Evil is a very serious, deep core game, while Dead Rising is more a comical, over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek sort of humor. So the two really don’t fit really well enough together.”
The one question we weren’t able to ask Inafune was if he saw Dead Rising as his version of the Night of the Living Dead flicks—if he’s was making the game as his take on what could be a next chapter, but in interactive form. There’s still some time to get an answer as Capcom is listing Dead Rising as a second-quarter release, though a Capcom employee close to the game’s development indicated that it’ll be a late second-quarter title at best, and perhaps a bit later than that still. As always, TeamXbox will bring you more information on this game as it gets closer to its final form.
