We probably don’t need to tell you this, but developing a game is hard, even more so when a ton of quality assurance work needs to be done. The remake of Resident Evil 4 was far from immune to those struggles, as a new documentary recently revealed.
The details came in a recent episode of the documentary series 100 Cameras (spotted by GamesRadar), which, true to the name, installs a hundred cameras to capture individuals in the specific episode’s theme. This particular episode focused on Capcom.
At the time of filming the episode, Resident Evil 4 Remake had one month left in development before its release date, with a slew of QA issues that needed to be addressed. One development team member disclosed that they found “around 70” bugs after finishing just one day of playtesting.
Resident Evil 4 Remake director Yasuhiro Anpo detailed several bugs, from the screen freezing at random points to Leon falling from the map. “At this rate, we won’t make the release,” Anpo said in the episode.
The episode goes into detail of the activities of QA testers during game development, delving into the extensive gameplay testing to ensure proper functionality.
Among other things, it highlighted the rigorous testing of elements like the “Game Over” screen, and revealed that one QA tester died 300 times in a day while testing the Resident Evil 4 Remake. At one point, the QA lead, frustrated with the number of bugs and questioning why the “fixes are so sloppy,” held a meeting with Anpo, worried that the team would be unable to finish the game before its release date.
One of the major issues was the fact that new additions, including those dealing with menu screens and lighting, were being tacked on during the final stretch of development, causing new bugs to surface and leading the QA team to pile more work onto their plates.
Nevertheless, we know how this story ends: Resident Evil 4 Remake hit its March 24, 2023 release date and did not encounter any game-breaking bugs upon release. The development team’s efforts did not go unnoticed, as Resident Evil 4 Remake was a critical and commercial success.
“The Resident Evil 4 remake is the series’ most relentlessly exciting adventure rebuilt, refined, and realized to the full extent of its enormous potential,” my colleague Tristan Ogilvie wrote in his glowing review of Resident Evil 4 Remake.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
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