In all the excitement surrounding the announcement of Capcom’s long-awaited Resident Evil Code Veronica remake last week, it was pretty easy to miss the fact its do-over has had a bit of a name change. And if you’ve been wondering why that might be, the publisher has now explained the reason it’s newly monikered Resident Evil Veronica is ‘Code Veronica’ no more.
Name-wise, the original game – technically a Resident Evil spin-off rather than a mainline entry – has always been a bit of an outlier for the series, adopting an atypical combination of colon and hyphen (officially its name is written as Resident Evil – Code: Veronica) the series hasn’t utilised before or since.
So what’s the reason for the name change? Resident Evil Veronica producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi discussed the issue during a recent Summer Game Fest press Q&A attended by Eurogamer, explaining that as far as Capcom and the development team (which also worked on the acclaimed remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 4) are concerned, each remake is as important as a numbered entry, and so they wanted a name more in line with other games in the series.
“[If you] think about the recent entries that we’ve had in the Resident Evil franchise,” Hirabayashi continued, “our titles are made from a very clear and impactful naming system; usually it’s just Resident Evil and a clear or simple single word in alignment with that. When we were deciding the title of this remake, we wanted to select one word that was most representative of the game and we thought that Veronica was the title that did that the best.”
Hirabayashi – as well as confirming Veronica will be a third-person game despite its first-person trailer – also touched on the inherent tension of creating remakes that appeal to both new and existing audiences. “That’s something our development team fights with each other about all the time,” he revealed. “So when our dev team gathers around the table and we discuss this, there’s one side who loves the original and wants to keep it how it is. There’s the other side that wants to add new elements too.” As for who gets to make the final call, “it’s the director who makes the decision.”
Resident Evil Requiem game director Koshi Nakanishi similarly discussed appealing to new and existing audiences when he chatted with Eurogamer earlier this year. “That’s something that’s always in the back of our minds when we design these games,” he explained. “We always consider the content and design from the perspective of both the established fan base… It’s something we do think about a lot, both with Requiem and with every Resident Evil title.”
As for Resident Evil Veronica, it’s coming to Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, and PC some time next year.
