RUMOR: ‘Resident Evil 4’ Heading To Oculus VR Headsets May 2021

A new leak hints at a VR port of Capcom’s legendary 3rd-person shooter horror game.

Earlier this month, Japanese video game developer and publisher Capcom was the target of a sizable online attack involving the unauthorized access of sensitive company emails and file servers, resulting in a number of supposed leaks regarding several unannounced projects. This includes an official VR port of Capcom’s 2005 hit survival horror game Resident Evil 4.

“Beginning in the early morning hours of November 2, 2020 some of the Capcom Group networks experienced issues that affected access to certain systems, including email and file servers,” stated Haruhiro Tsujimoto, President and COO, in an official release. “The company has confirmed that this was due to unauthorized access carried out by a third party, and that it has halted some operations of its internal networks as of November 2. Capcom expressed its deepest regret for any inconvenience this may cause to its various stakeholders. Further, it stated that at present there is no indication that any customer information was breached. This incident has not affected connections for playing the company’s games online or access to its various websites.”

According to the leaked documents, the VR port of RE4 is scheduled to launch May 2021 on Oculus VR. While it’s unclear which headsets the document is referring to specifically, based on the age of the now-classic third-person shooter, I doubt the game would have any difficulty running on the Oculus Quest platform.

That being said, serious alterations would need to be made in order to properly translate the game to the VR format. In addition to switching from a third-person to first-person perspective, developers would need to address Resident Evil’s famous “tank controls,” a unique locomotion mechanic which requires players to stand in place in order to fire their weapons.

I suppose allowing players to move freely while looking down the sights of their weapons wouldn’t drastically change the core gameplay experience, though I could see die hard fans wholeheartedly rejecting the idea. Perhaps teleportation could serve as a nice middle ground between the two options, allowing players to move freely throughout their virtual environments while maintaining the classic stand-and-shoot combat mechanic.

Here’s a brief summary of the data leak (via stealthyfrog). It’s important to note that some of this information was gathered from 2018 files, therefore plans could have changed drastically:

Resident Evil Village details (Current-gen release, April launch, Demo before release)
New multiplayer Resident Evil referred to internally as Project Highway/Village Online. It’s a Battle Royale of some sort. September 2021. (Dusk Golem says Highway was the codename for Resident Evil Resistance so ???)
Great Ace Attorney and Great Ace Attorney 2 localization for the west, announcement in April and release in July. English dub recorded in the UK. AA Trilogy + DGS1-2 box set for Japan only.
New project codenamed “GUILLOTINE” for Switch in February, other platforms in May
Unannounced project “Reiwa” in May, no platforms mentioned
Monster Hunter Rise on PC releasing October 2021(?). Demos for Switch in January and March
Monster Hunter Stories 2 on PC. Targeting June 2021 Switch/PC release. Single-player, online co-op and PvP modes. Paid DLC expansions, free post-launch co-op quests, cosmetic MTX, and amiibo support planned.
Resident Evil 4 for Oculus VR
New Shooter Multiplayer game titled “SHIELD” geared towards streamers
Source Code for DMC2 and Umbrella Chronicles
Stadia paid Capcom $10 million USD to put RE7 and RE8 on the platform. Sony paid $5 million USD for RE7 VR/timed DLC/demo exclusivity.