Resident Evil 4’s long-awaited remake is out tomorrow. And while this soon-to-be-released horror game is a mostly faithful adaptation of the original Capcom classic, not everything from the original game has been recreated in the remake. For example: You monsters who like murdering the mysterious merchant will be upset to discover that he’s now unkillable.
After being rumored for years, the Resident Evil 4 remake was finally announced by Capcom last year and it updates the iconic game’s controls and combat, while mostly preserving the basic storyline and characters. As in the original RE4, former cop-turned-secret-agent Leon S. Kennedy travels to a rural part of western Europe to save the kidnapped president’s daughter. In the process, the pair get mixed up in a whole bunch of campy, horrific action. Y’know, classic Resident Evil shenanigans!
While you count the hours you might want to check out a recently uploaded video from GameXplain, which points out 10 surprising things from the original RE4 that are cut or changed in this new remaster.
As previously mentioned, the loveable and wonderful Merchant is now immortal. When you attempt to aim your gun at him, Leon lowers it, so you can’t kill him anymore. Classic Resident Evil 4 let you kill the merchant, but he would still appear in other locations, leading some to believe the merchant wasn’t one man but many different people spread across the region. (I hate this theory and believe Capcom just didn’t want to punish players who made the mistake of killing the merchant once for the rest of the game.)
More changes in the new Resident Evil 4 remake
Another positive change in my book is the removal of the odd crane mini-game bit in the factory. Here you had to use a large crane to grab enemies and knock them off a ledge. It was fine, but felt very out of place. On the other hand, sadly, some great lines of cheesy dialogue have disappeared, including the very silly conversation about right hands between the evil Salazar and heroic dope Leon.
Also—and this is a minor thing but one which I’ll definitely miss—the cool laser room section is gone now, too. I always liked this bit, as it was awesome looking and it felt like a neat reference to the live-action Resident Evil film starring Milla Jovovich. (And yes, that movie came out first, in 2002.)
Overall, while I know some folks will be mad about any changes at all, the original game is so easy to play in 2023 that I don’t mind these tweaks. If anything bothers me too much, I’m just a few button clicks away from replaying the classic RE4 on basically every platform in my house.