“The village is a more open and expansive location which the player can freely explore and get lost in,” says Sato. “As you play, you’ll gain access to more parts of the village. Making sure that the player knows where to go next in a larger environment is something we had to be really careful about. We consciously designed it so that you would see and notice the right things from the right locations.”
“This is indeed one of Village’s newest evolutions,” Sato says. “We’ve prepared a more open environment, and basically we just tell the player to go and have fun with it, which is something Resident Evil hasn’t done before. While the main story still advances in what we think is the best order to experience it, it is totally possible to ignore the objectives and just get lost in the game’s world. There are many houses you can completely ignore, but as we feel it’s important to reward the player’s eagerness to explore, there will always be something interesting to discover. We really put a lot of effort into making Village’s exploration worthwhile.”
“The fact that Village has so many optional things to do makes it very different from previous installments in the series,” says Sato. “I’d almost go as far as to say that we prepared too many detours, so if you want to experience everything, it’s really going to take you a long time.”