Shinji Mikami says Resident Evil 4’s camera wasn’t meant to be groundbreaking
Former Resident Evil series director Shinji Mikami says the iconic camera his team designed for Resident Evil 4 was never supposed to be groundbreaking.
In a new discussion with Resident Evil 7 executive producer Shinji Mikami on the official Biohazard YouTube channel, Mikami – who wrote and directed the fourth Resident Evil game – said the team simply decided that a moving third-person over-the-shoulder camera would work better than the fixed camera angles used in the first three main Resident Evil titles.
However, the camera proved so effective that it was cited as one of the main reasons for the game’s overwhelming critical success and subsequent status.
Takeuchi also revealed that the Gears of War team told him they based their game’s camera on the Resident Evil 4 viewpoint.
“It felt natural, oddly enough,” Mikami explained. “We weren’t planning on doing something innovative, but in the end everyone kept saying we did.
“To us personally, we just thought that angle was better. We weren’t trying to do something new or groundbreaking, there was none of that.”
Mikami said the first person who praised the change of camera was Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai. “He came to check out the game in development and asked, ‘who came up with this camera system?’,” he recalled.
“‘Hey, yeah, that was me.’ ‘This is great,’ he said. ‘Woah, really?’ I responded.”
Takeuchi, who wasn’t involved in Resident Evil 4’s development and was instead working on Lost Planet at the time, then revealed that the Gears of War development team took inspiration from Resident Evil 4’s camera.
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“During the development of Lost Planet, at our first E3, we were
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