Everything announced in Capcom's Resident Evil showcase
Weekly demo windows! Mercenaries mode! Resi 4 VR!
Capcom's latest Resident Evil showcase event has detailed a series of times you'll be able to demo Resident Evil Village ahead of its May release.
It also included an announcement of Resident Evil 4 VR for Oculus Quest 2, a quick look at Village's Mercenaries mode, a new trailer for the Netflix CGI series Infinite Darkness, and some other smaller bits and pieces. No new Resident Evil games were announced.
The showcase kicked off with new Village trailer showing clips from early in the game, a radio broadcast calling for survivors, a look at the werewolf-like lycans, and Lady Dimitrescu taking a tasty sip of Ethan's blood. Chris Redfield also puts in an appearance - but what he's up to isn't clear.
You'll be able to poke around all this for yourself with the game's upcoming time-limited demo, which will let you play for 60 minutes on PlayStation 5, PS4, Stadia, Steam, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
This demo will be available for all platforms for 24 hours starting 2nd May at 1am UK time, or 2am in Europe. In North America, this will be from 1st May at 5pm Pacific for 24 hours.
You will be able to choose between exploring the game's village or castle areas, or dip into both if you so choose. But you only have 60 minutes total.
PS4 and PS5 owners also get "8 Hours in Village", where you can play both village and castle areas over preceding weekends. Each area will be opened up for eight hours, in which you can then play for 30 minutes.
In the UK, the game's village area will be available for PS4 and PS5 owners to sample from 18th April at 4pm until 19th April at midnight. In North America, this will be from 17th April at 5pm Pacific until 18th April at 1am.
A week later, the game's castle area will then be available for PS4 and PS5 owners from 25th April at 4pm UK until 26th April at midnight. In North America, that'll be 24th April at 5pm Pacific until 25th April at 1am.
You'll have an eight-hour window to play each for 30 minutes, Capcom said. Yes, this is all a bit complicated. PS4 and PS5 owners can start downloading the demo today.
Moving on, we got a look at Village's Mercenaries mode - the fast-paced combat mode featured in numerous other Resi games which returns here with a few tweaks. New feature include the game's Merchant popping up between areas, who sells supplies, guns and upgrades. You can also select abilities, which include skills where you can buff movement speed, weapon damage, armour, and more.
Capcom's competitive multiplayer Resident Evil Re:Verse was again mentioned as being free for Village owners, though there was no more new information shared on that.
Next, we got a new trailer for Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, the upcoming CGI series for Netflix starring Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield. It'll launch in July this year, and is set in 2006, a couple of years after Resident Evil 4, so it will feature Ashley Graham's father as president. (Will Ashley also return, and get to hide in more boxes? We'll have to wait and see.)
Live-action movie Welcome to Raccoon City has wrapped filming and is now in post-production, Capcom said, though there's no word on a release date just yet.
And in other news, Resident Evil will join Dead by Daylight in some capacity, with more details to be announced on 25th May.
Capcom wrapped the show with an announcement of Resident Evil 4 VR for Oculus Quest 2, which is being developed by Armature. This version of the game moves its action to a first-person perspective - even its inventory management, which is now in 3D. More details will come as part of an Oculus showcase on 21st April.