Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles - producer discusses weapon choices, settings and the power of the game's music

The following bits of information are from Producer Masachika Kawata, as featured in the latest issue of Nintendo Power…

Kawata explaining the lack of an RE4 storyline ‘chronicle’ - “The biggest reason [that the game was not included in The Darkside Chronicles] was that Resident Evil 4 had already been released on Wii… We also had an idea of making RE4 a gun shooter, but in deciding upon Leon’s partner, Ashley, Luis, or Ada turned out to be impossible in terms of scenario. Thus, we decided not to force ourselves to include RE4 in this game.”

- Nunchuk can still be used to switch between weapons
- A button is still used for knife
- submachine guns, shotguns, bowguns, and grenades and more weapons to be revealed
- use gold collected to improve a weapon’s rate of fire, power, capacity, reload speed, and stopping power

Kawata on the number of available weapons - “The number of weapons is not too large. Instead, the arsenal allows you to refine your favorite weapons to further meet your needs rather than experiment with many.”

Kawata on the similarities between Resident Evil 5 and the ‘Operation Javier’ chapter of RE:DC - “Having established a more advanced system in terms of light-source processing compared to the last installment, we wanted to take advantage of the new system by incorporating day and night scenes in the game. Although Darkside is a horror game, we do not feel bound to darkness. By introducing light, we thought we could offer a different sensation when playing a horror game.”

- Shusaku Uchiyama (Resident Evil 2) and Takeshi Miura (Code Veronica) are handling the soundtrack

Kawata on the power of the soundtrack - “The basic melody and composition follow the original ones. The composers have arranged the score to enhance the game’s quality. As a result, the soundtrack complements the action, stirring up excitement, horror, and a sense of impending doom. The use of a full orchestra for some songs proved to be effective in expanding the scale of the game. I have the orchestra version of the soundtrack on my iPod. I listen to it all the time and seriously never get tired of listening to it.”

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