Resident Evil 2 (2019 video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  Resident Evil 2, the 2019 survival horror game from Capcom, begins on the night of the 29th of September 1998. A rookie police officer named Leon S. Kennedy is heading for Raccoon City to start his first shift. A college student named Claire Redfield is already on the road, searching for her brother. Neither of them knows that a viral outbreak is turning the city's residents into zombies and other monsters. The game is a remake of Capcom's own 1998 title of the same name. Remakes usually follow a safe path, but this one waited years for approval, rebuilt its fear from the ground up, and gave players a second look at characters who were supposed to die. Why did Capcom hold back for so long? How do you frighten an audience with a monster they have met a thousand times? And what does a game about one terrible night owe to the people who never made it out?

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• 2. A Remake Delayed

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  In 2002, Capcom released a remake of the first Resident Evil for the GameCube, and a similar treatment for the second game seemed like the obvious next step. Series creator Shinji Mikami disagreed. He did not want development effort pulled away from Resident Evil 4, which arrived in 2005. The idea of remaking the second game stayed on the shelf.

  In August 2015, producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi appeared in a video announcing that the remake had been approved and was in active development. He ended the clip with three words: "we do it". Then the project went quiet. Nothing more came out until Sony's E3 2018 press conference, where Capcom showed a debut trailer and gameplay footage. By that point the word "Remake" had been dropped from the title.

  Hideki Kamiya, who directed the original Resident Evil 2, said he had pushed Capcom to make a remake for years. Hirabayashi, who had also produced Resident Evil 6, said the team wanted to capture the spirit of the 1998 game. He added that the developers had taken feedback on Resident Evil 6 into account. When the team finally showed their work, the clearest difference from 1998 was the camera.

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• 3. Rebuilding the Fear

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  Producer Tsuyoshi Kanda openly acknowledged one problem: zombies had become ubiquitous in entertainment since the first Resident Evil appeared in 1996. A shambling corpse no longer shocked anyone. The team aimed for a game that felt "modern, accessible" while putting horror ahead of action, and they hoped to keep a claustrophobic atmosphere.

  The RE Engine, the same technology behind Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in 2017, gave Capcom room to modernize the gameplay. It also created a new puzzle. Without the fixed camera angles of the original, enemies could not simply lurk out of frame. The developers hid them with room layout, lighting and smoke instead. The moving camera also changed the sound design, because noise no longer made sense coming from a single fixed source. The game ships with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

  Character designs shifted to suit a photorealistic world. Leon no longer wears the large shoulder pads that were added to the original to set his low-polygon model apart. Several faces come from scans of real people. Leon is based on the model Eduard Badaluta, Claire on the model Jordan McEwen, and Lieutenant Marvin Branagh on the music producer Patrick Levar.

  Capcom chose non-union voice actors, so the cast of the 1998 game did not return. In Japan the game was censored and received a CERO D rating, while an uncensored version received a Z rating.

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• 4. Rules of Survival

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  Raccoon City, a fictional mountain city in the Midwest, is the stage for a third person shooter that treats every bullet as a decision. Players choose Leon or Claire at the start. That choice changes the weapons, areas, items, subplot, supporting cast and even the final boss. Leon is joined by Ada Wong, a mysterious federal agent investigating the Umbrella Corporation. Claire is joined by Sherry Birkin, the young daughter of an Umbrella executive.

  The original's tank controls are gone. Players can move in any direction, rotate the camera, switch between walking and sprinting, and shoot while moving. Standing still while aiming tightens the crosshair, which improves accuracy and power. Many areas are dark, so a flashlight is essential.

  The zombies are tougher than in 1998. They absorb more bullets, rise again after being knocked down unless the head is destroyed, and follow the player from room to room. Enemies react to gunfire in real time and can lose limbs. A heart rate monitor in the inventory menu shows the player's health. Herbs and first aid spray cans restore it.

  The inventory holds eight slots, and hip pouches expand it. Items can be turned around in a 3D viewer, combined into something useful, or discarded. Safe rooms keep enemies out and hold item boxes for spare gear. Safe rooms also hold typewriters for saving, which normally require ink ribbons. The Assisted, Standard and Hardcore difficulty modes change how generous items are, how strong enemies are, and whether the game saves automatically.

  The Tyrant, a bioweapon built to hunt survivors, cannot be killed, only stunned for a moment. He follows the player almost everywhere except safe rooms, which forces a stealthy approach. Each protagonist also has a short stretch where the partner takes control. Ada hacks electronics with an EMF gun, while Sherry crouches through tight gaps. Finishing the game unlocks a 2nd Run as the other character, with remixed item locations, the true final boss and the real ending.

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• 5. Night in Raccoon City

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  At a gas station on the edge of the city, Leon and Claire meet just as zombies overrun the place. A strain of the T-virus has contaminated the water supply, and the whole city falls with it. The pair reach the police station but are split apart when a truck crashes and explodes. Inside, Leon meets the infected Lieutenant Marvin Branagh, who reveals a secret passage before succumbing to his bite. Beneath the station, whoever is playing runs into William Birkin, Umbrella's leading scientist, now mutated into a monster.

  In the parking garage, Ada Wong saves Leon from zombie dogs and says she is an FBI agent after a sample of the G-virus. Birkin developed that virus with his wife and coworker, Annette. Claire, meanwhile, finds paperwork showing her brother left Raccoon City weeks earlier to investigate Umbrella overseas. She then meets the lost Sherry Birkin and resolves to protect her.

  News reporter Ben Bertolucci sits in a holding cell, locked up by the corrupt police chief and serial killer Brian Irons, who has been covering for Umbrella. Ben is killed by the Tyrant, which Umbrella programmed to eliminate everyone in the station. Leon and Ada reach the gun shop owned by Robert Kendo. There they find Robert with his infected daughter Emma. Robert puts Emma down and then takes his own life. Leon resolves to help Ada take the G-virus sample to expose Umbrella. In the sewers they kill a giant alligator, and Annette shoots Leon in the back before escaping to Umbrella's underground laboratory, NEST.

  Sherry is taken to the Raccoon City Orphanage by Irons. William injects Irons with a "G-embryo" that bursts from his stomach, killing him. William then incapacitates Claire and deliberately infects Sherry with the G-virus.

  Claire follows Sherry into NEST and retrieves a vaccine, which Annette gives to her daughter. Annette also reveals Ada as a mercenary who plans to sell the sample to the highest bidder. William kills Annette. Ada holds Leon at gunpoint but falls into the abyss below NEST with the sample as the facility begins to self-destruct. She survives and tosses Leon a rocket launcher, which he uses to defeat the "Super Tyrant". Leon, Claire and Sherry escape on a train, where William attacks them in his final form. The train decouples, and William is destroyed along with the laboratory. Leon and Claire vow to keep fighting Umbrella.

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• 6. What If Scenarios

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  Beating the 2nd Run unlocks "The 4th Survivor", where an Umbrella Security Service mercenary codenamed Hunk fights through a gauntlet of enemies. His goal is to travel from the lower waterway of the sewers to a rescue helicopter outside the police station. Beating that mode unlocks "The Tofu Survivor", which swaps Hunk for a block of tofu armed only with knives. The remake also adds characters to that mode, each with a unique loadout. Completing specific objectives called "Records" earns concept art, 3D models and sometimes weapons with unlimited ammunition.

  "The Ghost Survivors" is a free bonus mode, available from the start, built around four "what-if" scenarios. Each one lets the player control a side character who dies in the main story and imagines that person living. These modes add special zombie types, zombies wearing backpacks that can be looted, and machines that offer a choice of one of three items. Each has a "Training" difficulty with a bigger starting inventory that does not record completion time.

  In "No Time to Mourn", Robert Kendo is about to pull the trigger when a longtime friend contacts him by radio, having arranged a rescue helicopter. Robert reaches it in the sewers, passing through poison zombies and zombies wearing explosive propane tanks. In "Runaway", Katherine Warren, the mayor's daughter, grabs a knife from the table in the orphanage director's room and stabs Irons in the throat. She then fights through Pale Heads, which are fast and regenerate, to free her boyfriend Ben from his cell in the police station.

  In "Forgotten Soldier", Ghost, a special ops agent like Hunk, narrowly survives the attack from William Birkin in his G form. He reaches the cable car at NEST with the dropped G-virus sample, only to meet Ada at gunpoint, and his fate is left uncertain. "No Way Out" is the odd one. Sheriff Daniel Cortini is killed by the first zombie in the main story, but here he overpowers it and defends the gas station against waves of the undead. He must kill 100 zombies, or 70 in Training, before Leon arrives. The mode also has its own Records, which unlock hats, and a pair of cat ears grants infinite ammunition.

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• 7. Release and Versions

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  On the 11th of January 2019, Capcom put out the 1-Shot Demo, which gave players exactly 30 minutes as Leon before it ended with a cinematic trailer. Players complained about the timer, but the demo still passed 4.7 million downloads worldwide. It later returned as the R.P.D. Demo, with no time limit and a Nemesis easter egg promoting the upcoming Resident Evil 3 remake.

  The full game arrived on the 25th of January 2019 for PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One. Players with a PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox One X could choose between 4K resolution and 60 frames per second. A collector's edition included a Leon S. Kennedy figurine, a hardcover art book, an R.P.D. renovation poster and a digital soundtrack.

  Downloadable content added five costumes. Leon gets a sheriff outfit and a noir outfit. Claire gets a military outfit, a noir outfit and the motorcycle suit worn by Elza Walker, the protagonist of the original game's development build. The noir outfits apply a black-and-white filter. Three Samurai Edge handguns recall those carried by Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine and Albert Wesker in the first game, and players who pre-ordered received the Chris and Jill models. A soundtrack swap restores the original music. On the 15th of February 2019, Capcom released the original 1998 models of Leon and Claire for free.

  On the 12th of December 2019, a final update added a letter from Jill Valentine to Kendo, found at his gun shop. Reading it unlocks an achievement called "Chasing Jill".

  Versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S were announced on the 2nd of March 2022 and released digitally on the 13th of June 2022. They add ray-tracing and high-framerate modes, and the PlayStation 5 version supports haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Owners of earlier versions could upgrade free. An Amazon Luna version arrived on the 9th of June 2022, a Nintendo Switch cloud version on the 11th of November 2022, and versions for iOS, iPadOS and macOS on the 10th of December 2024.

  In October 2022, Capcom Japan and Universal Entertainment released a casino Pachislot, PACHI-SLOT BIOHAZARD RE:2, in which a roulette decides the outcome of battles. In 2025, Bandai Namco announced Resident Evil 2: Arcade, a rail shooter played with light guns and slated for 2026.

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• 8. Reception and Sales

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  Metacritic reported "universal acclaim" for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions and "generally favorable reviews" for Windows. OpenCritic found that 97% of 205 critic reviews recommended the game. Its consensus called the game "a gold-standard for how to do a remake".

  Ben Reeves of Game Informer wrote that the game "not only looks great, it plays well". Keith Stuart of The Guardian called it "a reminder of how beautifully crafted survival horror games were in their heyday." Aoife Wilson of Eurogamer described it as "a masterly reimagining of a modern classic". Daemon Hatfield of IGN first gave it an 8.8, then raised it to 9.0 after learning about the unlockable second playthrough.

  The sales numbers were large from the start. Capcom shipped three million copies in the first week and four million in the first month, with more than one million on Windows. That made it Capcom's second biggest launch on Steam, behind Monster Hunter: World from 2018. In Japan it debuted at number two with 252,848 retail sales, behind Kingdom Hearts III. In the UK it topped the charts and was the best-selling game of January 2019, despite being on sale for only two days.

  By December 2019, it had sold over 5.8 million copies, overtaking the original Resident Evil 2. Totals reached over 10 million by July 2022-13.9 million by March 2024 and 15.8 million by April 2025. By January 2026 the figure was 16.871 million, and by May 2026 it stood at 18.32 million.

  At the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards it won Ultimate Game of the Year, and it was nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards. Capcom followed with remakes of Resident Evil 3 in 2020 and Resident Evil 4 in 2023. That fourth game was the very project Shinji Mikami had refused to delay.

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