Dead Rising Devs Wanted Frank West to Look Like Someone Who’s “Enjoyed his Share of Beer and Bacon Cheeseburgers”
Frank is back in action.
Updating a nearly 20-year-old game is no simple task, especially when it's one as beloved as Dead Rising. Capcom's zombie-slaying masterpiece has become a cult classic over the years for a variety of reasons – from the demanding time management gameplay to the slick and smarmy journalist Frank West, who loves to remind people he’s covered wars.
But Capcom managed to tread a difficult line with Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, retaining the soul that made the original so special while making it more approachable for a wave of new players. Of course, part of that meant that the game needed a new take on the iconic Frank West, one that played into the idea of the “average joe” that you’d find in Anytown, U.S.A.
“Using the ‘average Joe’ concept as a foundation, we deconstructed and reorganized Frank’s various aesthetics from over the years,” art director Satoshi Takamatsu tells Inverse, “In terms of a ‘tough physique,’ we opted for a beefier body type that resembles someone who’d trained as an American football player in school, occasionally goes bowling on the weekends, and has enjoyed his share of beer and bacon cheeseburgers.”
That single idea of redefining Frank West is indicative of Dead Rising as a whole – a game that delights in mixing serious storytelling with over-the-top antics. That tonal clash is part of what makes Dead Rising so special, and with the release of the Deluxe Remaster Inverse had the chance to take a deep dive with the team on updating the classic.
Talking to Takamatsu, director Ryosuke Murai, original game director Yoshinori Kawano, and producer Kei Morimoto, you can learn all about redesigning Frank West, bringing Dead Rising to a brand new engine, the game’s prescient themes on the dangers of consumerism, and much more.
Frank West is still the cocksure journalist he was before, but a new look and voice actor gives the character a bit of a different flavor.
Autosave has been one of the more contentious additions for fans. Did you know from the start you wanted autosave, and did you try different implementations of it?
Murai: In order to share the charm and appeal of Dead Rising with a wide range of gamers, we decided to make some meaningful adjustments to elements that we thought might have caused players to stop playing. We witnessed many players giving up on the original game because they hadn’t been able to save frequently, and were forced to either start from the beginning or replay large segments.
For this reason, autosave is one feature we’d considered adding from the start of development. Of course, players still have the option of loading save data and picking up where they left off, as well as the freedom to transfer save data and start a fresh playthrough. Whether or not players use the autosave feature is entirely up to them.
You’ve talked about how you didn’t want to change too much in this remake, but I’m curious if that’s always been the case. When you started development did you think about making any more drastic changes?
Murai: I think that the fun of attacking zombies in a variety of ways and the struggle of deciding what to prioritize within the game’s time limit are a big part of what made the original Dead Rising so appealing. From the outset, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster’s concept revolved around the idea of keeping these core elements and improving the quality of the original game’s finer details. In early stages of development, we tested gameplay for Frank, the zombies, and the survivors in a vertical slice of the game where only one section of the mall had been completed. This convinced us that we’d made the right decision in terms of the game’s concept.
While the Deluxe Remaster feels almost exactly like the original Dead Rising, it had to be rebuilt from the ground up in the company’s RE Engine.
How difficult was it to make sure Dead Rising’s gameplay still felt the same in the RE Engine? How did you make sure it still had the “feeling” of the original?
Murai: The programming language and physics engine used to develop Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster were different from those used for the original game, so despite our attempts to build things out the same way, we saw many differences in behavior.
Our solution was a fairly simple process – play the original game, compare that to the current in-development section of DRDR, identify any issues, and adjust as needed. We strived to keep gameplay as close to the original game as possible. For example, we swapped some of the player’s movements with more realistic ones, but this ended up impacting pacing. Staff who’d worked on the original offered feedback and advice, which we used to make detailed adjustments and ensure movements felt more natural.
Many people describe Dead Rising as having a “B-movie” kind of tone and feel. Is that something you wanted to lean into even more with the remaster?
Murai: We developed Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster with the goal of preserving the original game’s serious tone and incorporating its various comical elements. For example, we had voice actors mirror the game’s overall tone and perform their lines a bit over the top. This is one of many steps we took to recreate the taste of the original game in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.
Takamatsu: Visuals for the original game were created with the medium of film in mind. With the hardware we used to create zombie hordes, in-game products, and real-time lighting, we weren’t able to allocate specs for rich film-like visual effects such as 3D shading and atmosphere building.
For Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, we were able to create a dark film-like atmosphere, more realistic lighting effects, area-specific thematic designs, and even the finer details of a zombie outbreak – none of which were possible in the original game. DRDR offers players the chance to experience the atmosphere of a modern horror movie. I was in charge of lighting design for the original game, so I’m elated to be able to reflect my learnings and know-how of the last 20 years in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.
While no story has been changed in the Deluxe Remaster, there were some alterations made to the game’s array of psychopath bosses.
There have been some minor changes made to the Psychopaths in terms of dialogue and visual design. Can you tell me about these changes, and how you updated the game for a modern audience?
Takamatsu: In Dead Rising, our goal was to accurately depict the emotions of people who’d been thrown into and adversely affected by a zombie outbreak. The Psychopath characters in this game weren’t born as monsters or enigmas; they’re individuals who have lost the ability to control their desires and traumas due to the zombie outbreak.
The theme of their designs is the depiction of the “desires and aspirations that exist in everyone’s hearts.” Among these Psychopaths is Larry Chiang. The development team felt that his caricature-like aesthetic in the original game distracted too much from the compelling story, so we decided to give him a more modern design in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.
Could you tell me a bit about Frank West’s redesign? He looks and feels a bit older than the 2006 version. Was that something you wanted updating the character?
Takamatsu: I supervised the character design, modeling, and lighting for the original game, and even now I love the artwork that was produced. I really like protagonist Frank West as a character, and for several months in the early stages of Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster’s development, we worked to improve upon the specs of Frank’s original character model.
As we were rebuilding the game and working to create a “more realistic” visual art style, the team felt like we’d reached an impasse on Frank’s concept as “an average American ‘tough guy’ on the verge of turning 40” and “a journalist who’s always looking for an opportunity to turn his life around.” For DRDR, we decided to “reorganize” visuals, which had become more diversified than we’d anticipated since the birth of the series roughly 20 years earlier.
Using the “average Joe” concept as a foundation, we deconstructed and reorganized Frank’s various aesthetics from over the years. We then infused some masculinity to better express his toughness and life-related frustrations and rebuilt his character design from there. In terms of a “tough physique,” we opted for a beefier body type that resembles someone who’d trained as an American football player in school, occasionally goes bowling on the weekends, and has enjoyed his share of beer and bacon cheeseburgers.
We also gave him a few more wrinkles to help create more vivid facial expressions, but we might have gone a bit overboard in that area. Haha! Frank’s aesthetic was also adapted for added versatility that works well in an array of situations – serious in-game scenes, female clothing fashion shows, and bouncing around in children’s outfits to name a few. He’s changed a bit from the original game, but I think his design fits well within Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.
Frank can wear a wide array of clothes and outfits, including ones inspired by other Capcom characters, like Resident Evil’s Ashley Graham.
Dead Rising has some underlying satirical themes about the dangers of extreme consumerism. Do you think the game’s themes are even more relevant today, and do you think any of the remake's updates accentuate those themes?
Kawano: For Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, we didn’t make any changes that would further accentuate those themes. Our biggest priority is to create games that players enjoy, so we don’t really want to push specific themes. That said, there are gamers out there that might not be satisfied with just an interesting or enjoyable game, and I have my own thoughts as a developer, so we did loosely incorporate some themes into the original Dead Rising.
Two themes were incorporated into Dead Rising for a bit of added spice: the concept that “larger countries’ mass consumerism is based on the sacrifices of other nations” and the mentality that “everyday life as we know it may fall apart at any moment,” which forces you to think about how you’d respond in that sort of scenario.
I feel like both of these issues are more pressing and real problems now than they were when Dead Rising first released in 2006. We just wanted things to be a bit easier and less expensive, but the world has changed significantly as a result. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, but while things have improved, I also know that we can’t continue down this trajectory forever. If the world can change this drastically based on seemingly trivial choices, the opposite is also true. Personally, I would like to live my life with the goal of making the world a better place.
Murai: As Kawano-san mentioned, we aren’t emphasizing any specific themes in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. That said, due to globalization and the growth of capitalism, people around the world are now enjoying mass consumption more than they were before. For those of us living in modern society, I think the themes present in Dead Rising are something we can relate to even now.
The Deluxe Remaster is the first game the series has seen since the 2016 release of Dead Rising 4.
Dead Rising 2 is obviously the game in the series most like the first Dead Rising. Regardless of whether there are any plans, do you think it’d be possible to “remake” DR2 the same way, or would that be more difficult?
Morimoto: Remaking or remastering Dead Rising 2 is definitely possible. For the time being, we’re monitoring market trends and how Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster performs. If we’re able to identify an appropriate time where we’d be able to sell a remake or remaster of Dead Rising 2, there’s potential for the project to be considered.
