During its Game Showcase deluge today, Oculus showed off some more footage of the upcoming Quest 2 port of Resident Evil 4 (2005), which is coming exclusively to Oculus Quest 2 (read: not the original Quest). And it’s starting to look like a real VR native.

Update (April 22nd, 2021): Capcom and Oculus showed a bit more of the Resident Evil 4 in action today. The entire game is being reworked for Oculus Quest 2, and includes interactive physical items such as ammo, keys, and treasures. Weapon holstering will be on-body, so no constantly pausing to rifle through menus.

Room-scale, teleportation, and smooth movement are all supported. Over 4,500 textures have been repainted, the studio says. Positional audio has been added too, which is a boon for immersion. Still, many of the things that made the game great, like its original character animations, are remaining the same. All of the cutscenes are also going to be left intact, which is a bit of a shame since we’re probably in for a magic window view of things.

Check out some of the new pre-alpha footage below:

Original Article (April 16th, 2021): Resident Evil 4 is headed to Quest 2 with the help of Armature Studio, the developer behind Oculus Studios titles Fail Factory! and Sports Scramble for Quest. The studio also has a history of other non-VR games and port projects.

Resident Evil 4 is one of Capcom’s best selling games. Initially launched on Gamecube in 2005, it has since been ported to PS2, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, and PC, selling 10.6 million units across all platforms, according to Capcom.

The game popularized the over-the-shoulder third-person camera view that’s been adopted by heaps of horror and shooter games since. Interestingly that legacy will be left behind, as Oculus says that Resident Evil 4 in VR will be played in first-person and has been rebuilt with VR specific interactions in mind.

 

“We’re thrilled for you to experience the world of Resident Evil 4 in a new medium—one where the immersion of a first-person perspective, Touch controllers, and no shortage of technical ingenuity will bring new depth to what you know and love about this highly acclaimed game,” says Facebook Reality Labs VP of Content Mike Verdu.

Unlike other games on the Quest platform, Oculus has confirmed that Resident Evil 4 VR will be exclusive to Quest 2 and not compatible with the original Quest. While the original Quest is just under two years old at this point, its processor was considered dated even at the time of its launch; the challenge of cramming the game onto that processor, compared to Quest 2’s more powerful processor, seems the likely reason why the company opted to keep it exclusive to the latter.

That reasoning probably won’t do much to placate original Quest owners though, who may feel that their headset is being phased out too quickly with Quest 2 launching less than a year and a half after the original Quest.

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Resident Evil 4 VR won’t be the first Capcom game to find its way into VR. The more modern Resident Evil 7 launched with an optional PSVR mode back in 2017, and has long been lauded as one of the headset’s best games. Though Resident Evil 7 also launched on PC, its VR mode has remained exclusive to PSVR.

Oculus says it has more to share on Resident Evil 4 VR during next week’s Oculus Gaming Showcase event on April 21st.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • tommys6

    What about the Rift S? What’s the reason for not giving it to them?

    • dk

      and if it comes to pc at some point …u could play it on Q1 too via link

      • Anonymous

        I do think eventually they will allow Oculus Store to officially be used by other PC headsets someday tho (likely with the catch of requiring FB).
        I just don’t see VR (and frankly future AR too) having the same product life cycle as a smartphone (i.e. every 1 – 1.5 years) so trying to become the “App Store of all VR” would be the best long term strategy instead of just selling new headsets in short order. More like a TV game console approach.

        There is already ReVive to play Oculus games so the walled-garden is futile anyways. Might as well open up and milk profit from game distribution (especially exclusives)

    • Ad

      They have zero interest helping a dead platform that offers them so little control.

    • kontis

      They are no longer interested in investing in PCVR.

      • Lulu Vi Britannia

        The most “hilarious” thing about this is… they don’t need to invest any penny. When you build your VR app, you choose whether it’s a mobile app or a PC app.
        Literally all they have to do to release it on PCVR is build the app for PCVR. It takes one click. They don’t need to change anything else, since Quest and Rift controls are the exact same, even from the programming perspective.

        That would make their game more lucrative, as there IS a PCVR playerbase who doesn’t own a Quest 2. Not releasing it is just stupid as fuck. I love Oculus from a technical standpoint, but most of their business decisions were crap.

        • ViRGiN

          Lol

        • kontis

          It’s not a Unity game so it’s not 1 click port, but definitely very easy, because nothing in assets or rendering have to be touched.

          • mirak

            because nothing in assets or rendering have to be touched.

            You can say the same for any non VR game.

          • Well, we now know from the Oculus Gaming Showcase that it’s not running in whatever engine it was built for in 2005, the whole thing is a ground-up remake done in UE4. So, yes, actually it is a one-click port. It was already lame to lock it out on Quest 1, but given that, it’s REALLY lame to lock it out for Rift.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Except, for the PCVR version people expect better graphics.

    • Elite-Force_Cinema

      Sounds like you hate Oculus Quest and standalone VR as a whole due to your burning hatred for shitty mobile graphics and a shitty mobile processor and that you prefer PC VR over them because AAA and photorealistic graphics are all you care about for VR and not the experiences!

  • Ad

    A vive and a min spec PC from 2016 could play half life Alyx and valve went to great lengths to make sure that was the case. It’s hilarious to see people who invested in Facebook understand they were sold a headset well below cost so Facebook owes them nothing, they owe Zuck.

    • ViRGiN

      It’s hilarious how valve couldn’t figure out body ik, add more than 3 weapons, add real reloading, full interactivity with environment, basic multiplayer etc. Indie developers, two men team have achieved more than valve with alyx. Delete half life title, and it would be mediocre game.

      • Ad

        Those were all basic choices to make the game immediately accessible and understandable. Having just hands was obviously the right option, etc.

        • ViRGiN

          Lmao

          Then keeping it exclusive to quest 2 is a business choice. Makes zero sense to bring it to pc where there are thousands of configurations and issues. It’s obviously the right choice.

      • kontis

        valve couldn’t figure out

        You are either trolling or just very ignorant if you believe this.

        It was a game design decision. Everything you mentioned have trade-offs.

        One of the reasons why HL1 and HL2 are to this day considered some of the most immersive games of all time is because Valve rejected the idea of putting players body and excessive animations (like pushing a button with virtual hand), because even on desktop these things make you feel a bit more like controlling artificially animated remote puppet instead of feeling like you are in the game. It’s very subjective, but full body in VR has the same issue.

        • ViRGiN

          Keep explaining yourself why alyx was babyfied aka “design choice”, and keep pretending that not bringing re4 to pc is horrible thing to do.

          • kakek

            Alyx was not babyfied in any way ? We have extensive dev comments explaining what they tested, and why they made specifc choice. Personally, I enjoyed every minute of the resulting game. If might not be YOUR ideal game, but crying that anything not deisgned for your specific taste has been done that way for wrong reasons is … well … very baby like.

            As for the choice of not bringing RE4 VR to PC, the reason for it is mostly ( exclusively ? ) facebook’s long term strategy that involves that the less PC VR games there is to compete with their walled garden, the better for them.

            And yes, I think that’s detrimental to VR as a whole. Much more than Valve choosing to limit the number of weapons to a number easily selectable with VR controls.

        • ViRGiN

          If beat saber had only heavy metal music, you wouldn’t be acting like “it was a game design choice”, instead you would be talking about wasted opportunity

      • DanDei

        Obvious troll is trolling.
        move along, people! nothing to see other than a baby shitting itself for attention

      • Please keep your virginity. :)

        • ViRGiN

          Why would that even be a bad thing?

      • namekuseijin

        Dude, you really hurt pcboys feelings.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      The Quest (and 2) aren’t sold well below cost, far from it (but also not really any profit). And Alyx needs at least a 1060, which is well above the specs of the original Quest, especially considering the original vive has a much lower resolution as the Quest.

      • Ad

        Wait, what? The second is completely irrelevant. But no, it definitely is sold below cost and it’s not even a loss leader. Zuck said the app store isn’t and won’t be their business model.

        • Anonymous

          I think Zuck is full of BS to say app store won’t be their business model. He likely just wanted to say that Oculus will always continue to make VR hardware.

          Nothing beats App distribution and microtransactions in terms of business model longevity.

          • Ad

            I don’t think so. I think he wants the quest to be the hardware equivalent of the facebook site. So most of the money for profit comes from ads, payment processing, promotion, etc. It would be safer for him to say the app store is the business model honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t.

          • Anonymous

            I don’t see what you suggest here must be mutually exclusive to App Store / subscription / microtransaction model though.

            Considering they have a decisive lead on consumer VR, they can easily secure profit on all three fronts – hardware,
            app sales, ads.

  • kontis

    Quest emulator for PC when?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      haha, that’s what I said on another site too. WIth all the knowhow of emulating Android and the Qualcomm Snapdragons these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if there would pop up a Quest emulator some day. But then again, You’ll probably need a hefty PC to really emulate those socs..

      • Helen Farnsworth

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      • Wild Dog

        Joking?

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Why? There have been a lot of emulators of a lot of platforms, so I do see people might wanting to emulate a Quest(2) someday.

          • Wild Dog

            I mean about needing a hefty pc.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Because the soc is quite powerful, even the snapdragon 835 of the original Quest will need a hefty PC to emulate it at full speed. The XR 2 is yet another level higher.

          • Wild Dog

            Hmm.

          • david vincent

            Indeed, a hefty PC is already needed to decently emulate PS3 games (as for other emulators, Vulkan integration helped a lot to that).

    • That’s hilarious. I immediately looked up a quest emulator as soon as I found out that resident evil was exclusive.

    • Wild Dog

      I was just about to ask.

    • Wild Dog

      Guys, I mighta found something. @andrewjakobs:disqus

      https://github.com/MozillaReality/WebXR-emulator-extension

      • Andrew Jakobs

        That’s not really a Quest emulator, that just a way to emulate WebXR on a 2d flatscreen, so you don’t have to have a headset. This doesn’t even come close to what a Quest emulator entails.

        • Wild Dog

          Aww.

    • Jonathan Winters III

      The problem is, Oculus changes the Quest system software often, so it’s not too likely there will be a reliable emulator any time soon.

  • Say what you will – I am thoroughly thrilled! Day1.

  • Alex

    Oh come on, not coming to Quest 1 ! dirty bunch of scumbags… will wait for Q3 then, I can wait. Already played that game easily more than 5 times, I’m just curious to see how they will manage QTE and cut scenes.

  • Yes yes yes!! This will be an insta-buy for me!!

  • Awesome! My second favorite RE game! Super excited for this!

  • Tommy

    I used to be a big Oculus supporter but not anymore. Seems like every business decision they make has me liking them less and less. I hope someone makes a better stand alone with a good ecosystem.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Your choice of course… hope you are the patient type! IF you can live with a console, maybe PSVR2 in 2023…

      • Tommy

        I am patient, thankfully. I use my G2 mostly but sure would like a wireless adapter to go with it. My Quest is good to show off VR and wireless fitness but I don’t use it much. I really liked some of the PSVR exclusives and hopefully they take it up a notch with the new one.

  • Ragbone

    Maybe resident evil 7 vr will come to pc next :P

  • FrankB

    Of course the obvious way to placate Quest 1 owners is to release a PC version that can be used over link of Virtual Desktop. They won’t though, they want their damn exclusive.

  • What a way for Oculus to word it so they don’t have to update either the character animations or cinematics, probably not even going so far as to have you standing in a cool RE-themed virtual room and watching the cinematics on a virtual cinema or whatever, and have all the weak-minded sheep believe that’s a good thing. It will be passable at best if they’ve kept all the original animations and just have a floating screen showing completely flat 2D videos. Hopefully everything else is a lot better to make up for the stuff they’re not really bothering to improve in any way to take advantage of VR in one form or another.

  • david vincent

    “Looks Like a Near-native VR Experience”
    Well, not the inventory system.

  • silvaring

    I don’t think this title has been given enough budget or time… but at least it could be a neat experiment anyways.

  • GrimmyReaper

    Just … just why? It is not enough that it is exclusive, not enough to be a Quest platform exclusive. Now we are doing specific headset exclusives? Really?

    Why? Why no release on the rift store so people can play it if they have literally anything beside a Quest 2?
    “To sell more units, duh?”
    The Quest 2 is already the best selling HMD, a Resident Evil 4 VR port on PC will not boost Vive or Valve headsets anyway. Facebook is literally the only company to do this and they already have a monopoly. Full support to the pirates out there, hoping they can crack this. I refuse to just buy another HMD for this.