A new ESRB listing page went live mentioning Capcom’s Resident Evil 5, driving fans to start turning the rumor mill about a remake of the Capcom’s least survival horror game in its survival horror franchise (in my country, it is actually illegal to talk about whatever the hell “Resident Evil 6” was…).
Spotted by the eagle eyes of Kotaku, the listing is pretty barebones, not mentioning any indication of this being a new project — save for one, small detail: the description mentions “in-app purchases”, which is something the original, March 2009 title released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (and later on PC) didn’t have.
Set nine years after the events of the fourth mainline game, Resident Evil 5 takes fans to Kijuju, West Africa, where Chris Redfield, now a Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) agent, takes his new partner Sheva Alomar to arrest a man named Ricardo Irving, who intends to sell a bioweapon in the black market.
When the duo arrive, they discover that the entire population has been affected by an improved version of Resident Evil 4’s Las Plagas parasite, which led the infected to kill a previously sent BSAA team. While confronting the hostile opponents, Chris and Sheva are rescued by their employers and, during a debriefing meeting, our intrepid protagonist spots a picture of former S.T.A.R.S. fellow and longtime missing agent Jill Valentine. Cue in a major plot that also includes new antagonist Excella Gionne and a returning, former teammate and all powerful enemy Albert Wesker and you got the gist of the game.
Also, fun fact: we’re nearing Resident Evil 4 Remake’s third-year anniversary, so there’s that.
Now, some details help bolster the rumor: recently, we reported that Sheva’s actress, Eva La Dare, celebrated Resident Evil 30th anniversary (the franchise, not the fifth game) on her X/Twitter profile by stating she’ll have “things to say” in March. And not only that, but Makoto Fukami, writer to Resident Evil: Vendetta and Resident Evil: Death Island CG movies, did say before that he would love to “do something” that had Sheva and Jill Valentine’s former partner Barry Burton — in fact, he had a conceptual idea that put both characters in Antarctica.
It is important to note two things, however: the first is that earlier rumors — mostly from leakers, but rumors nonetheless — stated that Capcom would remake Resident Evil: Code Veronica before even thinking about a Resident Evil 5 remake. Those still hold some water due to the second statement: the eSRB listing could be a chonky, robust remaster, not a remake.
Because Capcom is Capcom, the Japanese publisher obviously did not comment on all the speculative material. And at the time this article went live, the listing was still there on ESRB’s website (we did a screengrab because this is the internet, after all…). Still, color us enticed.
Anyone feel like imagining how Chris Redfield would punch-roll a boulder into submission in incredibly high, remade graphics?
