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Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is so large that it “couldn’t possibly be DLC”, the game’s executive producer has told VideoGamer.com
Off the Record presents an altered version of Dead Rising 2, restoring the hero of the first game, Frank West, in a new “What If?” scenario. When the project was revealed earlier this, some gamers immediately assumed it would be a DLC expansion, rather than a standalone release.
“Perhaps it’s understandable,” said Jason Leigh, executive producer for Capcom Vancouver. “I think we’ve tried as much as possible to tell people that it’s not DLC. This is a larger game than Dead Rising 2.
“We’ve done very little subtraction. I guess the biggest thing we’ve removed is the Terror Is Reality multiplayer game. Everything else has been additional, so the new zone, the weapons, psychos, the sandbox mode and whatever – it’s a larger game, and it couldn’t possibly be DLC.”
And while the announcement of Off the Record caught most of us by surprise, Leigh explains that the expansion was planned right from the start of Dead Rising 2.
“It was always going to be a standalone release,” said Leigh. “Right from when we got the contract to do Dead Rising 2, as Blue Castle Games, part of the deal was that we were going to do a Director’s Cut.”
He continued “Capcom saw DR2 as really growing the franchise. One of the reasons they came to us for Western development was that they wanted to make it more accessible, as a game, to Western audiences. The thought was, ‘This is going to be a bigger game, obviously with more sales, and because of that we want to do a Director’s Cut’. And Capcom has a great history of Director’s Cuts with the Resident Evil series.”
The decision to remake Dead Rising 2 with Frank came about as a result of fan reaction to the initial announcement, Leigh explains.
“We headed down that path, and the interesting thing that happened was as soon as we announced Dead Rising 2 everyone was very excited about it, except that the biggest question by far was, ‘Where’s Frank?’
“The Dead Rising franchise is one that doesn’t play by the rules, anyway. We felt, ‘What the heck, rather than doing a Director’s Cut, let’s do a re-envisioning of the Dead Rising 2 game, but with a different hero.”
Leigh adds that the team was aware of the way this plan might be perceived, leading to the decision to include a Sandbox mode, as well as a brand new play area for the Fortune City mall.
“Along with that came the need to add more to the product as well, because simply doing a character swap would have been taken as a cash-grab. We really knew that we needed to add things like the Uranus Zone, all the weapons, and certainly the Sandbox mode.”
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record will be released on October 14 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
