In the second part of Capcom’s behind-the-scenes series of short films about the making of Resident Evil 7, the creators discuss the making of the ‘dinner’ scene and the meaning behind the setting and some of the names.
The second part of The Making of Resident Evil 7 is called ‘Welcome to the Family’ and goes into more details about the creation of the videogame antagonists. The creators reveal that the game was set in Louisiana in order to capture a ‘Southern Gothic’ feel. The development team did some searching on Google Earth in order to find a place that matched the tone they were aiming for. Members of the capture team even flew out to a location that had been found by one of the team in order to take photo scans of an abandoned Louisiana house to capture the texture and feel of the buildings.
The character of Jack was known during early development as ‘Daddy’, who was originally characterised as being a somewhat two-dimensional monstrous killer, but as his character was fleshed out, aspects of him being a father figure, as well as his determined pursuit of the player character came into play, and the writers hit upon using The Shining as inspiration, which is why the character became known as Jack, after both the character of Jack Torrence, and Jack Nicholson, the actor who played him.
The infamous ‘dinner’ scene where the Baker family sit around a horrifying feast, was redone completely, after the director thought it needed to be more disturbing. The effectiveness of the scene is that it truly allows the player to perceive the horror of the family’s insanity. Rather brilliantly, the development team actually acted out the entirety of that scene in a brightly-lit conference room to use as a pre-visualisation, complete with little drawings of cockroaches on bits of paper.
Further episodes of The Making of Resident Evil 7 biohazard will be released on a weekly basis. You can watch Part Two: Welcome to the Family below. Part one of the series can be found here.
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