Updated February 22, 2009 with some new thoughts on weapon durability and the game environment.

Now that the existence of Dead Rising 2 has officially been confirmed, the masses can begin speculating on its contents from the few screenshots that accompanied the announcement.

As rumored last year, Capcom is working closely with Vancouver’s Blue Castle Games to develop the sequel, which in their anticipation will result in “a even better game”. In order to maintain the design intent of the original game, key team members from Dead Rising at Capcom Japan are meeting with the designers at Blue Castle at least once a week through video conference, which in the opinion of Capcom’s Keiji Inafune is just the first steps in Capcom’s “Global Design” initiative. I have to admit I was a little curious why such a successful IP was farmed out, but it’s reassuring to know that the project is being guided by its original creators.

At this point, the only confirmable detail is the game’s environment: a casino. Whether this is modeled after downtown Las Vegas, Atlantic City or simply another enclosed complex like the Willamette shopping mall remains to be revealed. The setting alone has me pretty excited about Dead Rising 2‘s potential. An “adult playground” as Inafune puts it, where roulette wheels become weapons of mass destruction.

I love the original Dead Rising; I’ve said before this was always a game I wished I had been able to play upon release. Now that I’ve experienced the full version, the sequel is one of my most anticipated games of the coming year. I plan on writing a full review of Dead Rising at some point, but I find this to be an excellent opportunity to sketch out my main complaints with the original game and label them as expectations for the sequel, instead of cluttering my analysis with a wish list of improved features.

Keep the overall time limit, but be a little more forgiving for the main story. Time was the underlying mechanic at work in the original Dead Rising. You had 72 hours to follow the main plot and discover the cause of the outbreak at Willamette. While this lent an incredible sense of urgency to the entire game’s proceedings, I felt that it was a little unforgiving in the way it forced you to adhere to an arbitrary schedule. If I was out beating on zombies and forgot to look at Frank’s watch, I would miss the lead-in to the next main mission and the game would end. It was frustrating because it didn’t feel like events unfolded naturally; the story progressed only at set times. However, having a time limit for the whole game created an underlying need to always be doing something, whether completing a quest or trying to make it to the next mission. It made you plan your time in between story events carefully to get the most out of the experience. For Dead Rising 2, the designers should leave the overarall time limit, but give players a more flexible “opt-in” approach. If they don’t want to follow the main quest, they don’t have to and the game still continues, but they miss out on the game’s story. It would be like Infinite mode in Dead Rising, where the Player “wins” by simply surviving. Of course, basic quests should be available for people who aren’t content to simply smash in the heads of lots and lots of zombies.

Change the quest delivery system. I have to give Otis credit. He kept his eye on things in Willamette and made sure no one was left behind. Except that he would always interrupt me when I was trying to defend myself. The walke-talkie was a clumsy quest delivery system, because whether you wanted the quest or not, as soon as you answered it a quest was added to your list. Even hanging up would elicit a snarky comment! The guy was relentless. For Dead Rising 2, I would be happy with a simple RPG quest system, which opens up quests by discovering the helpless NPCs or situations directly. It would reward exploration instead of following the instructions of someone in the safety of the Security Room, and would allow players to ignore the quests altogether if they choose to.

Variable Weapon Durability. One of Dead Rising‘s unique strengths is that almost everything can be a weapon. But what I didn’t like is how every weapon has more or less the same durability. That is, a Lead Pipe lasts about as long as a 2×4 or a Bowling Ball or an Electric Guitar. Capcom made up for this by adding in a “book” system that increases the durability or adds bonuses to certain weapons as long as you carry the book in your inventory, but this takes up a valuable slot. The current system seems to be in contradiction with Frank’s character levelling system, which only addresses hand-to-hand moves and not skills with weapons. Why are weapons and power-ups so disposable? Shouldn’t Frank gain at least some bonuses for using melee-based weapons all the time? I can see where the original design came from, though: it forces inventory management and with a limit of resources it contributes to that underlying feeling of tension I mentioned earlier. However, when I’m in the middle of a crowd of zombies and suddenly my bowling ball disappears after only a few hits, it’s a little puzzling. Naturally the developers don’t want players searching for the “best” weapon that lasts the whole game, but varying the durability of weapons based on their material would add a new dimension to this tension. Yes, that Lead Pipe will last longer than that Baseball Bat, but how much longer? Making the higher durability weapons less common or a little tougher to find would also balance this out.

More unique weapons unlockable through completing quests. After defeating the True Eye cult leader in one of Dead Rising‘s quests, you get his ceremonial broadsword. It is a magnificent weapon. Once it broke, I knew I would never hold it in my hands again. But having access to its attack speed, damage and excellent raw durability for that short while was worth it. Dead Rising 2 needs more unique weapons like these. Obviously the quests can’t be re-completed to get the weapon again, so once the weapon is unlocked and destroyed I want it to be spawned somewhere else in the game world. And it will be up to the player to find them.

Improve or completely redesign guns and shooting mechanics. The guns are the worst weapons in Dead Rising. What should be the most reliable weapon to use is all at once the most tedious, least effective and unsatisfying. Borrowing controls from Resident Evil 4 (probably why I hate using it), the gun must be aimed in an over-the-shoulder zoomed-in third person view. There is no separate acquisition of ammo and no reload – you have to pick up more guns for that. You can run around while shooting in regular third person view, but don’t expect to land many shots. And compared to the other bludgeoning-type weapons or the swords, the guns are suprisingly weak and ineffective in dealing with groups. Keep the crappy controls if you must adhere to the “Resident Evil Guide to Shitty Controls for Shooting a Gun”, but at least make the guns in Dead Rising 2 more powerful and worth using an inventory slot for. And make ammo separate. If you’ve gone out of your way to find a good weapon, you should at the very least be able to keep it and reload it.

Make Zombies spawn randomly. There were certain areas in the Willamette mall that I knew weapon-wielding zombies would hang out. After running out of bullets, or when I needed a new knife, there was always Chubby the Police Officer or Hawaiian Shirt Dude to rely on to hook me up. After I had already killed them 10 minutes prior. Make these guys tougher to find, especially if they are carrying more powerful weapons. Randomly respawning common zombies would also create the illusion that the player really is being overwhelmed, instead of regenerating a bunch of models that were there moments before.

Boss battles should be more interesting. I want more variety, and less reliance on gunplay – especially if the controls remain the same. Make solutions to defeating boss characters interesting! Dead Rising with all of its usable material had so much potential for trap setting in advance and using your immediate surroundings to defeat a boss. I so very badly wanted to topple scaffolding onto Isabela and her motorcycle during that fight. Though no button combinations to defeat bosses, please. I want to feel like I have some control over the process.

Why limit usable materials to weapons? While we’re on the subject, I want to be able to use my surroundings for just about anything. I want to create barriers to move zombies into a choke point to easily take them out, or topple over structures to dispatch large groups. And how about introducing easy access to some explosives, like creating your own molotov cocktails? They’re great fun in Left 4 Dead. About the closest I got to this feature in Dead Rising was dropping a propane tank into a mob, and shooting it from afar. But it’s more challenging than it sounds.

For the sake of my sanity, overhaul the NPC AI. There was nothing more frustrating in Dead Rising than escorting a bunch of people that just end up a zombie buffet. I wasted far too many weapons on these people in the hopes that they could defend themselves. Dead Rising seemed well aware of this shortcoming, because you were rewarded for saving people as well as bringing them back to the Security Room. The rescue missions are essential in a game like this. So if I’m going out of my way to save someone, I want to make sure I don’t have to babysit them the whole way.

Do not add co-op. Please. This seems to be a design descision that is granted these days, but I liked how I was alone in the world of Dead Rising. Sure it had its moments of (often unintentional) comedy that lessened the impact of the situation, but in the end it was me versus an entire fucking shopping mall full of zombies. It was an incredible feeling. Co-op, whether split-screen or online, will remove some of this atmosphere and turn it into a bit of a joke. I don’t want to go on a zombie killing spree with my friends. I want to survive. I want to feel the lonliness and desperation against overwhelming odds.

Lose the camera. I can only assume that the new main character is not a photojournalist, but some guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s wearing a pretty nifty racing jacket too! While the camera was the perfect gimmick in Dead Rising given Frank’s mission in Willamette, I don’t think it was necessary. There were experience points and Achievments to be gained from good photos, but the photo system didn’t really offer much to the overall game. As such, there’s no need for anything like this in the sequel. I would rather see more work put in to a better variety of quests and missions.

More Save Points, but not a new save system. There were a lot of complaints about the save system in the original game. They were too far apart, artificially extending the length of the game by forcing players to replay entire sections. I’ll agree that there were too few, but I don’t want the original system to change too much. Saving in games is a tricky thing when you start talking about realism, but I think Capcom’s decision to use Bathrooms as save points was certainly a more practical approach. It’s a room that made sense to be repeated throughout the mall. I don’t want the ability to save anywhere, because this completely removes any tension in the game. If the player isn’t worried about making it through a shambling mass of zombies with their NPCs in tow, what are they doing except beating up a bunch of slow moving targets? I also don’t want to see the use of checkpoints, because this will inhibit the original free-form design of the game. The original game automatically saved once key mission objectives in the main storyline were completed, which I think is a completely acceptable compromise. If the developers can come up with a similar scheme with more points reasonably spread out for Dead Rising 2, I’ll be satisfied.

Better Writing and Character Development. Yes, this is a game about a Zombie invasion, but Capcom’s story behind the Willamette outbreak was like a bad Resident Evil outtake (and really, that is saying something). There is a certain amount of tongue in cheek involved in telling a story like this, but I think someone took it a bit too far. The characters were cliché, the source of the virus and the location of the outbreak had a tenuous link, and everything was conveniently isolated within the walls of a shopping mall. Frank grew on me through the game; you had to admire his infallible dedication to the job of getting the scoop on this phenomenon. But everyone around him was a caricature, and the sub-plots surrounding the NPC rescue missions ranged from B-Movie horror to adolescent parody of American action films. Also, no more big breasted schoolmarms with hair the color of their skin. Obviously good writing is a request of most games and it rarely materializes, but try and indulge me with a little more effort, guys.