Resident Evil Requiem team comments on Grace, Leon and DLSS 5 controversy
Resident Evil Requiem producer Masato Kumazawa says the reaction to NVIDIA’s altered Grace Ashcroft demo showed that players liked Capcom’s original character design.
Capcom has commented on the reaction to NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 showcase, which used Resident Evil Requiem to demonstrate AI-based rendering changes. The demo drew criticism from players who said Grace Ashcroft looked too different from her in-game design.
In an interview with Eurogamer, producer Masato Kumazawa said he could not discuss Capcom’s exact involvement in the showcase. He added that the player response was still positive from Capcom’s point of view, because many fans said they preferred the original Grace design.
While we chat about Grace, I ask whether the team took anything away from the recent furore surrounding her DLSS 5 redesign revealed by Nvidia , which saw many fans rejecting her ‘glamourous’ AI-powered makeover. And while Kumzawa couldn’t comment on the team’s involvement specifically, he noted “ the fact a lot of players commented they really liked the original design of Grace and didn’t want to see it changed was a positive… It meant we got the design right [and] points to the fact that Grace quickly established herself as a fan favourite, that people had such strong opinions on her design.”
— EuroGamer
According to Kumazawa, this showed that Capcom “got the design right.” He said the reaction also proved that Grace quickly became a fan favorite, since players had strong opinions about how she should look.
The same interview also covered Capcom’s wider approach to Resident Evil Requiem. Director Koshi Nakanishi said the team wanted Grace to feel more emotionally expressive than long-running characters who have already survived multiple Resident Evil events. This was meant to make players root for her during the horror-focused sections.
Source: NVIDIA
NVIDIA announced DLSS 5 in March as a new neural rendering system that adds photoreal lighting and materials. Resident Evil Requiem was one of the games shown in NVIDIA’s early demo, but the Grace comparison became one of the most discussed examples because of the visible character changes.
Source: EuroGamer
