Some games get remade because the originals have aged like milk left on a radiator. Others get remade because a generation of players spent the year 2000 hunched in front of a Dreamcast, hoarding ink ribbons like wartime rations. Resident Evil – Code: Veronica sits firmly in the second camp, and it is back in the conversation this week. Capcom’s remake, now simply called Resident Evil Veronica, is due in 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam, and the internet has started chewing it over again because a former Capcom manager has decided the original was quietly bad for the series.
A quick recap for anyone who missed the reveal. Capcom opened Summer Game Fest on 5 June with a trailer set in rainy Paris, where a visitor is welcomed into an apartment block by an elderly concierge whose French accent could be spread on a baguette. There is a plate of biscuits. There is a knock at the door. Then the camera swings round and the visitor turns out to be Claire Redfield, which is never good news for anyone standing near her. The whole thing was shot in first person, prompting brief panic among fans who like their Resi over the shoulder. Producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi has since said the finished game is third person throughout, and that the trailer’s viewpoint was a deliberate feint. Capcom does love a magic trick.
The Paris material is new, and Capcom says the remake keeps the appeal of the original while serving up a reimagined story. Hirabayashi has said it picks up three months after Resident Evil 2 and fleshes out Claire’s hunt for her brother Chris. The 2000 game then dragged her off to Rockfort Island, a prison run by Umbrella, and from there to a research base in Antarctica. Where earlier entries borrowed their look from American zombie B-movies, Code: Veronica went full European gothic: portraits, ballrooms, music boxes and the Ashford twins, a sibling double act who made the Addams Family look emotionally well adjusted. It also gave us Steve Burnside, whose original voice performance has acquired a cult of its own. The remake team have been handed both a classic and a duty of care.
Which brings us to this week’s row. A former Capcom manager has argued on Bluesky that Code: Veronica drew a straight line to the action-movie excesses of Resident Evil 5 and 6, and grumbled that many of his colleagues rated it the best of the pre-RE4 games, when he always preferred Resident Evil 2. There is something to the first point. This is the game where Wesker starts moving like a man who has watched The Matrix once too often. But blaming Code: Veronica for Resident Evil 6 feels a bit like blaming Dr. No for Die Another Day. Somebody else chose the invisible car.
The pedigree looks sound. Development sits with the internal teams behind the Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 remakes, with Yasuhiro Anpo and Kazunori Kadoi directing on the RE Engine, and Capcom says the game has passed two million Steam wishlists. The rumour mill, meanwhile, has insider Dusk Golem claiming a Separate Ways-style story expansion is already in the works. Capcom has said nothing of the sort, so file that under “plausible, unconfirmed and probably involving Wesker.”
There is still no release date beyond 2027. Capcom’s habit of landing big releases before its financial year ends in March has some people pencilling in early 2027, but that is tea-leaf reading rather than an announcement. Here at SFcrowsnest we have only one request for the remake team. Modernise the controls, polish the Antarctic, rebuild Rockfort from the dungeons up. But somewhere, in some unlockable corner, let us hear Steve Burnside exactly as he once was. Some things are heritage.
Watch the trailer on YouTube: Resident Evil Veronica – Announcement Trailer
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