With E3 just around the corner, we're going to hear some pretty bizarre things over the next few weeks, and today, we have a doozy. It's been going around that Capcom has some interesting ideas for its next Resident Evil game, namely that it'll somehow revive longtime series baddie Albert Wesker, but even more bizarrely, have Alice of the "Resident Evil" films as a playable character.
The dubious source of this "info" is KDramaStars, citing a tweet from "an alleged employee of Capcom" declaring that" Wesker's voice actor going in to the studio to record lines for Wesker and that they are planning to add Alice from the Resident Evil movies to be a playable character in the Resident Evil 7 mercenaries mode."
The gaming community blew up over the apparently unverifiable knowledge, owed to the fact that the outlet never bothered to link to the tweet in question, and the article is credited as the work of but an unknown staff writer.
How's that for hard evidence? Still, let's play detective for just a moment.
As far as the voice actor bit goes, we'd have to assume the site is referring to Wesker's most recent actor, D.C. Douglass, who played the Umbrella despot in the character's "final" appearance in Resident Evil 5. However, that's news to Douglass, who wrote on his official Facebook page and Twitter in regards to the rumor, "Is this true? I haven't been called. Are they referring to Japanese actor for #Wesker? Should I book more cons in 2015?! Lol!"
In the interest of being thorough, let's check on that Japanese actor, Jōji Nakata. There's no sign of any new BioHazard or Resident Evil projects (or any projects currently in development for that matter) on his IMDB page, and there's no mention of either at his Twitter page. At least, not recently. Granted, that's not a guarantee of much of anything what with NDA agreements, but information has filtered through in such a manner before, even with RE projects.
Wesker's return? Hell, I wouldn't put it past Capcom to try. In a game series that centered around shambling corpses, genetic manipulation, corporations run amok, I suppose we can't assume that thousand degree molten rock and a rocket launcher is enough to keep anything in the RE world dead permanently.
As far as Alice's inclusion, making the character available in another Mercenaries mode would be a unique fan service. No matter how much certain fans will booboo the premise, it'd give Capcom an interesting selling feature if anything, and lord knows they need it after everything that happened with Resident Evil 6, which may have had great numbers, but couldn't stand on its own.
Plausible, maybe. But likely? Characters unique to the movie series have never crossed into the games before, it'd certainly be a first. The only thing that makes it even a remote possibility is that Paul W.S. Anderson announced another RE movie, "Resident Evil: Rising," earlier this week. While only actress Li Bingbing was mentioned to feature, reprising her role as Ada, you have to assume that Milla Jovovich will also return as Alice given she's been the central character in the series since day one. Not to mention that whole "being the director's wife" thing.
It's all speculation at this point, but something more solid could be here soon enough. According to Japanese paper Sankei Shimbun, this year's E3 will be the venue for when Capcom will formally announce Resident Evil 7. 'Til then, take anything else you hear with a big grain of salt.
