The themes of the Resident Evil series have evolved with the popular modes of the eras: the first three focused on survival-horror, the fourth on inventory and shooting; and fifth and sixth are primarily action-oriented with quick-time events. Then there are the rail shooters, the RPG-like Raccoon City and the occasional fighting game appearance from Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker in the Marvel vs. Capcom series. But Resident Evil 6 will be looking at another rising trend in gaming: the online drop-in/drop-out co-op system.
Speaking with the US Playstation Blog, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, producer of Resident Evil 6, explained how their Crossover mechanics worked:
"The concept of this feature is to have people joining you in real time and seamlessly, so whenever you happen to be at a point where you get to China as Leon, for example, somebody else in the world who’s playing roughly at the same time and they’re also about to get at that point or they’re already there as Jake, he or she will join you. So the idea is more to have a surprise about who’s going to play with you."
There will be a Friends Only option for the co-op, along with a Chapter select in case you want to go back and replay a sequence as Leon, Chris or, Wesker's son, Jake. Hirabayashi also promised that playing between these three storylines wouldn't be short. "[W]e estimate that each one of these storylines is probably around 70% to 80% of the volume of the whole game in Resident Evil 5. So with three separate storylines, there’s plenty to play here," he told the Playstation blog.
Another brief confirmation came from the fluidity of weapon transition in the demo, which he confirmed will no longer require going in and out of the menu screen. But as for the ease with which characters were taking on the hulking Bio-Weapon, the demo was specifically tweaked so no one would die and they had plenty of weapons. So don't expect that when Resident Evil comes out on October 2nd.
