Deleted game Dead Rising 5 should have had Dark Souls-esque battles

From 2015 to 2018, Capcom Vancouver worked on Dead Rising 5. The game changed creative directors several times. This also changed the approach. One of them wanted to make it into a Dark Souls-like game. Capcom closed the studio and the game never came out.

In early 2015, even before Dead Rising 4 was released, a small team was set up to work on Dead Rising 5. It was decided to make the switch to Unreal Engine 4. The previous games used Capcom’s own engine. The switch to the Unreal engine did not make it possible to put huge amounts of zombies in the game, as with Dead Rising 4. As a result, fewer, but stronger zombies were chosen. The plan was also to add RPG elements to the game.

The new information came out in a lengthy Game History Secrets video from YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming. Its creator, Liam Robertson, spoke to employees of the former studio.

In 2016, Capcom hired a completely new team of developers to work on Dead Rising 5. Later that year, when Dead Rising 4 was released, the employees who had worked on that game were also added to the team. A former Ubisoft design director who was involved in the project envisioned that the game would have The Last of Us-esque combat and the game had to look colorful. It would be a co-op game, with two characters each with their own fighting styles.

Those plans were later jettisoned. The game would become a single player again, but the player would be able to switch characters. A new design director was appointed and told the developers that Uncharted 4, Batman: Arkham Asylum and GTA V should serve as inspiration for the character switching. According to developers, it was very unclear which way the game would go and that phase only lasted a few months.

In the summer of 2017, the plans were turned upside down again. Dead Rising 5 should now have Dark Souls-esque gameplay, with a stamina meter and a lock-on system in combat. Sony agreed and agreements were made to release the game on the PlayStation 4. However, Capcom Japan saw nothing in the new direction the game was taking and those plans were brushed aside. The parent company restructured Capcom Vancouver in 2018 to finish the game, but in a style more similar to Dead Rising 3 and 4. The game should have been released in 2019.

Dead Rising 5 never appeared. A few months after the restructuring, Capcom Japan decided to close down its Vancouver studio in its entirety. In September 2018, the studio closed and more than 150 employees lost their jobs. Figures from Capcom show that about $ 40 million was put into the studio. Most of that money would have been spent on Dead Rising 5’s development.

The video also discusses other Capcom Vancouver projects that never got off the ground. For example, the studio was working on a new IP, New Frontier. That should have been a sci-fi game with adventure and RPG elements in an open world. The studio staff describe the game as “Destiny for Destiny.” Not because of the gameplay, but because of the themes in the game. At the time of that game’s development, Bungie’s Destiny had not yet been released. Footage from New Frontier can be seen in the video from 5:10.