Capcom cut an entire chapter in which you played as Ashley in the opening of Resident Evil 4 Remake.
Modder and content creator Michael “Thekempy” Kemp has reportedly restored the cut chapter that was meant to open the game. While there are no cutscenes or even enemies, there are enough “leftover pieces” in the game files to put “Chapter 0” back together and “get a rough idea of how it would have played out”. So that’s exactly what they did in the video below:
“It would have started with Ashley in the woods at night,” Thekempy explains. “She stumbles upon Los Illuminados in the middle of performing a ritual sacrifice.”
If that sounds a little familiar, that’s because it is – the sequence was briefly seen in the story trailer Capcom released back in October 2022. And while it seemingly didn’t make the final cut and the area is not accessible in the final build, Thekempy was able to find the path Ashley took to witness the sacrifice, and then a fork in the road, which takes her down to the village.
“There are a number of leftover spawn locations for scripted events that would have happened in this chapter,” thekempy added (thanks, PC Gamer).
“I am unable to restore all of their functionality, but I can tell you what they’re labelled as. There’s one here for the spawn of a Ganado who would begin walking around, and Ashley has to sneak past him.”
While the cutscenes seemingly no longer exist, Thekempy did manage to trigger autosaves and give a little detail on what each cutscene may have entailed from their labels and descriptions in the code.
We may never know why, exactly, the opening sequence was binned, but it’s possible Capcom was a little wary of kicking off the horror with a comparatively slow, non-combat sequence so at odds with the game’s action-heavy playstyle.
Resident Evil Requiem will be released next year on 27th February across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and Steam. Its dual protagonists will represent two styles of gameplay, which its developers describe as like “jumping into a cold bath after a hot sauna”.
Resident Evil 7 and Village are also coming to Nintendo Switch 2.