Resident Evil Director Explained How Simple Tricks Made Corners Work on PS1

Good morning from legendary game creator Hideki Kamiya, who shared another lesson on game design history. Speaking on X, the Resident Evil and Devil May Cry director offered rare insight into how technical limitations shaped the iconic look and feel of the early Biohazard (Resident Evil) titles.

Kamiya, known for his deep knowledge of classic game development, described the unique challenges developers faced when designing pre-rendered environments during the PlayStation era.

According to Kamiya, one unexpected design problem stemmed from the PlayStation’s limited resolution. What was intended to be a hallway corner often looked like a flat, dead end to players. If it appeared blocked visually, players wouldn’t explore further.

The designer came up with tricks like placing light sources or pictures to indicate the corner and suggest that something continues beyond it.

These subtle visual cues guided players without breaking immersion, demonstrating how much early survival horror relied on environmental suggestion rather than modern camera control.

Kamiya also revealed that in the first Biohazard, strict memory limitations capped each room at only eight camera cuts. Every angle, every shot, and every scripted moment had to fit within that limit. The designer shared that when using cuts within the room to show event scenes, you have to cover the room with the remaining number of cuts afterward. 

This meant that large rooms, like the famous entrance hall of the Spencer Mansion, were particularly difficult.

For the first hall, the designer wanted to stage the scene between Wesker and Chris with lots of close-ups, but he couldn’t because of the 8-cut limit. The iconic fixed-camera style of classic Resident Evil wasn’t just an artistic choice – it was an engineering necessity.

By the time development began on Biohazard 2 (Resident Evil 2), the team had found ways to improve efficiency. The per-room limit was doubled, allowing up to 16 cuts per room.

This expansion gave Kamiya and his team more flexibility in staging dramatic moments and refining the cinematic tone that defined the sequel.

For readers unfamiliar with his legacy, Hideki Kamiya is one of Japan’s most influential game directors and a central figure in shaping the design of action and survival horror. He began his career at Capcom in the mid-1990s and contributed to the development of Resident Evil, then created Devil May Cry, directed Viewtiful Joe and Ōkami at Clover Studio, co-founded PlatinumGames, where he led titles such as Bayonetta.

Today’s tools allow near-limitless camera control and real-time environments. Still, these early technical limitations helped define the pacing, tension, and atmosphere that made Resident Evil a landmark in survival horror. Fixed-camera horror wasn’t simply a stylistic decision – it was a puzzle, solved with lighting tricks, hand-placed props, and strict camera budgeting.

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