Back in March, Nvidia revealed unto the world DLSS5, the next version of its upscaling and frame generation tech. It was ugly as sin, turning Resident Evil Requiem’s Grace Ashcroft into, in the words of our own James, yassified Instagram models. The response from developers and onlookers alike was overwhelmingly negative, but of course Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn’t see it that way (he’s still wrong, by the way). Yet amongst the mess is a glass half full outlook from Requiem’s producer, Masato Kumzawa.
Kumzawa, alongside game director Koshi Nakanishi, recently took part in a big interview about the latest Resident Evil entry with Eurogamer, and when asked about the DLSS5 controversy, he couldn’t comment on how the team was involved specifically. However, he did have this to say: “the fact a lot of players commented they really liked the original design of Grace and didn’t want to see it changed was a positive… It meant we got the design right [and] points to the fact that Grace quickly established herself as a fan favourite, that people had such strong opinions on her design.”
While I do think part of it was just generally a negative reaction towards the tech as a whole, it is still nice to get a small win somewhere. Nakanishi also commented on the overall response to Grace as a character, noting that the whole team has “been really glad to see.”
He went on to note how “compared to some of our more stoic characters who’ve been through a lot in Resident Evil, this is her first time experiencing anything like this. She’s very emotionally expressive about the fear she goes through, being thrust into this intense experience. And it’s something I think players have just really responded to; because she’s so relatable, you root for her… you want her to get through this and be okay. I think that emotional relatability, in a horror game especially, is important.”
I expect with all of this pride emanating from the team, Grace is a character we’ll see pop up again somewhere down the line, especially considering just how well Requiem has been doing. Let’s just hope Capcom don’t change their stance on generating game assets.