Frank West is back again after almost eight years. Capcom announced in a new teaser trailer that Dead Rising, the first game in its other zombie action-adventure franchise, is getting a remaster.
We don’t have much info to go on just yet, besides that Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster will be “an updated release with a brand new look.” Watching the teaser, you can see that West, the series’ protagonist, has gotten a bit of a youthful makeover (although he still looks appropriately haggard). When he speaks briefly, you can hear somebody other than original West voice actor TJ Rotolo. A post on the official Dead Rising X (formerly Twitter) account says more details will be coming “soon.”
The trailer briefly goes through the game’s history: 2006 with initial launch and 2016 with the HD remaster. It notes that people in 2006 were “captivated by the originality” of its premise, which I can anecdotally confirm. Dead Rising was a zombie action game, but it was set in a semi-open sandbox that allowed you to improvise weapons from objects around the mall where it all takes place. While you could use typical weapons like firearms, you could also pick up a baseball bat or a guitar from a store nearby and use that instead.
The game also had a degradable mechanic, where melee weapons would break or guns would run out of ammo, which has been used in a lot of other titles since. While there was a story about having to survive 72 hours inside a zombie-infested mall, you could approach it from a lot of different angles — an astounding level of freedom for a 2006 game.
The last mainline series title came out in 2016 with Dead Rising 4, although it’s also taken a spin in two live-action movies on Crackle and the aforementioned remaster. There was also reportedly going to be a fifth game, but the closure of Capcom Vancouver led to its cancellation.
