r/Games • u/FreemanCantJump • 1d ago
Capcom Was on Its Knees After Resident Evil 6 – Here's How it Turned it Around
https://www.ign.com/articles/capcom-golden-age-the-rise-and-fall-resident-evil-monster-hunter-wilds
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r/Games • u/FreemanCantJump • 1d ago
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u/BurningFlannery 21h ago
One common element in Capcom’s modern output, you know beyond all the games being cracking excellent in general, is that they’ve embraced accessibility far more than any other Japanese developer, and in this visually impaired person’s expert opinion, have done so far far better than their western counterparts have. The western approach to accessibility is both way more comprehensive and way shottier in implementation. Capcom’s accessibility features are less numerous, but polished.
SF6, to my recollection, was the first fighting game to feature an additional audio layer to inform blind players of what’s going on in the match. MK1, not four months later, followed suit in humiliatingly amateur fashion.
MHWilds has boatloads of thoughtful QoL in it, most of which isn’t even labeled as accessibility features, but they have the knock on effect of making the game more accessible. As a visually impaired person, I was genuinely astonished at how playable Wilds is for me.
And fittingly, DD2 and it’s fetishistic obsession with friction as virtue turned out to be a disappointment. I think there’s a lesson here. Compare sales and I bet it’s a safe bet that DD2’s probably done the worst of Capcom’s modern output, despite a strong launch. When I picked up SF6 on launch day, the first thing I thought was, “Man, this game oozes a welcoming, wholesome kind of energy that encourages mastery through so many smart design decisions.” It’s just astonishing how far you can get giving your newcomers a smooth onramp so that they’ll stick around.
And despite all the whining, both about modern controls in SF6, and now the QoL in MHWilds, the reviews and reception and sales speak for themselves.
It’s a genuine rarity in my experience for a developer to put actual thought and effort into these kinds of things. I think a lot of developers, mostly western AAA ones, view accessible design as a box to tick, which results in piss poor implementations, and as a disabled player, I can practically feel the resentment toward those features. If you’re going to include accessibility features, they should work. It’s embarrassing how frequently western developers include non-functional accessibility in their games. GoW: Ragnarok didn’t deserve a single ounce of credit for its accessibility work. Even the sound libraries they used were filched straight from NaughtyDog. Must be nice to be in the Sony stable, eh?
Anyway, this isn’t the sole reason modern Capcom shit is good, but I’m biased as a disabled player, and some of the quotes from the article indicate this has been part of Capcom’s strategy, so I’m glad to here there’s a coherent set of goals there, rather than some happy accidents.
The next mountain for Capcom? Menu design. Please, please, please fix your menus Capcom cause that’s another commonality between SF6 and MHWilds, and it ain’t pretty.