Capcom struck gold with Resident Evil in 1996, a tense survival horror game that set the standard for the industry. Its franchise has continued to this day with a variety of critically acclaimed and beloved entries - and it spawned a multimedia empire that includes a long-running film franchise by Paul W.S. Anderson which will soon be rebooted. For its 25th anniversary, Capcom released Resident Evil Village to great success and has other projects in the works, such as the animated Netflix series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. Behaviour Interactive's Dead by Daylight is also getting in on the celebration.
Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical horror game that pits one Killer against four Survivors in a nightmarish cat-and-mouse pursuit. The game began by paying homage to horror media tropes before snowballing its success by partnering with its sources of inspiration: Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and more. For its fifth anniversary Dead by Daylight is adding content based on the recent Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, and creative director Dave Richard said this will honor Resident Evil's anniversary while introducing the series into Behaviour's "horror hall of fame." Game Rant attended a press event leading up to Dead by Daylight's fifth anniversary reveal livestream Tuesday and found out more about how this crossover came to be.
"I'm super excited. I've been playing these games all my teens, I grew up with them. They're an influence, so it's absolutely amazing that this is happening."
The Raccoon City Police Department map and Survivor Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 2 Remake; as well as the Killer Nemesis and Survivor Jill Valentine from Resident Evil 3 Remake; will be officially added to Dead by Daylight in Chapter 20 on June 15. Richard said Behaviour worked with Capcom in deciding what from its storied history would be best for the multiplayer game, and to Behaviour it was "important to have what is considered 'classic' in the world of Resident Evil." It feels these older characters and stories have lingered in peoples' imaginations and wanted to hit on those memories.
When asked why Jill and Leon were specifically chosen as opposed to less-combatant Survivor options such as Claire Redfield from Resident Evil 2 Remake, Richard said it was important they draw from multiple entries equally rather than concentrating on one. This philosophy was reflected last year when Dead by Daylight introduced content from Konami's Silent Hill franchise: the map Midwich Elementary School from Silent Hill, the Killer Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2, and the Survivor Cheryl Mason from Silent Hill 3.
"We're super excited to welcome this legendary content inside our universe. Its really been a dream come true to work with such an amazing franchise."
Compared to Resident Evil, which has had a successful string of releases over the past few years leading up to its 25th anniversary, Silent Hill has been a considerably quiet franchise since the cancellation of Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro's Silent Hills in 2015. That being said, Behaviour Interactive CMO David Reid drew no significant difference between working with Capcom versus Konami. "They're both legendary franchises, they're both great developers and publishers," he said. "It has been awesome for us to be able to work with these iconic properties. They've both been great partners."
Adding Resident Evil content into Dead by Daylight on their respective 25th and fifth anniversaries seems like a match made in heaven, but Reid said his team could not go into detail about which studio approached the other. He said the scale Dead by Daylight has grown to over the past five years means Behaviour talks with a lot of companies, though it's hard to imagine how much larger the game can go after taking part in Capcom's quarter-century celebration.
Dead by Daylight is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.