Much has been made of Capcom's desire with Resident Evil 6 to keep fans of both survival horror and third-person action interested without alienating fans of the series, and new rumors are hinting at one way the team may be keeping their most devoted following happy.
Files discovered within the downloadable demo of Resident Evil 6 released this week point to the somewhat surprising presence of playable Ada Wong in her own campaign. Obviously those hoping to keep the campaign a complete surprise may want to avoid details, but at this point the information is far from official.
The possibility of getting to the bottom of Ada Wong's character firsthand comes as a complete surprise, since up to this point the separate-but-interwoven Jake, Chris and Leon campaigns were thought to be the only secrets that the team had ever been keeping. Up to this point the series regular's absence hadn't been discussed much - unsurprising of a secret operative of her caliber. But seeing how smoothly Leon's campaign in particular mixes the series' older gameplay with new styling, the mere mention of walking in Wong's shoes is sure to get fans excited.
If you've yet to play through the RE6 demo, be sure to take a look at the footage from all three campaigns that's made its way online. Fair to say it covers plenty of gameplay styles:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_OXh8DSvnk
But thanks to internet sleuthing over on NeoGAF, the files included with the demo itself have been scoured, confirming that Ada Wong does seem to have a campaign all her own, apparently bringing a Hookshot grapple with her. The co-op partner for her portion so far seems to only be named 'Helper,' so a few explanations are possible. Either Ada's campaign will be a singleplayer portion that may add in a second player, but not to the story itself (the files for her campaign possess a 'co-op mode on' that the others do not) or something more nefarious.
Since Capcom has yet to even address the existence of Ada Wong playable content, and some might read the released details as indicating that her portion has yet to be finalized...you may see where we're head with this. The publisher is no doubt still regretting their past claim that new content DLC and locked on-disc DLC are effectively the same thing, a problem they got into with Street Fighter X Tekken. After seeing how much the fan base disagreed, Capcom backpedaled, but made some telling comments in the process:
"We would like to assure you that we have been listening to your comments and as such have begun the process of re-evaluating how such additional game content is delivered in the future. As this process has only just commenced in the past month or so, there will be some titles, where development began some time ago and that are scheduled for release in the coming months, for which we are unable to make changes to the way some of their post release content is delivered.”
That statement was released in May, around the same time that the company's high sales hopes for RE6 were being outlined as well. With Resident Evil 6 one of the titles "scheduled for release in the coming months," could this be one such instance that Capcom was referring to as too late to change? It's far too early to tell, and just as possible - but perhaps not as likely - that the developers will announce the previously-secret Ada Wong campaign as included in the retail release.
It's also possible that the Ada playable campaign may arrive later as completely separate downloadable content, or even as a pre-order bonus for the RE6 Collector's Edition. We don't want to get fans enraged prematurely, but the presence of character assets for a campaign that showed no sign of being included must give some pause.
What's your opinion? Think we're looking into some odd assets a little too far, or does all this ring a little too true?
Resident Evil 6 releases October 2, 2012 for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
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Source: NeoGAF (via Destructoid)