A couple of months removed from its launch, and it's hard to label Resident Evil 7 as anything other than a major success for Capcom. To celebrate the game's strong sales and positive reviews, Capcom has decided to release a multi-part video series detailing the development of the game. In the first part of the video series, some of the game's key developers reveal some surprising details about its development and some elements that were cut during production, like the Baker family's dog Diane.

According to Resident Evil 7 game director Koshi Nakanishi, the Baker family originally had a vicious pet dog named Diane, who Nakanishi regrets cutting from the game. Concept art for the dog is seen in the video, and it appears as though Diane would have functioned similarly to the zombie dogs from past games in the series. Nakanishi stopped short of explaining why Diane was cut from the game, but he did say that Diane would have been part of the infamous dinner scene at the beginning.

Diane wasn't the only thing that ended up on the cutting room floor during the development of Resident Evil 7. As explained by executive producer Jun Takeuchi, Resident Evil 7 once had a "breathing meter," which was controlled by players holding in a button. By holding their breath, players were able to avoid detection from "zombies" in the game. Ultimately, the team found that people were holding their breath in real life as well as in the game, and it was decided that this wouldn't be fun for the player for the entire gameplay experience.

Besides revealing cut characters and features, the first part of Resident Evil 7's "Making Of" video series also revealed one of the game's biggest inspirations. As it turns out, Resident Evil 7 was influenced by the Sam Raimi film Evil Dead, which is why it has a small number of characters and is set almost entirely in one location.

Learning what influenced the development of the best-selling game along with discovering cut features is interesting, so taking the time to watch this video series should be worth it for Resident Evil 7 fans. In the meantime, fans should keep an eye out for the possibility that some of these cut elements will return in the future, either as part of the third volume of the Banned Footage DLC or in Chris Redfield's free story expansion that's on the way.

Resident Evil 7 is available now for PC, PS4, PlayStation VR, and Xbox One.