Without a doubt, Resident Evil 7 is one of the best releases available at the moment for Sony Interactive Entertainment's PlayStation VR headset, as Capcom's survival-horror title immerses players in a grimy world of fear, where terror lurks around practically every corner. Interestingly enough, though, as mentioned by the lead VR engineer Kazuhiro Takahara during the third entry in a series of making-of videos, it seems as if Resident Evil 7's executive producer Jun Takeuchi is not physically able to play VR, even though he helped oversee RE7's creation.

As seen in the video further below, at the beginning of the third entry to the mini making-of documentary for Resident Evil 7, Takahara states that the game initially didn't have a PlayStation VR version planned, but the lead VR engineer bode his time and implemented experiments until the opportunity presented itself to pitch a virtual reality port for the survival-horror title. Eventually, Takeuchi gave the green light to the development of a PlayStation VR version, but he was wary at first, partly due to his inability to fully test it out for himself due to physical limitations.

"At the time that I heard Takeuchi-san was taking over the RE7 project, he hadn't said anything about supporting VR, but he became more and more interested in it. So I saw a chance.

"At the time I was actually working on the RE Engine. I was in charge of designing and developing the runtime at the core of the engine. Within that role, I kept thinking it would be really interesting if we could team up Resident Evil with VR, so I kept watching for an opportunity.

"I have to admit that my biggest miscalculation was that Takeuchi-san himself is not physically able to play VR much, so while he thought it would be fun, and he held the decision-making power on implementing VR, in the final product, he wasn't able to make the decision based on personal experience."

Although Takeuchi was unable to try out Resident Evil 7 in virtual reality to do some hands-on quality assurance before the PlayStation VR version went into development–be it due to any number of physical ailments that occasionally crop up for some people when using such technology–Takahara's patience and persistence obviously worked out in the end. As it happens, the PSVR iteration of RE7 wound up posting solid numbers supporting the decision to port it to the Sony headset.

Of course, at the moment, the virtual reality experience of Resident Evil 7 can only be taken on through the PlayStation VR, but the Sony headset won't have claim to it forever. As a matter of fact, the official site for the survival-horror title revealed a while back that the PSVR version is a timed-exclusive, which means that the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive will eventually have versions of their after the exclusivity contract lapses in 12 months since the game's launch.

Taking all of this into consideration, it will be interesting to see if the VR version of Resident Evil 7 becomes even more widely used when it's opened up to more than just PlayStation VR users. Although Sony currently has control the market share in terms of VR, a larger audience could definitely boost the chance for even more players to strap on a headset and scare themselves silly.

Resident Evil 7 is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, and Xbox One.

Source: Resident Evil – YouTube