However, the game sold worse than expected, leading Capcom to change the direction of the series to a more action-oriented approach.

Resident Evil is a survival horror game where the player controls the on-screen character from a third-person perspective to interact with the environment.

To advance, the player must explore a mansion and its surrounding areas while avoiding, outsmarting and defeating monsters including zombies and giant spiders.

Items in the inventory can be used, examined, and combined to solve puzzles and gain access to areas that were previously inaccessible.

Finding Bravo Team's crashed helicopter in a forest, they descend to investigate, but are attacked by a pack of monstrous dogs, killing one of them.

After Alpha Team's helicopter pilot, Brad Vickers, panics and flies off alone, remaining members Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker, and Barry Burton retreat inside a nearby abandoned mansion, where they decide to split up.

The player character then learns about a series of illegal experiments conducted by a clandestine research team under the authority of biomedical company Umbrella Corporation.

The mansion teems with monstrous creatures resulting from these experiments, which have exposed both personnel and wildlife to a highly infectious and mutagenic biological agent known as the T-virus.

Inside, they find Jill or Chris (depending on the player's character choice) in a cell and witness Wesker programming a Tyrant, a humanoid bioweapon.

[14] Mikami[15] and producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi[4]: 175  agreed the GameCube would allow them to bring the game closer to the original vision the team had for the series.

As Capcom's marketing director Todd Thorson said, the main goal was to "achieve motion picture-quality visuals and create even more suspense and fear than the original".

[17] In the process of development, the team wanted to make sure that those who had already played the 1996 version would find things to enjoy in the remake.

[18] As a result, the graphical style of the remake features 3D models on top of pre-rendered backgrounds like early Resident Evil games.

[20] Creating fear in players was a priority, and many of the game's backgrounds were designed to have a high contrast between dark and light so that enemies could appear unexpectedly.

[23] Instead of using adjectives to describe difficulty levels, Mikami decided to have unique questions so that the player would pick the hard one.

[13] In a later interview Kobayashi stated that many of these additions and substantial changes were a deliberate effort to attract veteran players.

[3][32][33][35] GameSpot credited the attention to detail, realistic gore, volumetric fog, and integration of real-time lighting and shadows with pre-rendered backgrounds, commenting that Capcom had "finally perfected the art of mixing prerendered scenery with ambient animations and polygonal objects, and the result is the most visually impressive video game ever released.

"[3] IGN highlighted the complex geometry of the character models, stating that "close shots of Chris or Jill look almost photo-realistic.

"[5] Writing for NGC Magazine, Jes Bickham remarked that, unlike in the original Resident Evil, the contrast between character models and backgrounds is seamless.

AllGame reviewer Scott Alan Marriott felt that the game "[creates] a constant sense of dread without relying too much on obvious shock values",[30] while GameSpot highlighted the quality and variety of sound effects, noting that "there seem to be dozens of sound effects for footsteps alone.

[3][5] Although the game's limiting controls and inventory management were criticized,[35] changes to many aspects of the gameplay were positively viewed.

[3] However, the controls were criticized for their lack of analog precision, a feature that was previously available in the Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 2.

[46] Digital Spy writer Liam Martin remarked that the game is "the definitive version of a true classic" and that it still looked "fantastic" nearly 13 years after it was first released.

[47] Before that happened, Capcom developed Resident Evil Zero, a direct prequel using the same graphics engine and released in late 2002.

[66] Although the original pre-rendered backgrounds have a 4:3 format, the developers decided against re-rendering them in 16:9 because it would allow players to see more of the environment than intended, reducing the sense of immersion and danger.

[67] As a result, the developers added vertical scrolling to the backgrounds, which respond to the movement of the character, to fit the remaster's widescreen aspect ratio.

[58] Several critics noted that some features like the inventory system and the insistence on having to revisit previously explored areas have not aged very well, but generally agreed that the remaster was a solid revival of a classic.