The player controls rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy and college student Claire Redfield, who must escape Raccoon City after its citizens are transformed into zombies by a biological weapon two months after the events of the original Resident Evil.

The gameplay focuses on exploration, puzzles, and combat; the main difference from its predecessor are the branching paths, with each player character having unique storylines, partners and obstacles.

[18] On September 29, 1998, two months after the events of the first Resident Evil,[19] most citizens of the Midwestern American mountain community of Raccoon City have been transformed into zombies by the T-virus, a biological weapon secretly developed by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella.

[24][25] While searching for an escape route, Claire meets a little girl, Sherry Birkin, who is on the run from an unknown creature, and Leon encounters Ada Wong, who claims to be looking for her boyfriend John, an Umbrella researcher from Chicago.

Ada ignores the unconscious Leon and follows the woman, who reveals herself to be Sherry's mother Annette and the wife of William Birkin, the Umbrella scientist who created the G-virus.

In an attempt to protect his life's work from special agents sent by the Umbrella headquarters, he injected himself with the virus, which turned him into the malformed creature and is now chasing Sherry because of her genetic make-up.

[39] The development team sought to retain the degree of fear from the original game, and introduced two characters without experience of terrifying situations: Leon S. Kennedy, largely identical to his persona in the final build, and Elza Walker, a college student and motorcycle racer vacationing in Raccoon City, her hometown.

[40] Leon received help from fellow police officer Marvin Branagh and researcher Linda – an early version of Ada – while Elza was aided by Sherry Birkin and John, who appears in Resident Evil 2 as gun shop owner Robert Kendo.

Instead, Okamoto proposed the creation of a fictional universe that would turn Resident Evil into a metaseries – similar to the Gundam and James Bond franchises – in which self-contained stories with common elements could be told.

[48] Sugimura was initially consulted on a trial basis, but Okamoto was impressed by the ease with which Sugimara solved script problems, and soon asked him to compose the entire scenario for Resident Evil 2.

The voice-overs by the all-Canadian cast of Resident Evil 2 were recorded before the actual cutscenes were completed, with each of the actors selected from a roster of ten people per role.

[52] Thereafter, the full-motion videos (FMVs) were created by filming stop-motion animations of action figures, which were then rendered to completed pictures with computer graphics (CG) tools.

Other additions include a new unlockable minigame called "Extreme Battle", and a "Rookie" mode that enables the player to start the main story with a powerful weapon and infinite ammunition.

[80][81] This version offers features that were not included on any other system, such as alternate costumes, the ability to adjust the degree of violence and to change the blood color, a randomizer to place items differently during each playthrough, and a more responsive first-person control scheme.

[83] A port of Resident Evil 2 for the Sega Saturn was developed at Capcom, with plans for it to use the console's 4 MB RAM cartridge,[88] but technical difficulties led to its cancellation in October 1998.

[b] Computer and Video Games magazine's Steve Key and Alex Huhtahla praised the gameplay, puzzles, horror, graphics, audio, and the scenario system's replay factor.

[130] IGN's Ricardo Sanchez said that the game's atmosphere was "dead on", and that "[the] graphics, sound effects, music, and level design all work together to create a spooky, horror-filled world".

[4] Writing for ComputerAndVideoGames.com, Paul Mallinson considered the atmosphere, story, and film-like presentation its most outstanding features, and though he found its plot to be "far-fetched", he said it was "kept down to earth by clever scripting and gritty storytelling".

[105] Mac Donald praised the model animations for having reached "true realism", and commended the use of body language as a means of seamlessly communicating the condition of the protagonists' health.

[4] Allgame's Shawn Sackenheim awarded its graphics the highest possible score, as he found the backgrounds to be "rendered to perfection", the cutscenes "a work of art", and the animation "fluid and eerie".

[125] Next Generation praised the game's massive length and said that the differences between each character's scenario were great enough to make the replay value ten times greater than that of the original, which used a similar two-scenario system.

[146] The Windows version was praised for its additional content, but criticized for not allowing the player to save at will, and for lacking updated backgrounds to fit the higher in-game resolution.

[148] However, Steve Key of Computer And Video Games disliked the Dreamcast release's low-resolution backgrounds, which he thought made the characters stand out too much from the environments, and thus lessened the atmosphere.

Although he believed that its graphics and sound effects managed to recreate the original game's atmosphere to a certain extent, he thought that its controls were too "sluggish" to allow for an enjoyable experience.

It therefore surpassed the opening revenue of all but one Hollywood movie at that time and broke previous sales records set by the video games Final Fantasy VII and Super Mario 64.

[169] In Italy, Resident Evil 2 was temporarily banned in 1999 following criticism from the political organization "Movimento Diritti Civili" (Civil Rights Movement) for its realistic depiction of violence, with the law enforcement agency Guardia di Finanza seizing over 5,500 unsold copies.

[174] A romantic comedy retelling of the game's story, centered on Leon, Claire and Ada, was released as the Taiwanese two-issue comic Èlíng Gǔbǎo II (lit.

[180] In 2008, Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi, who had previously worked on the series as weapons designer and graphics animator, alluded to the possibility of a full-fledged remake.

Along with a unit of the French Air Force sent to burn down the village, she encounters Christine Henry, the Umbrella facility director who gave HUNK the order to deliver the G-virus to France.

[188] The characters' story arcs are continued differently: Sherry is taken into custody by the U.S. Government immediately after the events of Resident Evil 2, and Ada keeps the pendant with the G-virus and resumes her activities as a spy.