Resident Evil Four VR is launching October 21st on Oculus Quest 2

A virtual reality version of Resident Evil 4 will appear on Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset on October 21.

Resident Evil 4 VR was announced earlier this year. But Facebook and Capcom – as well as third-party development studio Armature – only gave a glimpse of the gameplay, including a short trailer. It adapts the content of the original game with a (mostly) first-person perspective and reworks it to take advantage of VR motion control.

Armatures Resident Evil 4 makes a somewhat complicated series of small changes to the original horror game from 2005. It’s supposed to have the same narrative content and world design rather than getting the kind of makeover from Resident Evil 2 in 2019. But it has been redesigned to work as a first-person VR game with motion controllers. You interact with weapons, objects, and puzzles with your hands. Your health is displayed on a wrist watch instead of a screen overlay. And in addition to moving with the analog stick on an Oculus Touch controller, you can teleport or walk in room-sized VR.

The new design could affect the gameplay in some ways. For example, you can wield weapons in either hand, and switching between them looks a lot easier. You use a knife by physically hitting your controller at enemies instead of pressing a button. And a gameplay video shows you moving around while recording, a major change from the original design.

The game is not entirely from a first-person perspective, however. All cutscenes are presented in their original third-person format, including those associated with Resident Evil 4’s many quick-time events, according to Facebook. Based on Facebook’s description, the game features some surprisingly fast-sounding camera shifts – for example, you can appear to kick a door with a button and see a brief third-person animation as it opens.

Facebook says the original Quicktime event placements and animations will stay the same, although some of the promotions have been “updated” to work better in VR. (We’ll see how the more acrobatic sections of the game translate to a headset.) Some of the quick-time events involve swiftly moving the controllers while others ask you to pull your trigger at the same time.

Other tweaks would make sense in any remaster. The game’s textures have been updated and Armature has made enemies less likely to target your partner Ashley, whom you will spend a lot of time protecting in both versions of the game.

Unlike most Quest games, Resident Evil 4 VR isn’t compatible with the original Quest 2019 – it’s completely exclusive to the 2020 Quest 2. Facebook also doesn’t share any potential plans to bring it to Oculus’ desktop platform, yet has discussed the game coming to desktops or consoles, just as Myst’s Oculus Quest version was later launched outside of VR. But if you’re just interested in a better looking version of the original Resident Evil 4, there’s always the game’s unofficial HD remaster.