TheDead Risingfranchise has been a bit of a mixed bag since its debut in 2006. Even the series' most hardcore fans will agree that not all entries are equal, and some may even go as far as to say the series has never been better than that very first game. ThefirstDead Risinghit at the perfect time, bringing an impressive zombie hack-and-slash game to the Xbox 360 right before the zombie market became oversaturated.
With every new sequel and spinoff,Dead Risinglost more and more fans, with many believing that the series had strayed too far from its tongue-in-cheek, creative roots, instead becoming an over-the-top exaggeration of the genre, being so overt that it lost all self-awareness in the process. WithDead Rising 4not meeting Capcom’s expectations, it’s only natural that a fifth mainline installment was canceled, but not before the project had received an outline and had began development. Players will likely never see this version ofDead Rising 5, which is a shame, as it was to act as a return to form for the franchise.
RELATED:The Case for a Dead Rising Remake
The story ofDead Rising 5is chronicled inDidYouKnowGaming’s videoabout the collapse of the games' development studio. Development onDead Rising 5started almost immediately afterthe release ofDead Rising 4in 2016, though the game wouldn’t officially be announced until Spring 2018. During this time, some pretty infamous leaks popped up on 4chan. These leaks suggested thatDead Rising 5would be set 25 years after the first game and would bring back Pyschopath boss fights and the time-limited mode of the original.
This leak turned out to be completely false. Instead,Dead Rising 5was actually going to be set betweenDead Rising 2and3, taking place in a ficitional Mexican city. ThoughDead Rising 5was going to play pretty similarly to the last few releases, there were some key mechanical differences that set it apart from its predecessors and would hopefully give the stale franchise a fresh start.
One of the main mechanics was the addition of two playable protagonists, each with their own unique set of skills. Players would get to play as both Chuck Greene and his daughter Katey Greene, two central characters ofDead Rising 2. Chuck would act as the main fighter of the duo, being able to crafttheDead Risingseries' iconic combo weapons. Katey would be able to telepathically control the zombie horde, a side effect of her exposure to the virus in the second game.
Another key mechanic was going to let players create combo weapons from any objects or regular weapons. As opposed to previous games in the series, where specific ingredients are needed to create a combo weapon,Dead Rising 5would let players mash together anything using procedural generation.
Dead Rising 5was also first envisioned as a large-scale open-world game, but this idea was soon scrapped as the newUnreal Engine 4was proving to be a little more tricky to develop for than Capcom Vancouver had first predicted. Aside from this hiccup, development onDead Rising 5was going fairly smoothly until the project’s director left the studio.
With a new project director coming onboard, a few key ideas were scrapped. Procedurally generated combo weapons were removed in favor of the more traditional system present in previous entries. The open-world became a focus for the developer once again, with the new director expressing an interest in making it more expansive and introducing fresh traversal mechanics.
In early 2018, much ofthe Capcom Vancouver studiowas laid off. Despite the incredibly high tensions in the studio, development onDead Rising 5continued until September 2018, which is when Capcom Vancouver was told to halt all projects. The developer then found out that it was being closed down and thatDead Rising 5would go down alongside it.
