Resident Evil 2 Remake Almost Axed Its Plant Zombies (& It Should Have)

The Resident Evil 2 remake deviated from the original’s gameplay, but it remained largely faithful to the aesthetics and mood of its PS1 predecessor, making it one of the most beloved remakes in recent memory. One element that almost didn’t make the cut was Resident Evil 2′s walking plant monsters, known as Ivy Zombies, and Capcom was right to believe they should have been left out.

In the original Resident Evil 2, players encountered wandering Ivies – monstrous, humanoid plants. These creatures, a series of bio-weapons devised by Umbrella known as Plant 43, sported large mouths and lumbering limbs. The design was effective, but also a bit cartoonish, so Capcom revised the Ivies into Ivy Zombies in the remake. These new enemies appear closer to normal zombies, just with plant growths around their bodies, croaky cries like The Last of Us’ Clickers, and vertical, Venus flytrap-like mouths.

In a 2018 interview, Resident Evil 2 Producer Tsuyoshi Kanda told VG247 Capcom’s development team originally planned to remove the plant monsters entirely. The team worried about how to implement “a plant monster in a more realistic atmosphere,” but Kanda wanted them in the game, so he went “back and forth” with the team for about a year, trying to figure out how to modernize the creatures. The ultimate results, the Ivy Zombies, are certainly scary, but the team was right about them not fitting in with the rest of the game.

Why Resident Evil 2’s Ivy Zombies Feel Out Of Place

On their own, the Ivy Zombies are great horror enemies. Their movement and sound design is among the most unsettling of any creature in Resident Evil 2′s remake, and their regenerative properties make for some surprising scares for first-time players. But, compared to Resident Evil 2′s other monsters, their visual design feels out of place.

Every other enemy (besides Mr. X and the giant alligator) is some variation on a mutated human or animal, marked by blood, viscera, and exposed flesh. This immediately signals to players that all of these creatures have their origins in the same source: Umbrella’s t-Virus. Birkin injected himself with it directly, the zombies caught it during the outbreak, and so on. The Ivy Zombies disrupt this consistency, as they’re a new type of zombie not caused by the virus directly, but by a parasitic plant derived from the t-Virus. On paper, it’s a small distinction, but in the course of Resident Evil 2′s story, the Ivy Zombies feel like a strange diversion from the consistent design of the game’s other enemies.

In fact, the Ivies’ original look may have felt less at-odds. Sure, it’s a bit outlandish, but their distinction from other zombies made them feel more like a one-off bio-weapon, deliberately designed by Umbrella, rather than victims of yet another virulent (but less prominent), zombie-causing infection running parallel to the main one. It doesn’t help that remake’s Plant 43 and its Ivy Zombie children are only found in a single location, further distancing them from the rest of the game’s enemy designs and overarching threat of the t-Virus. Perhaps being even more faithful to Resident Evil 2′s original concepts would have ultimately simultaneously made the Ivies feel less confusing and appeased nostalgic fans.

Resident Evil 2 released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on January 25, 2019.

Image Source: PCGamesN

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Camden Jones
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Camden Jones is one of Screen Rant’s gaming features editors. He loves video games, but he’s even more interested in the people who make and play them.

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