Change Leon's movement and you have to rethink all of the environments and how the enemies behave, too, because those things were so, so finely tuned 15 years ago. Throw a fancy new graphics engine on and the quick-time events will feel archaic, even if they're actually still pretty damn fun. If anything, I think remaking RE4 today would actually highlight its flaws. But what else? Adjust Leon's movement and aiming to be a little less stiff? Expand on the context-sensitive actions, like kicking enemies or jumping out of a window? None of that would be worth it. Revel in the gore of Leon getting chainsawed in half, of a plagas parasite bursting out of the neck hole of its zombified host and writhing in the air. What would Capcom really change? Sure, they could make it prettier. Any remake of Resident Evil 4, at least right now, would just be a shallow reskinning of the same damn game. Because Resident Evil 2 and 3 belong to a different era and had to be changed so fundamentally after 20 years, the remakes easily stand apart from the originals as wholly different games. Almost all developers have left those static camera angles and 'tank controls' behind, except for indies deliberately evoking the sensation of late-'90s horror games. Looking back, it's hard to believe there's barely more than a five year gap between Resident Evil 3 and 4, but that's how quickly technology and game design were evolving at the time. The remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 made both games as pretty and detailed as possible with cutting-edge graphics, of course, but mainly they served to bring both into the post-RE4 era, with familiar controls and a comfortable camera perspective. Resident Evil 5, 6, and later spin-offs all more or less followed RE4's new playbook, though none of them did it as well. It did away with static camera angles, which had been practical on the PlayStation's limited hardware and also deliberately evoked the creepy cinematography of horror movies. It put the focus on action, not horror, though it was still tense and gross and sometimes outright scary. In 2005, RE4 marked the start of Resident Evil's modern era.

Resident Evil 4 just doesn't need a remake, period. Not because the RE3 remake has shaken my faith, though. Now Resident Evil 3 is proof that a remake isn't necessarily a surefire home run, and I hope that Capcom isn't planning to go after RE4 next. After the stellar Resident Evil 2 remake last year, it seemed like Capcom was destined to keep going, updating its greatest hits with a new generation of technology.

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