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A short PS5-exclusive Resident Evil Village demo is now available for free on the PlayStation Store.
Resident Evil Village producer Peter Fabiano revealed the demo during Thursday’s Resident Evil Village Showcase.
The short narrative slice, titled ‘Maiden’, is one of two demos that Capcom plans to make available. This spring, the second demo will hit all platforms ahead of Resident Evil Village’s May release. Right now, PS5 players get the first shot at experiencing the sequel to Resident Evil 7.
Instead of protagonist Ethan Winters, the PS5 demo follows the titular Maiden. It’s a standalone experience set in the same world, much like Resident Evil 7’s ‘Kitchen’ demo. But the way players interact with the demo is drastically different: though ‘Maiden’ is set within the Resident Evil Village universe, it takes a pacifist approach to horror, so there’s no combat, nor the ability to block or fight back in any capacity.
According to Fabiano, the team meant for the demo to act as a way for players to explore the setting of the main game, but eventually grew into something bigger. “The ‘Maiden’ demo doesn’t take place during the main story of Resident Evil Village,” he said. “‘Maiden’ was originally designed as a visual demo that would allow you to explore the inside of Dimitrescu Castle, but it evolved to include a short story and puzzle solving.”
The demo will also showcase this Resident Evil entry’s tech upgrade, including its ray tracing capabilities and lightning load speeds. “For ‘Maiden’, or rather, for Resident Evil Village, we wanted to create a game with beautiful graphics, high frame rate, and short loading times that don’t spoil people’s immersive experience of the game,” Fabiano said. “The technology we mentioned in the showcase aided the director in realising his vision of how the game is played, and the art director’s vision of how he wanted the game to look.”
Capcom has not offered a release date for the spring demo. The full game is set to release on May 7, so the second gameplay experience should be dropping in the coming weeks. Resident Evil Village is coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and PC.
Yesterday, (21 January) a series of apparent leaks by way of Humble Bundle revealed Village’s new multiplayer mode. Though the Humble Bundle store page outed the name, Resident Evil Re:Verse, no details about the new surprise demo were released.
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