DR2: More than 3K zombies on screen "ruins the experience", says Ohara

Dead Rising 2 co-producer Shin Ohara feels too many zombies on screen can "ruin a game".

Speaking with Gamasutra, Ohara said the game's tech doesn't limit the amount of revenant flesh-eaters featured on screen at once; however, if too many are present, the area becomes constricted provided the player with less room to chop 'em all down.

"Last year at Captivate we did a demo. We had a strip -- It was probably like 10 meters wide and 200 meters long. We filled it with about 7,000 zombies. After about 3,000, you can't really tell the difference because it fills up the screen anyway. Over 3,000, it ruins the experience. It's not a game anymore," said Ohara.

"We can show about 7,000 zombies if we wanted to, our technology is not limiting us. If the game only shows about 500 zombies or 1,000 zombies, that's not the game's limit. We have just enough so that people have fun with the zombies and the gameplay is rewarding.

"We want people to use a lot of weapons, and they need to be able to move around to use it against zombies. Traversing the space shouldn’t be a pain, but it needs to be a challenge as well. We didn't want to fill a room out of zombies where you had to wiggle your way out.

"Rather, you can jump over them, kick them, or go around them. There are many ways that you can deal with the zombies."

During the same interview, Ohara explained why Capcom chose western developer Blue Castle Games to work on the title, and how well the team "clicked" with the publisher's vision of the game.

Dead Rising 2 is out on September 28 in the US, and in the UK and Europe on October 1 for PS3, 360 and PC, with Case Zero hitting XBL exclusively on August 31.