How Is Capcom’s RE Engine So Versatile?

Exoprimal was built using Capcom’s proprietary RE Engine, which is surprising considering the other Capcom games that have used the engine are quite different. The first game to publicly use it was Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which caused many to dub the engine the Resident Evil engine, which is not what the ‘RE’ stands for. Instead, the acronym is confusingly shorthand for Reach for the Moon. In Japan, the Resident Evil series is called Biohazard, which is why Exoprimal technical director Kazuki Abe is surprised that anyone ever thought the engine was named after the survivor horror series . “It’s really just a matter of coincidence that Resident Evil games are also developed using this engine.”

Since Resident Evil 7, RE Engine has been used to develop Resident Evil Village, the Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes, Devil May Cry 5, Ghosts’ n Goblins Resurrection, Monster Hunter Rise, Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium, Street Fighter 6, and the multiplayer Resident Evil Re:Verse. It is also the engine used to develop Pragmata, Dragon’s Dogma II, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection

Its versatility and flexibility are impressive, thanks to the RE Engine team being in-house at Capcom. It means that if a Capcom game needs the engine to do something specific for the game being made, the team can go directly to the source and have it added. For example, the Onimusha team needed a Dynamic Dismemberment System, so they put in a request to the internal engineers at Capcom. Rather than putting a game in an engine, the RE Engine can pivot and mold around the game based on needs. “If certain components for the game don’t exist in our engine already, the RE Engine team can work to implement those features to allow those things to become possible,” Abe says.

Resident Evil Village

The Exoprimal team was less confident about where the RE Engine logo came from, which features a creepy, slightly misshapen hand reaching for the sky, silhouetted in front of the moon. “The idea of the orientation logo with the hand reaching up is the idea that as an engine, the game that you envision, creating the dream that you have for game development, is just within reach,” Abe says. “And by reaching out with this engine, you can grab it, reach it, and make it happen. This is entirely hearsay. Not entirely sure if this is true, but that is the idea behind the visual for the art engine logo.”