How Is Capcom’s RE Engine So Versatile?

Exoprimal is 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. The acronym for Reach for the Moon is used instead. Kazuki Abe of Exoprimal, the technical director for the company, was surprised to learn that the Resident Evil survivor series in Japan is named Biohazard. “It’s really just a matter of coincidence that Resident Evil games are also developed using this engine.”

Exoprimal

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 being used to develop Pragmata, and Dragon’s Dogma II.

Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection

The RE Engine is a highly flexible engine, and its versatility can be attributed to Capcom’s in-house team. This means that, if Capcom needs the engine in order to make a game with a certain feature, they can contact the RE Engine team directly and ask them to add it. The RE Engine is able to pivot around a particular game, rather than having it incorporated into an engine. “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

Exoprimal was not sure where the RE Engine’s logo originated. It features an unsettling, slightly misshaped hand, silhouetted against the moon, reaching up to the sky. “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. The story is pure hearsay. Not entirely sure if this is true, but that is the idea behind the visual for the art engine logo.”