Dino Crisis 2

Summary	Plot	Gameplay	Development	Marketing	Reception	Credits	Gallery	Translation errors	Further notes

Dino Crisis 2 was developed by Capcom with a budget of approximately $7.5 million, with the opening cutscene costing $500,000 to make.

Development

Pre-production

Due to an internal shake-up within Capcom in 1999, Yoshiki Okamoto's Planning Room 2 was shut-down and replaced by Production Studio 4, to be led by Shinji Mikami as Executive Producer. This shake-up left Mikami with too much work to actively work on Dino Crisis 2, and Hiroyuki Kobayashi was instead hired on as Producer. A new company set-up by Okamoto known as Flagship had also recently been acquired by Capcom, and creative control of the project was given to company head Noboru Sugimura, running against the previous game's development where Mikami and a team of Planners developed both the story and script. The final shake-up was the hiring on of Shu Takumi as director; Takumi himself was briefly Director on Dino Crisis in 1997 while Mikami worked on Resident Evil 2, and this was his first time directing throughout.

Programming

Running contrary to the previous game in the series, Mikami and Kobayashi agreed that Dino Crisis 2 should rely on arcade-style features, abandon item-management, and give the player easy access to enemies so they could far outperform the dinosaur enemies so the user experience is more fun. In an interview for Prime Games, Kobayashi described the core theme of the gameplay as being "the exhilaration of defeating a succession of dinosaurs". A points system was designed so players have more enjoyment in fighting; these points can be used as currency at in-game shops, where more ammunition and more powerful weapons can be purchased, eliminating the need for item management. Sub-Weapons were also designed to give players more ways of fighting enemies, such as a powerful machete or the Firewall. One of Mikami's own proposals was that the player be able to run and shoot at the same time.

Design

Concept art of Military Facility/Entrance by Yusuke Kan

The graphic department was headed by Kazunori Tazaki, who was also in charge of creating and designing the characters for the game. The CG models were then created by Yasuyo Kondou and Kaoru Araki.

As was more typical with Planning Room 2 and early Studio 4 titles, Dino Crisis 2 used 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. These were done by creating 3D environments, taking two-dimensional 320×240 still shots of them at different angles and then programming hidden walls to simulate a third dimension. This was a process Capcom started with Resident Evil due to the PlayStation's graphics and memory limitations, and since Resident Evil 2 the absolute limit was reached at sixteen still shots per room.

The CG art inspired by it.

The background art team was led by Masachika Kawata, with Yusuke Kan drawing sketches for each room. When agreed upon, a larger team would then create CG artwork based on the sketches. To create a more convincing jungle environment, a team had to do research on what jungle environments look like, as well as how the ground is lit in such dense woodland.

Story

Development of the Dino Crisis 2 story was split between the internal planning department and the external professional writing studio, Flagship. The story was created by Flagship's head writer, Noboru Sugimura, with Yusuke Hirano and Kishiko Miyagi as co-writers. The scriptwriting process focused initially on the opening and ending cutscenes; other scenes were written afterwards around the game objectives, following meetings with the Planning department. This department consisted of. 

While the story was largely settled on, the script as proposed by Sugimura was more ambitious than Studio 4 had time and funding to achieve, and a number of changes were made to simplify the flow of events. While at the Army base, Dylan was to break a door down to escape the Tyrannosaurus, only to fall down a hole and contact Regina to save him; in the retail version, he goes into the Hardware Storage room and gets locked behind a door. Another cut early on was that Regina was to run past booby-traps such as pits, spears and falling rocks, while also avoiding plants that release poisonous spores; in the retail version only the poisonous plants remain. Another cut at this point was a Regina/Paula fight scene, which was to be more elaborate at one point. Another similar change was later in the game, where the death scene for David, then known as John Smith. In Sugimura's treatment, the patrol boat was to be swept away by the current, forcing John to jump into the water to reach it only to be swallowed whole by a Plesiosaurus that swam up the river; in the retail version David is eaten off-screen by an Allosaurus after pushing Dylan out of its path.

Other changes in the story revolved more around streamlining or simplifying the game. Ideas that would have Americanised the story were largely removed, such as a mention of NASA taking over Third Energy research and Dylan being a Green Beret. The "present" settings were also changed over time from 2020 and 2065 to 2010 and 2055. Early changes to characters include Paula who, while the Full Face storyline was settled on, was to be Dr. Kirk's daughter instead of Dylan's. Another character was to be briefly introduced at the very end, with Regina returning to the present and into the arms of her boyfriend, Alex. This present sequence was abandoned early on and Alex's CG model was never made.

More significant changes were made later on in development. While at the Third Energy facility, a Plesiosaurus was to damage and destroy the reactor, forcing Dylan to help Regina escape the underwater complex; in the retail version, Dylan's section was axed completely in favour of Regina having a boss fight. The jeep chase was at one point to continue onwards, with Dylan and Regina forced to fend off waves of Velociraptors from stationary turrets, culminating in them commandeering a broken tank and killing the one-eyed Tyrannosaurus with its cannon. While the jeep chase was preserved, now with Triceratops, the second turret section was removed in favour of exploring Edward City, and the tank is made fully functional to make the Tyrannosaurus fight more fun. The "cyclops" however was kept alive so it could be killed by the Giganotosaurus instead. Another chance that simplified the plot was that of the missile's role in the plot: in a late draft Dylan, Regina and John are given only two hours to find a working Time Gate before the warhead detonates and destroys the entire region they have explored; in the retail version they are simply escaping the missile silo before it blows up.

One of the most significant changes later in the game is that of the Noah's Ark Plan reveal. In the late draft, Old Dylan was to reveal that the team contracted a deadly virus and were placed under quarantine by the US government of 2065. Ultimately everyone died aside from the children, who were placed within life-support machines at the expense of their parents. In the retail version a computer malfunction closed the Time Gate bound for 2055, with the project staff being mauled by escaped dinosaurs instead.

Sounds

Composer Sayaka Fujita at her workstation.

McClear/Digital was hired as the studio for English dubbing to take place. Based on 255 Mutual St. in Toronto, Paul Seeley's Studio Four was used for professional dubbing. Capcom's Susan Hart and Eriz Suzuki served as Producer and Director, respectively.

For music production, the sound team used several music workstations, consisting of a Roland XP-50, a Yamaha EX5R, and a Korg Wavestation, and used the Opcode Vision MIDI sequencer program. Like with Dino Crisis, all music was encoded on Capcom's proprietary format, "GIAN".

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