Claire Redfield Was the Compromise of Resident Evil 2 Director On Creating New Characters
Claire Redfield is a central character in the Resident Evil series, with her iconic red jacket and her resourcefulness when it comes to dealing with the apocalypse. She is also Chris Redfield’s sister, a central character in the first original game, and according to Resident Evil 2 director Hideki Kamiya, some people were a little miffed at the second game introducing a whole new cast of characters. So obviously, Claire Redfield was born. Here’s what Kamiya posted on X explaining the decisions on introducing new characters in Resident Evil 2.
The Decisions of Introducing New Characters in Resident Evil 2
If you’re new to the series, each Resident Evil game features a cast of characters that rotates with each game, with each game introducing new characters central to the Resident Evil universe. When developing Resident Evil 2, Kamiya describes himself as selfish, not necessarily taking the player’s feelings into account, especially with the direction the sequel took.
Resident Evil 2 introduced a new cast of characters with Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong, Sherry Birkin, and Claire Redfield. When Noboru Sugimura joined the team of developers in Resident Evil 2, and asked why he wasn’t using any of the characters from the first game, Kamiya responded by creating Claire Redfield.
Claire Redfield is Born
The creation of Claire Redfield was the result of Kamiya’s decision to develop Resident Evil 2 with new characters and a whole new story apart from the first game. It serves as a direct sequel; however, it does not feature any characters from the first game. Here’s the full post on X translated:
Back then, I was a selfish, shitty idiot who didn’t consider the users’ feelings at all, so when making 2, I decided on a policy of “exclude all characters from the previous game and start fresh”…
In the end, that got buried in darkness as Bio 1.5, and afterward, when I joined, Mr. Sugimura got angry at me, saying “Why aren’t you including characters from the previous game!”, and so I created Claire, Chris’s sister…
The creation of Claire Redfield definitely links both games by establishing a connection between characters, while also reassuring fans of the series that even though Resident Evil 2 is an entirely new story that stands on its own, it was the start of conceptualizing the Resident Evil universe.
