With Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition already flying past Capcom’s projections of 420,000 copies sold worldwide and showing no signs of slowing down yet, plus on-rails shooter Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles due in November, Wii is already looking like a good home for the series. But what about taking the zombie-filled series online in the future?

Speaking recently with GamePro, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles Producer Masachika Kawata of Capcom discussed various aspects of the eagerly awaited Wii game that will make good use of the Wii Zapper that Nintendo unveiled at this year’s E3 trade event in July. To start things off, Kawata-san talked about the two-player co-operative mode and how the aim was for both players to have more fun together than they would on their own since the mode “makes it livelier then if you play by yourself.” However, for those wanting online in this game, currently they will have to wait, possibly even for future iterations of the franchise. He also states why The Umbrella Chronicles is so different from other Wii shooters:

“We’d definitely like to bring online elements into the game; both Umbrella Chronicles and to future titles. We don’t have any [definite] plans, though we’d like to.” [ Capcom’s PR team then stressed that online is not a currently planned feature, merely a desire on the part of the developers ].

“We’ve gone to a lot of trouble working on the visuals to make it look like a lot of the other games in the series. We think that this game will be as accepted by the public as RE4 was on the Wii. Other Wii shooters in the past have been bright, and not so scary. We’ve made this game darker and more horror-like, and we think that’s one of the reasons that it will be successful.”

For those wondering about the control set-up, Kawata reveals that motion control will be used “to reload and to shake off the enemies. These are the unique ways we’re using the motion controls.” The game was initially created with the aim of just using the Wii controller, rather than Nintendo’s Zapper peripheral, yet using the Wii Zapper “can enhance the gameplay by giving you a more palpable experience: it allows you to aim better and feel like you’re shooting the enemies.”

In terms of how long the game will be and what incentives there are to play through it again, Kawata laid any fears to rest by stressing the following:

“…we’ve included a lot of unlockable items in the game. Also, because it’s a shooting game you’re going to want to play it again to increase your score. In the past, RE games have been made so you can play for a certain period time your first time through, and when you play through it again improve that. For this game we’ve done our best to make sure that it takes the same amount of time each time you play it, no matter how good you get.”

Finally he rounded things off by pointing out that since this game is an on-rails shooter, although players will be revisiting areas familiar to them from past iterations of Resident Evil, they will not be able to freely wander around and find new places. However, gamers should “look forward to a new scenario that is something you haven’t seen before. Not only will you get the general outline of the events in the Resident Evil series, but you’ll find out what happened to Umbrella, and we’ll take you a little bit further into the elements of the back story you many not of heard before.”

Stay tuned for further updates here on Nintendic…