Capcom made a big mistake handing this franchise off to a Western studio. I wonder if they would ever consider getting some of the original team back together and having them make a sequel to the first game..
Dead Rising 2 was very good though, as it had proper Capcom oversight and Japanese developers aiding production. I didn't find 2 too far removed tonally or conceptually from the first game. The problems started occurring when two things happened:
- They dropped the Japanese oversight for the third game and they allowed the Vancouver team complete creative control. Dead Rising 3 is still a good game with a lot of charm and clear gameplay improvements, but it lost a lot of its Japanese quirkiness in the process and they overly simplified the systems and difficulty a bit too much in favour of things that further removed the game from the original concept for the series.
- Dead Rising 4 had an essentially different development team behind it versus Dead Rising 3 despite it being the exact same studio. Look at the head Director, Producers, Writers, Artists, Programmers etc. on its wikipedia.
So I don't think handing it off to Western developers was necessarily a problem, it was more the way in which Capcom managed and hired talent at that studio that severely damaged the franchise.
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