The IGN First of April is packed with Resident Evil Village Scoops, interviews, footage and more. Today, we can exclusively reveal a concept art that has never been shown before for the internet’s favorite new video game, Lady Dimitrescu, and her three daughters exclusively.
Art director Tomonori Takano was responsible for the design of Lady Dimitrescu. In response to the huge demand from fans, he had earlier announced the height of this fearsome character. Although the stunning 9’6 ”(2.9 meters) includes her high heels and wide-brimmed hat, Lady Dimitrescu still beats the height of anyone alive. However, some of the tallest people in recorded history come close enough to give Lady Dimitrescu’s height a sense of reality, which makes her all the more frightening.
But what about her shoe mate? We asked Takano to measure it too, and he came back with impressive results. Lady Dimitrescu’s shoe size is 44 cm (17.3 inches), which is almost double the average female shoe size. She also beat Jeison Rodriguez Hernandez’s Guinness World Record of the Largest Feet in the World by nearly 4 inches. Takano designed Lady Dimitrescu’s shoes based on a real pair of high heels, which he digitally scanned and changed to fit the giant woman’s enormous height.But we’m not quite to Capcom’s headquarters in Osaka to talk about feet. Together with director Morimasa Sato, Takano told us how the dominant Countess of Castle Dimitrescu originated, and the two were overwhelmed to see how their creation became an internet phenomenon before the game was released. “We intentionally made the character design a little more extravagant than in Resident Evil 7, but no, we did not see it coming,” Takano says, laughing.
Sato mentions that creating characters that impress late from the start was a theme for the game, and the reactions to Lady Dimitrescu’s revelation reassured him that it was the right choice. “The core concept of the game in a village environment was decided in the early stages of development,” says Sato. “After that, we started thinking about the characters. To create an attractive village with a sense of place, the characters who live there are extremely important. For the biggest hostile characters, we thought about the area each would be in and the kind of experience they could offer. “The approach to starting with the characters and building an experience from them can feel similar to Resident Evil 4.”
Resident Evil 4, which is also located in a town with different locations, is loved by memorable characters such as Bitores Mendez and Ramon Salazar. “There are quite a few other characters with a similar impact as Lady Dimitrescu in Village, so you can look forward to it,” Sato says.
Lady Dimitrescu may not be Village’s only villain, but according to Takano, her design dates back to the beginning of the project. He remembers how the team started prototyping the character. “We reused Mia’s character model from Resident Evil 7 and had her wear a dress and hat,” he explains of their early tests. ‘I thought that would be enough to give her a ghostly trait, but we could not make her feel scared. Then we decided to make the character model much bigger. This was the beginning of Lady Dimitrescu. The art director continues: ‘I drew a piece of concept art in which she bent down to get through a door. Then I felt it was going to work out. ”
From there, the team created an area and experience similar to the newly designed mistress, who became Castle Dimitrescu, a Gothic vampire castle. “The original concept was a castle populated only by women,” Sato recalls. ‘We tried a lot of different things to scare the countess and feel like a boss character. There were ideas to make her more creature-like as well, but in the end we felt that a tall woman was the simplest yet most powerful thing we could do. ‘Lady Dimitrescu is not just a tall vampire-like dominant woman. Her fashion is inspired by styles from the 1960s, and Takano hopes it will set her apart from other gothic villains. “I felt it would be just a little bit original to do a gothic aesthetic, so I wanted to add a modern idea to the premise,” Takano explains. ‘We looked at fashion from the era in which actresses like Audrey Hepburn were active, as well as The Addams Family. We used these sources as tips to create a less conventional Gothic setting. ”
Lady Dimitrescu is not the only femme fatale chasing Ethan in the castle – her three beloved daughters are also after him. Bela, the eldest daughter, is quiet and has a strong head on her shoulders. Cassandra is a sadist who enjoys murder. Daniela is the youngest daughter and is the craziest and most deceptive of the three. “Ethan has a family he’s trying to protect, so we also wanted a family for Lady Dimitrescu to provide a contrast,” Sato explains. “The concept started out as a castle with a hundred witches inside, but it was difficult to implement in a video game format. That’s why we finally made it that way,” says Takano. ‘But actually, if you play the game, you can see that the environment is still very close to the idea. All the hostile types inside the castle are female. With Lady Dimitrescu as the cult guru, we have created this hierarchy of women. Men’s blood is drained by these women, so you could say it is the opposite of Dracula.
‘Outside, in front of the castle, you can see corpses that have shed their blood, look like skinny scarecrows, and they are all men. This is an environment in which women are very strong. ”
This horror experience, in which a relatively weak male character is terrorized by imposing women, seems to draw inspiration from a kind of sadomasochistic fantasy that is rarely seen in video games. In the Resident Evil series, Lady Dimitrescu and her three daughters are a threat of a kind we have never seen before.
In order to lead the series in a bold direction, Sato says that he encouraged the team in the planning phase to try out as many unusual ideas as possible. “We’re not the type of team that starts with a niche idea and starts expanding so little by little,” Sato explains. “When we try out new ideas, we start pursuing something extreme. As we progress, the idea usually begins to deviate from pure horror. Ultimately, we need to terrify the experience. ”According to Takano, the hundred witches in the original concept would be mostly naked. A giant countess and her three creepy daughters are the idea when the team brought it back to horror.
For more information on Resident Evil Village, be sure to check out a five-minute gameplay on PS4 Pro, and stay tuned for more IGN-exclusive content Resident Evil Village during April. An open beta for Resident Evil Re: Verse launches on April 8, which can now be downloaded in advance.
Esra Krabbe is an editor at IGN Japan. He can not wait to have his blood drawn by Lady Dimitrescu. Of course figuratively speaking.