Summary
Just like any long-running franchise should,Resident Evilhas a sizable cast of iconic, beloved characters, most of whom have been around for almost 30 years now. Debuting all the way back in 1996,the firstResident Evilmay not have had the best writing or voice acting in the world, but it still managed to deliver two iconic protagonists in the form of Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. Thus began a long trend ofResident Evilgames including some of the most well-known characters in all gaming, most of which are still just as relevant today as they were upon their first introduction.
EveryResident Evilfan has their own personal favorite legacy character, and those can vary wildly from smaller parts like Barry Burton, to larger-than-life figures like Albert Wesker. But when it comes to fans who grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it’s Leon S. Kennedy who’s the most likely pick for their favoriteResident Evilcharacter, and there’s a lot about the protagonist that even die-hard fans might not know.
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Leon Kennedy Was Always Destined to be in a Resident Evil Sequel
After the firstResident Evilreleased in 1996, Capcom began working on a sequel almost immediately. Slated for a March 1997 release, Capcom became increasingly dissatisfied with the state of this sequel, and made the tough decision to completely axe this build on the game and start completely from scratch. DubbedResident Evil 1.5, not much from this prototype sequel remains in the final product ofResident Evil 2, except Leon Kennedy, who had been present from the very beginning. Looking pretty much the same as his final iteration, this original version of Leon Kennedy was still an R.C.P.D. recruit, but one that was there during the start Raccoon City outbreak.
Resident Evil’s Leon Kennedy Was Designed to be Completely Different to Chris Redfield
In a 2009 post on PlatinumGames titled “Greetings!“Resident Evil 2’s director Hideki Kamiyagave a little insight into the design of Leon Kennedy. According to the blog post, Kamiya wanted to makeResident Evil 2’s protagonist completely different from the first game’s “blunt, tough-guy” Chris Redfield. Though Kamiya stated that he loves that archetype and its use in the firstResident Evil, he wanted something different for the sequel, and that’s where Leon Kennedy came into creation, designed to have weaknesses but still be “on the ball.”
Leon Kennedy’s Design May Have Influenced Devil May Cry’s Dante
Resident Evil 4had an incredibly difficult development cycle, going through a total of four different iterations before its final release. One of these iterations was a third-person hack-and-slash action game that didn’t really fit theResident Evilmythos, but had some real potential. That game would eventually becomeDevil May Cry, and while Dante was originally Tony Redgrave in theResident Evil4build, his visual design shares a great number of similarities withLeon Kennedy’sResident Evil 4design. Though it hasn’t been confirmed whether Hideki Kamiya was inspired by Leon Kennedy when it came to creating Dante, the likeness is certainly there.
According to the original manual forResident Evil 2, Leon Kennedy is still suffering through a pretty bad break-up by the time the game starts, with it being the reason he decided toventure out to Raccoon Cityin the first place. This break-up might have saved his life, because rather than get a good night’s sleep in before his first shift at the R.C.P.D., Leon decided to get drunk, leading to him being late, and thus missing the initial stages of the Raccoon City outbreak.
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