You'll Be Able to Play This Fan-Made Resident Evil 2 Remaster for Free Soon

A long-in-the-works fan project seeking to remake Resident Evil 2 is almost set for release, its developers have revealed.

Resident Evil 2: Reborn, as it's called, is a remake of the the 1998 survival-horror game in Unreal Engine 4. According to the YouTube description of the new gameplay trailer embedded below, it offers a whole raft of new features and changes. These range from visual effects, like a new lighting system and improved 3D models, to new sound effects, a new health system, and more.

Visually, you won't be fooled into thinking this is a modern game, but considering this is a fan project--and how rough the original version looks after more than 17 years--it's still quite impressive.

Reborn's developers plan to release an alpha version for free sometime this summer. They note this is a "non-profit game," though that's no assurance that Capcom won't decide to shut the project down at some point.

That would be a shame, considering how much work appears to have gone into this, but it wouldn't necessarily be a surprise. Capcom has been re-releasing past Resident Evil games with various levels of remastering. Capcom has yet to touch Resident Evil 2 or 3, both of which were originally released on PlayStation. By contrast, the games Capcom has chosen to remaster--Resident Evil, Zero, Code Veronica, and so on--were launched on more recent platforms. The exception is the original Resident Evil, but in that case, Capcom had the remastered GameCube version to work with for last year's re-release.

There's no exact release date for Reborn, but you can stay on top of the project through the developer's YouTube channel and Twitter account.