Raccoon City exploration is more vast in the new Resident Evil 3

In less than a month, on April 3 Capcom will release the modernized Resident Evil 3 as a follow-up to last year's GOTY (at least to some) Resident Evil 2 and to keep with the current trend of high-profile AAA remakes, as Final Fantasy VII: Remake gets its turn the week after. Now, with every ambitious, game-changing remake comes the always delicate subject of what should remain the same and what shouldn't. Back in 1999 bigger, more credible and explorable cities weren't a thing yet, so it seems that's one of the aspects Capcom will expand now.

It's not a matter of turning the classic RE experience into some sort of GTA-clone, but rather finding interesting ways for players to explore the town. "You can explore a lot more of Raccoon City this time," producer Peter Fabiano tells the Official Xbox Magazine (via Gamingbolt). "We have built it from the ground up, there is some reference here and there to the original, but it is Raccoon City reimagined. You can go into certain shops and see things you wouldn't have been able to see before. It's not an open-world game, don't get me wrong, but you can explore a lot more."

It makes sense when the original struggled to have controlled outdoor environments that made sense outside the mansion or the police station due to technical limitations, and now, according to Fabiano, this reimagined Raccoon City is "way more fleshed out, there's a huge attention to detail - you'll notice posters throughout the city and all these little homages to the '90s and the '80s, these little touches we put in there".

For some reason, we expect shopping at those stores to be way more exciting than your typical open-world trading. What would you like to see in those streets?