100 Things You Never Knew About Resident Evil
83. RE3's Hospital Was Nearly Totally Different
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis remains a unique proposition because, despite it's name (and thanks to it's story taking place over several days), it's actually set both before and after RE2 at different points. This is why it started off life with the title Resident Evil 1.9. However, with development being an ever-changing beast, the game was "promoted" to a mainline title.
Kazuhiro Aoyama stated in an interview with Crimson-Head.com that because the game began life as a spin-off they had a lower budget which meant the dev team had to be resourceful and could only afford a certain level of scope. This is why the player revisits the RPD, for example. Importantly however, Aoyama-san went on to say:
“In the beginning, Raccoon City hospital was just where vaccines were stored & wasn’t even considered as a stage. Resident Evil 3 changing to a main title with the extra development time & resources, allowed us to expand it.”
Whilst the hospital section isn't exactly all that sprawling in the original game, this is a really interesting tidbit since it's the one time players get to take control of the game's secondary character Carlos. Additionally, the hospital is one of the bigger parts of the game's 2020 reimagining so it's wild to think that it was due to be so much less originally.