In its Resident Evil Village showcase today, Capcom dropped the news that Mercenaries, the series' long-running arcadey action mode, is coming back. Mercenaries was especially popular in RE5 and RE6 thanks to co-op multiplayer support, but it wasn't included in Resident Evil 7 or the remakes of Resident Evil 2 or Resident Evil 3. "It's back, with a few Resident Evil Village twists," said director Morimasa Sato.
There's now a shop, The Duke's Emporium, which you can access "between areas" to purchase and upgrade weapons. The Emporium has three menus: Supplies, Gunsmithy, and The Duke's Purse, which looks like where you'll go to sell things to get the funds for the other two. The Gunsmithy's upgrade system looks very much like the weapon upgrading introduced in RE4.
Like in previous Mercenaries modes, Village's looks fast-paced. You have a time limit to kill a certain number of enemies, but combo-ing kills will grant you both bonus point and bonus time. The big difference this time is that, like the rest of Village, you'll be playing in first-person.
Mercenaries mode now has a simple ability system to buff certain attributes, like pistol damage or movement speed or resistance to enemy hits. The one thing the demo didn't show was whether or not Mercenaries will support multiplayer. More on that when we know it.
