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They played around with the ideas for Leon S. Kennedy. Unlike Claire, his name always stayed the same, but his personality and such changed with each different design for him.
The Rumor… Leon S. Kennedy badass extraordinaire
A long time ago I found an ancient website that had "rumors" for the "new" Resident Evil game (Resident Evil 2).
Resident Evil 2 had already come out when I visited the static website, so I went on and read the rumors to humor myself. They had images of previous designs for Leon and Claire
(Elza Walker) and a bit of info on their personalities that "capcom had released." (I don't know if they really did so…) It said something about Leon being a crazy badass gun lover. I'm
glad they didn't go with that idea, too repetitive.
Idea #1…Chris Redfield? No- it's Leon!
The pretty-boy idea hadn't come to mind yet, and they gave Leon a tough guy look. Maybe they realized that it would remind the players of Chris Redfield. Or every other survival horror loser boy. Leon also wears a much
different uniform than he wears in Resident Evil 2. It doesn't say R.P.D on it anywhere, slightly resembles the S.T.A.R.S team uniforms.
Idea #2…Just a different sketch
Here's a sketch of Leon without a "uniform" on at all. Although it does look like there's an R.P.D and police badge on each short sleeve. And one might notice Leon's hair is cut slightly
different than in the sketches for Idea 1. Perhaps that is something he would wear to target practice? Maybe I'm just overanalyzing. Uck.
Idea #4…Pretty Boy
They softened Leon's appearance with the longer hair and took the shadowing out of his face to take away the tough-guy look and make him more of a pretty boy. They also
changed his uniform to what the Capcom producers called the more "stylish" look. His appearance is now identical to how we see him in Biohazard 2/Resident Evil 2. The main
difference is when he shows up in the game. He shows up prior to the infestation instead of after everything goes beyond repair. A little while after he's hired as a rookie officer and joins the
Raccoon Police force the city's population catches the disease and the town is a disaster zone. He's a very good officer and is one of the few one's remaining by the time Elza Walker (Previous
design for Claire) arrives in town.
Leon's Rookie Buddy
The game makes a tiny bit more sense with another Rookie buddy for Leon to relate to. I have no idea what role this guy had for the game. I just know his name was DJ and he was a
rookie just like Leon, and another one of the few remaining officers. Note that DJ's uniform is the same one that Leon wore in Idea #1.
Safety vests or Armor
Resident Evil 1.5 had different Vests/Armor that the player could equip to reduce damage. They also allowed the player to carry more items. One of them was even fire resistant
because there were fire or "inferno" sections of the game. Was it that white space suit lookin' one?
I gathered a good deal of the information in this section from the website bioflames.com, which is dedicated to the Resident Evil prototype or Resident Evil 1.5. |
