The Dead Rising franchise has been a bit of a mixed bag since its debut in 2006. Even the series' most hardcore fans will agree that not all entries are equal, and some may even go as far as to say the series has never been better than that very first game. The first Dead Rising hit at the perfect time, bringing an impressive zombie hack-and-slash game to the Xbox 360 right before the zombie market became oversaturated.
With every new sequel and spinoff, Dead Rising lost more and more fans, with many believing that the series had strayed too far from its tongue-in-cheek, creative roots, instead becoming an over-the-top exaggeration of the genre, being so overt that it lost all self-awareness in the process. With Dead Rising 4 not meeting Capcom's expectations, it's only natural that a fifth mainline installment was canceled, but not before the project had received an outline and had began development. Players will likely never see this version of Dead Rising 5, which is a shame, as it was to act as a return to form for the franchise.
Dead Rising 5's Premise
The story of Dead Rising 5 is chronicled in DidYouKnowGaming's video about the collapse of the games' development studio. Development on Dead Rising 5 started almost immediately after the release of Dead Rising 4 in 2016, though the game wouldn't officially be announced until Spring 2018. During this time, some pretty infamous leaks popped up on 4chan. These leaks suggested that Dead Rising 5 would be set 25 years after the first game and would bring back Pyschopath boss fights and the time-limited mode of the original.
This leak turned out to be completely false. Instead, Dead Rising 5 was actually going to be set between Dead Rising 2 and 3, taking place in a ficitional Mexican city. Though Dead Rising 5 was going to play pretty similarly to the last few releases, there were some key mechanical differences that set it apart from its predecessors and would hopefully give the stale franchise a fresh start.
One of the main mechanics was the addition of two playable protagonists, each with their own unique set of skills. Players would get to play as both Chuck Greene and his daughter Katey Greene, two central characters of Dead Rising 2. Chuck would act as the main fighter of the duo, being able to craft the Dead Rising series' iconic combo weapons. Katey would be able to telepathically control the zombie horde, a side effect of her exposure to the virus in the second game.
Another key mechanic was going to let players create combo weapons from any objects or regular weapons. As opposed to previous games in the series, where specific ingredients are needed to create a combo weapon, Dead Rising 5 would let players mash together anything using procedural generation.
Dead Rising 5 was also first envisioned as a large-scale open-world game, but this idea was soon scrapped as the new Unreal Engine 4 was proving to be a little more tricky to develop for than Capcom Vancouver had first predicted. Aside from this hiccup, development on Dead Rising 5 was going fairly smoothly until the project's director left the studio.
Dead Rising 5's Cancelation
With a new project director coming onboard, a few key ideas were scrapped. Procedurally generated combo weapons were removed in favor of the more traditional system present in previous entries. The open-world became a focus for the developer once again, with the new director expressing an interest in making it more expansive and introducing fresh traversal mechanics.
In early 2018, much of the Capcom Vancouver studio was laid off. Despite the incredibly high tensions in the studio, development on Dead Rising 5 continued until September 2018, which is when Capcom Vancouver was told to halt all projects. The developer then found out that it was being closed down and that Dead Rising 5 would go down alongside it.