April’s IGN First is filled with Resident Evil Village scoops, interviews, gameplay footage and more. Today, we can exclusively reveal some concept art never before shown to the new favorite Internet video game character, Lady Dimitrescu, along with her three daughters.
Art director Tomonori Takano was responsible for the design of Lady Dimitrescu. Responding to the high demand from fans, he previously announced the height of this fearsome character. Although the impressive 9’6 ”(2.9 meters) includes her high heels and wide-brimmed hat, Lady Dimitrescu still easily matches the height of any living human being. However, some of the tallest people in recorded history come close enough to give Lady Dimitrescu’s height a sense of reality, which makes her even more frightening.
But what about her shoe size? We asked Takano to measure this as well, and he came back with impressive results. Lady Dimitrescu’s shoe size is 44 cm (17.3 inches), which is almost twice the average size of women’s shoes. She also beat Jeison Rodriguez Hernandez’s Guinness World Record for the longest feet in the world by almost 4 centimeters. Takano designed Lady Dimitrescu’s shoes based on a true pair of high heels, which he scanned and digitally resized to match the giant’s formidable height.But we didn’t go to Capcom’s headquarters in Osaka just to talk about feet. Together with director Morimasa Sato, Takano told us how the dominant Countess of Castle Dimitrescu emerged, and the two were delighted to see their creation become an internet phenomenon even before the game was released. “Intentionally, we made the character design a little bit more extravagant than in Resident Evil 7, but no, we didn’t anticipate that,” says Takano, laughing.
Sato mentions that creating characters that leave an impression was a theme for the game from the beginning, and reactions to Lady Dimitrescu’s revelation reassured him that this had been the right choice. “The central concept of the game in a village setting was decided in the early stages of development,” says Sato. “After that, we started thinking about the characters. To create an attractive village with a sense of place, the characters who live there are extremely important. For the main characters of the enemy, we thought about the area each would be in and the type of experience they could provide. “The approach of starting with the characters and building an experience out of them can seem similar to Resident Evil 4.”
Also located in a village with a variety of locations, Resident Evil 4 is loved by memorable characters like Bitores Mendez and Ramon Salazar. “There are a few other characters with an impact similar to Lady Dimitrescu in Village, so you can expect that,” says Sato.
Lady Dimitrescu may not be the only villain in Village, but, according to Takano, her design dates back to the beginning of the project. He remembers how the team started to prototype the character. “We reused Mia’s character model from Resident Evil 7 and made her wear a dress and hat,” he explains of the first tests. “I thought that would be enough to give her a ghostly quality, but we couldn’t make her feel scary. So, we decided to make the character model much bigger. That was the beginning of Lady Dimitrescu. ”The art director continues,“ I designed a piece of conceptual art in which she bends down to go through a door. That’s when I felt it was going to work. “
From there, the team created an area and experience to match the newly designed lover, who became Dimitrescu Castle, a gothic vampire castle. “The original concept was a castle inhabited only by women,” recalls Sato. “We tried a lot of different things to make the Countess scary and feel like a chief character. There were ideas to make her look more like a creature as well, but in the end we felt that a tall woman was the simplest but most powerful thing we could do. “Lady Dimitrescu is not just a tall, dominant woman, like a vampire. Her fashion was inspired by 1960s styles, and Takano hopes it will set her apart from other gothic villains. “I thought that just doing a Gothic aesthetic would lack a bit of originality, so I wanted to add a modern idea to that premise”, explains Takano. “We saw the fashion of the time when actresses like Audrey Hepburn were active, as was the Addams Family. We use these sources as tips to create a less conventional Gothic environment. “
Lady Dimitrescu is not the only femme fatale chasing Ethan in the castle – his three beloved daughters are also after him. Bela, the eldest daughter, is quiet and has a strong head on her shoulders. Cassandra is a sadist who likes to kill. Daniela is the youngest daughter and the craziest and delusional of the three. “Ethan has a family that he is trying to protect, so we wanted to have a family for Lady Dimitrescu too, to provide a contrast,” explains Sato. “The concept started out as a castle with a hundred witches inside, but it was difficult to implement in a video game format, so we ended up doing it like that,” says Takano. “But in fact, when you play the game, you can see that the scenario is still very close to that idea. All types of enemies within the castle are women. With Lady Dimitrescu as the cult guru, we created this hierarchy of women. Men have their blood drained by these women, so you can say that it is the opposite of Dracula.
“Outside, in front of the castle, you can see bodies that have had their blood drained, looking like skinny scarecrows, and they are all men. It is an environment in which women are very strong. “
This experience of terror in which a relatively weak male character is terrified by imposing women seems to be inspired by a type of sadomasochistic fantasy rarely seen in video games. Within the Resident Evil series, Lady Dimitrescu and her three daughters are a type of threat we’ve never seen before.
In order to guide the series in bold new directions, Sato says that in the planning stages he encouraged the team to experiment with as many unusual ideas as possible. “We are not the type of team that starts with a niche idea and gradually expands”, explains Sato. “When trying out new ideas, we started chasing something extreme. As we move forward, the idea often begins to deviate from pure horror. So, in the end, we have to bring the experience back to horror. “According to Takano, the hundred witches in the original concept should be almost naked. A giant countess and her three scary daughters is what that idea became when the team “brought it back to horror”.
For more information on Resident Evil Village, be sure to check out five minutes of gameplay on PS4 Pro and stay tuned for more exclusive IGN Resident Evil Village content throughout April. An open beta for Resident Evil Re: Verse will begin on April 8, which can be pre-downloaded now.
Esra Krabbe is an editor at IGN Japan. He can’t wait to have his blood drained by Lady Dimitrescu. Figuratively speaking, of course.