Resident Evil 4 Playable Ashley Cut Prologue Unearthed

A cut prologue from 2023’s Resident Evil 4 remake has been unearthed, revealing an introduction to the game where you played as Ashley.

Resident Evil 4, whether that be the original or remake, pretty much throws you into chaos right from the get-go. Within the first 15 minutes of the game, you’re fighting infected villagers, dogs, and deranged large men wielding chainsaws.

It’s a pretty memorable opening sequence, and serves as a terrific introduction for what you’re getting yourself into over the course of the next 15 to 20 hours.

However, it turns out that Capcom originally had a different scenario in mind for Resident Evil 4’s opening prologue in the remake.

As unearthed by modder Michael Kemp (known as Thekempy on YouTube), Resident Evil 4 originally had an introductory Chapter 0 set before Leon’s arrival in Spain.

The prologue features a playable segment where you control Ashley Graham in the moments leading up to her capture. As Kemp points out, this sequence is seen briefly in the announcement trailer for Resident Evil 4, but doesn’t appear in the final game.

Aspects of this introduction such as cutscenes, enemies, and light sources aren’t included in the leftover files, but Kemp is able to walk us through the playable area and show us roughly how the sequence would have played out had Capcom not cut it.

There would have been no combat, and would instead have probably served as an introduction to teach players the controls and deliver some initial spooks before we switch to Leon.

Leon and Ashley in Resident Evil 4 Remake, Capcom

Resident Evil 4's Cut Prologue Was For The Best

As cool as seeing the cut content is, I don’t think there’s much here that we missed out on here.

For starters, there’s nothing really in this sequence that we don’t already learn by playing as Leon, so it’s rather redundant to have it here. I prefer Ashley’s first appearance in the game being when we find her later on.

Also, Resident Evil games are designed to be replayed, and this sequence would have just interrupted the flow if we had to keep replaying it every time we wanted to do a new playthrough.

Just look at Resident Evil Village’s opening sequence for example, where you have to play the role of a dad and then wander around in the dark woods for 15 minutes. It takes too long for you to get to the fun stuff. So, perhaps this was for the best.