RE Engine

RE Engine, short for Reach for the Moon Engine, is Capcom’s own video game engine. It was built in the mid-2010s as the follow-up to MT Framework, starting during work on Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. That game’s sequels—Resident Evil Village and Requiem—along with the remakes of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Resident Evil 4, and the upcoming Resident Evil Veronica all use it. Other Capcom titles running on RE Engine include Devil May Cry 5, Monster Hunter Rise, Street Fighter 6, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Pragmata.

Capcom had originally planned to replace MT Framework with an engine called Panta Rhei, which began development in 2011. That project was scrapped after the PlayStation 4 game Deep Down—meant to showcase it—fell into development trouble and was never released. RE Engine was created in 2014, early in Resident Evil 7’s development. It was designed with that game’s linear structure in mind, aiming to make development more efficient. The team avoided third-party engines because they felt a generic engine from another company wouldn’t suit a game like Resident Evil 7. MT Framework was also ruled out due to its slower tools. Jun Takeuchi, head of Capcom’s Division 1, explained that the company needed to rethink how it made games, and to adopt the asset-based development common worldwide, they began building RE Engine.

Since its launch, RE Engine has become Capcom’s main engine across all its titles. According to Monster Hunter producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, no single game or series drives its direction; instead, all studios contribute to its improvement. This approach has helped Capcom avoid the problems other developers face when forcing a single engine designed for one game to work across many, as happened at Electronic Arts.

When porting RE Engine to the Nintendo Switch for Monster Hunter Rise, director Yasunori Ichinose noted that a lot of technical engineering work was needed just to target the new hardware. He also mentioned the challenge of building large maps while keeping graphical quality. Capcom personally asked Nintendo to increase the Switch’s RAM from the planned 2GB to the final 4GB, so the engine could run games like Rise effectively.

In October 2023, Capcom revealed “Codename REX” (RE neXt ENGINE) in a 22-minute developer presentation.