I mean, at least we got to explore Willamette in that weird non-canonical Dead Rising spin-off where you play as Frank's distant half cousin; Hank the wedding photographer

As a resident of Colorado, i can confirm the malls here in real life are just as confusing, inconvenient, and non-handicap friendly as the ones in Willamette

I've a feeling the developers watched the movie "Eight Legged Freaks" and assumed that having weird underground mines attached to a mall is perfectly fine. That film shares a lot of strange similarities with Dead Rising. The other thing is why would you build a mall that big IN town? the local roads would be bottle-necked with traffic constantly, it's why they build them out of town. Also no multi storey parking lot either? there's not enough parking out front for a mall of that size. Finally, there's no back area of the mall for trucks to deliver goods. I worked in a mall as a kid, and those delivery areas are HUGE. bigger than the mall itself a lot of the time.

I remember that one of the Capcom staff from Japan was sent to America to figure out just what the hell a shopping mall was, and from this video, it seems that whole experience was some sort of horrific fever dream for him.

i think one of the biggest issues with willamette is the mall itself. it seems illogical for a rural american town of that size to have a megaplex mall that massive, with such a large objective waste of space as leisure park. a town that size wouldn't have the budget for something that size, and a couple blocks in any direction puts you out in nature, so why have a park in the center of it? Also, maybe the layout of the mall makes sense according to how malls are over in japan. Their building codes and urban planning might be like that over there, but the dev team didnt realize that it makes no sense when applied to a free standing structure like malls here in the US

I always knew that there was a lot of ilogic places and locations in DR1 Willamette, Colorado in general. For example: -What was exactly the place that you fought with Brock Mason? A military base? A prison camp? A training camp for tanks? Or anything like that? -Why there's a wall blocking the parking lot in Leisure Park? -What was exactly the main use for the maintenance tunnel in Leisure Park? -Why there's a butcher shop in the maintenance tunnel? -And the rest that you said in your video.

Last time I was this early, Willamette had no zombies.

2:22 Wow... Patrick has a shadow in this edited video? That's a good detail.

Not a single mention of the underground parking garage that connects to Leisure Park and has no exits to the town proper? So you have Leisure Park a parking lot and the underground area but no way for vehicles to get out into the town.

probably true that they had time restraints but instead of focusing on a realistic map, they made a map that was focused on gameplay which is why for me, the mall is really fun

I think its virtually impossible to be tired of this content. STiP0 you're great!

This is a pretty funny and interesting video. I never really noticed most of these errors in mall design, but now I'm always going to think about them. Your editing has certainly improved since the good ol' days of JTAG modding, that's for sure. Great video, man.

You may not have noticed these issues, but your brain did.

I don't suppose you like the Dead Rising series Stip0?

This mall is almost as bad the RPD! Capcom is all about that design oversight I guess.

Never realized how truly nonsensical the mall really was. It's actually hilarious

5:57 Ah I see the willamette mall took some notes from ikea.

I think the intro helicopter ride through the town and being able to see the town when inside the mall is so much more important that people realize. It really gives you a sense of an outside world and that you are truly isolated in the mall. Where as with DR2 you just spawn inside fortune city and cant see what outside and does not give you that same feeling.

Could we also take a moment to appreciate the fact that a town with only 53,594 people (and one that doesn't seem to be connected to a larger urban or metropolitan area) has a gigantic, multi-level mall, with a roller coaster no less, that would put most real malls in major cities to shame?

I always imagined that they made the tunnel shorter so YOu don't have to run inside it for 20 mintues and it really reaches out further into the mountains

The mall is just a big fire hazard with the one exit and just makes no goddam sense and not wheelchair friendly

Sorry if its brought up later but I remember the tunnel having a load screen which I thought was meant to reresent a passage of time we dont play but where Frank and Isabel are traveling.

Man, getting to the bathroom after Central Tacos is bad enough as it is, but you have to go through a thousand fucking zombies on your way there, too.

Another excellent video. Of course, the real answer here is that its just a fictional video game and the game-play/"sense of place" is more important than actual geographic accuracy. Its pretty easy to suspend your disbelief and "feel" like the construction mountain area is somewhere outside the mall in the town, as long as you can see mountain tops and sky. I think it works, especially for a 'casual' 1st-time player. I love your map modding btw. seeing the Willamette map imported into Unity and 'flown-through' is fascinating! Please keep adding to this "dead rising 1 museum", as you call your channel. Cheers! :D

The boss arena gave me “water dam” vibes. Like at one point it was a man-made water reservoir, or a type of bulkhead/levy system to prevent flash floods coming down from the mountains as the winter snow melts in the springtime.

I've always wanted to remake the map of Willamette for ArmA 3.

Can you check out the Dead Rising 2 Beta Stip0.

Interesting stuff and great job noticing these inconsistencies. I'd still prefer that devs design the game around providing good gameplay first rather than making everything internally consistent (considering limited development time)

I always just assumed the tunnel beneath the clock tower was meant to divert floodwater from heavy storms (perhaps several maintenance entrances are scattered along the tunnel and the clock tower just happens to be near/is one of them), considering that the area you eventually end up in seems to have what looks like flood gates. The town is also next to a river as well, and seems to mostly be established in a low-lying area compared to the surrounding hills and mountains. How a town as small as Willamette was able to afford to construct such a thing is beyond me, however. Maybe the mall was able to bring in some extra funding and act as a tourist destination of sorts?

Great video! I never noticed the whole shopping trolley fiasco, it is kinda funny. As for the mysterious boss arena area, I always liked to imagine that Willamette once depended on a gold rush of some sort at the start of the 20th century (this is referenced in one of the newspapers mentioning "Since the mines closed back in the 60s, [Willamette] has been nothing but a haven for pickle-eating yahoos!" So this may mean that the entire town was once interconnected with mines, hence them running beneath the mall as well.

Amazing video! Architecture is so easy to forget when developing a game, but it's important for immersion. I think someone managed to stick all the Half life 1 maps into a single one. And it actually makes sense, just impressive. Maybe an analysis to the one on DR2 next?

Literally never thought about any of this other than it's weird a small town would have a mall that huge.

I imagine if Willamette was a real mall it wouldn't be long until Dan Bell visited it.

I have a theory of why having only one entrance to the mall. They probably wanted to pad out the journey for the consumer as much as possible and take advantage of that by overwhelming them with product placements. The longer you're expose to ads, the higher chance the customer folds and buys the product. As for the rather inaccurate proportions, I feel it was intended to be abstract. In-game, you wouldn't be too sure exactly where you are in the sense of world space. You're fighting to survive in a linear interior filled to the brim with zombies, you'd be too busy wanting to advance instead getting a real feel of the place. HOWEVER, when you're supposed to transition from the tunnels to the mines, you had to do it by taking the humvey mounted with the heavy mg. Using a vehicle would imply some long distance fast travel. Why is the two world space so close, the tunnel and mines, that's developer's convenience. With the mines mountains and its skybox being just an empty sky, its enough to allow the player to interpret they are indeed far away from the mall.

Every time you upload I want to turn my Xbox on and play through dr1 again. Great video.

When I was kid I noticed the weird design of the mall and after replaying a few times even noticed how odd “the center of town” wasn’t easily viewable. As a kid I honestly thought the mall was a subtle hint at planned supernatural story. I honestly believed the sequel would mention survivors who insist that they took refuge in a mall that never existed in there town. I was a dumb kid.

A dead rising add-on where frank and Isabella escape after the tank battle and run through the town and explore the map outside of the Willamette Mall would have been sick

The Brock boss arena looks like a dry water reservoir or dam. Probably connected to the mall because it's the largest structure in town. For drinking water, the ponds in the center park and numerous fountains and water features in Paradise Plaza.

I’ve noticed in the game bully that bullworth academy doesn’t seem to have any ramps for students in wheelchairs or any sort of disabled facility’s just like the willamette mall 🤔 also speaking of the whole toilet thing there’s actually this one super market close to me here in the uk where the bathroom is far away from the cafe next to the checkouts which is really awkward but thankfully the other supermarkets have theme next to the cafe 😊

when i was younger found a picture on the internet of frank outside a house and because of that i used to think you could get out of the mall and explore the city when you after you beat dr1 (sorry for bad english tho)

You forgot to mention the mysterious wall in the parking lot by the entrance to the Maintenance Tunnel.

Playing the game I always wondered: “How on earth did an armed jeep get into Leisure Park?”

Technically for the central tacos part you could go into the gyms bathroom in the plaza that starts with a W it’s been a while. The place with treadmills

I always thought it was a water reservoir that connected to the sewers and that it was just kinda implied that it was longer than it was so you didnt have to go through miles of tunnels. Everything else I never noticed but now I’ll never unsee them XD

Thanks again for your amazing work on this game STiP0 ! I hope all DR1 fans from all over the world know your channel ! Love from France !

I feel like the maintenance tunnels were originally designed to be used by the customers to navigate the mall as they would alleviate alot of the navigation problems you layed out in your video as most entrances to the tunnels have elevators and parking spots underneath and where the tunnels exit to the world could be considered another entrance to the mall that is walled off by concrete barriers that seems done after the outbreak. Also i love the video and keep up the amazing work!

I love this channel and it's content. Keep it up, STiP0

I don't think there's a single bad video that you've done on this game. I really hope this channel never dies. I don't know if Dead Rising 2 would be as interesting for you, but I'd love to see that game explored more too in the future.

Lol, that soggy fart noise attached to the Dead Rising 4 image. That put a smile on my face.

You forgot mentioned the parking lot in Leisure Park and the maintenance tunnel.

I'm so happy I found your channel. I have a personal connection to the first dead rising. It was the first game I bought for my XBOX 360 and I remember playing it for hours. My daughter was 3 month old at the time, so I can still remember playing the game with her sleeping on my shoulder (Yes, I'm not a very good dad). Now she was 12yo, but when I try to remember her as a baby the only thing that comes to my mind is she sleeping on my arms while I am trying to turn the XBOX 360 on to play Dead Rising without waking her up.

That intro hurts. Why couldn't they just let us explore willamette as it was in DR1. Spawn us in the plaza, play a 5 hour long chapter 1 where we can't leave the mall, then it opens and then the real game begins where you can explore the whole town. Also, about the location of the mining facility or whatever, if i recall correctly, you get in a vehicle and drive to the final arena, and we don't exactly know how far you drive.

Not to mention there's no projector rooms in the cinema. Capcom should have consulted a mall planner or architect to construct a mall plan, or base it from an existing mall structure.

Ay, really liked the editing of this video, thanks for making it comrade, and for teaching me more about one of my favorite games for as long as ya have. I appreciate it my dude.

Bravo my friend. How you make such interesting stuff on one amazing game is beyond me. I've being playing Dead Rising since it's release. A true masterpiece.

Just watching Frank carry around a shopping cart and then chucking it down the stairs in frustration is hilarious. This is a great vid.

I always took it as you were travelling for a while once you get a vehicle in the tunnels, not shown in-game of course. And there is a closer toilet to the food court, but it's in the Gym.

8:03 I started laughing. The idea of Frank West trying to get out with a shopping cart full of groceries but can't. XD

I like to think that the tunnel was... longer for the characters, but shorter for the players. One of those. Like how Elder Scrolls games depict cities. They are actually massive with lots of citizens, but they are tuned down to a few streets and buildings for the player. That's game design.

I love your passion for this game :) Keep it going! Great and funny video, I never really wondered why some shops were in the places they were until now

I enjoy seeing your passion for this game. Love it.

The bad desing is in Dead Rising 2 too, look the example of Fortune Park and Silver Strip... all the restaurants, all mini casinos, bars, shops, nightclubs, etc shares one single unisex bathroom for *E V E R Y T H I N G*

The mall was so amazing and big, but the design as you said is a nightmare.

I get so giddy when you upload!! Videos on my favorite game ever, such an awesome channel!! Thx for exploiting all the flaws with willamette mall lmao 😂😂😂😂🤗

Great video as always Stipo! it would be cool if you did more videos like this

I love all the audible chuckles you make when describing the design fallacies of the mall 😂 also realize the fact that the only way the convicts could've gotten their stolen armored Jeep into Leisure Park is if they were airdropped into it by helicopter. Which would have most likely been done by the US government. And that wouldn't even be the most messed up thing the US government would've done in this game.

Jesus I never questioned anything until now. Literally only 1 entrance to the mall, no other Plaza has any entrances at all. Why the hell is there a parking lot in Leisure Park but there's a huge ass wall? Where the fuck did the cars that are parked come from? Why is there this military like base here near a mall? Like literally I'm pretty sure a helicopter above, Hell even Frank would've already seen it when arriving. Why is the mall so fucking huge even for 2006? What kind of budget did Willamette Colorado have? Why is there no pathway for handicapped people? The only logical explanation I can get from this is that the Willamette Parkview Mall was probably gonna be one of those places "Made by the shady government" used for "Testing" purposes, basically how Fortune City had underground tunnels that housed a secret laboratory used for harvesting Queens. Maybe Willamette had a different story than the Santa Cabeza story back then.

Great vid as always stipo keep up that FANTASTIC work

Someone once made a fake screenshot of a rumored "Return to Willamette" DLC or (New Dead Rising game) bullshit. It literally just took debug screenshots of the opening town sequence but photoshopped Frank walking on the sidewalks. As a kid I thought they were real, and deep down I still wish they were.

The final area is a decommissioned water reservoir. That’s why there’s floodgates. The mall is off to the side of the town so we only we see it after flying over the downtown area. The lack of elevators and bathrooms is obviously a gameplay decision.

Love the Stipo! Keep it up! Sorry for English.

0:18 I don't know about that fam, most gamers wouldn't recognize the game

What always gets me is how the convicts just appeared in Leisure park. The parking lot doesn't connect to a road and there isn't some giant hole to show that they forced their way in. Not to mention that they're the only psychopaths that respawn in 72 hour mode after Frank kills them. I know enjoying video games involves suspension of disbelief, but somehow these magic crimesters get in the way of that!

Willamette, Colorado. The small town(s?) with great big secrets. Perhaps the outbreak was to cover up everything else the residents started questioning about their own city haha. I mean every town has a history,imagine a part of the history being the great mall ramp shortage of 2006, tragic! X)

Makes me wanna boot up Off The Record and see if Fortune City would make more sense in the real world than the Willamette Mall.

I do have to point out, when you're in a shopping mall you don't use shopping carts, unless you're in one big chain like a clothing store, but even then you take your bags and carry them and leave that store's carts.

I always figured the tank fight facility was well away from Willamette, somewhere in the mountains we see in the intro and that Frank and Isabella just had a long drive that wasn't shown to us lol

Loving all these videos, can't wait for more

Your production value gets better with each video. 😃👍

I always liked to think the cars in the mall parking lot were Cars from the Capsule Corp XD

Willamette Megaplex Mall, thinking about people in wheelchair and buyers using shopping carts since... Next week

I think the place where you fight Brock is some kinda of water reservoir with the green mold on the walls and the red doors to let the water out. Interesting i've never thought about how the hell would you be able to shop here lol

It's no wonder why the zombies overrun the mall so fast.

The Sean's food store had me rolling on the floor, I never thought about it being on the second floor before!

Idk what kind of malls you have around you, but I have never been to a mall here in the USA that had shopping carts you can roll around the whole place. You just hold bags of what you get, and if you get a ton of stuff you just make a quick trip to your car to drop it off. The whole thing about there being only 1 entrance and the entrance plaza is true though..... every mall I have been too has at least 3 entrances from outside.

As a massive dead rising fan since I was a kid I'm so happy someone can make so much content and just make this game bigger then I thought it would ever be since this classic is a gem

You could talk about anything or any game and id be interested the entire time.

I think it's important to consider that the scale of an in game world doesn't necessarily correlate 1:1 with the actual world it's trying to display. The Elder Scrolls games are a great example of this. Solitude is supposed to be the capital city of Skyrim. It should be massive with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, yet there's only 24 buildings with only about 85 or so NPCs. Perhaps the tunnel in the clock tower is far longer than they actually rendered in game, but was shortened to reduce the amount of time it would take the player to traverse, and to keep from rendering too much at once. Same with the city of Willamette itself. I will admit though, I never realized how bizarre the concept of shopping carts in a mall is until you pointed it out.

Another great video to see again. nice job stipo.

I never been to a mall that had shopping carts lol

Did you forget that dev teams don’t worry about what the actual map looks like since players don’t usually get to see all of the map

Great video! Hoping to see something similar about Fortune City!

The mall was HEAVILY inspired by the old Westminster mall in Colorado. Look up photos. You’ll see some similarities

I never realized any of this. You must have opened the third eye to make this video.

Not sure if this has been said, but I think that mining place is actually some kind of dried up reservoir. Those big doors would have been floodgates, and the towers around the place would have been submerged up until a point. Those useless ladders, would be useless from down where you are, but if it was full of water, maybe not so much. That underground area could have been a storm drain or something... As for its location though, and how its suppose to fit... well, Seeing how badly designed the mall was, I think we already know the answer to that.

Well, I completed (and loved) this game just today, and this is really interesting actually, nice analysis :)

You just have to carry as much groceries in bags and walk until your arms fall off

In the UK at least, shopping carts are only used for individual stores. You pay for everything and bag it up on the way out, leaving the cart there.

I figured out the mall only having like 1 entrance but everything else was new to me. Dope video.

We should have a open world Dead Rising game set in this strange town That isn't Dead Rising 4.