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We recently had the chance to ask Capcom Vancover studio director, Joe Nickolls, a little bit about Dead Rising 4 and reasons behind Frank West's dramatic, albeit festive return to the series.

"When we finished Dead Rising 3 we took a bit of time to kind of plan out what we wanted to do," says Nickolls. "We kept coming back to Frank, because the fans love Frank, he's the original and because it was the 10th anniversary of Dead Rising we thought well it's perfect timing to bring Frank back."

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Set 16 years after the original outbreak in Willamette, Dead Rising 4 will see Frank return to the mall where it all started, but Nickolls wanted to be clear that "this is not a remake, but a brand new story."

Dead Rising 4 will also see the return of Frank's infamous camera, he's covered wars you know? But this time around it looks like it will see a lot more use, Nickolls explains;

"More than just taking pictures of what's going on Frank uses his camera as a tool, there's a bunch of filters on the camera, it's got kind of a night vison mode and a spectral analyser, so it lets him solve puzzles and find hidden objects and open up different areas of the game that you wouldn't normally have, so the camera is a really big part of the game."

You can also take selfies in a multitude of different ways in the game, adding another dimension to the zombie apocalypse.

"Yeah the selfies are awesome," says Nickolls. "They're even more fun when you're wearing a chicken head, cause you can do the cos-play still, so you can do the selfie, but when he doesn't have a chicken head on, when he just has Frank face, you can move the stick around and change his facial expressions, so he's happy or he's doing Magnum or Blue Steel or he's sticking his tongue out, it's super cool."

The latest addition to the series will be bringing with it a whole host of new zombies to dismember and promises to deliver thousands of the walking dead on screen at one time. Nickolls had this to say about the new zombie classes and where they are hoping to take the game in the future;

"We've introduced a whole bunch of different types of zombies in the game, so we have our regular zombies, the horde, we have the freshly infected guys, which are the crazy ones, who are a little bit like 28 Days Later, they'll chase you, they'll climb up on cars after you, you can't just stand on a car to get away they'll come up after you and we have a third zombie called the Evo which we are not showing at E3 today, but the Evo is kind of like a super smart version of a zombie that's got some strategy in it."

Dead Rising 4 is set to release on Xbox and Windows 10 this holiday season.