Resident Evil 4 Remake patch removes speedrunning glitch

Looks like you'll have to escort Ashley back to town anyway

Capcom has released yet another update for Resident Evil 4 Remake, and speedrunners might want to look away, because it’s not great news. A very popular speedrunning glitch that previously let players skip huge chunks of the game has been removed entirely.

Basically, if you were standing up against a wall in some places and lined up a shot with your scope (or sometimes without a scope), you could clip through certain walls. With the right positioning and lots of practice, you can use this to skip entire sections of the game, drastically cutting down on the time required to beat the game.

The most prominent use of this glitch is in Chapter 5, right after rescuing Ashley. This is known as the Church Skip, because it lets you exit the church without activating the window cutscene. The main benefit of this is that it despawns Ashley, letting you quickly run back to the farm without worrying about her getting kidnapped.

Anyone who’s played that section of the game knows that ferrying Ashley back to town is a very frustrating and time consuming process, so being able to skip that was a huge boon to anyone with a little knowhow. Still, it was technically a bug, and game developers typically patch bugs out, so it’s not surprising that Capcom has done the same here.

The new update also makes some adjustments to the Xbox version of the game, fixing some long standing issues that the company has attempted to fix in previous updates. The analog stick deadzone on Xbox consoles has finally been tightened up, making for a much more pleasant experience, and some graphics rendering issues have been ironed out too.

A number of other bugs have been fixed, as you can see in the patch notes below (thanks VGC). Despite a few bugs and issues, we still gave the game a glowing recommendation in our Resident Evil 4 Remake review, where we called it a legendary game and better than ever.

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Resident Evil 4 Remake April patch notes

[PlayStation®5 / PlayStation®4 / Xbox Series X|S / Steam]

• An issue where certain key items become unobtainable, preventing the player from progressing through the main story, has been fixed. (Announced March 31, 2023)
• An issue causing players to warp through walls when using the scope in certain areas has been fixed.

[PS5 / PS4]

• Incorrect text displaying for certain trophy explanations in some languages has been fixed.
  (Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish)

[XSX|S]

• An issue preventing the game from launching when downloadable content has been installed and an account with content restrictions is logged in has been fixed.
• Fixes to the stick dead zone (the range in which the controller’s sticks don’t respond to movement) made on April 7 have been further adjusted.
• Changes to the graphics rendering process made on April 7 have been readjusted.

[PS5 / PS4 / XSX|S / Steam]

• Other miscellaneous bug fixes.