Last year’s remake was a truly fantastic game. A tense, gore-soaked gauntlet that managed to completely revitalise the struggling survival horror franchise. It was, in fact, pretty much universally beloved by everyone who played it… with only one or two minor niggles dividing players.

One such niggle was the way in which the game approached knives. In the remake, you could only use a knife a handful of times before it broke. Obviously this made sense when a zombie grabbed you and you had no choice but to ram it into the undead fiend’s neck in an attempt to get away… but they fact they broke from standard use was kind of a bummer – especially since it basically deprived of us all those awesome knife-only speedruns you see in other Resi games.

The good news is that the upcoming remake has given the knife a welcome upgrade. The iconic Resi tool will never break, as Capcom wants you to have at least one way left to defend yourself if you suddenly run out of ammo and need to fight off a crowd of zombies.

“We kept the knife inexhaustible [in Resident Evil 3], so you can use it forever,” producer Peter Fabiano explained to Game Informer. “We’re dealing with survival horror and everything is exhaustible. You run out of bullets. You run out of herbs. You run out of all the items you can use.”

“So if you did run out of everything, what would you have? The knife. The director always wanted to make it so that you at least have your trusty knife. That’s always something you can rely on.”

I’ve no doubt there’ll be some folk who find this news a little disappointing. There are, after all, some absolutely masochists out there who love the idea that even their last line of defence against the undead hordes can shatter into tiny pieces and leave them utterly screwed. Maybe Capcom can add some kind of extra hardcore mode for those that want a challenge and miss the fact that their knife can break?

If nothing else, surely we’ll all be glad to know that some of the team at Capcom have said they managed to beat using nothing but a knife? The knife-only run lives on, and that’s . comes to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on April 3rd. I don’t give it long before the stabby slashy speedruns start to come thick and fast.