The development team sought to retain the degree of fear from the original game, and introduced two characters without experience of terrifying situations: Leon S. Kennedy, largely identical to his persona in the final build, and Elza Walker, a college student and motorcycle racer vacationing in Raccoon City, her hometown. Unlike the final version, the character paths did not cross, and each character had two support partners instead of one. Leon received help from fellow police officer Marvin Branagh and researcher Linda – an early version of Ada – while Elza was aided by Sherry Birkin and John, who appears in "Resident Evil 2" as gun shop owner Robert Kendo.