During a period in which the team made no progress rewriting the scenario, Okamoto was introduced to professional screenwriter Noboru Sugimura, who was enthusiastic about the first game's story. Sugimura was initially consulted on a trial basis, but Okamoto was impressed by the ease with which Sugimara solved script problems, and soon asked him to compose the entire scenario for "Resident Evil 2". One fundamental modification to the story was the reworking of Elza Walker into Claire Redfield, in order to introduce a connection to the plot of the first game.