The reason for this is due to the philosophy of rebuilding the game from the ground up, and recreating a tense atmosphere of constant danger through a different approach to the same kind of horror present in the original.
Resident Evil 2: Remake, or REmake 2 as fans call it, is the perfect example of a remake done right without sacrificing the game-play for its faithfulness to the original 1998 game (which also happens to be set in 1998).
