What I think after five hours of Resident Evil 7
No Chris, no Jill, no Wesker - just pure survival horror.
Perhaps it was the shark-jumping boulder punching that did it. "Resident Evil 5 was, for me, a big step towards being able to develop something like Resident Evil 7," says Jun Takeuchi, executive producer of the latest Resident Evil game.
"At the time, we were putting forward Chris as the main character. It was the first time you'd seen him in a while and he had to be made into this big hero. I realised, in retrospect, the process of developing Chris into a hero character is not the same process of developing a Resident Evil game.
"It could be a little bit of a parallel track. I think we made a great game and people enjoyed it, we were able to marry the concept of co-op action and survival horror as best we could, but I do think there was more we could have done to make it moment-to-moment scarier.
"The fear of what's around the next corner or the fear of being left alone - I do think back and I'm like, we made Chris into a hero so successfully that we probably - it's like a zero sum thing; the more you get of one, the less you get of the other. Thinking back on that, Chris taught me a lot about what I needed to do next with the series, and that's been able to be translated into what you've seen today with Resident Evil 7."
What I saw and played that day was five hours of Resident Evil 7 in Capcom's central offices in Osaka, Japan, taking in the game's early stages and meeting some of its major antagonists. And honestly, it's the most Resident Evil game I've played in a long time.
It's easy to fixate on the first-person perspective, on the virtual reality and on the lack of recognisable characters, but for all that, Resident Evil 7 still feels like a true old-school title. It feels like survival horror.
And though, sure, what Resident Evil means to people has changed over the years, with some embracing its shift towards action and co-operative gameplay, the series' roots are embedded in survival horror.
"When we started development on Resident Evil 7, we did kind of list up all the core experiences that we personally felt really makes a Resident Evil title," says director Kōshi Nakanishi. "Not knowing what's in the next room, for example, being a little bit scared when opening a door, knowing that I'm pretty sure there's a jump scare ahead but I don't want to take a step forward, having a lack of ammo, figuring out, when am I going to use this, how do I optimise this, trying to figure out item management; we definitely had a huge list of things that we had to figure out how to prioritise."
Gizza kiss.
Resident Evil 7 wants to bring it all back to where it began - not to the Spencer Mansion, but back to a time when players felt utterly vulnerable in the face of almost overwhelming odds. You don't play as a gun-toting police officer or a badass special agent, but a guy woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the situation he suddenly finds himself in.
Ethan wakes up during our demo strapped to a chair and at the mercy of the Baker family, a psychotic collection of oddballs and murderers with Southern drawls on their tongue and literal skeletons in their closet. They own a plot of land housing a small compound of buildings smack-bang in the middle of a swamp, and it's here that the entirety of our play session - and perhaps the entire game - takes place.
There's physically imposing father Jack, screeching mother Marguerite and unhinged yokel son Lucas, and from the moment we begin playing until the end of the session five hours later, they are the only people we square up against - almost. Gone are the endless hordes of zombies from previous titles - this time Capcom is focusing on fewer enemies, and making each count.
"In terms of creating the adversaries, what we really wanted to strive for was thinking, what if we were to meet a monster in real life? What would they be like? And if you were to meet a monster in real life, it would be a terrifying experience even if it's a one-on-one encounter," says scenario director Morimasa Sato.
It is a terrifying experience, not least because during the early stages of the game, you're unarmed. Even after you manage to grab a gun, it isn't the Get out of Jail Free card you hope it'd be. Stealth, and the multitude of hidden passageways and crawlspaces dotted around the Baker compound, are your best hope for survival, and though it seems like the easiest thing in the world to compare this new sneaking-focused set-up to games like Alien: Isolation or Amnesia, the difference is that being spotted by your pursuer here doesn't guarantee death.
Nope nope nope nope nope.
Jack in particular is a paralysingly scary presence; like the T1000 or, more aptly, Resident Evil 3's Nemesis, he doesn't immediately come running for you, but instead walks at a slow pace, dragging his shovel with him. If he catches up, he likes to toy with you at first, throwing you around the room and literally daring you to fight back. Of course, the smarter option, always, is to run.
"We felt that as Resident Evil progressed, the enemies were more frequent, more abundant, and at the same time it almost lessened them, almost cheapened the feel of each encounter," says Nakanishi. "We looked back and thought, what is a Resident Evil adversary all about? What do those encounters mean? At the end of the day, each adversary should represent a fear. Something that means when you encounter them you are scared. At the same time, because you're scared, when you do overcome them you feel a greater sense of triumph, so that's definitely something that we were trying to strive for."
This is what Takeuchi means when he talks about how making Chris into a hero character was counter-productive to letting players experience fear. Chris was armed to the teeth. Chris was a trained professional. Chris had seen it all before. By the time Resident Evil 6 rolled around, Chris didn't show fear anymore - so why should the player?
Ethan, however, is all alone and without back-up, without any idea what BOW or STARS or BSAA means. All he knows is there is some freaky shyt going down, and he wants out. "It's the same world," says Takeuchi. "It's not a reboot, but you're getting a fresh perspective on the same universe through new eyes. I think of it as a macro to micro shift, because the scale of global bio-terrorism events from the previous games is so massive that there's almost nowhere bigger to go. So by shifting the focus and spotlight on to a single average person in a single house - well, it's more than one building but you know, a single location - I think we really want to give you a chance to see that.
"But at the same time, it's not like the game opens with a scene where all the existing characters are killed in an explosion or something. In my mind they are out there, doing their own thing, running and gunning, and in the meantime this also happened in the Resident Evil world. It's a fresh perspective on an existing fiction."
The connections between Resident Evil 7 and the previous games were apparent during my playthrough, during which I discovered - among other things - an old discarded photo of the Arklay mountains. As a long-time series fan, you're always on the lookout for these little nods, and the developers are well-aware of it.
What I think after five hours of Resident Evil 7
No Chris, no Jill, no Wesker - just pure survival horror.
Perhaps it was the shark-jumping boulder punching that did it. "Resident Evil 5 was, for me, a big step towards being able to develop something like Resident Evil 7," says Jun Takeuchi, executive producer of the latest Resident Evil game.
"At the time, we were putting forward Chris as the main character. It was the first time you'd seen him in a while and he had to be made into this big hero. I realised, in retrospect, the process of developing Chris into a hero character is not the same process of developing a Resident Evil game.
"It could be a little bit of a parallel track. I think we made a great game and people enjoyed it, we were able to marry the concept of co-op action and survival horror as best we could, but I do think there was more we could have done to make it moment-to-moment scarier.
"The fear of what's around the next corner or the fear of being left alone - I do think back and I'm like, we made Chris into a hero so successfully that we probably - it's like a zero sum thing; the more you get of one, the less you get of the other. Thinking back on that, Chris taught me a lot about what I needed to do next with the series, and that's been able to be translated into what you've seen today with Resident Evil 7."
What I saw and played that day was five hours of Resident Evil 7 in Capcom's central offices in Osaka, Japan, taking in the game's early stages and meeting some of its major antagonists. And honestly, it's the most Resident Evil game I've played in a long time.
It's easy to fixate on the first-person perspective, on the virtual reality and on the lack of recognisable characters, but for all that, Resident Evil 7 still feels like a true old-school title. It feels like survival horror.
And though, sure, what Resident Evil means to people has changed over the years, with some embracing its shift towards action and co-operative gameplay, the series' roots are embedded in survival horror.
"When we started development on Resident Evil 7, we did kind of list up all the core experiences that we personally felt really makes a Resident Evil title," says director Kōshi Nakanishi. "Not knowing what's in the next room, for example, being a little bit scared when opening a door, knowing that I'm pretty sure there's a jump scare ahead but I don't want to take a step forward, having a lack of ammo, figuring out, when am I going to use this, how do I optimise this, trying to figure out item management; we definitely had a huge list of things that we had to figure out how to prioritise."
Gizza kiss.
Resident Evil 7 wants to bring it all back to where it began - not to the Spencer Mansion, but back to a time when players felt utterly vulnerable in the face of almost overwhelming odds. You don't play as a gun-toting police officer or a badass special agent, but a guy woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the situation he suddenly finds himself in.
Ethan wakes up during our demo strapped to a chair and at the mercy of the Baker family, a psychotic collection of oddballs and murderers with Southern drawls on their tongue and literal skeletons in their closet. They own a plot of land housing a small compound of buildings smack-bang in the middle of a swamp, and it's here that the entirety of our play session - and perhaps the entire game - takes place.
There's physically imposing father Jack, screeching mother Marguerite and unhinged yokel son Lucas, and from the moment we begin playing until the end of the session five hours later, they are the only people we square up against - almost. Gone are the endless hordes of zombies from previous titles - this time Capcom is focusing on fewer enemies, and making each count.
"In terms of creating the adversaries, what we really wanted to strive for was thinking, what if we were to meet a monster in real life? What would they be like? And if you were to meet a monster in real life, it would be a terrifying experience even if it's a one-on-one encounter," says scenario director Morimasa Sato.
It is a terrifying experience, not least because during the early stages of the game, you're unarmed. Even after you manage to grab a gun, it isn't the Get out of Jail Free card you hope it'd be. Stealth, and the multitude of hidden passageways and crawlspaces dotted around the Baker compound, are your best hope for survival, and though it seems like the easiest thing in the world to compare this new sneaking-focused set-up to games like Alien: Isolation or Amnesia, the difference is that being spotted by your pursuer here doesn't guarantee death.
Nope nope nope nope nope.
Jack in particular is a paralysingly scary presence; like the T1000 or, more aptly, Resident Evil 3's Nemesis, he doesn't immediately come running for you, but instead walks at a slow pace, dragging his shovel with him. If he catches up, he likes to toy with you at first, throwing you around the room and literally daring you to fight back. Of course, the smarter option, always, is to run.
"We felt that as Resident Evil progressed, the enemies were more frequent, more abundant, and at the same time it almost lessened them, almost cheapened the feel of each encounter," says Nakanishi. "We looked back and thought, what is a Resident Evil adversary all about? What do those encounters mean? At the end of the day, each adversary should represent a fear. Something that means when you encounter them you are scared. At the same time, because you're scared, when you do overcome them you feel a greater sense of triumph, so that's definitely something that we were trying to strive for."
This is what Takeuchi means when he talks about how making Chris into a hero character was counter-productive to letting players experience fear. Chris was armed to the teeth. Chris was a trained professional. Chris had seen it all before. By the time Resident Evil 6 rolled around, Chris didn't show fear anymore - so why should the player?
Ethan, however, is all alone and without back-up, without any idea what BOW or STARS or BSAA means. All he knows is there is some freaky shyt going down, and he wants out. "It's the same world," says Takeuchi. "It's not a reboot, but you're getting a fresh perspective on the same universe through new eyes. I think of it as a macro to micro shift, because the scale of global bio-terrorism events from the previous games is so massive that there's almost nowhere bigger to go. So by shifting the focus and spotlight on to a single average person in a single house - well, it's more than one building but you know, a single location - I think we really want to give you a chance to see that.
"But at the same time, it's not like the game opens with a scene where all the existing characters are killed in an explosion or something. In my mind they are out there, doing their own thing, running and gunning, and in the meantime this also happened in the Resident Evil world. It's a fresh perspective on an existing fiction."
The connections between Resident Evil 7 and the previous games were apparent during my playthrough, during which I discovered - among other things - an old discarded photo of the Arklay mountains. As a long-time series fan, you're always on the lookout for these little nods, and the developers are well-aware of it.
What I think after five hours of Resident Evil 7
Unless you're a glutton for horror, not sure how anyone can enjoy playing this.
