Instead, you have to decide if you want to stand and fight with your meager resources, or run away. There are guns and other equipment in Resident Evil 7 though, but unlike later entries in the franchise, they don't make you a powerful force of destruction. The early demos lacked weapons, which gave fans like myself pause. Resident Evil 7 is about learning the layout of the Baker complex and using that knowledge to survive. The focus is a weaker protagonist trapped in a single place, the sprawling, remote estate of the Baker family. Since then though, Capcom has shined a light on the other aspects of the game and what's been shown feels like classic Resident Evil. Perhaps that was a misstep by Capcom, trying to present something different under the 'Resident Evil' name. Instead, you're held captive by a family that recalls the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No weapons, no mutated horrors, and none of the familiar extended cast of heroes and villains that had characterized the series up until then. Switching to a first-person viewpoint, early demos showed a protagonist trapped in a run-down home in a swamp, somewhere in the American South. The early looks at Resident Evil 7 recalled P.T., the playable teaser that was supposed to precede Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro's Silent Hills. let's do that in a modern setting, with modern technology.' Fear the door. Like Resident Evil 1 or the remasters of Resident Evil 1, which are kind of the old-style game. 'Instead of trying to do everything in one title, let's try to do its strongest suit right, the best we can, and that's horror. 'Resident Evil, as you know, has always been a horror game, but it's branched off into other tangents across the years, and one of the main focuses of this title was to focus on the series' main strength,' Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi told PCGamer last year. So why is Resident Evil 7 the one that's seen by some fans as 'not Resident Evil'?įor Capcom, Resident Evil 7 is seen as a 'back to basics' game, trying to recapture the feeling of the original release from 1996. Resident Evil 6 tries to be all things to all people, roving across a number of different concepts and ideas. It's a fairly linear affair that throws Leon into overwhelming odds and charges you to think on the fly. Resident Evil 4 is an action-heavy game whose tension comes from adaptation.

The first Resident Evil is about the knowledge of the Spencer Mansion you're trapped in and the tension that comes from not knowing what's behind the next door.

The series shares an aesthetic and narrative wallpaper, but mechanically the games themselves are quite different.

Resident Evil isn't the same game as Resident Evil 4 or Resident Evil 6. The problem with any long-running franchise that innovates in any fashion - see Final Fantasy - is that the answer varies from person to person.

Resident evil mansion wallpaper