sisslethecat
This just keeps sounding better and better.
In a recent interview with Metro, a UK gaming site, producer Masachika Kawata and promotion producer Tsuyoshi Kanda have gone into a little more detail as to what to expect from Resident Evil VII: Biohazard, shedding light on why we haven’t seen much yet, and how important it is to them that this feel like a true Resident Evil title. They’re aware of your concerns, and they’re confident they can deliver.
To start with, addressing the concerns that RE7 is going to be an ‘Outlast’ clone, or ‘Amnesia’ clone, the interviewer asked pretty much that very question, saying “Another aspect of Resident Evil is that although there is limited ammo you do usually have access to quite powerful weapons. Whereas most other survival horrors give you little or no means of defending yourself. Is that still your approach for this game?” Masachika Kawata gives the perfect answer that will hopefully set your little hearts at ease:
Combat is obviously something that’s really important in a Resident Evil game, we’re just kind of showing a little bit at a time with different aspects. Beginning Hour was really just the feeling of atmosphere and exploration, which is another classic Resident Evil element, and now you’ve been able to see a little bit more of the fear of escape from an enemy. And also we’ve had a little bit of puzzle element in it.
So we’re taking it one step at a time here. Some people have got the impression that combat is missing from this game, because of the content we’ve shown so far, but actually combat is definitely in there. The main character is not one of these gun-toting heroes that we’ve sort of gone towards in the recent entries. It’s very much a normal person, a normal guy who’s put in an extreme situation and has to survive.
And we’re going to be showing off some more around that, but for the time being we haven’t got around to that yet. But rest assured we know what people want from Resident Evil: it’s exploration, puzzle-solving, managing limited resources, and combat in a horrifying situation. And you know, we’re gonna get there.
They also state elsewhere in the interview that the main goal of Resident Evil VII is to invoke the feelings that the original Resident Evil did all those years ago, and that’s something I’m very excited about. RE1 (well, REmake, technically) is not only one of my favorite games ever but also one of my favorite RE games ever as well- and the perfect place to look in regards to “returning the series to its roots”. They also go into detail about returning elements and mechanics from previous games. We’ve already seen the new Green Herbs, as well as classic inventory management (I especially like things like the Bolt Cutters in Begining Hour requiring more than one inventory block, ala Resident Evil 2/Zero):
You mention green herbs, that’s just one of the things that are going to be featured in it that will make you think of past titles. And even the gameplay system, even though it’s being substantially refreshed and updated we are keeping that link to that legacy – whether it comes from stuff like inventory management and so forth it’ll be the sort of thing you expect from a Resident Evil game. Even though we haven’t necessarily shown off all those aspects just yet, in the content we’ve shown you so far.
This also has me curious – what other gameplay systems could be carrying over that they haven’t shown us yet? Herbs, inventory management, puzzles, even the classic door loading screens are sort of back because of the way you open doors in this game… Okay, a tiny bit of speculation on my part, and this is based on nothing but my own hopes and dreams, but… could it be possible typewriter saving is coming back? With limited Ink Ribbons, a series staple until Resident Evil 4? It’s certainly a possibility since the stress and tension of making every save count definitely was an element that was at the core of the original games. We’ll have to wait and see I guess, bringing back Typewriters at the very least has been a hope of mine since Resident Evil 5‘s auto-save system so totally defused any chance of a horror aspect, I even wrote about it in a list of things I wanted from RE6 back in the day. It’s something that I honestly feel makes the horror that much scarier in games like REmake, Dead Space 2, and Silent Hill 4. Having to limp back to a safe place, where you can save, hoping and praying that you don’t run into something with a sweet tooth for you is an experience that is essentially gone in modern gaming, with the best and only example of it in modern gaming being the excellent and terrifying save station system in Alien: Isolation. Fingers crossed.
By and large, the rest of the interview doesn’t contain much new information, but you can read the whole thing here. There’s some great discussion about the culture gap that led the original titles to be so ‘cheesy’, and about how they’re going about improving the game’s VR. I’m over the moon for RE7, and I’m practically twitching as the calendar ticks down to the next new piece of information to be revealed at TGS in a few weeks.
Resident Evil VII: Biohazard looks to be returning us to the world of survival horror next January 24th, across Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
[Source] via Playstationlifestyle.net
