WhenResident Evil Villagecame out in 2021, it was Exhibit A that the series was on a dangerous trajectory. With aResident Evil 9 announcement potentially coming soon, it’s worth remembering the reasons the series went off the rails in the past.
Capcom Has Mastered The Release Calendar With Resident Evil
Capcomhas handled its survival horror series exceptionally well for the past seven years. It has found a release cadence that works well, alternating between all-new games and from-the-ground-up remakes. As a result, since 2017, the longest fans have had to wait for a single-playerResident Evilgame is two years.
Aside fromLike a Dragon, that consistency and speed in output is basically unheard of in modern triple-A gaming. Capcom understands that games take longer to develop than they used to and has accommodated for that change with alternating releases. It’s the same method Activision took withCall of Dutyfor years, except, in Capcom’s case, most of the games are worth playing.
But Village pointed to a worrying future where, business acumen aside, Capcom hasn’t learned from the creative stumbles the series took in the PS3/Xbox 360 era. Though it maintained its predecessor’s first-person perspective, it lost much of what made 7 special in the process of following it up. Resident Evil 7 was a stripped down, back-to-basics horror game. You would be forgiven for not noticing given how different it looked from Resident Evil’s earlier scares-driven entries. Instead of the isometric perspective of the original PS1 games, or the over-the-shoulder viewpoint ofResident Evil 4onward, it was presented from first-person like some sort of found footage film.
But the gameplay was classic Resident Evil, with strict ammo scarcity, difficult-to-kill enemies, and an atmosphere that leaned into horror and away from guns-a-blazin' action. I love a lot of RE games, but, for my money, 7 might just be the best.
Village Pointed To The Series Following The Post-4 Trajectory Again
And Village is… fine. There’s one all-timer level (House Beneviento) that actually feels fresh and terrifying. There’s another pretty great chapter that does a great job of riffing on previous entries (Castle Dimitrescu). And there’s a whole lot that doesn’t rise above the level of … eh, fine.
It isn’t a bad game. But where 7 feels focused, Village feels like it can’t pick a lane. 7 rediscovers the soul of classic Resident Evil by turning Texas Chain Saw Massacre into a horror game. Village is all over the place, keeping 7’s perspective, but adding vampires and werewolves into the mix, homaging 4, borrowing from The Room games, momentarily becoming a 2010s combat-less horror game, and more. By evolving from 7, it loses the focus on stripped down horror that made it special and ends up feeling like an average shooter.
In that way, Village feels a lot like Resident Evil 5 to 7’s Resident Evil 4. RE4 was special, a perfect combination of action and horror. But as Capcom continued to iterate on it, the games got further and further from what made it work. 5 still kind of felt like 4, if you squinted, but it was so focused on co-op action that it mostly lost touch with horror. 6 took this even further, and feels closer toDevil May Crythan classic RE. I actually prefer 6 to 5 by a pretty wide margin, but 6 is the RE game that feels least like an RE game, and critics and fans soured on it so much that Capcom had to reboot the series with 7.
If 9 maintains Village’s trajectory, Capcom could be in for the same ‘come to Jesus’ moment. I hope it shifts back to 7’s horror focus instead of sacrificing the series' identity on the altar of bigger and better. But if it doesn’t, I’m sure 10 will be the pivot I’m looking forward to.
