Resident Evil 7: 9 Past Mistakes Capcom Have Already Fixed
Whatever happens, there'll be no more punching boulders from now on.
Congratulations are in order, Capcom. For the first time in over a decade, your once-beloved horror series can finally be referenced in the same sentence as the word 'scary', without fear of being laughed at.
After enduring a particularly bad identity crisis that has seen the franchise go from revered survival horror to middling third-person shooter over the course of six games, the slate has been wiped clean for Resident Evil 7 in order to make way for a back to basics tour de force with one very simple aim:
To make you never want to sleep again.
Sure, Resident Evil 6 was scary in the sense that its structure, story and pacing were frighteningly awful, but Resident Evil 7 is planning to go one better by stripping away all of the baggage associated with the series and distilling it down into its core fundamentals.
Without a crystal ball, nobody can know if Resident Evil 7 is going to be as successful as its Beginning Hour demo would have you believe, but remedying all of these legacy issues is certainly a good start.
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9. A Fresh Start
Ever since the genre-defining success that was Resident Evil 4, Capcom has struggled to move out of its all-encompassing shadow, having pushed out two sequels since 2004 that are largely considered to be enjoyable at best and a jumbled mess of ideas at worst.
The pressure to meet (and exceed) those expectations may well be what caused the many issues with Resident Evil 5 & 6 - especially the latter, which all too frequently felt like a game made by committee - but instead of trying to improve on 4's formula, the publisher should have concocted a brand new one from the get go.
Thankfully, Capcom's eyes have finally been opened, and Resident Evil 7 has every chance to be the purest dose of survival horror the series has provided since the original game. It looks nothing like what's come before, and that can only be a good thing.