Four years on and with that wonderful gift of hindsight and retrospective thinking, I think we can all admit that Resident Evil 6 is a solid game. Okay, not all of us; many fans are simply never going to accept the direction the series has headed in. What was once hailed as the king of the survival horror genre (sorry Silent Hill) turning into a heavily action-orientated horror experience was always going to leave at least some portion of the fanbase unhappy. But for the sake of objective thinking, let's come together and reexamine some of elements in 6 deemed controversial by fans, and then perhaps more importantly, study how Resident Evil 7 can learn from them. Because like it or not, fanboys and girls of classic Resi, Resident Evil 6 does have some good aspects to it. Be they literal game mechanics, interesting use of characters or certain plot quirks, 6 is a game with a lot of intriguing and innovative stuff going on, and as its successor, 7 will be using it as a base to jump off of. These may be controversial, and some may even receive tuts of disagreed annoyance, but here are the 10 controversial things Resi 7 can learn from 6.
10. Multiple Campaigns
Its innovative, you've got to give it that. True enough, Resident Evil has had hints of such a concept in the past. After all, in the first game you pick between Chris and Jill, and have slightly different stories dependent on your character of choice, but the extent to which Resi 6 took this idea is really quite novel. The three campaigns of Leon and Helena, Chris and Piers, and Jake and Sherry all have completely different stories. Stories that rather cleverly interweave at certain watershed moments. I personally found it quite exciting to be playing as Jake, helping pseudo series mascot Chris take down a massive BOW, but ultimately wondering just what the heck the BSAA agent was doing there in the first place. Playing Chris campaign then revealed all. The campaigns are their own complete plots, but upon completion of all three, the wider narrative of the game is understood. The main feature of using three different campaigns that 7 should take from 6 though, is the differing gameplay styles assigned to each of them. This was the true innovation. Leon has a go at heading the horror side of the game, Chris pushes on with action orientated combat, and Jake had an alternative hand-to-hand, stealth campaign. The game attempted, somewhat successfully, to cross genres. A cool concept such as this cannot just be left at the wayside, and Capcom would do well to bring it back for 7.
