The fourth and final video in the Making of Resident Evil 7 video series from Capcom was released today, and the company shared some intriguing insights into where it thinks the franchise – and really, survival horror as a whole, as a genre – is headed in the future, especially in the wake of Resident Evil 7‘s unexpected success.
“We want this title to be the start of a new kind of survival horror and of a new series. We’re already thinking about various plans for the next game, but we also want to see how we can continue to evolve survival horror itself,” said Executive Producer Jun Takeuchi in this video.
“In the next few years, technology will continue to advance and what players want may also change, but we will always want to create horror experiences where the characters overcome a difficult situation. That, to me, is what survival horror is all about, and the next Resident Evil game and the one after that, every future Resident Evil, will feature characters getting through crises like this.
“And so the current masterpiece is just the beginning. Plans for the next title are already in motion and, when you see that game, you may find that it is very different from Resident Evil 7 in some ways, while still retaining that core survival horror concept of people overcoming the odds. Resident Evil will always retain that essence.”
Essentially, then- it sounds like Capcom is unlikely to lose the focus on survival horror in favor of a more action game oriented focus like it did with Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 ever again- but other core components of the franchise may well be switched. While I have hope that Capcom will continue to explore the first person viewpoint some more with the next game in the series, I will not begrudge them wanting to explore alternate viewpoints and formats for their games going forward- they have more than proven themselves, and earned the benefit of the doubt on that.
