{"id":14800159,"date":"2017-02-25T23:38:44","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T23:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800159"},"modified":"2017-02-26T01:50:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T01:50:50","slug":"resident-evil-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800159","title":{"rendered":"Resident Evil 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-influence\"I gave an IGDA talk a few years ago about the horror genre’s roots in Adventure games. \u00a0You can draw a line of influence, I argued, from\u00a0Colossal Cave Adventure\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0King’s Quest<\/em> all the way through modern titles like\u00a0Slender<\/em> and\u00a0Amnesia: The Dark Descent. \u00a0<\/em>This line, which crosses through all of the survival horror classics, is best understood in terms of feature iteration: each new derivation\u00a0adds new features and drops some of the traits of its predecessors, and the rest stays the same. \u00a0Resident Evil<\/em><\/a> is an iteration of Alone in the Dark<\/em> which added item rationing, inventory management, and puzzle interfaces to the formula. \u00a0Alone in the Dark<\/em> itself was an iteration of early Graphic Adventure games like Maniac Mansion <\/em>that added real-time combat and third-person player-centric control to the mix. \u00a0Like Y-Chromosome DNA tracing, we can understand the lineage of these games by following the addition and removal of features to the core design over time. \u00a0If you’re interested in this idea, you can download my slides from this talk.<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking at game design this way, at the mutation of a core feature set over time,\u00a0reveals some interesting patterns. \u00a0One thing\u00a0I learned was that horror games reached “peak complexity” with Resident Evil 4<\/em>.<\/a> \u00a0Resident Evil 4<\/em>\u00a0has nearly every feature of its predecessors and a few more to boot. \u00a0Part of what made that title so outstanding, and so difficult to duplicate, was the shear volume and intricacy of its game systems. \u00a0After\u00a0Resident Evil 4,\u00a0<\/em>popular horror games tended to shed more features than they added. \u00a0Silent Hill: Shattered Memories<\/a>, Amnesia: The Dark Descent,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Slender\u00a0<\/em>were all part of a new wave that removed as many design features as possible, starting with combat. \u00a0The\u00a0Resident Evil<\/em> titles went the other direction, adding features and game modes until they became top-heavy and nonsensical. \u00a0Unable to find a balance between the various game systems it wanted to include,\u00a0Capcom duct-taped four mediocre games from different genres together and called it\u00a0Resident Evil 6.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is within this context, then, that\u00a0Resident Evil 7<\/em> is something of a revelation. \u00a0It is unquestionably the best\u00a0Resident Evil<\/em> game since\u00a0Resident Evil 4<\/em> (which is\u00a0over a decade old now!), and it can easily compete with some of the earlier gems of the series like\u00a0Code: Veronica.<\/em> \u00a0What is most impressive about\u00a0Resident Evil\u00a0<\/em>7<\/em> is how simple it is. \u00a0The\u00a0game system tropes are all there, but in miniature. \u00a0Combat, puzzles, item management, keys items, and locked doors all make an appearance, but only as supporting actors. \u00a0The focus is on exploration above all else, and nearly all of the game design effort has gone into making the environment detailed and intimate. \u00a0Put in terms of my feature variance\u00a0chart,\u00a0Resident Evil 7<\/em> is the equivalent of shaving your head, giving up all of your worldly possessions, and becoming a monk.<\/p>\n

This is particularly significant for a series known for bombast rather than subtlety. \u00a0The over-the-top\u00a0tentacle creatures and daring helicopter escapes that have been a mainstay\u00a0of the\u00a0Resident Evil<\/em> series for twenty years still make an appearance, but like other hallmarks they have been reduced to a footnote. \u00a0The focus in\u00a0Resident Evil<\/em> 7<\/em> is intimate environments and high fidelity interactions, and in that respect it has more in common with\u00a0Amnesia<\/em> than its predecessors.<\/p>\n

Indeed, similarities to the seminal PC horror title abound: in addition to being a first-person flashlight crawler with maximum drawer-sifting game play, RE7 forces you to run and hide from relentless, unkillable enemies. \u00a0Resident Evil <\/em>has a history of\u00a0exceptionally tough and occasionally invincible antagonists designed to knock their superhuman protagonists down to size. \u00a0But in RE7, the protagonist is already disempowered, often has no weapons, and his recourse is almost always to run for cover. \u00a0And like\u00a0Amnesia<\/em>, cover isn’t always easy to find. \u00a0There are no\u00a0Clock Tower-<\/em>style pre-determined hiding spots: you just cower behind a rotting couch or something and hope that Leatherface’s dad\u00a0runs out of gas for his chainsaw before he finds you. \u00a0This isn’t just a mutation of the core feature set, it’s a significant shift in tone.<\/p>\n

\"grandma\"

This doesn’t look like a Resident Evil game, and that’s great.<\/p><\/div>\n

Resident Evil 7<\/em> is a contemporary horror game that is hyper aware of the other players in its genre. \u00a0In addition to\u00a0Amnesia<\/em>, we can see clear influence from\u00a0P.T.,\u00a0<\/em>primarily in the awesome playable videotape system, which is used to foreshadow areas the player will subsequently explore. \u00a0P.T.\u00a0<\/em>was also the obvious influencer of Capcom’s early\u00a0Kitchen<\/em> demos (which displayed a VR scene using RE7\u00a0<\/em>settings and characters without revealing the connection to the RE license), as well as the release of a “playable hour” demo six months early. \u00a0This is the first\u00a0Resident Evil to flirt with an etherial, supernatural antagonist (before eventually, and somewhat awkwardly, tying everything back to yet-more-corporate-bioweapons), which has become a common conceit in modern indie horror. \u00a0And it’s the first\u00a0Resident Evil<\/em> to include complex, multi-step escape-the-room style puzzles (most obviously in the form of Lucas’ birthday cake puzzle). \u00a0I wonder if this title features a scary version of the folk song Go Tell Aunt Rhody\u00a0<\/em>because\u00a0Until Dawn<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>has a scary version of O Death<\/em>. \u00a0For a series that has alternated between radical innovation and dated chunkiness,\u00a0Resident Evil 7<\/em> feels uniquely current. \u00a0On the Influence\u00a0Lineage chart,\u00a0Resident Evil 7<\/em> would appear way down at the bottom, directly descended from modern PC horror design.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that the\u00a0production quality of Capcom’s latest endeavor is, as usual, exceptional. \u00a0What is more interesting to me, and significantly more surprising, is how far down the genre spectrum they were able to move\u00a0Resident Evil 7<\/em> without losing its soul. \u00a0Resident Evil 7<\/em> is a tight, contemporary game that is designed to\u00a0modernize the dated trademarks of its predecessors, a task that it executes with significant skill. \u00a0It is the rare title that has retained much of its core DNA and yet shed its sequel baggage like a snake discarding its skin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I gave an IGDA talk a few years ago about the horror genre’s roots in Adventure games. \u00a0You can draw a line of influence, I argued, from\u00a0Colossal Cave Adventure\u00a0and\u00a0King’s Quest all the way through modern titles like\u00a0Slender and\u00a0Amnesia: The Dark Descent. \u00a0This line, which crosses through all of the survival horror classics, is best understood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,17,2,3,65,4,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14800159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-releases","category-completed-games","category-game-design","category-games","category-ps4","category-reviews","category-xbox-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14800159"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14800168,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800159\/revisions\/14800168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14800159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14800159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14800159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}