Resident Evil 7 is a smart and effective response to the challenge of creating a modern Resident Evil game. When amplified by virtual reality, however, Resident Evil 7 transcends the limitations of its medium and becomes a menacing decent into reactive terror. After a capricious and misguided series of experiments, Resident Evil has finally created a stable and powerful statement of identity.
Resident Evil rapidly became everything for no one. In the past two years, we’ve seen another ill-conceived multiplayer shooter, an episodically unloaded spin-off sequel, and current-gen revivals of five mainline entries. This panicky identity crisis followed Resident Evil 6, a moribund fiasco so calamitous to the Resident Evil name it was difficult to know if Capcom was even aware of its faults, let alone capable of fixing them. The despair of the series’ unlucky protagonists, in the absence of other ideas, was being practiced by its audience.
Resident Evil 7: biohazard is an unanticipated and revelatory shift in perspective. This is meant literally, as it’s the first mainline Resident Evil entry to adopt a first-person point of view, but it’s also emblematic of an improbable course correction. Under no circumstances would you board a boat this shaky and committed to its own disastrous fate and expect it to come through the storm alive, aware, and unscathed by the pressure to survive. The assembly of Resident Evil 7, apparently, thrived on immense pressure.
It should be no surprise that Resident Evil 7 is equally skilled at passing that tension and pressure onto the player. Whereas the more action-oriented trilogy of Resident Evil 4, 5, and 6 balanced dread and stress with limitless hordes of oppressive opposition, Resident Evil 7 slows it down and confines the player to a single, albeit sprawling, location and a relative handful of opponents. Grandeur remains present, but through a sense of purpose and place rather than interminable expansions of lore and irritable townies.
All but a quarter of Resident Evil 7 takes place in a backwater plantation of nowhere, Louisiana. Ethan Winters, blissfully unrelated to a n y o n e else in the series, receives a cryptic message from his presumed dead wife, Mia. This drives Ethan to the expansive, crumbling Baker estate isolated in a bayou. While I live in Kentucky, I’ve seen similar aggregations of property around more rural and insolvent portions of the state. In exchange for my sympathy is the aloof promise that I will never, ever have to see what’s inside the decaying caboodles of botched vinyl siding, disgraceful concrete, and faded domestic equipment.
Resident Evil 7 made me go in one of those houses. Worse, upon entry I found it filled with rotting horse carcasses, pots of stew that had been sitting for years, and a scavenger bird jammed into a microwave and left to deteriorate. Congealed blood, puzzling corpses, and the sinister suspicion of mortal danger are the next sensations that arrive before I decided that Ethan shouldn’t care about his wife and needed to leave, immediately.
Ethan can’t leave. He’s locked in the house and, after a petrifying process, introduced to the precarious Baker family. A father, a mother, a son, and a grandmother claim this sprawling property and there’s something deeply wrong with their behavior. Resident Evil 7’s brand of Southern horror calls to mind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and season 4’s Home episode of The X-Files. It’s an opportunity for the series to detach itself from the fustian plot tendrils of its past, and for gaming, in general, to explore a more subdued and controlled induction of horror.
It’s through the Baker family where Resident Evil 7 recites lessons learned from Amnesia and Outlast. Jack and Marguerite, the dire Baker power couple, stalk certain sections of the house. Firearms with precious supplies of ammunition may slow them down, but they can’t necessarily be defeated until Resident Evil 7 sanctions that ceremony with a boss fight. In response, Ethan must stay out of their sight or, in my experience, repeatedly get caught, take some damage, and then run like hell in an attempt to seek safety.
Ironically, Resident Evil 7 doesn’t seem interested in making space for Ethan to hide. Whereas Outlast and Amnesia reserved lockers and dark corners as places of sanctuary, Resident Evil 7 is dependent entirely on your own agility. Jack and Marguerite certainly have patrol routes but with a flexible definition of vision and a certain degree of variance, there’s never a large window for Ethan to safely move from one location to another. Should Ethan fail and take some damage, green herbs and other health upgrades are usually around.
A second facet of Resident Evil 7 returns to its puzzle-oriented foundation. The original Resident Evil struck a nimble balance between combat and exploration, and creating progress between the two through arcane contraptions scattered around the mansion. Resident Evil 7 retains the esoteric nature of these puzzles—there are plenty of crests and keys to go around—but keeps away from convoluted latitude and spirals of wasted time. This is a thoroughly modern solution to a legacy problem, and one that is exemplary of Resident Evil 7’s ability to flourish in 2017.
The tighter scale of Resident Evil 7 presents another conscious shift in series parlance. This is a compact game, and while the Baker plantation is large for a single family, it’s drastically reduced for a series that had gotten used to trotting across the planet. Lining every crevice with ammo, health items, or brief plot accessory densely packs every area of each environment, and the “looping” nature of the house, built to facilitate chase sequences, creates paths without sacrificing coherence. The Baker residence looks, feels, and acts like a normal, albeit disgusting, early twentieth century southern residence.
Combat, as expected, presents the third and final component of Resident Evil 7’s architecture. While the Baker’s are mostly indestructible, “Molded,” gelatinous creatures of dubious origin, prowl spaces in very specific sequences. There are a finite number of Molded, and outside of some nefarious insects none of the Molded every respawn. This helps realign Resident Evil’s sense of tension toward ammo scarcity and of tight spaces, which, surprisingly, works as well in 2017 as it did in 1996.
Combat options are still left to the player. A couple handguns, shotguns, a flamethrower and one or two surprises are the only weapons at your disposal. This is in stark contrast to firearms that basically had their own skill trees in past games, relieving Resident Evil 7 from the perils of insane upgrades and paralyzing choices. Backing away and carefully aiming takes care of most any problem, at least until you start running into more than one Molded at a time. This is when Resident Evil 7 demands improvisation, or at least the ability to effectively block attacks and reload ammunition.
A microcosm of Resident Evil 7‘s allegiance to its past and commitment to its future is found in, of all places, its doorways. As a concession to the structure of the 32-bit generation, the original Resident Evil handled room-to-room transitions by transitioning to a screen depicting a door opening in a black space. You never knew what was on the other side, and that paralyzing fear of the unknown followed the player into every room. Resident Evil 7 invites the player to participate in this same process, as Ethan (presumably) opens each door by pressing his nose against the front of the door. The real-world practicality of this maneuver is questionable, but it preserves the powerful fear of the unfamiliar embraced by its revered predecessor. Every step of Resident Evil 7’s construction feels driven by this belief, and the delicate call and demand to combine old with new.
The final quarter of Resident Evil 7—you’ll know it when you’re provided with a machine—disturbs this harmony. Without getting into specifics, the clever nature of its practice is abandoned in favor of more linear hallways and pure action. Moderate puzzle solving and A to B navigation are still in play, but the prowling threat of an indestructible nemesis is abandoned. This sequence doesn’t last very long and its soft impact on the final product is observable, but it’s not the morale-demolishing kill shot Final Fantasy XV delivered under similar circumstances.
Are there other grievances? Sure. I don’t know if it was the original script of the localization, but melodrama and corny language (and bad lip syncing) dominate most of Ethan’s conversations with other humans. Some of Resident Evil 7‘s boss fights are too reliant on gimmicks, rather than a test of skills honed and developed over the course of the game. These problems are not unique—boss fights, in general, struggle for relevance and connection in the modern era—but they are temporary moments of instability and defeat in an otherwise skilled performance.
On the PlayStation 4, Resident Evil 7‘s offers full compatibility with PlayStation VR. This transforms Resident Evil 7‘s from an accomplished game into an inescapable slice of hell constructed explicitly to prey upon basic instincts. Virtual reality doesn’t make the greatest introduction, the twilight portions of the beginning sequence look weird and jittery, but once Resident Evil 7 gets Ethan inside the house it transitions into a deeply unsettling experience. You’re there, man, and the difference between interacting with a 2D abstraction on screen to feeling like you’re in a sinister murder playground is intense and monstrously effective.
When it was time to exit the Baker house and walk to a different part of the property, I was afraid to set foot outside and walk over to a poorly-lit trailer. It was pitch-black night and anything could be out there. Later, I had to take the PlayStation VR unit off and mentally psych myself up into walking down stairs because my brain believed that any disastrous outcome was not only possible, but probable. Smaller games have experimented with combining horror with virtual reality, but none have the commitment and history (and financial support) of Resident Evil 7.
Fear of the unknown is part of this apprehension, in addition to a cheap jump scare you never know what grotesque object or foreboding risk is out there, but the greater achievement is Resident Evil 7‘s ability to create a tangible sense of space. I’ve never been to a shit hole as profound as the Baker residence, but I’ve seen similar stairways, walked through pitch-dark neighborhoods, and squeezed in between walls of unfinished houses. These every day slices of suburban life create a tangible connection between Resident Evil 7 and basic reality, effectively muting the effects of the uncanny valley and selling the player’s brain on a threatening environment.
PlayStation VR captured image
PlayStation VR also plays a vital role in selling the Baker family’s menace and brutality. Walking through their house is scary, but playing cat and mouse with a psychotic human being elevates tension and dread into the stratosphere. Anticipating Jack walking down a hallway, I was crouched next to a wall and repeatedly tilting my real-life head to the left in order to check and see if he was coming around the corner. It was legitimately terrifying, and the instances where I failed and he snuck up behind me elicited screams I wasn’t proud of producing.
It helps that PlayStation VR plays nicely inside of Resident Evil 7‘s basic operation. Aiming, previously the responsibility of the right stick, is controlled entirely with slight head movement. I did this instinctively, not even realizing a shift in control until after I switched back to playing Resident Evil 7 normally. Basic movement also has a variety of options. Either the right analog stick can control complete 360 freedom of motion, or it can be partitioned off into instant 30 or 60 degree rotations. Anecdotally, complete control made me nauseous but switching it back to 30 degrees worked perfectly. There are some issues with turning around and running away from enemies, but these problems are also present in the base game. Resident Evil 7 handles the inherent weaknesses of PlayStation VR as well as it possibly could.
Touring haunted houses (usually) comes with the assurance that the monsters are real people who won’t actually cause you harm. You just sell yourself on the contextual fiction and get a few cheap thrills. Of course, nothing in PlayStation VR or Resident Evil 7 will actually hurt your person, but the fidelity of the experience and mortal peril of your avatar tap into the natural fight-or-flight responses of your brain and, basically, reduce the decision making process to purely instinctual levels. This only works once, you can only be sold on the unknown one time and repeat performances reduce tension, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before. Playing Resident Evil 7 by yourself, at night, in a dark room, and in PlayStation VR is a frightening experience unrivaled by any other game or platform.
An engaging game and an immersive experience are usually defined by choice and taste. It seems unwise to combine something like Gone Home with Outlast, as both of those games (presumably) cater toward different needs. Resident Evil 7 is in the privileged position to do both; virtual reality makes basic acts like exploration essential to world building and inseparable from creating tension. That option can also be declined, as Resident Evil 7 is also effective in its operation as a game. It’s hard to know how long this novelty will last as virtual reality wades into the main stream, but, in its current state, Resident Evil 7 is one of the defining experiences available in its medium.
All of this makes Resident Evil 7 a smart and effective response to the challenge of creating a modern Resident Evil game. When amplified by virtual reality, however, Resident Evil 7 transcends the limitations of its medium and becomes a menacing decent into reactive terror. After a capricious and misguided series of experiments, Resident Evil has finally created a stable and powerful statement of identity.
