Resident Evil, as a series, has evolved over the last few outings. Some would say that is a good thing, others have been less impressed. In conversation with Eurogamer, Tsukasa Takenaka, assistant producer on 3ds game RE: Revelations, explains why he thinks things haven't changed all that much.
"I don't think 4 and 5 are not horror games," Takenaka said. "What we were trying to do with those games is explore different kinds of horror.
"For instance, Resident Evil 4 is not about zombies. It's about the Ganados speaking in human words and coming at you with weapons. That's a different kind of horrific thing than zombies.
"With Resident Evil 5 it was more about the light and darkness and these new things we were finally able to do with the hardware to see the contrast in the environments and those different types of surprising and interesting experiences. It was a kind of new horror.
"It's not so much that we were going away from horror and towards action. It's more that we were trying to do different kinds of scary experiences. That's maybe something that's got a little confused in terms of the messaging."
The original Resident Evil was made under completely different circumstances, with different constraints and the constraints are as much of what made those early games as anything else. As consoles move on and developers become capable of new things, why should they impose artificial barriers on ideas just to keep the fans happy? 4 and 5 were both excellent games, introducing common enemies that are much more a threat than the zombies in the first game.
Revelations is released in January 2012.
