Resident Evil Creator Explains Why the Series Stopped Being Scary

[MrBaskerville]

They should have just gotten rid of the camera angles and poor controls, then maybe they could have made a horror game that sold well. But then on the other hand, i don't really know how well Silent Hill sold, and those had better camera and better controls.

It kinda sucks to be i the demographic that doesn't enjoy story based action shooters, since that's basically the one demographic that everyone tries to please. I wished that someday, the AAA industry would acknowledge that there is a minority of gamers who would by survival horror games and stuff like that. I really hope The Evil Within delivers!

 

[StriderShinryu]

It's quite nice to hear this from the horses mouth, so to speak, as it's pretty much what I've been saying for years now. Not so much anything to do with the sales numbers, but more so that RE4 is where the series stopped being survival horror and started being an action game with a few horror elements. To me (and regardless of the fact that, in a vacuum, RE4 is not a bad game) RE4 is where the series started going downhill. People love to point at RE5 as where it all went wrong, but the steps towards that end clearly started in RE4.

 

[Terramax]

Wait, they release the remake on a console that was basically third in the console race at the time and they wonder why it didn't sell very well? Morons.

Personally, I think this is just a scapegoat excuse anyways.

 

[K12]

This is true, of course. Everyone likes to whine about changes to their franchises or that certain genres and games are popular. In the end though, everyone buys them, so why would developers go back to making games that all sold poorly? Most of my favorite games were commercial failures sadly. I never expect them to be made again in this day and age.

The problem is that the biggest selling genres are already well represented and you'd need to spend a shitload of cash to compete with COD or Halo or WoW and making a better game won't guarantee being a real competition.

I don't know why game developers seem to think that COD clones will sell better than games in an underrepresented niche genre. A bigger slice of a small pie vs. a smaller slice of a big pie. Developers seem to believe that they'll be able to get the big slice of big pie by just emulating games that have managed that. Not true!

The other issue is that making games isn't just a business, it's supposed to be art as well. We're right to criticise when a band creates a more generic sound just to sell better and we're right to hold game developers to the same level of integrity.

I also agree that the idea that a game has to sell on the same level of CoD to be considered a 'success' is rather silly. That is why I look less and less to AAA games nowadays.

COD sold 9 million units and cost £90 million to make (complete guess btw) so if we spend £90 million on a modern FPS then we'll sell 9 million copies, anything less is a failure.

... can't see any problem with that logic

 

[Myndnix]

I say again: Resident Evil was never scary. It was the kind of campy, so-bad-it's-good that nerds like us love.
The games have IMO actually been getting better, they're video games now instead of being weird, tank-controlled nightmares that make for excellent Youtube poop material.
You were almost a Jill sandwich.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

That sounds like an answer that has the benefit of hindsight. Like George Lucas saying the lightsaber fights in the prequels were more frenetic because the jedi were better trained yadda yadda. When in reality the budget, style and technology changed.

RE 4 was a legitimately spooky game and the RE series has always been about spooking people rather than the silent hill, alone in the dark approach of making the player feel totally alienated by their environment.

RE 5 is when it started becoming a joke in my opinion. RE 4 had spooky mansions, caverns and foggy lakes. RE 5 had......black hawk down with zombies and a village of stereotypical tribesmen? You can have balls to the wall action and still shit someone up. Dead Space 1 proved that. RE 4 is a scary enough game, but more in a schlocky slasher movie way rather than trying to do the Shining

 

[Major_Tom]

I would buy another game with clunky movement controls and restrictive camera angles. I would buy another ten of them. Also, Remake didn't sell very well because IT WAS ON THE FUCKING GAMECUBE. Your target audience had to buy that damned thing just to play it, but we already bought a PS2.

 

[shrekfan246]

Pretty much what they are doing. Trying to blame it on the fans because we enjoyed how refreshing RE4 was. So they then take the worst parts of 4, add horrible co-op and interface, and then wonder why people don't like their game anymore.

I bought RE5 and its the last one I will get ripped off by. I didn't touch 6 with a 10ft pole. Hell I didn't even watch others play it because the gameplay is so dull. :/

Maybe it's just me but I read this as "Resident Evil stopped being scary because of you people! It's not our fault, despite our sloppy writing and continued focus on things that players have already expressed distaste in!"

Always great when a dev blames their screwups on their players.

Except that's not what's happening. Shinji Mikami had no hand in Resident Evil 5 or 6, and his point about why the control scheme of 4 was so vastly different is a good one; People were likely tired of tank controls. I know that personally, that's one of the biggest reasons I can't get into the older Resident Evil or Silent Hill titles.

It sounds more like he equates a clunky, unintuitive control scheme with a "scary" game, which is a bit of a double-edged blade because clunky controls alone won't make something tense and frightening, it'll just make it tedious and frustrating. He's not blaming the fans, simply stating that the development of Resident Evil 4 was altered because of the market. Arguably, due to Capcom's hilariously poor writing department, Resident Evil 4 probably could've been "a more scary, horror-focused game" even with the new control scheme if Resident Evil's writing hadn't always been B-movie quality.

 

[Vrach]

...says that the series kept that mentality until it became clear that gamers wouldn't buy another game with clunky movement controls and restrictive camera angles.

So what he's saying is, they sold out because a GameCube exclusive didn't sell well (don't write *chuckle*, don't write *chuckle*... DAMMIT) and they couldn't be arsed fixing game controls.

Totally legitimate argument.

 

[Evonisia]

So basically it's our fault that he made Resident Evil 4? Great, then!

However what he's really saying is that we're responsible for Resident Evil's failure. Seriously? Not the god awful voice acting, the terrible gameplay, dodgy camera angles, bad writing and translation and crap story of the first three? There's also the fact that the remake was on the Gamecube, the third place of the 6th Generation. Talk about pretentious.

 

[AngryPuppy]

Resident Evil remade for the PS3 with RE6 graphics would be awesome and better then the new games IMO.

 

[Abomination]

I've never actually liked a Resident Evil game. Most of the suspense was caused by the fact that controls handled like arse and for the first installments the camera was 3d models on a 2d platform.

It was only "scary" because you couldn't see what the fuck was going on due to the third person camera being a crock of shit.

 

[Ishigami]

So he made a remake of a horror game for a console that focused on family entertainment and he was surprised of "bad" sales?
To recap this: he produced a game for a specific and smaller market to begin with on a console bought mostly by NOT that crowed? and was surprised that it did not sell CoD style.
Even on a mainstream system like the Xbox or PlayStation the remake would have not sold ?stellar? because horror is not for everyone.

So to sum this up for me: You are a dumbass.
The remake was a great game. Now you produce mainstream shit. Be happy to feed the sheep but you can fuck right off for me.

 

[PunkRex]

Claustrophobic enviroments, resistant enemies with weak spots, giant monsters that shook the screen as they walked, fast moving bosses, minimal background noise, those buggy henchmen fellas who followed midgiy naploeon around, mother licking Regenerators! RE4 may not have focused on horror but it sure as hell didn' forget it.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

This just sounds like excuse making to me. RE4 may not have been "Amnesia" type scary, but it certainly had horror elements, for a good chunk of the game I really did feel like you had to choose your shots wisely because ammo felt scarce, and there was a good sense of isolation and desperation.

5 and 6 lost much that by becoming co-op focused (your partner being dumb as a bag of hammers certainly didn't help), giving you plentiful ammo, putting in WAY too many QTEs (6 was almost hilarious about this), and putting in action sequences so over the top they'd make Michael Bay blush.

To me, RE4, the original FEAR, and the original Dead Space showed how you can make an action-oriented game and still keep it scary, by focusing on atmosphere, ammo scarcity, and a sense of just barely surviving (FEAR didn't really have ammo scarcity, but compensated for it by giving you the sense of being chased by an unstoppable and unknowable force).

 

[JagermanXcell]

And so the scapegoating continues! Well done Capcom!

I really don't know what they expected from the RE Remake (A great game), it was on the Gamecube, it was destined to fail sale's wise since the PS2 was running the show at the time. As for the success of RE4... it was RE4 (A great game), it was bound to sell console exclusive or not. Its a shame that we loved the balance of action and horror RE4 offered, yet Capcom stopped listening to us as soon as ACTION was brought up and they threw BALANCE out the window. And you morons wonder why Mikami left...

You know what, whatever. They say'll they''ll listen to the fans, they haven't, I'll be shocked if they ever do at this point.