Resident Evil: Finding the Fear

An in depth look at how horror elements are used to create fear in the series and how that use has evolved along with the series

[Rayko]

I only want to play the horror RE. action RE is just boring and horrible. Give us the REAL Resident Evil!

[LOGICWINS]

"action RE is just boring and horrible."

When RE4 came out, it had the least horror of ANY RE game...yet its widely regarded by many critics and publications as the best game of all time when it released.

When RE5 came out, it had even LESS horror than RE4..yet it became the best selling RE game of all time.

Do you see the pattern here? Capcom has had more critical acclaim and financial success with the action/survival hybrid REs than the all out horror REs.

You can say that action oriented REs are "boring" and "horrible" all you want...won't change the fact that the majority of RE fans disagree with you.

[bennyace]

Personnaly I liked more the "old" RE. More atmopheric oriented then action. Still RE 4 was great and different... but 5 I felt it has less horror then 4. I would love to see a new RE like yhe old ones. Like when the remade it GC. Or I'm pretty sure there is a way to mix a little of both styles.

To me the RE and silent hill games are still head and shoulders above the horror games of this gen like, Dead Rising, Dead Island, Left for Dead. Where they only throw hordes of zombies at you and you shoot going backwards until everybody's down! Just action no atmosphere! I hope they go more down the atmospheric road then the action one with RE....

On a side note... I really like what the new silent hill looks like so far. Seems to have kept the "old" feeling... Good horror games are lacking this gen imo. All action grrrr!

[yokokoroma]

As a fan of RE since the beginning, I know the series inside out. The misconception between 4 and 5 is asinine, they are both the same thing. RE:5 was just an improved version of 4 (i.e. better controls, better inventory setup) This is FACT and can be proven, based on a simulation. As for "finding the fear", the fear didn't go anywhere, it just was limited. In RE:4, the fear is the regenerators, in 5 it's the reaper.

There's a way to balance action and horror, Romero did it for his entire (official) dead series. RE will never be what it's been again because control limitations (RE 1, 2) don't work this gen. We need range of motion, besides the story is progress and the characters are as well. It's up to fans of the series to either accept that, and play, or do the opposite.

[LOGICWINS]

People like you need more bubbles. Your absolutely right. The SCARIEST thing about the old REs were the control limitations. You could easily be outrun by lickers/other monsters and you moved like a tank. This made your character vulnerable which made the game more scary.

[Kyosuke_Sanada]

It was not just the range of motion that made the game scary but the lack of ammunition which usually forced you to think on which enemies are actually worth taking out. When every enemy randomly drops ammo or money to buy ammo, there is no worry of you making careless mistakes so the sense of tension in each single battle is minimized dramatically.

Next there was the damage system where as the closest you are to an enemy, the more damage you are able to do. This factor compounded with the lack of ammo made each encounter with a creature a high risk/high reward feeling which adds to the survival modus operandi of the game.

Another factor was limited saves which played a very big role in adding to the fear. Once the player knows there there is a high chance of him/her screwing themselves over in recording data, more tension fuel is added to keep player away from a comfort zone even if they were armed to the teeth.

Finally, there was the clever use of fixed camera angles. I'll use an example of this;

-A player's character opens a door rendering the camera viewing the front of him/her at the end of a hallway. The slight bit of fear of the unknown kicks in because of the obvious limits in area view but add an event that rattles them for abit. Maybe a zombie ambling right in front of the camera to look at the actual player's television screen followed by him turning to the character he/she is playing as (all of this is gameplay not a cutscene....). Have the camera change immediately to a good targeting view of the monster so it can properly be disposed of.

That brief encounter will have the person volatile every time a fixed camera angle is used because of the anticipation of a similar or worse encounter happening again giving freedom to the developer to experiment in balancing free roam camera with fixed..

You are right LIMITS were the fear of the RE genre but not in just the way you expected.......