Resident Evil Village isn't Scary
235#residentevilvillage #villageisntscary #markflynn
Video Contains Spoilers for Resident Evil 7 & 8 and also includes Violence & Gore.
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Resident Evil Village (AKA Resident Evil VIII) is a game that received critical acclaim following on from Resident Evil Biohazard (AKA Resident Evil VII). But is Resident Evil Village actually scary? Mark Flynn breaks down in-depth today by looking at the characters of both games, The Bakers, Mother Miranda and Lady Dimetrescu and the horror contained within both these games.
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On the 11th June 2020, Capcom announced Resident Evil Village, the newest entry in its most popular series. The debut trailer showcased tons of action, a setting reminiscent of Resident Evil 4 and Monsters that appeared to include Werewolves and even Vampires. From watching the initial trailer, I watched excitedly as Resident Evil trod new ground, but through a lens glossed with concern.
Three years prior, Capcom had successfully released a soft-reboot of the franchise with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which I will simply refer to as Biohazard. Biohazard took the series in a new direction with a first-person gameplay perspective and re-emphasis on Horror that the series had moved away from. Up until this point Resident Evil had been populated by Zombies, Monsters & Mutant Bio-Weapons, but this time around the inspirations were clearly very different. The game paid homage to a variety of different Horror influences that could be likened to the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Exorcist, Ring and even SAW, franchises I never really expected to see referenced in a Resident Evil Game, let alone influencing it. The overall themes of the story dealt with psychological, supernatural and grotesque horror elements and as a complete package it felt like a love letter to the genre in general. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t at least one element in here that didn’t scare you as a player in some way shape or form.
I absolutely loved Biohazard but it also terrified me. I played it for the first-time last year and found it so immersive and mind blowing that it sent me down a rabbit hole of Resident Evil as a franchise in general. It was without question the most I enjoyed playing a game in 2020 and the horror was undoubtedly a highlight; there were moments where I even had to switch it off because it got too much for me. After finishing the game, I couldn’t stop thinking about it as it had hit me on so many levels, watching videos on its lore from some fantastic creators.
At the time of its release, despite some purists maybe not liking how the game had departed some of its then current established tropes; Biohazard received critical acclaim and was perceived to be one of the best Resident Evils and even Survival Horrors in recent memory. Given how much the genre had evolved since Resident Evil's conception, with breakout hits like Amnesia and Outlast, this was a big achievement. It seemed only right that given the success of this experiment, that we would get a follow up that followed suit and dived deeper into that horror element.
While the visuals were beyond impressive and the spectacle of the location was mesmerizing, the vibe that Villages trailer had set was another bold choice for Resident Evil and one I wasn’t 100% sold on. Could these folk lore styled elements fit within the series' re-emergence as a truly scary survival horror series? Given how much it like a seemed like a spiritual successor to 4 only added to my concerns, as that game, while incredible, had signalled the series shift to action and abandoning of fear almost entirely.
The scare factor of Village has been a topic that has cropped up a few times around its release, with the game's producer Tsuyoshi Kanda going as far to state that some of the feedback towards the previous game was that it “was too scary to play” and they had “eased up on the tension curve” in Village because of it. I worried when I read this and wondered whether or not he was trying to fool us, luring us into a false sense of security. Some of the game's marketing campaigns chose to highlight the ensemble of key villains in a cutesy puppet show video format to reiterate a tongue in cheek ‘We’re not scary, come play in RE: Village’ and it felt like it had to be a ruse. Were they hiding the true horror from us? Well, kind of.
Having finished Villages main campaign, there are definitely choices made with its opening segments, main characters and core gameplay loop that impact the amount of fear the game imposes, these changes lead to a more action-oriented experience that revisits some of Biohazard’s horrors in a familiar way that could never be quite as effective the second time round. Today we’ll explore how the game does this and whether the changes to the scares hurt the experience.
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At this time, The Artist Mark Flynn has 12,555 views for Resident Evil Village spread across 2 videos. Less than an hour worth of Resident Evil Village videos were uploaded to his channel, or 3.50% of the total watchable video on The Artist Mark Flynn's YouTube channel.