The mid-to-late 2000s were quite harsh to AAA game development, since just about every video game that hit the PS3 and Xbox 360 just HAD to make Call of Duty numbers. Thankfully, we’ve moved on from these dark times, and there’s no greater indication that those days are behind us than just looking at the current state of survival horror video games. These days, expectations are in check and no one’s expecting insane sales numbers, and that means video games that wouldn’t necessarily have to appeal to every single person out there have a better shot at being made.
While indie studios have long since been unburdened by these unrealistic expectations and continued to make some downright fantastic games, big-name studios are just now coming back to survival horror; Bethesda made a decent amount of money with The Evil Within, and Capcom has released hit after hit from 2017 onwards, starting with Resident Evil 7Resident Evil’s ups and downs don’t really stop with Resident Evil 6 and 7; there were a few smaller-scale games that did a lot to damage the franchise, as well as bring back some of its former glory. There were bad games, like Resident Evil Mercenaries and Operation Racoon City, which focused too heavily on the action-heavy style of RE6. On the other hand, there were two games, the Revelations series, that were downright fantastic and lived in a cool middle ground between the action focus of the later RE games and the survival horror aspects of the earlier Resident Evils.
And then we have 2017’s Resident Evil 7 - a game that quite honestly surprised most of us considering just how good it was. RE7 went back to its roots by mostly keeping us in one general location with a tonne of stuff to find and explore. RE7 quite obviously learned a lot from the hordes of indie horror games that have been released, and the influences aren’t too hard to spot.
