Capcom has been absolutely knocking it out of the park recently. In the last few years, Capcom has seemed almost incapable of producing a bad video game, with Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise both being some of the best entries in franchise history, Devil May Cry 5 being the rejuvenation the series desperately needed, and most recently, Street Fighter 6 putting the franchise back on top of the fighting game world. But, of course, Capcom's most successful ventures of the last few years have been its Resident Evil sequels and remakes.
Selling over 12 million copies since its launch in 2017, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard ushered in a brand-new era for the Resident Evil franchise, an era that's still very much in its heyday. Resident Evil 7 was quickly followed by a remake of Resident Evil 2 in 2019, which saw even greater critical success, and the franchise has continued to bounce between those two areas ever since, releasing a sequel, then a remake or two, then another sequel. But while the Resident Evil remakes have mostly been huge hits both critically and commercially, there's one big element that they're lacking which the new entries have in spades.
The Resident Evil Remakes Aren't As High Stakes As New Entries
For the most part, the Resident Evil remakes have been phenomenal. Resident Evil 2 Remake managed to retain the essence of the original while completely overhauling the gameplay and visuals, Resident Evil 4 Remake managed to double down and improve upon practically every element of the original, and though Resident Evil 3 Remake certainly has its issues, it still looks and plays great. At their worst, the Resident Evil remakes are fun action games that respect their source material at every turn, and at their best, they redefine what the modern-day horror genre can be.
But the Resident Evil remakes aren't perfect, and there's one big area that the recent Resident Evil sequels outperform them in, which is stakes. With many fans having already played the original versions of these Resident Evil games, they likely remember all the major plot beats, and possibly even when they occur in the story. This means that many players already know if a character is going to die, and potentially even how, why, and when. Naturally, this can strip quite a bit of tension away from the experience.
Though the Resident Evil remakes do try to switch things up to help this issue, they mostly retain the same major plot points as their original versions. For instance, in the recent Resident Evil 4 Remake, the time, place, and circumstance of Luis' death is altered, but he does still die, just like in the original. Those that have already played the original game will have been waiting for that death to happen, and probably wouldn't feel the intended impact of the scene quite as much as those who have never played Resident Evil 4 before. The stakes of the Resident Evil remakes are set in stone long before they even hit store shelves.
New Resident Evil entries, however, have a chance to really catch players off guard and deliver some of the highest stakes in the entire franchise by presenting players with completely new stories where anything is possible. For example, the opening of Resident Evil 7 sees Ethan Winters lose his hand suddenly in an incredibly intense sequence. This tension and fear that anything can happen carries through to Resident Evil Village, with its own opening sequence showing Chris Redfield shooting Mia. High stakes are an important tool for horror video games, and future Resident Evil sequels should lean even further into it, possibly even teasing that legacy characters aren't safe from the chopping block either.