Hot off a debut at Sony’s PlayStation 5 reveal, Capcom has shared more information around their next installment to their flagship franchise titled Resident Evil Village. As the sequel to 2018’s Resident Evil 7, it’s also the first to add a new original story after the series focused on its stellar remakes. Capcom’s seventh major game was a far cry from Resident Evil 6 while putting the series back on track with grindhouse horror and just enough connections to move its lore forward.
Its trailer offered huge Resident Evil 4 vibes, building up on its setting with a few subtle nods. Defending a cabin with an NPC, exploring a castle, finding a suave bearded man smiling in cutscenes and tons of non-zombies. While the anticipated remake was teased through some parasitic zombies in Resident Evil 3 Remake, the test comes for Capcom to see how scary they could make a village out to be on next generation consoles.
Resident Evil Village follows seemingly regular person Ethan Winters as he settles back into a normal life years after fighting The Bakers in Resident Evil 7. But Ethan’s life is thrown back into a nightmare as Chris Redfield seemingly kills his family. It’s surprising to see this Chris look closer to his swole, boulder-assaulting appearance since he was remade under Capcom’s new engine in 7’s Not a Hero DLC. This also suggests something is wrong with the darker Redfield, who mysteriously leads Ethan into a search for answers. Things start to get weird once he starts making his way through Resident Evil VIII‘s titular village setting.
According to Capcom in their latest dev vlog, its team wanted the village to feel like a character itself. It would live as a populated setting, but breathe out a chilling atmosphere – both thematically and literally.
Resident Evil 7 was filled with claustrophobic hallways and silent danger, but VIII steps it up with quantity. Its trailer showed Ethan discovering some terrified villagers hiding from an enemy that’s faster and smarter than the Molded from the previous game. Though somewhat absurd, the village is full of werewolves – seen terrorizing players with a hulking physique to match their danger levels.
It’s still not known if they would be make up for the game’s lack of traditional zombies. But we know the werewolves are only a piece to VIII’s folk setting. The trailer showed tons of dead goats, a hooded witch and even a Victorian-era castle looming over the village. At some point, Ethan encounters the castle’s boujee crazies, seen wearing vintage dresses that scream Ramon Salazar without going out of style.
All of its atmosphere will look more like a real nightmare from Capcom’s updates RE Engine. First used in Resident Evil 7, it used photorealism to show horror from a first person perspective in a similar style that was popularized in Hideo Kojima’s P.T. demo.
The team later upgraded RE Engine over the years and tweaked it for RE2 Remake and RE3 Remake. It also let the studio employ real actors for motion capture for most of the games and deepened the realism factor. The same graphics were even used in Devil May Cry V, showing how well it can also work with supernatural elements. Over the PlayStation 5 reveal, fans got a taste of the latest engine which makes Resident Evil Village much bleaker than its predecessor while making the first-person exploration and combat seem lucid.
Resident Evil Village‘s connection to the series lore is what drives the mystery so much deeper for the next game. Players would only find answers in playing the game, which is set to come to the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Steam later in the future. Its trailer was only a slice of the mind-boggling terror which may look different from a staple zombie-shooting scenario, but keeps the Resident Evil vibe intact.