It's difficult for any gaming franchise to stay afloat after several decades, let alone one from the horror genre. Yet, Resident Evil has maintained its stance as a defining series in survival horror gaming. True, it did have a rocky midsection with the release of the fifth and sixth installments, but before and after that, Capcom has had a winning formula on its hands. Recently, the studio gave some of the later releases a PS5 and Xbox Series upgrade, but there were some issues as far as PC users were concerned.A post on Twitter by Capcom says that the ray tracing updates for Resident Evil 2, 3, and 7 can now be rolled back to their previous incarnations. After it became apparent that it was no longer possible to return to previous gen versions of each game, the company has seemingly listened to the fan base and reactivated them, much to the delight of people commenting below the tweet. Instructions on Steam show a step-by-step process on how to downgrade the games.Although the PS5 and Xbox Series upgrades have been welcomed by many, the PC community has been less than impressed with being forced to play the new versions. For one, Resident Evil 2, 3 and 7 players noticed problems with mods, and given that modding is an integral part of PC gaming for a lot of players, this was seen as a major issue. On top of that, some realized that the hardware requirements to run the games had been increased since the update, making it more difficult for those with lower-end systems to play them.
Hopefully, the non-ray tracing DirectX 11 versions will solve any problems that PC users have been having. However, this doesn't seem to be the end of things. It's also been noted that Resident Evil 7 PS5 users are having to pay for the upgrade if they got the game via the PS Plus Collection, despite Capcom insisting that it was free for anyone who had the games on previous generation systems. It remains to be seen whether this will be rectified.
These troubles aside, now seems like a fantastic time to be a fan of the long-running horror series. With Resident Evil 4 Remake coming next year, not to mention Village DLC on the way, the franchise seems to be going from strength to strength. It's hard to imagine that it's still as popular today as it was when it first hit shelves way back in 1996, but the developer has evidently been doing a fantastic job of keeping it alive all these years.
Resident Evil 2, 3, and 7's next-gen upgrades are available now for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Steam