At the end of the month, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard will be turning five years old. Even the most diehard Resident Evil fans will agree that the franchise has seen some major ups and downs over the course of its life, but Resident Evil 7 was an entry that breathed new life into a franchise formula that was beginning to become a bit stale. Thanks to some clever moves made by Capcom, the game was able to bring the series back into mainstream gaming popularity, resulting in RE7's followup, Resident Evil Village, being hugely popular and cited as one of 2021's best games.
Influential games, however, are sometimes better remembered than they are to play. Luckily for Resident Evil 7, this isn't the case at all, as the game is still a joy to revisit five years after its initial launch.
Resident Evil 7's Persistent Legacy
Although there are certainly some merits to it, the Resident Evil franchise was in a rough spot after the release of Resident Evil 6. The series had lost a lot of what made it special and fans weren't happy with the direction that Capcom was taking things. As a result, the studio decided to take Resident Evil back to its horror roots and scale down the action so that each game had more space to breathe. This ultimately produced Resident Evil 7, a game that ditches most of the preexisting lore of the series in favor of telling a smaller, more contained story.
From a narrative aspect, RE7 is one of the best games in the franchise to revisit for this reason: it's completely accessible to those not familiar with the deep lore of the franchise while still having enough connective tissue to make it a compelling next step for the overarching story. Resident Evil Village then expands even more on what RE7 set up, and the twist reveal at the end of RE8's narrative recontextualizes a lot of the events of RE7 - making it worthwhile to experience once more following the introduction of new, crucial information. In addition to the twist, it seems as if the next mainline Resident Evil entry will continue focusing on the Winters family, so it's not a bad idea to revisit all of the character details provided about Ethan and Mia in RE7.
Sometimes, when going back to horror franchises, the scares of early entries lose their weight as players become exposed to them. While that's certainly something that can happen with frequent replays of RE7, the game's unique approach to horror allows it to still be frightening all these years later. The pin holding RE7's horror together is the Baker family, who remains effective to this day since AAA horror games rarely have the small scope that makes the Bakers into unique horror antagonists. Their constant pursuit of the player throughout the game is unnerving, especially given the fact that they look to be normal people on the surface - something that makes what lies in wait beneath their skin even scarier.
Now that the game has been out for so long, it's able to be picked up for a relatively cheap price, usually alongside the story DLC that helps bridge the gap between RE7 and RE8. Given how popular Village was last year, fans are more likely to pick apart the narrative elements of RE7 and its DLC, seeing what stuck around for the sequel and what might be saved for the unannounced Resident Evil 9.
Resident Evil 7 is available for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.