Oh, actually, speaking about difficulty.
Did anyone else notice for Resident Evil 7 one of the pre-order bonuses is having the hardest difficulty unlocked from the beginning? There's also that item 'survival' pack thing, but I find that a little odd. I really don't care too much about the pre-order stuff, I will be pre-ordering the Deluxe Edition of RE7 on Steam when it's available to get the bonus post-release episode & short story episodes, but I find the difficulty thing to be interesting, maybe not the smartest move on Capcom's part, but something to talk about. As a pre-order it kind of fails since it feels like, why lock people out of it from the start otherwise? And it's unlockable anyway, how come?
But then it being unlockable, and a pre-order bonus, makes me wonder how it differs from the normal game. It makes it seem like there's some big differences in the game's hardest difficulty. More-so, Capcom have done big differences in difficulty before, Revelations 1 fiddled with Infernal Difficulty which made big changes to enemy placement/number, and item placement, and some much tougher enemies appeared much earlier in the game. Revelations 2 also did some things with enemy placement, it included some trickier placed enemies on the hard difficulty to make it harder.Then some older Capcom horror games had this; REmake had harder enemy placements and less health and ammo items on hard, Director's Cut had an arranged mode, Haunting Ground & Clock Tower 3 had recolored versions of their stalkers with much harder AI behavoir and new attacks they could do on you when playing on their unlockable hard difficulty modes.
And since they have an unlockable hardest difficulty, but will let this difficulty be available from the start if you pre-order, does imply to me that maybe there's some big differences in RE7's Hardest difficulty compared to its other difficulties, like maybe some remixed elements, different enemy placement, maybe if more personalized enemies they have new challenges to them, item placement differences, etc. And I am going to pre-order and I will have it unlocked from the start, and when I play these games I like to play from the default highest difficulty available, so I'm really debating if I should do my first playthrough on this difficulty for a real blind challenge with excitement and tension, or if I should just do my first playthrough on the non-unlockable hardest difficulty and then do that one for the next playthrough.
I think I need to know more about RE7 and its hardest difficulty to fully make this judgement, but I think it's a bit odd it's an early-unlock pre-order bonus, and I'm wondering what that might imply for the difficulty itself, and debating if I should go for it on my first run or not. If it's just the same game, but harder, then I probably would. But I would love for it to make some huge changes to the game design to be harder, with additional things and changes, but if it does that then maybe it'd be best for the second run, but part of me hopes it has severe differences for replayability.
Locking it behind a pre-order to be available from the start is dumb, and I think if it works better as an unlockable to be an unlockable or just available from the start for everybody if it doesn't work best as an unlockable. It's my whole dilemma over this as someone who will be pre-ordering anyways though, for any horror game, even if its procedural generated or whatever, the first playthrough of a horror game is crucial. You will never have that first blind run ever again. Good horror games can of course be a lot of fun to replay, but enjoying them the first time through is crucial and a different sort of thing entirely. So that's why I'm sort of split on this, and I hope they do release some more information on this.
If the Hardest difficulty is just the base game, but... Harder. Then I think I will want that to be my base difficulty to play through the first time since I enjoy my first blind run to be against challenging odds, its how I play almost all my horror games, on the hardest possible option from the start, but then if it's just that and it's locked away from the beginning for non-preorder consumers, that's dumb.
On the other-hand, if it's like a mode that expects you to have played the base game originally and then throws in some big curve-balls that messes with expectations and provides new challenges not in the regular difficulties, and designed to be played after the main game, then I don't really want that to be my first run of the game but a subsequent run, in which case why even have it unlocked from the start?
I am going to pre-order the game as I said, I think RE7 actually will be a really good game, and I am excited for it. But I think this particular difficulty pre-order decision was dumb from either angle, but I hope they at least clarify since I want to know which difficulty I should be playing for my first run as someone who usually plays on the hardest difficulty in horror games available from the start, but appreciates difficulties that 'remix' and change major things for a subsequent playthrough.