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Capcom: RE4 & 5 didn't ditch horror, they were a different kind of horror...

Thought this was pretty interesting and I can what they are trying to say, but it's pretty damn obvious the games were action oriented with horror virtually nonexistent.

Resident Evil 4 and 5 did not move the series away from its horror roots towards action, Capcom has insisted.

Instead, both games explored a different kind of horror.

Tsukasa Takenaka, assistant producer on Nintendo 3DS game Resident Evil: Revelations, told Eurogamer there had been "confused messaging" around what Capcom had tried to do with the last two numbered Resident Evil games.

"I don't think 4 and 5 are not horror games," Takenaka told Eurogamer. "What we were trying to do with those games is explore different kinds of horror.

"For instance, Resident Evil 4 is not about zombies. It's about the Ganados speaking in human words and coming at you with weapons. That's a different kind of horrific thing than zombies.

"With Resident Evil 5 it was more about the light and darkness and these new things we were finally able to do with the hardware to see the contrast in the environments and those different types of surprising and interesting experiences. It was a kind of new horror.

"It's not so much that we were going away from horror and towards action. It's more that we were trying to do different kinds of scary experiences. That's maybe something that's got a little confused in terms of the messaging."

Revelations, due out early next year, is seen by many fans as a return to the series' scare-orientated haunted house roots. It is the first all-new Resi adventure since 2009's opinion-splitting Resident Evil 5.

Is its gameplay the result of fan response to Resident Evil 5?

"Certainly user feedback and what our fans and consumers want is very important to us," Takenaka explained. "We're always listening to that feedback and making use of it."

And does Revelations hint at the direction Capcom will take with Resident Evil 6?

"I don't know. What's Resident Evil 6?"

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-01-capcom-resident-evil-4-and-5-didnt-ditch-horror
 
Wait, they still think RE5 was about light and darkness?

RE4 was scary because that game was fantastic about keeping up pressure on the player so you constantly felt harried or in danger - it was specifically great TENSION, though, not great HORROR (although, to be fair, the earlier RE games aren't great horror in that sense either).

RE5 was neither horrific nor tense.
 
I agree with that.

RE4 and RE5 ditched the traditional 'boo' scares of the original RE games, and went for creating a general sense of unease and creepiness. Enemy encounters weren't characterized by being helpless, just by the sheer tension of having to deal with so many enemies at once.
 
RE4 was a pure commando game. Wasn't scary at ALL (except for that refrigerator dude for 5 sec). You weren't trying to survive, you were out to kill as many parasitic spaniards as you could. RE5 the same. But it was a pretty masterful commando game.

Dead Space though.... now THAT is actually horror. The gameplay also complimented it. You have very little ammo and you HAVE to use stasis and limb dismemberment properly to survive.
 
Yes. Resident Evil 5 was a different kind of horror. The horror of realising you'd just spent £35 on a piece of crap. I never even finished it. It was just so boring.

Resident 4, on the other hand, was great. But horror? Only in the same was that Die Hard or Commando are.
 
Good to see that they've taken the criticisms from RE5. It looks like they struck a good balance with the action and horror for RE:Revelations.
 
The Antitype said:
I agree with that.

RE4 and RE5 ditched the traditional 'boo' scares of the original RE games, and went for creating a general sense of unease and creepiness. Enemy encounters weren't characterized by being helpless, just by the sheer tension of having to deal with so many enemies at once.

RE4 has a bit of tension, and a few boo scares.

RE5 has none at all. Also, there's nothing scary about being rushed by lots of enemies when you have plentiful ammo to deal with them handily.
 
re4/re5 were definitely horror, but gamers aren't asking for a return to horror, they're asking for a return to something that is actually scary.
 
I only ever played the first 30 minutes of RE4, but I was scared shitless even before I entered the first town. I might have really enjoyed the game if it didn't have some of the worst controls I have ever played with. Never cared enough about RE5 to even try it.
 
badcrumble said:
Wait, they still think RE5 was about light and darkness?

Yeah kind of odd that they bring that up, it was a big deal during development but when the actual game came out I was left wondering what happened to this major feature they were talking about.

It certainly had its moments though. First time playing Veteran and going to loot a dead chainsaw majini comes to mind.
 
mik83kuu said:
I only ever played the first 30 minutes of RE4, but I was scared shitless even before I entered the first town. I might have really enjoyed the game if it didn't have some of the worst controls I have ever played with. Never cared enough about RE5 to even try it.

This is a fair statement. The new kind of horror damage control quote may work for RE4, but not for RE5.

RE5 was a third person shooter with limited controls. Nothing more. Nothing less.
 
So Capcom's attempt to explore different kinds of horror has essentially resulted in the franchise becoming less scary. Time go to back to the basics, Capcom. Hopefully, RE Revelations will do that.
 
Well, they did say this in the other thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frw0Or9b_ZA

Capcom said:
"Resident Evil is traditionally sort of a survival horror franchise, but one of the things that fans and press alike have been asking about for a lot of years now is fully fledged TPS gameplay in the Resident Evil universe, and so Operation Raccoon City sort of represents an answer to that."
So presumably by their standards, things that aren't a full TPS would be more like a Survival Horror game.

I'm assuming that they feel they're horror thematically and gameplay wise though instead of like... actually scary.
 
Gravijah said:
re4/re5 were definitely horror, but gamers aren't asking for a return to horror, they're asking for a return to something that is actually scary.
yep. i don't get why anyone would see it differently.

RE5 is absolutely horror.

if this was controversial, this thread would have exploded already.

hopefully Revelations is scary. obviously given that they've gone back into more claustrophobic territory shows that they are listening to the fans (and well, working within the confines of the 3DS kind of helps encourage that i'm sure).
 
badcrumble said:
Wait, they still think RE5 was about light and darkness?

RE4 was scary because that game was fantastic about keeping up pressure on the player so you constantly felt harried or in danger - it was specifically great TENSION, though, not great HORROR (although, to be fair, the earlier RE games aren't great horror in that sense either).

RE5 was neither horrific nor tense.
this is it, really
nothing else to discuss
 
I'm one of those heathens that thinks Resident Evil 4 is far scarier than any of the other RE games. I think a lot of the reason so many people look upon it as "not scary" now is because we've literally played the damn thing to death and know every single trick.
 
re 4 had elements of horror, re5 was just plain shooting and capcom can pretend there were elements of 'light and dark' but none of that was even implemented to be scary or anything.
 
I agree that RE4 was a different kind of horror done masterfully well. RE5 abandoned horror in favor of fighting waves of enemies and huge creatures.
 
Dacon said:
RE4 has a bit of tension, and a few boo scares.

RE5 has none at all. Also, there's nothing scary about being rushed by lots of enemies when you have plentiful ammo to deal with them handily.

RE5 suffered a lot once you moved from the African environments into the indoor, industrial environments.

Still, clamoring through shanty towns and maze-like temples, trying to keeps hordes of enemies at bay still raised my blood-pressure abit.

It definitely didn't have the sense of unease that RE4 had throughout, even in the down moments, though. I can see what they were going for, the same kind of tense undercurrent that you had in Black Hawk Down, but they didn't nail it.
 
RE4 had a sort of "FUCKING RUN, THERE'S HUNDREDS OF THEM" vibe to it.

RE5 was a game designed for Co-op, and while it was good game, gameplay-wise, that essentially ruined any scare factor it was aiming for.
 
Finished RE5 today in coop.
The final
Chris-punching-the-giant-boulder-into-the-lava
scene, was simply art in its purest form.

But anyway, the only brilliant horror part of RE5,
was the mines, where one had to hold the light to the other.
 
Nirolak said:
Well, they did say this in the other thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frw0Or9b_ZA


So presumably by their standards, things that aren't a full TPS would be more like a Survival Horror game.

I'm assuming that they feel they're horror thematically and gameplay wise though instead of like... actually scary.
they aren't saying RE4 and 5 are *survival* horror though. just horror, which i think they both clearly are.

horror != survival horror
horror != scary
 
Resident Evil 4 did a great job with tension at times in the slower paced moments of the game. The only part to really scare the shit out of me were those fucking regenerators:
Resident%20Evil%204%20-%20Iron%20Maiden.jpg
 
plagiarize said:
they aren't saying RE4 and 5 are *survival* horror though. just horror, which i think they both clearly are.

horror != survival horror
horror != scary

What defines horror, if not scary?

You have action, gunning down waves of enemies, huge monstrous bosses, explosives, and co-op.

Why is Gears of War not horror?
 
Biggest-Geek-Ever said:
I'm one of those heathens that thinks Resident Evil 4 is far scarier than any of the other RE games. I think a lot of the reason so many people look upon it as "not scary" now is because we've literally played the damn thing to death and know every single trick.
You'd be wrong. I think I only fully played through RE4 once. The only part it where became "scary" was the lab with the Regenerators and Iron Maidens. The rest of the game was a suspense filled action game. Resident Evil 5 was even less of a horror game. In fact it wasn't one at all. This would have been fine as well, had game not been shit. Resident Evil 4 on the other hand, although not a great horror game, was, and still is, a masterpiece.
 
I always got a Village of the Damned vibe from Resident Evil 4, which is most certainly a "different kind of horror." They gave you guns and context sensitive melee because you were facing enemies that were smarter than zombies.
 
Capcom, your opinions do not matter. The customer's opinions matter. The games were generally successful because they were fun action games, but many people who wanted horror games felt let down, especially with 5. You don't get to tell them how they feel. Deal with it.
 
NateDrake said:
RE5 was a good game. It was just a terrible RE game.

Yep.

First time I played it I thought it was crap. I went in wanting and expecting RE4 type horror.

Second playthrough I went in knowing it was a TPS/co-op game and had so much fun with it.
 
GuardianE said:
What defines horror, if not scary?

You have action, gunning down waves of enemies, huge monstrous bosses, explosives, and co-op.

Why is Gears of War not horror?
Zombie, ghosts, things like that is horror.Gears of Wars has monsters and aliens sure, but that's more scifi.
Dead Space with zombie aliens is horror.
RE5 is a horror game because of the guanados and all.

Horror=/=survival horror.
RE5 is an action game with a horror theme.
 
I can't remember the last time I found a horror movie scary, but that doesn't mean the genre has ceased to exist.

No arguing that RE5 had worse atmosphere and direction than 4, but it's not hard to understand what capcom means. They took a different direction, tried to evoke feelings of being hunted by angry mobs, wild animals and crazy-ass natives and it didn't quite work.

I don't even wanna get into whether something's a survival horror game or not because it seems like everybody's got their own damn definition.
Horror no, but RE5 was the master of tension in Co-Op on Professional.

Man, that Licker hallway in co-op when neither of us had the health or ammo to take them on...sneaking past them one by one. Then one dropped from the ceiling missing my friend by an inch and I pretty much just stopped breathing.
 
There's a huge difference between horror games and horror themed games.
 
GuardianE said:
What defines horror, if not scary?

You have action, gunning down waves of enemies, huge monstrous bosses, explosives, and co-op.

Why is Gears of War not horror?
gears of war definately contains horror elements. you've got the gore, you've got the dark foreboding environments. it's like Half Life 2 and Halo in that regard. whatever you'd call the entire game, each has levels or chapters that you would describe as horror.

whether or not something is scary is whether or not it succeeds at something. you can't really judge genre on that.

you can't say 'something is only a comedy if it's funny'. what you have to say is 'something is only a comedy if it contains jokes'. horror games contain things which attempt to scare or horrify.

action and horror aren't two mutually exclusive things either. there are lots of action packed horror movies. the action doesn't instantly make Predator into the equivalent of Commando.
 
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