lol at the gap in quality between Sir Ilpalazzo and Gator86 posts. One gives an insightful explanation for their statements, the other repeats "bad game is bad".
Ultimately, there is no war. Play the games that interest you, nevermind the series or expectation for that series. Don't be a sore loser who thinks he owns the brand names associated with your favorite experiences (i.e., don't be owned by the brand you think you own). If RE7 is bad, it'll only be because I think it's bad on a general scale; I won't think it's better or worse because of the name on the box or my preconceived notions of what the real owners of that brand name ought do with it. That may be a disappointment given my long history with the series, but it's not a big deal at all - nothing was taken from me. This applies to people who feel grudges over RE6 or RE5 or Metroid or Super Mario or whatever. That's a loser's mentality. Get over it, do things you like.
I don't think there was ever that much of a relevant clash between action and horror within the series in the first place. You can make an argument for RE1 as a pure horror game, but it would be weak (for reasons already said in this thread) and it would get weaker and weaker as early as RE2 and RE3 and so on. The action vs. horror dichotomy has its basis on iffy ground by referring to the past, which becomes obvious when people try to say the RE7 demo is like RE1.
If you hold "fear" as the all important metric, jump-scary first-person walking simulators, due to the sheer helplessness involved, are going to rate higher than Japanese 3D action games, before or after camera angles (universally) switched to being behind your shoulders. This is the direction RE7 is (apparently misleadingly) implied to be going in and that disappoints me because I think that's boring. Being scared is such a shallow, short-term appeal to me, which is best sprinkled into something deeper, like one's long-term engagement with an increasingly complex system that gains urgency with tactical/difficult encounters. The horror theme comes down to the mood you set for particular scenes (as such, many not-"horror games" have moments or levels that attempt to scare you - this at least was true for even the later "action" RE games). The question is if having that mood 95% of the time is worth throwing out many avenues of engaging interactivity (like combat, or relevant combat). For me, most definitely not.
.
When Capcom goes back to making third person/fixed camera Biohazards that aren't shoot-bang-Evils, the war can end.
People still talk about retired series that can't sell copies like Megaman, so I'm sure there will still be arguments even if they did do this.