Contrary to what Capcom has shown us of Resident Evil 7 so far, the first-person survival horror sequel will, in actual fact, feature gun combat as one of its mechanics, but it won’t be the main gameplay focus, producer Masachika Kawata has told GameSpot. Although the playable demo dispatched during E3 (PlayStation 4 only) ahead of a full release next year is a standalone experience (and features no combat whatsoever), there will be such elements included.
In the final game, of course, there will be many types of game mechanics including combat, perhaps some gun-play. One of the things I would like to emphasize about this is that it’s not always about going in guns blazing. It might actually be to your advantage to try to run away from combat at certain times, or use items against your enemies in a different way. This is to say that trying to survive the horror, the survival horror, is a key element to Resident Evil 7.
Kawata’s comments will likely be music to the ears of many fans who have fond memories of the earlier games in the series (which placed great emphasis on elements like ammo conservation and avoiding unnecessary combat), but is this re-imagined follow-up to Resident Evil 6Â borrowing a little too heavily from Konami’s Silent Hills teaser P.T.? Kawata says no, and reveals that Resident Evil 7 actually entered development prior to the aforementioned title.
I can say that there are no staff on the team now or before that worked on PT at Capcom. However, we were actually creating Resident Evil 7 before PT was announced, so when they announced it, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, they’re doing first-person too?’ However, now that we’ve come this far, we can see that the content of this game is completely different from what the content or the direction that [PT] was moving in. So we just wanted to make a point of that: that they’re both in the horror genre, but what you’ll actually see at the end of the day is completely new.
Resident Evil 7 launches January 24 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The PlayStation 4 version, however, will support the use of PlayStation VR, which launches this October.
