Capcom Almost Made Resident Evil 7 A Multiplayer Game

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was a monumental success for Capcom when it was released back in January 2017, reviving the iconic survival horror franchise and evolving the formula in ways not seen since 2005's Resident Evil 4. By transitioning to a first-person perspective and leaning into the series' horror origins, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard moved the franchise away from the cinematic, globe-trotting, explosive multi-narrative mayhem of Resident Evil 6. Instead, Resident Evil 7 took inspiration from films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Blair Witch Project, and The Evil Dead, and took the series in a fresh, disgusting, and horrifying new direction.

 

Creating a video game is a long (and often arduous) process and, after the less-than-steller response to Resident Evil 6, Capcom knew that the Resident Evil franchise needed to go in a new direction. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village executive producer Jun Takeuchi recently sat down with the first Resident Evil game's director Shinji Mikami to celebrate the franchise's 25th anniversary. Takeuchi revealed that Capcom's marketing department was pressing for a multiplayer Resident Evil game. According to Takeuchi, they asked the development team to include online multiplayer, downloadable content, and microtransactions, and to make Resident Evil 7 an "ongoing service game." 

With Capcom and their marketing team clearly inspired by the success of multiplayer games like Overwatch and Call of Duty and preempting the wild popularity of live service titles such as Fortnite and Destiny 2, it took the intervention of Capcom founder Kenzo Tsujimoto to get Resident Evil 7 back on track. Tsujimoto assigned Takeuchi to the project, who subsequently brought Koshi Nakanishi on as Game Director. Together, Takeuchi and Nakanishi "decided that Resident Evil's 'roots' are in horror" and, while Resident Evil has received multiplayer outings in the past (for example Resident Evil 5's co-op campaign and Resident Evil 3' Remake's Resistance mode), they "didn't have any good ideas". With a multiplayer Resident Evil 7 off the table, Takeuchi and Nakanishi crossed the marketing departments' suggestions off one by one until they were left with "marketing's worse nightmare". Resident Evil 7: Biohazard would be "a regular old single-player horror game", and fans loved it. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard sits at a very positive 86/100 Critic Score and 8.1/10 Audience Score on review aggregate site Metacritic, and has sold over 11 million copies as of June 2022.

 

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is available on PC, Xbox 360, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Google Stadia, and Amazon Luna.

 

Alex David Johnson (@AlexJohnWriting)
News Editor, NoobFeed