One Avocadoan’s journey delving into the realm of survival horror.
Resident Evil Remake has been my favorite survival horror game almost from the very start of this project. Other contenders have come and gone, with Silent Hill 2 Remake coming closest, but none managed to topple it from its position. Until now, that is. It’s strange – I find REmake to be a nearly perfect masterpiece, while Resident Evil 7 suffers from a few major flaws. So why did I end up liking RE7 better? It’s time to dig into that and find out.
The story of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’s development naturally goes back to its predecessor, 2012’s infamous Resident Evil 6. With the critical and financial success that was achieved with the more action-oriented Resident Evil 4 (2005) and Resident Evil 5 (2009), as well as general shifts seen in the horror game market at the time, Capcom became increasingly convinced that horror was untenable and that the key to really making money was doubling down on action. They were particularly enamored with the idea of attracting Call of Duty players to the Resident Evil franchise. This led RE6 to ditch most of the horror elements that had made the series what it was and instead go all in on being an over-the-top action shooter. The result was a game bloated with Quick Time Events (QTEs), scripted events, and four entirely different campaigns that attempted to appeal to as many people as possible but ended up pleasing few.1 Despite ending up as one of the best-selling games in the franchise, Capcom expressed disappointment a few months after launch in the game’s failure to meet its lofty sales goals and inability to match the sales of RE5.2,3 To make matters worse, RE6 was likely much more expensive to produce than its predecessors; while the budget has never been disclosed, Capcom did boast prior to release that over 600 people worked on the game, an amount they claimed to be the largest in the franchise.4 It quickly became clear to Capcom that they had strayed too far from the things that had actually drawn players to Resident Evil in the first place and had suffered a bad reputational hit in the process.5
Between the poor reception to Resident Evil 6 and other perceived failures in the mid-2010s, like Street Fighter 5, Capcom knew things needed to change. They underwent a reorganization and built a new engine, the Reach for the Moon (RE) Engine, to handle their games moving forward. And, perhaps more importantly, they decided it was finally time to go back to Resident Evil’s roots and focus on survival horror once again. Making the next installment actually scary was a priority this time, and to that end it was decided to introduce something new to the franchise – first-person perspective. The first trailer for Resident Evil 7, which would also be the first game to utilize the RE Engine, released at E3 2016 and was an instant hit. Seven months later the game was launched to critical and commercial success,6 becoming one of the highest selling games in the series and managing to surpass RE6 in the process.7 To this day RE7 is considered to be the lynchpin to the revitalization of the franchise and is still often held up as one of the scariest Resident Evil games.8
Unlike previous Resident Evil games, which largely follow the same cast of main characters (Jill, Chris, Leon, Claire, etc.), Resident Evil 7 introduces us to a new protagonist in the form of Ethan Winters. Ethan’s wife Mia had gone missing three years earlier under unclear circumstances, but now he has suddenly received two conflicting messages purporting to be from her – an email asking him to come to an address in Dulvey County, Louisiana, and a video telling him to stay far away. Unsurprisingly Ethan decides to go to the provided address and finds a large and dilapidated estate nestled in the Louisiana bayou. Finding a bag of Mia’s belongings outside of the guest house, Ethan steps inside and finds articles indicating that the owners of the property, the Baker family, appear to have gone missing (as have twenty other people in the area over the past few years). A search of the guest house reveals that, fortunately, Mia is still alive. Unfortunately, so are the Bakers, and they would very much prefer that Ethan never leaves.
Perhaps the biggest factor as to why Resident Evil 7 works so well for me (and many others, as I’ve gathered) is the Baker family themselves, especially the three who serve as main antagonists (the parents, Jack and Marguerite, and the son, Lucas). There are two other members of the family who show up – Marguerite and Jack’s daughter Zoe, who is introduced over the phone as an ally of sorts, and a granny who spends most of her time sitting stationary in a wheelchair and has a tendency to pop up in the most unsettling of locations – but it is Jack, Marguerite, and Lucas who shine the most. From the very first time we meet the three of them together, an unsettling dinner sequence that is perhaps the most iconic moment of the game, we become rapidly acquainted with their disturbing and idiosyncratic personalities and the tone for the rest of the game is set. The Bakers also provide a window into a key component of the game’s development – namely, the heavy inspiration that was drawn from classic horror films for the game’s characters, locations, aesthetics, and set pieces. The most obvious case of such inspiration in the game’s opening hour has to be the aforementioned dinner scene itself, a sequence that is a direct homage to a similar scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (a film that I haven’t watched but am certainly aware of). Beyond that, though, each of the Baker antagonists appears to embody a distinct kind of classic horror trope or subgenre and I love how easily that allows the game to differentiate them and their sections.
First up is Jack Baker, who represents the slasher style of horror akin to Michael Myers from Halloween, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street. (Or even Jack Torrance from The Shining, for that matter, given that he was Jack’s namesake.) And just like any good slasher villain, Jack is difficult to shake and nearly impossible to put down for good. For much of the early part of the game he fulfills the role of stalker enemy, constantly hunting Ethan throughout the hallways of the Baker House and brandishing weapons like an axe, a rake, or even (in one particularly memorable moment) a chainsaw. This is an archetype that has existed in the Resident Evil franchise for quite a while with the likes of Nemesis, Mr. X, and Lisa Trevor, but Jack might just be my favorite example. Like Nemesis, he is frequently faster than the player, making him feel like a true threat and requiring the player to make use of the environment to evade him. At the same time he looks just like a normal guy, something that I actually find more unsettling than being chased by a hulking zombie Tyrant. He’s also just plain funny, which gives him a lot of personality and in a way heightens the disturbing atmosphere of his segments. He has a whole host of one liners he’ll shout in his thick Southern accent while searching for Ethan, ranging from “Yoo hoo!” to “I’m gonna squish you like a bug! I hope Marguerite didn’t hear that.” If you get him to smash the dining room table, he’ll briefly ponder how he’s going to fix it. He even makes a fun little Evil Dead reference, exclaiming “Groovy!” when activating the previously mentioned chainsaw. Jack is frequently discussed as being the best part of the game, and I can definitely see why.
Next is Marguerite Baker, who represents both body horror and insect horror (if that’s a real subgenre) in the vein of Carpenter’s or Cronenberg’s works (such as The Thing and The Fly). Unlike Jack she is completely serious; little to no humor or glee can be gleaned from her vicious ramblings. Neither does she actively hunt the player, instead patrolling a set path through her domain – the Old House – and only deviating when Ethan enters her field of view. There is so much that feels just wrong about Marguerite the more she is encountered. Her shouted recriminations come across like an angry mother doling out punishment to an unruly child but taken to twisted extremes. Her affinity for and control over the disgusting and unusually large bugs and insects that infest the Old House (including sending swarms of bees after Ethan whenever he is spotted) make her feel almost like a force of nature. And her bizarre reverence for an (at-the-time) unknown entity, even involving the building of an altar dedicated to ‘her’, gives Marguerite something of a fanatical edge. None of that even touches on her horrific bodily transformation over the course of her section. Between all of those elements and the darker lighting of the areas where she is located, I found Marguerite to be perhaps the scariest part of an already scary game. Which makes sense, as body horror is one of the horror subgenres that most gets under my skin. (And I’ve always hated bugs.)
Finally we have Lucas Baker, a puzzle-loving psychopath who delights in putting his victims through gruesome tests a la Jigsaw from the Saw franchise. Like Jack, Lucas appears to take pleasure in his monstrous actions. Unlike Jack, whose goal is the hunt itself and getting his hands dirty, Lucas is all about exerting control over others from a distance and proving himself to be more clever than everyone else. We rarely even see him in the flesh, instead hearing him over the phone or intercom as he goads and taunts his victims. Hiding behind booby traps, rigged escape rooms, and the falsely chummy front that he puts on, he seems to be aware of what he is doing more than Jack or Marguerite are and that makes him the most sadistic of the bunch. Of the three he’s definitely the easiest to hate.
Of course, every great horror game needs a great setting, and the Baker Estate is an all-timer. A sprawling ranch situated deep in the rural Louisiana bayou, the estate is made up of multiple buildings and swampy outdoor areas. The Main House is where the largest chunk of the game occurs and feels much like the game’s equivalent to the Spencer Mansion from RE1. I know that I’ve made a lot of comparisons to the Spencer Mansion in my previous columns, but this one is perhaps the most apt. (Not to mention that the mansion was a likely source of inspiration as the developers tried to bring the series back to its roots.) The Main House, like the Spencer Mansion, is an enormous and eccentrically designed manor complete with numerous puzzles (including one that requires switching a broken shotgun with a working one), hidden passageways, and doors marked with icons that require matching keys. I got much the same feeling exploring the Main House as I did in REmake. I believe you can even find a renovation invoice at one point that lists the architectural firm that built the Spencer Mansion. The Main House still manages to feel like its own thing, however. While the Spencer Mansion looks like a Victorian castle, the Main House is very much built in the Southern Gothic style. It also comes across as much more lived in than the Spencer Mansion. File boxes are stacked everywhere and everyday items (ashtrays, books, food, laundry, videotapes, football memorabilia, etc.) are strewn about on tables and counters. Toys and trophies litter the floor and shelves in a kid’s room while a game of billiards appears to have stopped mid-round in the recreation room. Even the aforementioned icons on some of the doors appear to have been haphazardly affixed with nails and rope. This juxtaposition – the creepy atmosphere, grand architecture, and surprisingly normal furnishings and decor – help to make the Main House one of my absolute favorite horror game locations.
Meanwhile, the straight-up scariest areas of the game have to be the Old House and the Greenhouse, the domains of Marguerite. The Old House was the original building on the property before the Main House was constructed, and after a bad storm it was left in a state of extreme disrepair. Both the Old House and the Greenhouse are in poor shape, with entire sections of the floor collapsed, damage evident in every room, and bugs infesting every cranny. On top of that it seems more dimly lit than the Main House, with certain rooms even being near pitch black. Combine all of this with Marguerite’s relative seriousness (versus Jack) and her entirely unhinged actions, and the Old House and Greenhouse are not places that you want to be for any longer than necessary.
There are multiple other, smaller areas that make an impact as well. The first 30 minutes or so of the game take place inside the Guest House, which feels almost like a more simplified version of the Main House in terms of visual design and puzzles. It’s not as memorable as some other parts of the game, but it does a good job of introducing the game’s atmosphere and mechanics. There is the Yard, which connects most of the main locations. The tall rustling weeds and shrubs, whistling wind, moonlit night sky, and contrasting glows from Zoe’s RV and the entrance to Lucas’s domain combine to create an incredibly eerie, kind of serene vista. And then there is Lucas’s Testing Area (aka the barn/stable), which isn’t as intricately or interestingly designed as the Main House or Old House but has its own aesthetic all the same through the copious use of plastic sheeting and plywood that matches his serial killer vibes.
The final two locations of the game are by far the most controversial. I typically try to avoid discussing late-game spoilers in these reviews if possible, so I will try to be as brief and as vague when talking about them as I can. The penultimate area tends to be criticized for having a dull visual design, throwing a wrench in the game’s pacing, and requiring the player to essentially complete the area twice. If I’m honest, none of these issues really bothered me all that much. Visually I found it to be the part of the game that is closest to a ‘typical’ Resident Evil location while the atmosphere and shift in the game’s flow made it quite creepy to me. I also found the required two playthroughs of the area to be sufficiently differentiated in terms of gameplay and vibe that I didn’t mind having to go through it twice. I can definitely see how this would be obnoxious during subsequent playthroughs of the game, however.
The final area is more of a letdown, largely being an action-oriented enemy gauntlet that feels at odds with the game’s design philosophy up to that point. It’s my least favorite part of the game, but it is relatively short and not really any worse than my least favorite areas of other Resident Evil games (such as the Island from RE4 or the sewers from RE2make). In fact, it really just seems to be typical of the Resident Evil franchise in general; almost every game has a much stronger first half than second half, with the second half usually ramping up the action in the process. While the final sections of RE7 are certainly a step down compared to the first half of the game (the final area more so than the penultimate one), I didn’t find them nearly as bad as people say and actually enjoyed them to an extent. But at the same time I can see why they have the poor reputation that they do among the fanbase, even if I don’t fully agree.
Regardless of the location, Resident Evil 7 absolutely excels in its environmental storytelling. The game doesn’t tell us until many hours in what exactly is going on with the Bakers, but we can clearly tell from their surroundings that they weren’t always this way. The Main House is the best example of this, with the aforementioned everyday objects littering each room, but all of the major areas of the estate have this to an extent. We see photos of the family looking like just an ordinary family. So many rooms are set up and furnished such that they feel like they’d been lived in and abandoned at some point in the recent past, now consigned to dust and the creeping black mold that’s invading everywhere. I think the RE Engine plays a significant part in this; there are some rough edges here and there due to this being its first usage (long hair in particular looks kind of odd), but the level of detail it allows without causing major performance issues is pretty stunning.
That environmental storytelling, combined with the Bakers themselves and a disturbing (and surprisingly tragic) plot, serves to make Resident Evil 7 one of the scariest games I’ve ever played. This shouldn’t necessarily have been a shock to me, given that much of the discourse surrounding the game for the past nine years has focused on how terrifying it is, but it still took me by surprise just how on edge I was while making my way through the Baker estate. Everything feels so unsettling, even once you’ve already cleared an area of enemies. The first-person perspective very much contributes, as it did in the Grace sections of Resident Evil Requiem, enhancing the claustrophobic nature of the narrow hallways and cluttered rooms. It’s impossible to discount the sound design when it comes to that as well. Expert use of creaks, thumps, and the rustling of leaves leave the player in a constant state of unease, unable to tell if they are truly alone or if a monster (or a Baker) might be just around the corner.
Speaking of monsters, the enemy variety is one of the areas where I think the game falls a bit flat. Outside of the bugs in the Old House, all normal enemies are some variation of Molded. The Molded are tall humanoid entities that appear to be made up mostly of black mold and tend to pop out of patches of such mold on the ground or walls. Molded tend to be fast and vicious and can be overwhelming if in large groups, which adds some good challenge. They were especially put to good use in the basement of the Main House, perhaps the creepiest area of the game outside of the Old House and Greenhouse. The problem is that, unlike the zombies of previous games, every Molded of a particular type looks identical. And while the game does introduce a few new variants as it goes along, they still end up all looking quite similar in the end. As such, they just end up becoming boring after a while. I definitely think that the game could have used a lot more variety in the appearances and behavior of its non-Baker enemies.
Where the enemies fall flat, the boss fights stand out in the best way. I’ve noted before that the Resident Evil series (and a good chunk of the survival horror genre) tends to struggle when it comes to providing engaging boss battles. Luckily, Resident Evil 7 doesn’t suffer from this problem. Outside of the final boss (which is incredibly underwhelming), RE7 has to have my favorite line-up of bosses in the series. A brawl in the garage that involves either driving or dodging a car, a chainsaw duel, a horrifying game of hide-and-seek – there is a surprising amount of variety on display. Each battle is a challenge and filled with constant tension; you can’t let your guard down for a second or you will meet a terrible fate. This feeling really meshes well with the oppressive and terrifying atmosphere of the rest of the game.
As with the enemies, Ethan himself is also something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I do like that he is one of the only Resident Evil protagonists who is not part of a military or law enforcement organization. I also do like how some of his one-liners portray him as just being completely over everything that’s happening. (My favorite example is when he sees the silhouette of Marguerite go scuttling off down a tunnel on all fours and just says, “Well, that’s special.”) The problem is that he is otherwise just kind of…bland. It feels like we never get to learn much about him, and the fact that we never get to see his face due to the first-person perspective further makes it difficult to connect with him as a character. While this lack of characterization can help with immersion, it also makes his relationship with Mia – the driving force of his journey – significantly less impactful.
There are a couple of other problems I had with Resident Evil 7. Shortly after the halfway point of the game, Ethan and the player are offered a choice. It’s treated as this big moment, but the events that transpire that lead to this decision feel so incredibly telegraphed for the purpose of creating drama that it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth (and has been criticized by many other fans as well). Which doesn’t even mention that the choice that Ethan is being offered just feels…dumb. It wasn’t game-breaking for me, but I didn’t like it. Less of an issue but still something I wasn’t a big fan of is the blood splatters that are overlayed on the screen as Ethan takes damage. It’s cool in concept, but in practice it just ends up obscuring too much of what is going on. (I learned later that this can be removed in the settings, but only after I’d already completed the game.)
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a flawed game, there’s no questioning that. The second half does drop in quality (although how much it does so is up to personal tastes), enemy variety is pretty severely lacking, the final boss fight is underwhelming, and there is one particular story beat that feels unnecessary in a way that negatively impacts the game. And yet, the things that worked for me really worked for me in a way that few other horror games have managed so far. The Bakers are fantastic antagonists that perfectly embody classic horror film tropes. The Baker estate is, like the Spencer Mansion before it, the platonic ideal of a survival horror puzzle-box-style setting with excellent attention to environmental detail. The boss fights (except for the final one) are creative, varied, and challenging. The game is also just straight-up terrifying, the scariest Resident Evil game I have yet played by a good margin. Resident Evil 7 has its weakness, sure, but its strengths are more than enough to overcome them in my eyes and to rocket it up to the top of my survival horror ranking. How long it will be able to fend off its challengers is up in the air, but for now Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is my new favorite Resident Evil game and my new favorite survival horror game.
Survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (in no particular order) – Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil (OG), Resident Evil 2 (OG), Resident Evil 4 Remake, Resident Evil Revelations, Resident Evil Revelations 2, Resident Evil: Village, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Amnesia: Rebirth, Amnesia: The Bunker, Tormented Souls, Alien Isolation, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Alisa, Dead Space 2, Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Alone in the Dark (2024), Curse: Eye of Isis, Dino Crisis, Dino Crisis 2, Darkwood, ObsCure, Cold Fear, Lempo, Stasis, Stasis Bone Totem, System Shock 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Look Outside, Fear the Spotlight, Heartworm, Little Goody Two-Shoes, SOMA, Empty Shell, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Clock Tower: Rewind, White Day: A Labyrinth Called School, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Sorry We’re Closed, Fragile Reflection, Bioshock 1, Bioshock 2, You Will Die Here Tonight, My Friendly Neighborhood, Conscript, The Callisto Protocol, Penumbra: Overture, Penumbra: Black Plague, Penumbra: Requiem, Lamentum, Outlast, Outlast 2, Carnival Massacre, Late Homework, Routine, Alan Wake 2, White Night, Onimusha, Onimusha 2, Heavy Metal Death Can, Remothered: Tormented Fathers, Remothered: Broken Porcelain
My Current Survival Horror Ranking:
- Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (9.5/10)
- Resident Evil Remake (9.5/10)
- Silent Hill 2 Remake (9.5/10)
- Signalis (9/10)
- Dead Space (2008) (9/10)
- Resident Evil 2 Remake (9/10)*
- Resident Evil Requiem (9/10)
- Cronos: The New Dawn (9/10)
- Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (8.5/10)
- Crow Country (8.5/10)
- Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake (8.5/10)
- Subversive Memories (8/10)
- Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (8/10)
- Silent Hill 4: The Room (8/10)
- Silent Hill f (8/10)
- Resident Evil 3 Remake (7.5/10)
- Resident Evil 4 (7/10)
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent (7/10)
- Alone in the Dark (1992) (7/10)
* Moved up two spots
Up Next: Fear the Spotlight
Header image courtesy of GameRant.