8 Things We’d Like to See in Resident Evil 8

One of the reasons Resident Evil 7 succeeded was that there was no political scheming going on behind the scenes. We’d like to see Resident Evil 8 avoid getting mired in conspiracy by giving us an all new villain, and not Albert Wesker’s babysitter’s cousin’s pet-groomer’s aunt.

We’d love to see the first-person perspective from Resident Evil 7 return, a perspective which ensured the horror was always in your face. It seems unlikely that Capcom would just throw out the engine they used for Resident Evil 7 and the upcoming Resident Evil 2 remake, so we’re guessing we’ll get our wish.

We’ve had Resident Evil games that took place on and in the water, but we’d love to see a Resident Evil game that took place in an oceanside town. Perhaps inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, we’d get to deal with horrors that had spent way too long in the ocean to be even remotely humanoid.

Horror doesn’t have to mean dealing with monsters every minute of the day. Horror can be found in the mundane which is why we’d like to see a Resident Evil game where you spent at least part of your time slowly piecing together the nightmare. Imagine picking over a crime-scene and, the further you probe, discovering that something is very wrong indeed; rather than wandering into hell in the first ten minutes of a game.

One of Resident Evil 2’s most engaging features was that while you played as two different characters, each character’s storyline took time at the same place. Events would be set in motion by one character, with their results felt by the other. Without sporting Resident Evil 6’s bloated cast, we want to see Resident Evil 8 give us another duo so we can experience the game through different eyes.

If we don’t get our Resident Evil: Innsmouth Edition, we’d at like to see locations that, like Resident Evil 7’s, are uncomfortably grounded. Resident Evil 7’s bayou farmhouse (and the associated area) was far more unsettling than any underground lab or isolated research station.

Shuffling objects around your inventory has been the hallmark of the Resident Evil series for some time but it’s just not fun. Give us a weight limit, sure, but don’t make us play inventory Tetris, moving and rotating objects every which way just so we can fit them in our oddly rectangular inventory. None of that in Resident Evil 8, thanks.

But above all, we want to be afraid. We want to face foes so unsettling that our first instinct is to turn tail and run. We want things that lurk in the shadows; we want to be outnumbered and end up cowering in the inventory room, afraid to leave. Resident Evil 7 accomplished this, here’s hoping Resident Evil 8 can follow suit.