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1. Put horror first, but do it right.

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2. Return the focus to survival horror-style puzzles.

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“ I want to see puzzles at the core of Resident Evil again.

3. Let us explore a memorable location.

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4. Give us firepower, but not too much.

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Capcom says the Beginning Hour demo is a “tone piece” designed to match the final “feel” of Resident Evil 7, and not an actual gameplay preview. The recent Lantern demo , available exclusively at conventions and private press appointments, is a section straight out of the game, but rather than give us a look at the “core” gameplay of Resident Evil 7, it pulls from one of the found footage sequences that Capcom has confirmed will be a recurring element.None of these things, save maybe a brief glimpse of gunplay in the most recent Texas Chainsaw-inspired trailer, have told us much about how Resident Evil 7 is actually going to play. As a long-time Resident Evil fan with high hopes for the franchise’s revival, I have mixed feelings about what we’ve seen so far.Below are seven things Resident Evil 7 needs to do to win me over and return the franchise to survival horror greatness.Resident Evil has always had jump scares, from its infamous window-bursting dogs to its shadiest interrogation rooms. But the Resident Evil brand of slow-burning tension and quiet survival horror — punctuated by these memorable moments of climactic terror — doesn’t really align with the run-and-hide panic of a game like Outlast, which the most recent Lantern demo noticeably pulls from. I want Resident Evil to be scary again, but not in the way we’ve been shown so far.Horror in Resident Evil is that mounting panic when you realize you didn’t conserve enough ammo to deal with an unexpected encounter — it’s the regret, anxiety, and quick-thinking demanded when you find yourself face-to-face with a boss after ditching your only green herb so you could have room in your inventory for a new key. It’s a horde of zombies suddenly breaking through the windows of a room you’ve passed through without incident dozens of times before now. It’s your safety net being broken, coupled with a growing distrust of your environment and its capacity for unexpected change. (Which is part of why the fixed-cameras of its early installments worked so well.)Resident Evil isn’t cowering defenseless in a corner from an angry hillbilly, and it definitely isn’t ghosts, as seen in the Beginning Hour.Give me horror in Resident Evil again, but do it the Resident Evil way.The demand for a more puzzle-heavy horror game is popular among fans of the early Resident Evil titles, but a lot of people seem to groan at the thought of piecing together odd items, extracting keys from emblems, and constantly swapping out ammo and herbs for important puzzle pieces — but I love it.I want Resident Evil 7 to return to the series’ statue-pushing, crest-embedding, gem-collecting, key-hunting roots. The teasers so far seem to indicate that it will: the Beginning Hour was full of adventure game-style problem solving and the Lantern demo contains a brief segment where you hold a strangely-shaped statuette up to a light, rotating it to cast a shadow in the shape of a spider over a painting in order to open a passage in the wall. At the end of the Lantern demo, you can even see a discarded crank beneath the Baker’s home — what feels like a deliberate nod to a classic Resident Evil puzzle.I wouldn’t mind seeing the obstacles adjusted to accommodate a new generation of players who might not see the appeal in early survival horror / adventure game-style puzzles — maybe a larger inventory for players with limited patience, or more of an internal logic to the objects you’re collecting — but I do want to see puzzles at the core of Resident Evil 7.The Spencer Estate is one of the most memorable and masterfully-designed spaces in video game history. Some games can take you on a journey across a vast open-world that took ten years to create, filled to the brim with things to do and see, and yet it’s this one, dimly-lit mansion in the middle of the forest that I remember most.Maybe Resident Evil 7 doesn’t need to give us a setting as iconic and near-perfect as The Spencer Estate — I don’t know if it’s possible to top. But Capcom does need to create something distinct and finely-tuned for the kind of puzzle-solving and smart backtracking that Resident Evil is famous for. Part of what made that sinister old mansion in Resident Evil so distinct was the many layers of circumstances it built up over the course of Chris and Jill’s time there. It made it possible (and required you) to revisit old locations with interesting new stakes in mind, find new shortcuts and treat old ones with caution, and uncover new secrets in the places you’ve passed by again and again and again.If Resident Evil 7’s singular location can capture half the magic of the Spencer Estate, I’ll be happy.Resident Evil 4 is a fun game, but it’s also the game that doomed the franchise. The switch from slow, third-person survival horror with fixed camera angles to an over-the-shoulder, third-person action game reintroduced the series to a new audience who came to expect the larger arsenals and quick-time events that more recent installments in the franchise are known for.The switch to first-person in Resident Evil 7 is meant as a way to return the series to its horror roots, according to the game’s director Koshi Nakanishi . While the change could end up working for it, it would be a mistake for this perspective shift, combined with zombie-shooting gameplay, to turn the franchise into a horror-flavored first-person shooter. Early Resident Evil games had bursts of action and boss fights, but their tank controls, claustrophobic environments, limited ammo, and other factors made sure you still felt helpless even as you were laying incendiary grenade rounds into genetically-modified bioweapons.I want Resident Evil 7 to embrace combat, as long as it doesn’t become an action-packed FPS where mowing down enemies is a quick and easy option rather than a desperate effort to escape danger.