I recently got a chance to talk to Resident Evil 7 producer Jun Takeuchi about a few interesting things - namely the new Molded enemy, and whether there are any sinister manipulative forces behind the scenes waiting to be revealed.
For a change, it sounds like there might not actually be any big arch villain waiting to burst from the wings with a cape over their face. "Maybe in previous games, you’d beat a few creatures and then mid-bosses or later bosses are the 'faces' behind it all, or the people who are pulling the strings," Takeuchi explains.
This time, however, things are a lot more simple. "We wanted it to be pretty clear from the start that this is what’s happening - you’ve come here for this reason, the situation is not what you thought it was but your goal is very immediately clear that you need to get away from these crazy people in this house." That goal of escape, then, "sets up the context for the rest of the game, rather than you discover your goal through exploration."
Establishing that goal is part of the reason Capcom, "flipped the script a little bit on the order of which you meet the humans, versus the creatures." That doesn't mean the monsters are less important though. And, while there might not be a puppet master pulling their strings, the Molded seem to be hiding a crucial secret we've yet to discover.
"With the previous titles’ viruses, it’s always been a case of people get infected by some sort of biohazard accident or something like that," says Takeuchi. "But with Resident Evil 7’s story you can infer from the name, the Molded, [that] there’s an intention there. There’s a human intention to mould something or to create something." While he won't hint who could have done that, he does add, "that’s part of the back story of these creatures, that I think will set them a little bit apart from maybe what you’re expecting from a typical Resident Evil 'infection' based enemy."
Resident Evil 7 will be out on January 24th and we'll get all our answers then. In the meantime you can read more on the four odd hours I've played of Resi 7, or you can finally find out how to solve that finger puzzle in the demo.
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