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Resident Evil is one of my favorite game franchises of all time, but one thing I don't like about recent entries is the idea of an enemy that stalks you through big chunks of the game, i.e. Jack Baker from Resident Evil 7, Mr. X from Resident Evil 2, and Nemesis from Resident Evil 3.
And yes, I'll freely admit that the reason I don't vibe with those folks is because I'm a little chicken shit scaredy cat with anxiety. Knowing that an invincible monster could burst through the wall and strangle me at any moment is simply too much sustained stress for my feeble constitution.
I've been nervously excited about how much Capcom has been hyping up Resident Evil Requiem's scare factor. Again, I love these games to death, but there are moments - particularly in 2 and 7 - that begin to test the limits of my tolerance. That's why I was relieved to hear producer Masato Kumazawa tell WellPlayed that the whole stalking element has been toned down relative to recent games in the series.
"I understand how there are a lot of opinions surrounding the stalker, but we are giving a survival horror experience," said Kumazawa. "We did learn from the past on how to balance it. We're trying not to make it a main part. It's like a small part of the game."
To be clear, I don't get the impression that Capcom is nerfing the stalker enemy's screentime to make Resident Evil Requiem less scary. After all, it's being helmed by Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi, who has said the series "should scare the hell out of you." And further to the point, Kumazawa added that the focus is "on trying to scare the player in many different ways.
"Providing that players can be involved in many different kinds of situations, we're just trying to cover a whole lot of scenarios to make sure the players can get scared and experience the horror."
In case you are worried Requiem won't be scary enough, our hands-on impressions from the summer should relieve that concern:
"There's a pervasive feeling of claustrophobia in Requiem that feels most comparable to the Baker house in Resident Evil 7, especially in first-person," wrote GR's Jasmine Gould-Wilson.
"Stuck in a tiny corner of a care facility, this is certainly no Raccoon City Police Department with all its winding passages, staircases, shortcuts, and safe rooms, and the creature is not simply stomping about like Mr X. The smallest creak and shuffle overhead stops me dead in my tracks as I start checking the ceiling obsessively for telltale hidey-holes."
