Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Managing Ethan Winters, the player explores the mansion, solves various puzzles, searches the caches and occasionally fights against monsters and bosses. Unlike the previous parts of the main series of the game, Resident Evil 7 is a first-person game ^[4] . Unlike the previous parts, which were action movies with a lot of action and shooting, the game is considered by the developers as a pure survival horror in more chamber and claustrophobic conditions. Unlike previous games, the main character of Resident Evil 7 is an ordinary person, and not like a James Bond superhero-mercenary ^[5] . Despite the more chamber style, the game still has a place for action, but in the style of the classic games of the series - the hero has a small amount of weapons with extremely small ammunition, so the player has to choose - fight monsters to the very end or run away and hide from them. The new part is full of extremely cruel scenes. The game features classic elements of the Resident Evil series, such as the need to solve puzzles of varying difficulty, allocate scarce resources and use medicinal herbs ^{[5] [6]} . Such a gameplay element of previous games as QTE is not present in Resident Evil 7 ^[7] . The gameplay in virtual reality mode through the PlayStation VR helmet is identical to the gameplay of the game without a helmet; the game can be completely completed in this mode ^[8] .

The inventory in the game is displayed on the right side and acts similarly to how it is done in the previous parts of the Resident Evil game series with a very limited space in which the player can contain objects. From the very beginning of the game, Ethan had 12 cells in his inventory and Mia had 16. As in the previous parts of the game, the hero’s inventory is limited, as a result of which part of the items received must be stored in special boxes in the storage room; the number of empty seats in the inventory can be increased by finding backpacks. As in the fifth part, in the seventh part the use of inventory during the game is more realistic, since opening it does not stop the gameplay. You need to try to make the choice of items faster, since a player with an open inventory remains helpless in front of enemies.

Beginning Hour

The demo version of the game is an independent storyline, although it partially repeats the main game at early levels. The protagonist is an unknown captive who comes to his senses in the living room of an abandoned Baker family home.

Wandering around the house, the hero finds a video dated June 30, 2017. It shows how cameraman Clancy Javis, along with the producer and owner of a TV show about paranormal phenomena, penetrates the house. The producer says that the house once belonged to the Baker family, which mysteriously disappeared. Next, the producer himself disappears, and the remaining heroes go in search of him. Having found a secret passage, the operator and his partner fall into the basement of the house, where they find the producer suspended from a broken pipe. The last seconds of the recording - someone approaches Clancy and grabs him, the player hears only the cries of the operator.

Having finished viewing the cassette, the hero finds the very passage in which he picks up the key and fuse. The ending of the game varies slightly from this.

Ending

• If the player comes out using the key, then Jack Baker, the father of the family, will grab him at the door and, with the words “Welcome to the family, son” , will knock out the hero.
• If the player uses a fuse to get to the attic, he will be able to find the phone and photo of the Umbrella Corporation helicopter there. On the phone, the player will also hear various phrases, but the result will be the same - Jack will appear behind and also deliver the final blow to the hero. The final brings us back to Clancy's record. The freed show host is trying to free Clancy, but an unknown woman kills him. The last frames of the demo are the disfigured face of a woman close up. The record ends.
• If the hero, in search of the key, goes down to the basement, then Jack will back the door, leaving the hero alone with the mold. If the hero is injured (just one blow from the monster is enough), then, before reaching the attic or exit door, he will be paralyzed by a fungus that has grown in his body. Jack reappears and, grinning at the unhappy, takes with him.
• If the hero manages to get out of the basement without a single wound and get to the window in the attic, he will be able to leave the estate and get to civilization. The story breaks off in a newspaper issue, where an anonymous source (protagonist) talks about a “crazy family in an abandoned house”, but, due to his unstable mental state, no one believes him.

According to the developers, the ending with the successful salvation of the protagonist is considered canonical, since Ethan learns from his testimony where to look for his wife.

Biohazard (main game)

The game takes place 4 years after the events of the sixth part .

Ethan Winters receives a message from his wife, Mia, who went missing three years ago. A search leads him to an abandoned house, somewhere in the town of Dalvi, Louisiana . Exploring the house, Ethan discovers that he once belonged to the Baker family, who also disappeared under mysterious circumstances. After a while, he finds Mia locked in the basement. An attempt to get out of the house turns out to be a battle for life for the hero, since a certain force infuses his spouse, turning the girl into a monster. Along the way, Ethan receives a call from a certain Zoe, who tells him to leave the ill-fated house as soon as possible. The hero’s plans are destroyed by the appearance of Jack Baker, who by force takes him and Mia to the main house. There Ethan sees the rest of the family: Jack's wife, Margaret, their son Lucas, and an elderly woman. Circumstances allow the hero to get out of the shackles, but Jack is still on his way, chasing the hero everywhere and invulnerable to attacks: no matter how Ethan tries to kill him, the father of the family constantly comes back to life, even after he shot himself. At the cost of incredible efforts, Ethan manages to defeat Jack and get out of the main house.

Zoe gets in touch with Ethan again. It turns out that she is the daughter of Jack and Margarita. The family was infected with a certain “infection” that can be overcome with the help of serum. Searches for ingredients and fall on Ethan's shoulders. To do this, he needs to explore the old house in which Margarita is located. Having overcome her, Ethan finds the necessary components, but suddenly he begins to visit visions of a certain girl. The hero calls Zoe, but at the other end, Lucas answers, who kidnapped Zoe and Mia. He lures Ethan into a part of the house pre-equipped with traps, arranging various trials for him. However, the hero manages to get out and put Lucas to flight. He finds the girls in a house by the river, where Zoe is preparing two doses of serum. Suddenly they are attacked by a strongly mutated Jack, forcing Ethan to use one of the syringes to beat the older Baker by injecting him with a syringe with serum. After that, he faces a choice: to whom to give the last syringe. Depending on the choice of the player, both subsequent events and the ending of the game change.

If a player chooses Zoe, Mia remains heartbroken. Zoe tells Ethan that the infection occurred after Jack brought the little girl, Evelyn, whom he had found near the wrecked ship, into the house. Then the heroes are attacked by an unknown creature that kills Zoe and throws Ethan out of the boat. If the player chose Mia, then Zoe will remain at the house. Ethan and Mia swim to the wrecked ship, where they are attacked by a creature that pulls Ethan.

Regardless of the choice, then the player takes control of Miyu. Looking for a spouse, the girl sees the same little girl who calls her mom. Subsequently, Mia discovers a recording from which she learns about the causes of the whole nightmare and restores her memory. It turned out that Evelina is a living biological weapon. Mia was an employee of an unknown corporation, which was supposed to transport Evelyn for further experiments. To do this, she and her partner, Alan, had to play the role of the family in order to restrain the girl. But the situation is getting out of control, Evelina kills everyone on the ship and infects Miya with the virus. The girl finds Ethan and frees him. If the player chose Mia, then she gives Ethan the genetic material of Evelina and pushes him out of the room so as not to harm her husband. If the player chose Zoe, then Evelina completely takes possession of Mia, forcing Ethan to kill her.

Once out of the ship, Ethan sneaks into the abandoned mines, where the old laboratory is located. In it, he finds information about Evelyn, which has the ability to control the virus, which allows her to control the infected. Obsessed with the desire to have a family, the girl infected Mia and the Backers. The hero also learns that Lucas has been working with an organization that has given him serum all this time to avoid Evelina’s control. Using laboratory equipment, Ethan synthesizes a toxin that can kill her. The tunnels lead him back to the house, where the hero is subjected to a powerful psychic attack from the girl’s side, but still manages to inject her with the toxin. When the hallucinations disappear, Ethan sees in front of him an elderly woman, who was Evelina, as her body ages almost twenty times faster than usual. Evelina mutates into a huge creature and tries to kill Ethan. Arriving at the scene, a group of soldiers helps the hero cope with the monster. Their leader, Chris Redfield , takes Ethan by helicopter.

Ending

The ending depends on who Ethan administers the serum:

• If a player saves Mia, then she will also be evacuated.
• If a player saves Zoe, then one will be evacuated.

In the finale, a rescue team helicopter is shown showing the Umbrella Corps logo.

Not a Hero

Addition events take place several hours after the main game finals. Evelina is destroyed, and Ethan is evacuated, but several agents sent to arrest Lucas Baker are missing in mines under the quarantine zone. Chris Redfield sets off in search of them.

While Chris is looking for agents whom Lucas captured, there is an opportunity to read secret files from his inventory, from which it turns out that after the events of the previous game, the Umbrella organization revised its policy, and now, having recovered as a private armed agency, is engaged in the prevention of biological attacks and search their activists, and Chris works for Umbrella only as part of her collaboration with A.P. B.T. (Alliance Against Bio-Terrorism).

Exploring the dungeons, Chris stumbles upon many of Lucas’s traps that he created with the help of auto-tours, stretch bombs and aviaries with “white molds” (due to quick regeneration, they are invulnerable to conventional weapons). Chris finds the first missing agent, but he dies - Lucas undermines his collar with a bomb. Taking advantage of Chris’s shell shock from the explosion, Lucas sticks a similar bomb to Chris’s arm and threatens to detonate it if Redfield does not back down. Lucas escapes, and Chris finds the key to the cell, which contains the second agent. Chris tries to free him, but this turns out to be another Lucas trap: a mechanical saw decapitates the captive.

Replenishing his equipment with an improved gas mask and night vision device, Chris enters the most trapped section of the mines, where the last prisoner - Marquez - is kept. Redfield manages to neutralize the trap and get Marquez out of it, but he still dies - Lucas decapitates it with a collar bomb. Chris threatens him with reprisal instead of arrest, and Lucas, in revenge, launches a countdown on his bomb. Chris, in search of a way to remove the device from his hand, finds a canister of liquid nitrogen in the dungeon that freezes the bomb and drops it from his hand.

Having found the necessary key, Chris opens the passage in the form of a drilling rig, inside of which Lucas sets all his remaining "pets" on him. Chris struggles to fend off them, and annoyed Lucas starts the process of self-destruction of the machine. Chris hardly manages to get out of there and enter the laboratory wing, where Lucas is hiding. Taking advantage of the fact that Becker Jr. found Redfield dead, Chris secretly gets to him and is taken aback. Lucas escapes to the server lab and begins transmitting data to Compound (an anonymous organization he spied on Mia and Evelina at). Chris catches up with Lucas and mortally wounds him with a shot in the head. Lucas does not die, but the regeneration process gets out of control, and he, like his parents, mutates greatly. Chris enters the battle with Lucas and kills him, after which he disrupts the data transfer.

In the end, Chris rises to the Beckers estate with a report on the operation, but the squad coordinator reports that there is one more task left for him ...

End of Zoe

Add-on events continue the plot of the game, starting from Ethan's choice, where he gives Mie’s serum and swims away with her, promising Zoe that she will find a way to help her. However, Zoe is disappointed in Ethan and refuses to help. Wanting to at least somehow escape from Evelina and her monsters, Zoe tries to leave the area, but the fungus in her body calcifies and sprouts, paralyzing her body.

A couple of weeks later, Umbrella agents find her and identify her, but they are knocked out by Joe, Jack Baker's elder brother and the only uninfected family member. Joe with horror recognizes his niece in the infected girl and takes her to her house, as well as one of the agents. Joe interrogates the prisoner about what is happening with the girl and why the local fauna mutates (Joe had previously encountered molds and mutated crocodiles). The agent explains that everything here is infected with biological weapons, which is why the whole area is in strict quarantine. He also confesses that they already have a cure for this, and one of the doses is at his partner, whom Joe also cut down and locked in the barn. Joe goes to the barn and finds the second agent already killed by the molds, but finds in him an ampoule with serum. At home, he administers Zoe’s medicine, but the girl is still in a coma, and the mutation only partially recedes. The agent explains that the dose that Joe administered to her is too small and she needs more. An unknown monster that kills a soldier and burns Joe’s house prevents him from negotiating. The owner of the house manages to escape on a boat, taking Zoe with him.

Joe approaches the fishing dock, where Ethan fought the mutated Jack and left Zoe. Exploring the Umbrella Field Camp, Joe stumbles upon the same unknown monster that drives him onto a sunken ferry. Joe overcomes him and finds another ampoule with serum, but a waking monster almost kills him. Joe hurries to Zoe, but does not have time to give her an injection - the monster abducts her. Joe pursues them to an abandoned chapel, where again forced to fight with him. Tearing off an impromptu mask from a monster, Joe recognizes his brother in him, but he still knocks down Joe and, locking him in a coffin, throws him into the river.

Joe manages to get ashore, from where he gets along the path to the Baker estate, where his brother has already managed to cut out half of the operatives in the camp. There, Joe finds himself a new weapon - AMG -78 (Power mechanical prosthesis for the hand). Having tested it on molds, Joe penetrates the house and enters into the last battle with his brother. After ending his suffering, Joe finds Zoe and injects her with medicine, after which Umbrella operatives, led by Redfield, burst into the house.

In the epilogue, Zoya, after medical examinations, agrees to let go, since she is now healed from Evelyn's mold. Joe tells her niece that even though her family became monsters, they still loved her. Chris, talking to an unknown caller on the phone, hands the phone to Zoe. The caller is Ethan, who, as promised, has found those who will help her. Zoe apologizes to him for everything that has been said in the docks, and thanks for the help.

Shortly after the release of Resident Evil 6, producer Masatika Kavata noted that Capcom was having internal discussions about the direction the series should go further ^[36] . It was noted that in the last game, showing bioterrorist attacks around the world, the scope of the narrative went beyond all bounds and what was lost was what made the series special ^[37] . The head of Kavata, Jun Takeuchi, stated that it was necessary to “clean up” everything superfluous from the series, returning the central sense of horror for her ^[36] , and that the game should be “scary, but interesting” ^[38] . The developers thought that they could achieve this in the best way by limiting the game to one location and using the first-person game mode to create the maximum immersion effect, and this decision was made long before the developers thought about virtual reality ^[37] . The first tasks in the development were established as follows: first-person view, photorealistic graphics, single-player game without a cooperative mode, a minimum of references to previous games and their characters ^[38] .

The development of a new game began around February 2014 ^[39] . Kosi Nakanishi, who previously led the creation of Resident Evil: Revelations ; Under his leadership, Resident Evil 7 was run by a development team of 120 people assembled as part of the Japanese division of Capcom Japan ^{[36] [40]} . Speaking about first-person games close to Resident Evil 7 , Nakanishi said that the developers got acquainted with “all the first-person survival horror, which there are now, for example ... Outlast ”, but decided - unlike these games, where the game character, as a rule, defenseless - give the player a weapon so that he can defend himself from enemies ^[40] .

The game is based on the new RE Engine game engine , which includes tools for developing games in virtual reality ^[41] . According to the head of the game’s development, Kosi Nakanishi, the project’s working title was “Haravata” ( は ら た た Haravata , “guts, entrails”) - at the same time an indication of the bloody scenes that the game was supposed to demonstrate, and a reference to the Japanese name for the horror film “The Evil Dead” ", One of the key sources of inspiration for the game ^[42] . Guided by the same desire to make the game more chamber and claustrophobic, the developers limited the number of opponents of the player to several characters - the main enemies in the game are members of the Baker family, and each of them has its own subgenre of cinematic horrors and related themes in the game: Margarita with her lengthening limbs and vomiting centipedes embodies the body horror , the bloodthirsty Jack - a subgenre of slashers , and Lucas with his passion for sadistic "games" - psychological horrors in the spirit of the series "P silt ” ^[38] . According to the idea of ​​the developers, every encounter with one or another member of the Baker family should force the player to look for new mechanics to defeat the boss, and not just shoot him before victory ^[38] .

A year before the announcement of the game, Capcom showed at the E3 2015 exhibition a demo version called KITCHEN ( Russian "kitchen" ) of a first-person virtual reality game ^[43] using the same engine ^[41] . Although the game Resident Evil 7 was under development long before KITCHEN was released, the developers took the chance to see how the RE Engine and its capabilities for working with virtual reality will be perceived by the public ^[44] . In connection with the Resident Evil 7 game, which was not announced at that time, a dash was drawn in the KITCHEN logo in the letter “T”, making it look like the number “7”; however, according to Kavata, this detail has remained almost unnoticed by the audience ^[39] . Four months later, Capcom’s annual success report highlighted the success of the KITCHEN demo and noted that Development Division 1, Capcom’s internal studio responsible for developing the Resident Evil series, will be creating products for the virtual reality market. These products included a new game engine and games for a new generation of game consoles ^[45] .

The game was announced at the Sony press conference at E3 2016 ^[46] . The demo version of the game for the PlayStation 4 called Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour was released on June 14, immediately after the announcement of the game ^{[46] [47]} . At the time of the announcement, game development was 65% complete ^[39] .

At the CEDEC conference, developers talked about technologies for working with the new engine. The studio used photogrammetry to create realistic models and objects. Capcom created an entire studio, which has about 100 cameras. Pictures taken by these cameras are processed and produce an already finished model. Using makeup, designers were able to create both character models and mutants ^[48] .

Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour

As part of the announcement of the game at E3 2016 , a demo teaser called Beginning Hour was also announced. The demo itself has been released for the PlayStation 4 , although the release is promised on other platforms. The teaser takes place in an abandoned house, from where the player must get out. The player can explore the house, selecting and interacting with various objects that will help in solving the problem.

Capcom later explained that the teaser is just a demonstration of the general atmosphere of the game, and not part of it. In the final game, there will be another protagonist, a broader scene and other mechanics, including combat. The events of the teaser, although they will not fall into the main game, but some of the elements will still remain unchanged. Also, the developers said that the most interesting element of the teaser - the finger of the doll - will be developed in the updated version of the demo teaser, which will be released later.

The game received positive reviews from Western and Russian gaming publications. Gambling site put the seventh license plate of the horror cycle eight points out of ten possible.

It can be seen with the naked eye that the second part of the game was done in a hurry: the whole harmonious balance goes to hell, and the finale is sewn with white thread. Nevertheless, the feeling that Resident Evil 7 is just a test of the pen, a test of how the new formula works, does not leave. And damn it, in polished form, it works fine. The next part is likely to become a real gem and pride of the series, but so far the creators still have room to grow.

- game magazine " Gambling " ^[30]

In 2018, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard took first place in the nomination “VR-game of the year 2017” and became the “Best horror of 2017” of the year according to the site Igromaniya.ru ^{[49] [50]}

• Official Japanese site (jap.)
• Official English site (Japanese)