Cliffy B: "I Would Split Up RESIDENT EVIL Into 2 Genres, One Horror and One Action"

I think fans and even Capcom today would even have to agree that Resident Evil has lost its way. Once being heralded for inventing the Survival Horror genre, nowadays it's become nothing more than a run and gun zombie-less action title. What happened to the creepy and the scary? I mean, we still have the turns that require pivoting but the zombies went where exactly?

Well, if you were suddenly hired by Capcom to run the series from this point on what would you do? Well, in an interview with Gamasutra on Japanese games, Epic Games' main dude Cliff Bleszinski, otherwise CliffyB, or even, Dude Huge, gave his very own personal thoughts on what he'd to bring back the RE series to its proper horror roots.

"Well, what happened is that it ceased being a horror game; it became an action game. And as much as the player was [handicapped] by pivot controls, he's still a badass dude with a laser sight and he's wiping out hundreds of zombies, right? You know, we weren't a scared girl running away from a giant guy with scissors anymore, and that's okay.

[...] When you look at action and horror the two are really, really hard to pull off, because in one scenario you're Rambo, and you're killing tons of things, and in the other one you're the scared little girl.

And I think the proper way to do that -- if I were to work on an RE game, hypothetically -- would be to alternate between those moments. Maybe do an RE game where there's two kinds of characters -- you know, you've got a Leon-type guy, and then mix in a scared little girl, and so you alternate between the empowerment and the fear. 

And I think you can pull that off, and then maybe have a choice, even, and you can appeal to two types of gamers. You know, if you're the guy who wants to be the badass and you don't even want to do that little scared girl stuff you can, or if you're the person who just wants the scared girl sections, you can play as that character. But then you're building two types of games, and I think that's what might be necessary to maintain that horror DNA strictly, and not full-on become [a Resident Evil action game]. And please be careful how you word that, because I have nothing but respect for that franchise and those guys."

[...] what if I was running Capcom? I would split Resident Evil -- and this may be a mistake but I'm just throwing an idea out there. I would do the Resident Evil, you know, "Merc Ops," where you're these badass soldiers who clean out zombies and you're just like "the guys."

And then do Resident Evil: Special Victims Unit. Where it's the stories of the ordinary people, where you see one zombie and that's scary and maybe you can fend that one off, but you get more than two or three and you do nothing but run, Walking Dead style. And see it from both sides.

[...] The RE6 trailer was amazing, but I look at that and I'm like, "That thrills me; that doesn't scare me." Fear is all about what's unseen; that's the root of all horror, right?"

Sounds like he knows what he's talking about despite his own Gears of War series being pretty much retaining the same formula without much evolution as the games went on. Not to say that's a bad thing if you're into the whole shoot, duck, and cover recipe.

I think for me personall, what excites me the most is seeing developers now more than even being more candid on their opinions on other franchises and studios. What with Kojima lending his talents to mentor the MercurySteam team as they developed Castlevania: Lords of Shadows, and even the most recent cross-over slash rivalry productions in Street Fighter X Tekken by Capcom and Namco Bandai.

As a fan what would you do to "fix" Resident Evil, or do you agree with Cliiffy here that the series should be split into two different genres?