Highlights
- Resident Evil should introduce Soulslike boss battles to offer more unique and engaging challenges, moving away from gimmicks and promoting player expression.
- Implementing a Dark Souls-like economy, where players can lose resources upon death, would add extra tension and decision-making to the game.
- Taking cues from FromSoftware's soundtracks and adopting a more melancholic tone can enhance the horror and emotional elements of Resident Evil.
With its remakes and new mainline entries, Resident Evil has been polished and expanded, once again becoming the leader of the survival horror genre in the eyes of many players. While Capcom is shaking things up with Resident Evil and taking more risks, the developer should take a page out of the Soulslike playbook with respect to certain core features
Resident Evil's slate of remakes has been revitalizing the franchise's older entries, revising them for modern audiences. These remakes take the bones of the classic games and implement contemporary game design staples like a player-controlled camera and the ability to move and shoot at the same time. When these games were initially released, these features would have been considered totally alien to the Resident Evil franchise. Just as alien would have been the idea of a first-person Resident Evil game, but that's just what Capcom delivered in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil 8: Village. All this is to say that the minds behind Resident Evil have been experimenting with new ideas, and this experimentation seems to have paid off. Modern Resident Evil is critically and commercially successful, but the franchise could benefit from pushing the envelope even further with Soulslike features.
Resident Evil Should Have Soulslike Bosses
Resident Evil may have hit its stride in recent years, but the series is still far from perfect. One of the weaker aspects of both the first-person mainline games and third-person remakes is how bosses are handled. These enemies can be challenging and offer exciting moments of spectacle, but they typically revolve around gimmicks and can thus feel a bit on-rails.
If the franchise made its bosses a bit more similar to those found in most of FromSoftware's modern games, this issue could be alleviated. Instead of glowing weak spots and set-piece elements, these boss battles could offer flexibility and freedom to players by having the bosses take damage normally. This would work best in the third-person Resident Evil games, as they focus more on movement and less on precision than their FPS counterparts. Essentially, introducing Souls-style bosses to Resident Evil would allow for more unique, engaging challenges that encourage player expression - a large step up from the more choreographed boss encounters of the current games.
A Soulslike Economy Could Provide an Extra Challenge in Resident Evil
One of the most influential features of the Dark Souls series has been how it handles in-game currency; when a player dies, they lose all the resources that can be used to level up and purchase new items. They are then given a single chance to retrieve this resource. A similar system could work well in Resident Evil, as it would add extra tension throughout the experience. Since money can be easy to find in the Resident Evil games that include it, this system would offer players an additional challenge and force them to consider if they want to spend or save their cash. This feature could also apply to in-game items, but that could end up being a bit too frustrating within the traditional survival-horror framework.
Resident Evil Should Take Cues from FromSoftware's Soundtracks
While it's not a gameplay feature, the music of the Souls games has been crucial in shaping the identity and tone of the series. Specifically, the tracks in the games are known for being tinged with melancholy, which heightens the emotions FromSoftware wants to evoke in certain environments or enemy encounters. Resident Evil's music is great in its own right, but it lacks these undertones of sadness and emotional complexity, often sounding more akin to the soundtrack of a bombastic blockbuster action movie, which can detract from certain horror or narrative elements.
Resident Evil Could Benefit From Soulslike Storytelling
Soulslike games are known for their obtuse, interpretable approach to narrative delivery. While Resident Evil shouldn't go as far into obscurity as a game like Bloodborne, it could leverage typical FromSoftware narrative staples, like the de-emphasizing of cutscenes and a heavy focus on lore-rich item descriptions, to improve its mystery and horror elements; this would work by detaching the player from the comforts of hearing another human voice or being grounded by a straightforward story.
Resident Evil games can be scary at times, but the abundance of dialog and cutscenes can often deflate the tension and horror elements built up during the gameplay. These moments offer relief, and cutscenes in particular create a more passive experience. By pulling back on these narrative devices and keeping things more obfuscated, the story of Resident Evil games can be more interesting and unsettling.
Soulslike Level Design Is a Perfect Match for Resident Evil
Aside from brutal difficulty and rich lore, Soulslike games are perhaps best known for the deep and interconnected design of their worlds. Levels are carefully plotted out in relation to the rest of the map, which can lead to revelatory moments where players find their way back to areas they may have forgotten about. Resident Evil's levels are well-designed in many ways, but they can take things up a notch by following FromSoftware's lead.
The interconnected nature of Soulslike maps can already be found in Resident Evil games, but usually not for the whole experience. For instance, the Raccoon City Police Department in Resident Evil 2 is interconnected with numerous winding paths that cleverly overlap with each other and lead back to a hub area. However, the game moves on from this structure, thrusting players into a more linear sequence of areas. A similar pattern can be observed with the other games in the series.
For better or worse, Resident Evil has its own iconic staples and features. Modern entries in the series have managed to improve upon the series foundations without sacrificing its identity, which has been crucial. However, it's possible for Resident Evil to borrow from other franchises without losing what makes it special.
