In an interview with MCV UK, Capcom EMEA Marketing Director Antione Molant revealed that the marketing team first learned of the change to first-person with Resident Evil 7 back in early 2014, shortly after development began.
“It brought a broad smile to the entire crowd because it was a massive change in terms of the game?s perspective, obviously,” he said. “Our first reaction internally was probably the same as the gamers’: ‘How is this a Resident Evil title" How is this going to connect to Resident Evil as a whole"'”
After mentioning how the camera perspective has changed, but the Resident Evil feeling about “being scared to open a door because you don?t know what?s on the other side” is still there, Molant brought up how RE7 and future titles could be considered a new take on the franchise: We took the direction ? starting with 4 ? to become more action-based. There?s a crowd for that as well and lots of people loved that. For a long-lasting IP like Resident Evil, you need to re-invent yourself on a regular basis while keeping the core nature of why your game is good. I think the first three Resident Evil games, and the spin-offs, were part of a trilogy. But 4, 5, and 6 presented a departure, with different camera angles and so on. You could think that 7 and what comes next are also a new take on the Resident Evil franchise.
Elsewhere in the interview, Molant said Capcom would love to sell four million ...