The Honest Opinion - Resident Evil VII Demo
In the last few weeks, there has a been a ton of buzz about Capcom's demo for Resident Evil VII : Biohazard. Some love it, some hate it, and I wanted to weigh in on it myself a bit. Before I break it down, let's take a little overlook at the demo.
It begins with you waking up in a run-down house with the objective of escaping to the house. You get to explore all to your whim, in first person view, picking up various items throughout the house. There's four level's to the house, of which you have access to three in either timeline (explain in a bit). You can find a number items to try and help you along the way such as bolt cutters that open up a cupboard containing a VHS tape, a dummy finger (has no purpose yet), as well as a number of items that can only be found depending on what you do.
The VHS tape becomes the key of this demo. Once you insert it into the VCR, you don't just watch it you get to play it. In the tape, three people are investigating the family of the house that has gone missing for mysterious reasons. There's Andre, Pete, and Clancy (the camerman that you control). While you are in the VHS world, some things you can do will alter what happens in the present day storyline. For example, in the kitchen while in the VHS world, you can pick up a lockpick to unlock a drawer, and in the present day, there will be an axe in the drawer.
Partway into the VHS tape, Andre goes missing, sparking Pete and Clancy to try and find him. Eventually leading you to discover a hidden lever in the fireplace that opens a secret passageway leading down through a hatch to the basement where you find Andre dead and Clancy get's attacked. The next shot in the tape is Pete and Clancy tied up in a kitchen trying to get free when someone comes in and kills them both.
Now, two things can happen depending on how long you play through the VHS tape (since you have the control to stop the tape and enter back to the present day at any moment you want). And each of these two things leads to a different ending.
Ending one : if you complete the VHS tape to the end, after you return to the present day, you can pull the same lever and enter the secret passage. The ladder leading down to the basement is gone, but in front of it is a key to the back door of the house. Once you pick up the key, you (obviously) begin making your way to the back door. Walking through the house, before you exit one room, a mysterious man passes in front of the opening, and when you turn the corner he's gone. You make your way through the house to the back door, put in the key, and it opens to your freedom! ....except not really. The door cracks open and you hear a chuckle behind you followed by "Welcome to the family, son" before you get sucker punched in the face and the demo ends.
Ending two : This ideally happens on your second play through of the demo, as in your first run, you attempt to fully discover everything laid out before you. And since it ends with you taking a haymaker to the face, your second run sparks the thought "What happens if I just go into the secret passage right away?" Once you enter the passage, instead of finding the back door key, you find a fuse sitting on a table. In the room you wake up in, there is a fuse box missing a fuse. You place the one you find into the box, and on the 2nd floor of the house is a switch that now has power to it. Pressing the switch lowers a staircase that leads up to the attic. Once you climb the top of these stairs, a phone starts ringing behind a doorway. Enter the room, and there's a table with the phone on it, as well as a photo of a helicopter with "Are they watching us from that helicopter?" scrawled on the back of the photo. You answer the phone and hear one of three different messages, and the line goes dead. Once you try to leave the room, that famous line "Welcome to the family, son" is spoken behind you and you get sucker-punched yet again, ending the demo.
So no matter what you do, you get knocked out and are unable to free yourself from the house. This fact alone has sparked a ton of heated debate online about this demo. Some of the items/objects in the game have no use, causing people to fume about this "incomplete" demo. The fact that you can't escape the house gets a lot of attention. Everything down to Capcom's integrity and loyalty to their fans is being questioned. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion so I am here to throw mine down. So let's look at a few points.
First Person View : The smallest complaint I've seen is people bashing the use of first person, simply because it's "never been done before in a RE game". That statement though isn't wholly true. The truth is, in gameplay, no it hasn't been done. Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3, and Code Veronica X were all fixed angle views, while 4, 5 and 6 were third-person over the shoulder views. BUT, there was a spin-off Survivor subtitled series that took place entirely in first person. There's also the Code Veronica Battle mini-game where you have the option of playing in first or third person. Lastly, when Capcom remade the first Resident Evil, the beginning of the trailer takes place with a first person view. So yes, as far as the main numbered series goes, there was never any hardcore gameplay done in a first person view, but it has been done before in the world of Resident Evil.
Demo Length / Incomplete and Capcom's Near-Silence : There's been a lot of attention focused at the fact that Capcom hasn't fully answered whether or not there is currently a way to access a true ending to the demo. But let's look at not just what they've said, but how they've said things.
First off, in response to questions about purposes for the dummy finger and the axe, someone in connection with the demo responded in a tweet that there is a purpose for one or both of these things in the attic. (To the last of my knowledge this was an unconfirmed tweet so it's possible it isn't a real thing, but I'm going off the assumption that it is for now). It was never stated that there was a purpose right now just that there was a purpose. And this brings me to my second point. Depending on where and how you're viewing the Playstation Store, you can reveal the file name in it's entirety to see "Demo 1", hinting that this won't be the only demo, or that this one will get an update. As of now, the demo is only available on PS4, with Xbox One and PC dates yet to be announced.
For nearly three weeks, Capcom let their fans stew and rage (in the opinion of the fans) before finally, just a day or two before writing this, they sent an email to members of their Ambassadors program containing the following image :
The presence of the finger in the photo is a clear shot at the dummy finger in the demo. And everything else in the photo seems to be a clue. The calendar month is September of 2016 with a bloodstain on the 28th. The finger appears to be over top of the dates 15-18 which lines up with the dates for Tokyo Game Show, a massive gaming convention in Japan. If you look at the key, you can see the letters "G" and "O" clearly, and a portion of the third letter looks like it could be an "A", maybe the key spells out goal? No matter what, in the end, Capcom is standing by their product, not giving anything away, and leaving all the fans to speculate.
Capcom Bashing and P.T. Demo comparisons : A lot of the fan speculation on how Capcom has handled the response to their demo has led to a lot of bashing. Complaints on not being able to complete the demo, not having a use for every item available, having an axe but not being able to use it as a weapon, and a ton of insults hurled at Capcom. The fans have even dredged up comparisons to the P.T. Demo that Konami released when the Silent Hills project was in production. The day that P.T. was released, the demo was sort of solved by accident on the same day. I say sort of because while the solution was stumbled across, it wasn't really understood entirely for a few weeks. But, because Hideo Kojima had said in an interview that he didn't expect it to be solved so quickly, people think that Beginning Hour should be the same way, when in fact it's a completely different product from a different company.
Ghost Girl During VHS Segment : Lastly, a small area of discussion about the demo revolves around the presence of a ghost girl while you're in the VHS world. She doesn't do anything, if you're lucky enough to catch her on screen, she flickers off almost faster than you can recognize she's there. But her being there has sparked the question "Is Resident Evil going in a new direction?"
Here's what I think about all of this
First Person : I love it. Yes, it's different and new-ish to the series, but up until Resident Evil 4, it was only fixed angle views. RE4 had been considered a reboot of the classic Resident Evil controls, and it worked beautifully as now, RE4 is considered the top game in the entire series-to-date. So maybe the first person view is along the same lines. It's possible that it won't even be in the final game since Capcom stated that the content in the demo won't appear in the main game, but since they've also said that the game can be completely played through Playstation VR, it's likely that first-person will find it's way into the game. Maybe along the lines of the Code Veronica Battle where you get the option of either or. Either way, I liked the view, I feel like it puts your more in the shoes of the character and forces you to experience what they experience. The downloadable game Outlast gained a huge following for those reasons, so this could just be Capcom playing the hipster role and following the trend before it's actually a trend.
Demo Length / Incomplete : I've felt that complaining about this has been a bit of a waste, simply because the demo is only out on PS4. The demo is called Beginning Hour and as I mentioned earlier, depending on where you're viewing the Playstation Store from, the demo includes "Demo 1" in the title. The way I see it is this. Resident Evil started on Playstation 1. Yes, eventually it found it's way to other consoles, but in the beginning it was only Playstation. So releasing the demo early just on Playstation is a nod of respect in a sense (in my opinion). It's Capcom saying "This series started here, let's have the demo start here too." But the biggest thing is knowing that the demo is eventually going to be out on Xbox One and PC, where's the fairness in letting PS4 people get to complete the thing in it's entirety and ruin all the thrill for PC and Xbox gamers? They're getting backlash now from the PS4 community that the demo is "incomplete" but they'd get even MORE backlash from Xbox and PC communities for letting PS4 users complete the demo before anyone else even get's a chance at it. Now coupled with the email, I feel strongly that once the demo sees a release on all platforms, it will be in it's final form.
Is it frustrating? Yes, but only to a degree. I for one spent a lot time skimming through every article and Reddit thread I could find hoping someone had found the solution. But, if the intent was to give PS4 users a little tease of the demo and making it unbeatable only until it's released elsewhere, then I fully applaud and agree with Capcom's approach. If there is another motive behind it then it might not be so applaudable. The fact is we won't know either way until that time comes. Think about one last thing, however. Let's say there is a way to actually beat the demo right now. Collectively, almost the entire PS4 community has hacked away at every single pixel in this demo. They've tried an infinite number of theories and ideas, places to hit with the axe, ways to use the dummy finger. It's gotten to the point that in the main Resident Evil Thread on Reddit the response to all of the "has anyone tried..." questions has become "If you can think of it, it's been done, and it doesn't work." Capcom has managed to stump countless gamers through countless hours of gameplay. Maybe they're just proud of that fact? Kojima said of P.T. that he didn't expect it to be solved for a week, but it was accidentally solved in a day. Beginning Hour is nearing it's first month of not being solved, so maybe their silence is a little bit of pride.
P.T. Comparisons : Does it share a close resemblance with P.T.? Yes. Is it P.T.? No, it's not. And trying to use that argument while putting down Capcom is unwarranted. That's like complaining that Battlefield 4 doesn't have an Uplink game mode like Call of Duty : Black Ops III does, and saying EA is at fault for not including it. Different companies, different products. Just because they're similar doesn't mean they're the same and what's more, they shouldn't be expected to be the same.
Capcom's Cryptic "Answers" : The original Resident Evil games had a massive puzzle aspect to them, some that involved a bit of in-depth analysis of specific items before finding the use for them. Capcom's responses to the fans have been equally puzzling. They stated there's a purpose for the dummy finger, they didn't say it was accessible now. They stated there's a use for the axe in the attic, but not that you could use it the way you need to right now. In everything they've said, there's been a simple statement that there is a purpose for certain things, or that there is more to certain objects, or even that there is another ending that hasn't been accessed yet. But nowhere have they said or even hinted that you can do so now. I stand by my belief that once this demo sees a release on all platforms it will be in it's complete form.
Ghost Girl : It's eerie and is another one of the unresolved areas in the demo that begs the question "What's the purpose?" With it being a new direction, that is entirely debatable. For one, while the Resident Evil games have focused on a zombie outbreak, they aren't strictly zombie games. They've always been dubbed "survival horror in a zombie apocalypse setting". There have been all sorts of creatures built in labs featured in every single game in the series, yet no ghosts. But just because they haven't been done before in the series doesn't mean that spirits don't exist in the Umbrella controlled universe. Also, the ghost only appears in the VHS tape, and there is the belief that cameras have a way of seeing things that our eyes cannot. So she might just be a representation of that. She appears in a total of seven different places, and there are a number of things that occur in seven's throughout the demo. There's seven voodoo dolls hanging up in one particular corridor, seven items that are able to be picked up throughout the demo. In all honesty, the ghost girl may be no more than a small easter egg included to get another "seven" in the demo.
So now, the only thing to do is wait. Once this demo sees it's release on Xbox and PC, I'll come back to it with a true final opinion on it. Until then, I'll be sitting back and waiting along with a good amount of the PS4 community as they are slowly beginning to give up on the idea that the demo is beatable in it's present state.
What did you think of this article? It's the first one I'm attempting on this blog, and won't be the last. These Opinion articles will not have a set rhythm for appearances, instead they will pop up more when something in the gaming community is sparking a huge debate. Would you like to see more? Let me know at mbenton88@gmail.com or on my Facebook page!
It begins with you waking up in a run-down house with the objective of escaping to the house. You get to explore all to your whim, in first person view, picking up various items throughout the house. There's four level's to the house, of which you have access to three in either timeline (explain in a bit). You can find a number items to try and help you along the way such as bolt cutters that open up a cupboard containing a VHS tape, a dummy finger (has no purpose yet), as well as a number of items that can only be found depending on what you do.
The VHS tape becomes the key of this demo. Once you insert it into the VCR, you don't just watch it you get to play it. In the tape, three people are investigating the family of the house that has gone missing for mysterious reasons. There's Andre, Pete, and Clancy (the camerman that you control). While you are in the VHS world, some things you can do will alter what happens in the present day storyline. For example, in the kitchen while in the VHS world, you can pick up a lockpick to unlock a drawer, and in the present day, there will be an axe in the drawer.
Partway into the VHS tape, Andre goes missing, sparking Pete and Clancy to try and find him. Eventually leading you to discover a hidden lever in the fireplace that opens a secret passageway leading down through a hatch to the basement where you find Andre dead and Clancy get's attacked. The next shot in the tape is Pete and Clancy tied up in a kitchen trying to get free when someone comes in and kills them both.
Now, two things can happen depending on how long you play through the VHS tape (since you have the control to stop the tape and enter back to the present day at any moment you want). And each of these two things leads to a different ending.
Ending one : if you complete the VHS tape to the end, after you return to the present day, you can pull the same lever and enter the secret passage. The ladder leading down to the basement is gone, but in front of it is a key to the back door of the house. Once you pick up the key, you (obviously) begin making your way to the back door. Walking through the house, before you exit one room, a mysterious man passes in front of the opening, and when you turn the corner he's gone. You make your way through the house to the back door, put in the key, and it opens to your freedom! ....except not really. The door cracks open and you hear a chuckle behind you followed by "Welcome to the family, son" before you get sucker punched in the face and the demo ends.
Ending two : This ideally happens on your second play through of the demo, as in your first run, you attempt to fully discover everything laid out before you. And since it ends with you taking a haymaker to the face, your second run sparks the thought "What happens if I just go into the secret passage right away?" Once you enter the passage, instead of finding the back door key, you find a fuse sitting on a table. In the room you wake up in, there is a fuse box missing a fuse. You place the one you find into the box, and on the 2nd floor of the house is a switch that now has power to it. Pressing the switch lowers a staircase that leads up to the attic. Once you climb the top of these stairs, a phone starts ringing behind a doorway. Enter the room, and there's a table with the phone on it, as well as a photo of a helicopter with "Are they watching us from that helicopter?" scrawled on the back of the photo. You answer the phone and hear one of three different messages, and the line goes dead. Once you try to leave the room, that famous line "Welcome to the family, son" is spoken behind you and you get sucker-punched yet again, ending the demo.
So no matter what you do, you get knocked out and are unable to free yourself from the house. This fact alone has sparked a ton of heated debate online about this demo. Some of the items/objects in the game have no use, causing people to fume about this "incomplete" demo. The fact that you can't escape the house gets a lot of attention. Everything down to Capcom's integrity and loyalty to their fans is being questioned. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion so I am here to throw mine down. So let's look at a few points.
First Person View : The smallest complaint I've seen is people bashing the use of first person, simply because it's "never been done before in a RE game". That statement though isn't wholly true. The truth is, in gameplay, no it hasn't been done. Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3, and Code Veronica X were all fixed angle views, while 4, 5 and 6 were third-person over the shoulder views. BUT, there was a spin-off Survivor subtitled series that took place entirely in first person. There's also the Code Veronica Battle mini-game where you have the option of playing in first or third person. Lastly, when Capcom remade the first Resident Evil, the beginning of the trailer takes place with a first person view. So yes, as far as the main numbered series goes, there was never any hardcore gameplay done in a first person view, but it has been done before in the world of Resident Evil.
Demo Length / Incomplete and Capcom's Near-Silence : There's been a lot of attention focused at the fact that Capcom hasn't fully answered whether or not there is currently a way to access a true ending to the demo. But let's look at not just what they've said, but how they've said things.
First off, in response to questions about purposes for the dummy finger and the axe, someone in connection with the demo responded in a tweet that there is a purpose for one or both of these things in the attic. (To the last of my knowledge this was an unconfirmed tweet so it's possible it isn't a real thing, but I'm going off the assumption that it is for now). It was never stated that there was a purpose right now just that there was a purpose. And this brings me to my second point. Depending on where and how you're viewing the Playstation Store, you can reveal the file name in it's entirety to see "Demo 1", hinting that this won't be the only demo, or that this one will get an update. As of now, the demo is only available on PS4, with Xbox One and PC dates yet to be announced.
For nearly three weeks, Capcom let their fans stew and rage (in the opinion of the fans) before finally, just a day or two before writing this, they sent an email to members of their Ambassadors program containing the following image :
The presence of the finger in the photo is a clear shot at the dummy finger in the demo. And everything else in the photo seems to be a clue. The calendar month is September of 2016 with a bloodstain on the 28th. The finger appears to be over top of the dates 15-18 which lines up with the dates for Tokyo Game Show, a massive gaming convention in Japan. If you look at the key, you can see the letters "G" and "O" clearly, and a portion of the third letter looks like it could be an "A", maybe the key spells out goal? No matter what, in the end, Capcom is standing by their product, not giving anything away, and leaving all the fans to speculate.
Capcom Bashing and P.T. Demo comparisons : A lot of the fan speculation on how Capcom has handled the response to their demo has led to a lot of bashing. Complaints on not being able to complete the demo, not having a use for every item available, having an axe but not being able to use it as a weapon, and a ton of insults hurled at Capcom. The fans have even dredged up comparisons to the P.T. Demo that Konami released when the Silent Hills project was in production. The day that P.T. was released, the demo was sort of solved by accident on the same day. I say sort of because while the solution was stumbled across, it wasn't really understood entirely for a few weeks. But, because Hideo Kojima had said in an interview that he didn't expect it to be solved so quickly, people think that Beginning Hour should be the same way, when in fact it's a completely different product from a different company.
Ghost Girl During VHS Segment : Lastly, a small area of discussion about the demo revolves around the presence of a ghost girl while you're in the VHS world. She doesn't do anything, if you're lucky enough to catch her on screen, she flickers off almost faster than you can recognize she's there. But her being there has sparked the question "Is Resident Evil going in a new direction?"
Here's what I think about all of this
First Person : I love it. Yes, it's different and new-ish to the series, but up until Resident Evil 4, it was only fixed angle views. RE4 had been considered a reboot of the classic Resident Evil controls, and it worked beautifully as now, RE4 is considered the top game in the entire series-to-date. So maybe the first person view is along the same lines. It's possible that it won't even be in the final game since Capcom stated that the content in the demo won't appear in the main game, but since they've also said that the game can be completely played through Playstation VR, it's likely that first-person will find it's way into the game. Maybe along the lines of the Code Veronica Battle where you get the option of either or. Either way, I liked the view, I feel like it puts your more in the shoes of the character and forces you to experience what they experience. The downloadable game Outlast gained a huge following for those reasons, so this could just be Capcom playing the hipster role and following the trend before it's actually a trend.
Demo Length / Incomplete : I've felt that complaining about this has been a bit of a waste, simply because the demo is only out on PS4. The demo is called Beginning Hour and as I mentioned earlier, depending on where you're viewing the Playstation Store from, the demo includes "Demo 1" in the title. The way I see it is this. Resident Evil started on Playstation 1. Yes, eventually it found it's way to other consoles, but in the beginning it was only Playstation. So releasing the demo early just on Playstation is a nod of respect in a sense (in my opinion). It's Capcom saying "This series started here, let's have the demo start here too." But the biggest thing is knowing that the demo is eventually going to be out on Xbox One and PC, where's the fairness in letting PS4 people get to complete the thing in it's entirety and ruin all the thrill for PC and Xbox gamers? They're getting backlash now from the PS4 community that the demo is "incomplete" but they'd get even MORE backlash from Xbox and PC communities for letting PS4 users complete the demo before anyone else even get's a chance at it. Now coupled with the email, I feel strongly that once the demo sees a release on all platforms, it will be in it's final form.
Is it frustrating? Yes, but only to a degree. I for one spent a lot time skimming through every article and Reddit thread I could find hoping someone had found the solution. But, if the intent was to give PS4 users a little tease of the demo and making it unbeatable only until it's released elsewhere, then I fully applaud and agree with Capcom's approach. If there is another motive behind it then it might not be so applaudable. The fact is we won't know either way until that time comes. Think about one last thing, however. Let's say there is a way to actually beat the demo right now. Collectively, almost the entire PS4 community has hacked away at every single pixel in this demo. They've tried an infinite number of theories and ideas, places to hit with the axe, ways to use the dummy finger. It's gotten to the point that in the main Resident Evil Thread on Reddit the response to all of the "has anyone tried..." questions has become "If you can think of it, it's been done, and it doesn't work." Capcom has managed to stump countless gamers through countless hours of gameplay. Maybe they're just proud of that fact? Kojima said of P.T. that he didn't expect it to be solved for a week, but it was accidentally solved in a day. Beginning Hour is nearing it's first month of not being solved, so maybe their silence is a little bit of pride.
P.T. Comparisons : Does it share a close resemblance with P.T.? Yes. Is it P.T.? No, it's not. And trying to use that argument while putting down Capcom is unwarranted. That's like complaining that Battlefield 4 doesn't have an Uplink game mode like Call of Duty : Black Ops III does, and saying EA is at fault for not including it. Different companies, different products. Just because they're similar doesn't mean they're the same and what's more, they shouldn't be expected to be the same.
Capcom's Cryptic "Answers" : The original Resident Evil games had a massive puzzle aspect to them, some that involved a bit of in-depth analysis of specific items before finding the use for them. Capcom's responses to the fans have been equally puzzling. They stated there's a purpose for the dummy finger, they didn't say it was accessible now. They stated there's a use for the axe in the attic, but not that you could use it the way you need to right now. In everything they've said, there's been a simple statement that there is a purpose for certain things, or that there is more to certain objects, or even that there is another ending that hasn't been accessed yet. But nowhere have they said or even hinted that you can do so now. I stand by my belief that once this demo sees a release on all platforms it will be in it's complete form.
Ghost Girl : It's eerie and is another one of the unresolved areas in the demo that begs the question "What's the purpose?" With it being a new direction, that is entirely debatable. For one, while the Resident Evil games have focused on a zombie outbreak, they aren't strictly zombie games. They've always been dubbed "survival horror in a zombie apocalypse setting". There have been all sorts of creatures built in labs featured in every single game in the series, yet no ghosts. But just because they haven't been done before in the series doesn't mean that spirits don't exist in the Umbrella controlled universe. Also, the ghost only appears in the VHS tape, and there is the belief that cameras have a way of seeing things that our eyes cannot. So she might just be a representation of that. She appears in a total of seven different places, and there are a number of things that occur in seven's throughout the demo. There's seven voodoo dolls hanging up in one particular corridor, seven items that are able to be picked up throughout the demo. In all honesty, the ghost girl may be no more than a small easter egg included to get another "seven" in the demo.
In The End
Everything about the resolution of this demo is pure speculation. While it's frustrating that it can't be "beaten" right now, it would make sense if Capcom is waiting to include the true ending once all the gaming communities can give it a crack. On the surface, it's a lot of fun and shows a lot of promise for the next installment in the series. The graphics are amazing, the creep factor is back to where it was at the beginning of the series, and whether you love it or hate it, the demo is being talked about a lot. So if Capcom made the demo unbeatable as a publicity stunt, all the bashing and hatred from the fans will be purely justified. But without knowing their intentions, patience becomes the key in all of this. It's unfortunate, but true.So now, the only thing to do is wait. Once this demo sees it's release on Xbox and PC, I'll come back to it with a true final opinion on it. Until then, I'll be sitting back and waiting along with a good amount of the PS4 community as they are slowly beginning to give up on the idea that the demo is beatable in it's present state.
What did you think of this article? It's the first one I'm attempting on this blog, and won't be the last. These Opinion articles will not have a set rhythm for appearances, instead they will pop up more when something in the gaming community is sparking a huge debate. Would you like to see more? Let me know at mbenton88@gmail.com or on my Facebook page!
