Report: Resident Evil 8 is first-person, takes "serious departures", and will be out next year
"Many purists are going to hate it."
Another day, another Resident Evil leak, and this one concerns not another remake but the next instalment of the celebrated horror franchise, colloquially referred to as "Resident Evil 8".
AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem - the source of many horror-flavoured leaks, including accurate leaks about Resident Evil 3 Remake and those not-yet-accurate Silent Hill leaks (Konami, as you'd probably expect, refutes them) - purports the next instalment of the horror series will release next year.
Interestingly, AestheticGamer reports the game started not as a mainline game but was originally developed as a successor in the Revelations spin-off series. However, Capcom and playtesters were so impressed by early prototypes that it was co-opted to become the next Resident Evil game.
"Okay, so the little game is done," AestheticGamer said (thanks, PC Gamer). "This will be breaking this month with more details later not by myself, but I've needed to clear some stuff up. "Resident Evil 2021" is Resident Evil 8, but it wasn't always RE8. During most of its development it existed as Revelations 3."
Acknowledging that this differs from his earlier reports, AG said: "The reason I said RE8 was "years away" earlier this year is last year a RE8 was in development, & that one is years away. But Capcom didn't want a huge gap between RE7 and RE8, so that title got pushed to the side for now, & internal testing and such was super positive on Rev 3."
The leaker also reports Resident Evil 8 will be a "cross-gen game", intimating it'll come to both current- and next-gen systems.
"It is first-person, and many purists are going to hate it because it's taking some serious departures in the story/enemies and the like," they later added. "Hallucinations, Occultism, insanity and not being able to trust others are huge thematics of the game."
If AestheticGamer is right - and there is absolutely every chance they're not, of course; this is just a rumour at this point - we should see Resident Evil 8 in 2021.
While feeling as though he's "coming down a little too hard on the Resident Evil 3 remake" in the Eurogamer review, Wes admitted his "expectations were set with the incredible Resident Evil 2 remake in mind", adding "Jill is a triumphant character, and there are moments of genuine brilliance here".