It's safe to say that the Resident Evil franchise has seen better days. After revolutionizing the third-person shooter with Resident Evil 4, Capcom has been trying to catch that lightning in a bottle a second time — and yet, the studio has always come up short.
Not every Resident Evil game has been terrible (Revelations 2 had some interesting ideas), but nothing has even come close to the level of the classic survival horror games.
What's even worse is that, for the most part, no one knows what's going on with the series. Capcom announced that production had started on a remake of Resident Evil 2 ... and that's about it. There's been no news about the next proper entry in the franchise, and considering that it's already been four years since Resident Evil 6 hit store shelves, many fans have started to worry about the fate of gaming's original survival horror series.
Of course, if Capcom was working on Resident Evil 7, one could assume that the game would make its debut at E3 2016 — and according to the latest rumors, that may happen. Japanese analyst Serkan Toto took to Twitter (via BleedingCool) to confirm the game's existence, along with the fact that Capcom is planning to reboot the franchise:
Remember, this is just a rumor: Toto hasn't mentioned any sources whatsoever, and there's been no mention of Resident Evil 7 anywhere else online. Given that E3 2016 is just a few weeks away, the Internet is rife with all sorts of gaming rumors — this could just be another example of rampant pre-E3 speculation.
That being said, it does make sense for Capcom to reveal the next true entry in its survival horror series at E3 — and it certainly wouldn't hurt to reboot the franchise. Resident Evil 6 tried to continue a story that had effectively ended three years earlier, and Revelations 2 didn't do much to kickstart a new narrative. At this point, fans are more interested in an actual survival horror game than anything else.
Hopefully, Toto's claims are accurate: it's been too long since fans have seen anything new from the Resident Evil series, and no one wants to see the series suffer the same fate as Mega Man. Plus, with a former P.T. member on board, Resident Evil might actually be scary again!
At the very least, it won't be long before fans know one way or the other: E3 2016 is set to kick off on June 14.
