The Impact Factor

Hazard The House: Resident Evil 7 Beginning Hour Is A True “Playable Teaser”

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Abstract: The Resident Evil franchise has had a rough past decade. Capcom looks to reinvigorate the long running series with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Announced and released at E3 2016, Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour is a standalone demo for the upcoming game. Beginning Hour is clearly inspired by 2014’s wildly influential Playable Teaser (P.T.). P.T. remains one of the best horror experiences I’ve ever played. Beginning Hour learns from the lessons of P.T. to deliver something familiar and something new, and in the processes establishes its own identity. Beginning Hour is a true playable teaser, in that what’s shown will translate to a large release, unlike what was present in P.T. Beginning Hour and P.T. give separate looks into how to bring players into a new horror world that makes me excited for the future of the genre.

E3 2016 has come and gone, but not without its big surprises still leaving us reeling. One of the most shocking, perhaps, was that a Capcom-produced PlayStation VR tech demo Kitchen was actually a well-disguised teaser for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Kitchen received high praise from fans and games writers alike in its ability to create a terrifying atmosphere and deliver high quality scares. The reveal on Sony’s PlayStation stage was terrific, and one that got many longtime fans of the franchise excited again.

For those of you who don’t follow Resident Evil closely, the series has had a substantial downturn over the past ten years. Resident Evil 4 was the last truly great installment, and it released just over a decade ago. Since then, the franchise has moved away from survival horror into a more action-packed zombie blasting territory. The tone deaf Resident Evil 5 featured the living bicep Chris Redfield blowing away thousands of zombies from one action setpiece to the next. Resident Evil 6 was a disappointing mix of old & new that ended up failing on all fronts. Spin-offs and smaller Resident Evil titles since Resident Evil 4 have been plagued by hammy writing, bad controls, and cliché scares.

Punching boulders is not what I want from a Resident Evil game.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard promises to be a return to the franchise’s survival horror roots. Capcom wants to deliver an experience that terrifies in the same way the original did to a whole generation of gamers. I was one such gamer. I didn’t even play the game myself, but watching the first Resident Evil over the shoulder of my friend left me with gore-filled nightmares for weeks. How was Capcom going to course correct a decade’s worth of mistakes? If Kitchen and the Beginning Hour demo are any indication their answer is clear – draw from one of the most influential horror titles of recent memory, P.T.

Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro’s Playable Teaser, or P.T., though only a few years old has inspired a new generation of horror titles. Originally intended, as the name would imply, to tease fans for the release of a new Silent Hill game (titled Silent Hills), P.T. transcends its franchise bonds and exists as a standalone experience. Soon after its release P.T. would truly become a standalone game, as Konami restructured and cancelled the Silent Hills project. The legacy of this roughly thirty-minute demo is extraordinary. We’ve seen elements of P.T.’s world building and ambient scares manifest in titles like Allison Road (now also cancelled) and Perception. And now, P.T. looks to be a key influence on one of the longest-running and well-known horror franchises of all time, Resident Evil. But why did P.T. make such an impact?

P.T. still haunts the horror game discussion in a big way.

P.T., for better or worse, delivered a horror experience gamers had never seen before. The entire demo is set in one small hallway. P.T. respects the way people have learned to play games and subverts them to unnerve and establish its world. Repetition, for instance, is a foundation of gaming. You do the same thing over and over to get good at it – your input always resulting in the same output. Not here. Performing the same act can give the player wildly different results. Walking through the same hallway multiple times changes it, adding layers of complexity and scares from the mundane. While so many other games have emphasized size and scale, P.T. focused on a dense microcosm. P.T.’s hallway it replete with hints at the player character, hints and the world, and hints at what to do. Nothing is told to the player, everything must be discovered. Scares are well earned, as P.T. builds tension through a subtle build up of sounds and sights. P.T. also acknowledges that one of the most compelling elements to horror is its mystery—the less the player knows the more terrifying its secrets. P.T. is packed to the brim with hidden mysteries that I suspect players are still trying to uncover. Now roughly a year later I find myself coming back to that hallway, to P.T., still impressed with what it delivered.

On the other hand though, it was apparent that P.T. would struggle to translate into a “full” horror game experience. Game systems are at an absolute minimum, giving the player little tools to interact with its fantastic world. The "throw you into the deep end" approach works brilliantly for a 30 minute game, but blindly stumbling through a 10-12 hour horror game would be abysmal. The play on repetition works for a chamber piece like P.T., but a bigger game requires forward momentum to keep players engaged. In this way, P.T. is actually quite awful at being a “playable teaser.” It works so much better as a standalone game. This is where it differs from Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour.

P.T., and its famous hallway, is a much better as a standalone game
than a teaser for a larger project.

Launched on the same night as PlayStation’s E3 2016 press conference, Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour is a roughly 30 minute demo for Capcom’s upcoming release. The demo takes place immediately following the events that transpired in Kitchen. The player awakes alone in a derelict house, blood on the floor and filled with memories of what has just transpired. You must navigate your way through the creepy rundown house to not only find your way out, but also piece together why you’re here in the first place. Playing Beginning Hour instantaneously brought me back to my time with P.T. You’re alone, walking through a hallway or two, in the creepiest house ever. The hallways are packed with secrets and hints at the larger narrative. A mysterious phone call, moving mannequins, split-second ghost woman appearances, Beginning Hour succeeds in creating a terrifying world to explore. Looking at the paintings hanging on the wall, listening to the creaks and cracks and growls of the house taps into the deeply ingrained fear of being unsafe in a traditionally safe space. The slow movement, the limited light source, the sense of impending dread all elicited that same spine-tingling unease I got while playing P.T.

Very different hallway, very similar scares. In a good way.

What I soon realized, however, was that playing Beginning Hour was a fundamentally different experience than playing P.T.. And that’s because Beginning Hour is a true playable teaser. The differences became evident quite quickly. For starters, Beginning Hour is a goal-oriented demo. You’re given the prompt “Exit the House” right as you start the demo. A quick scan of the first room you find yourself in informs the player of some of the game mechanics we’ll likely see in the full release of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. You can find a VHS that’s missing a tape, with a clear “Press X to enter cassette” “You don’t have a tape” prompts. You find an electrical breaker box that’s missing a fuse with a “You must find a fuse.” As you explore you can find some bolt cutters conveniently placed just after you come across a chained up cabinet. Picking up the bolt cutters gives the player their first look at an inventory screen, which is classic Resident Evil through and through. These elements and more combine to tell the player a story that transcends narrative and atmosphere, but begins to inform on what they will be doing in an expanded version of this game. Beginning Hour lays a clear foundation for a 10-12 hour horror game in a way P.T. never did. But both are exceptional.

Beginning Hour gives players a great idea of what we'll be doing
in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Like looking for lock picks.

Being a true playable teaser isn’t objectively good or bad, however. I can appreciate the glimpse into gameplay and the work being done to establish Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’s world. I can also appreciate its clear lineage with P.T. in creating a standalone horror experience (it’s been confirmed the main character and events of Beginning Hour will not be a part of the final game). I love that Beginning Hour is a smart realization of where fans want horror games to be now and I love that Beginning Hour does a great job at being a great demo. On the other hand, I love that P.T. isn’t tasked with being a preview of what’s to come—in fact, I’d argue P.T. is better for it. It can be more experimental, more mysterious. It can do things 10-12 hour long games never could. Beginning Hour took me back to when I played P.T., but also established its own identity in the process. Experiences like P.T. and now Beginning Hour get me excited for where horror games are going. I’m glad I hazarded the house – there was a lot there to enjoy.