Six Things Resident Evil 6 Must Do To Return The Series To Greatness

Last week, Capcom surprised gamers everywhere by revealing Resident Evil 6, due out November 20th of this year. While fan reaction has been enthusiastic (though mixed), Capcom’s recent hits and misses with the franchise lately has shaken fans’ confidence in the series. We’re sure Resident Evil 6 will be a blast to play, but if it wants to truly be great then it will hopefully adhere to the following advice.

NO TACKED ON CO-OP

This will be the biggest deal-breaker for the game. Resident Evil 5 was a good game, but poorly executed co-op held it back from being great. Sheva Alomar was not only an uninteresting character, but her atrocious AI led to needless frustration, and practically forced the player to play the game co-op to enjoy the full experience. While co-op is all well and fun, the core single-player experience should be just as enjoyable without it.

BE SCARY

Fans may have criticized Resident Evil 4 for abandoning its survival horror roots to be an action game, but at least its gothic castles, occult based story, and claustrophobic gameplay made it seem like it was TRYING to be scary. Resident Evil 5 on the other hand, didn’t seem to attempt to frighten players at all. The reveal trailer definitely confirmed that Resident Evil 6 was going to continue in the action style gameplay of its predecessors, but hopefully Capcom will remember the series’ horror roots as well.

WRAP UP THE STORY

Resident Evil’s overarching story has been going ON since the 1996 release of the original Resident Evil (though 2001′s remake retconned it), meaning this game has 16 years of backstory to draw from. While Resident Evil 4 was smartly written to be a standalone story with little connection to past games, Resident Evil 5 was a direct continuation, confusing newcomers. Resident Evil 6 looks to continue with this, featuring the return of Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Ingrid Hunnigan, and Sherry Birkin, who we haven’t heard from since Resident Evil 2. How much longer can Capcom build their entire narrative from the Raccoon City incident? Resident Evil 6 needs to wrap up the story and the characters, or else the series will just drag on.

FIX THE INVENTORY SYSTEM

Resident Evil 4′s inventory system, which took the actual size of the items into account and let the player move them around in order to make room, was both intuitive and fun. Resident Evil 5 replaced this with a cumbersome system that extremely limited the amount of items that the player could hold, and was awkward to access (especially when surrounded by a horde of angry zombies).

DON’T BRING BACK WESKER

There’s a bit of speculation as to when Resident Evil 6 is supposed to take place. According to Capcom, it’s 10 years after the Raccoon City incident, putting it in 2008. However, Resident Evil 5 took place in 2009. So, this is either a mistake on Capcom’s end, or they REALLY want a way to bring back series antagonist Albert Wesker, who died a pretty definitive death at the end of Resident Evil 5. Wesker’s a cool villain and all, but bringing him back would just be redundant.

Bring back this guy instead