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Resident Evil 4 is one of the best games ever made, and so gave Capcom a problem that - until the recent reveal of Resident Evil 7, at least - it was in no rush to solve. How do you follow up a classic? Resident Evil 5 would spend four years in development, benefit from a new generation of hardware, and use it to offer a simple answer: you do the same, but better. Were it so easy. Resident Evil 4 was the point where the series prioritised survival over horror, establishing a new combat system that was all-action and made the player character a supremely capable hero. In the early Resident Evil games, monsters were less frequent and combat had simple principles - empty bullets into the bad thing, and try not to let it get too close. Proximity meant vulnerability, it meant damage, and most of all it meant trying to escape with a control scheme designed around moving forwards rather than back.
Resident Evil 4 upended these principles by introducing location-specific damage and follow-up attacks, as well as making the enemies more aggressive and numerous. In terms of pure mechanics this led to bigger and more intense battles, and most importantly a much wider range of possibilities for the player. It also meant that horror, for the most part, was a secondary effect - Resident Evil 4 has scares, for sure, and in the creepily human Ganados and cultists genuinely scary enemies. But horror is also about a protagonist being helpless or at least significantly outmatched. Leon can take on any number of enemies, deliver an up-close kicking, and walk away without a scratch.
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