Leon’s Not In ‘Resident Evil 7,’ But He’s Not Bitter

  The Internet, as we all know darn well, is full of mysteries. Are those blurry-ass photos of Bigfoot screwing that unicorn genuine? Will we really be killed in our beds at 4:20am by an undead orphan with chainsaws where her asscheeks should be, because we didn’t pass on that chain letter? Are those pills I saw in my junk folder that will ToTEs MakE Your WaNg TWELvE INcheS LoNGEr legit? Probably. I saw it somewhere online, so it must be true.  

Still, there are some things even the Internet can’t tell us. What did I find when I typed Just what in holy balls is going on with Resident Evil 7 into Google? Nothing, that’s what.

It’s a critical time for the series, what with the whole ‘it’s rapidly disappearing down Shit Street’ sentiment a lot of players have been expressing of late. Capcom have to be careful with what they release. They have to, y’know, not drop raw steaming dumps like Umbrella Corps on us (your opinion may differ). They’re being pretty freaking secretive and ambiguous with 7, but what we’ve seen and heard thus far hasn’t really filled anyone with confidence/to the brim with girlish glee.

Case in point: the all-new protagonist and supporting cast. Now, sure, the old Resident Evil mainstays were getting a little overused. Jill returning from the dead, Leon and Chris’s cheestastic bro-meeting in Resident Evil 6, Wesker being the faux-Brit asshole he is, repeatedly… it was all a little too much. Still, we loved these guys, they don’t seem to be coming back, and we’re pissed about it.

Matt Mercer, voice of Leon S. Kennedy, reinforced this element of Resident Evil 7. ‘As far as 7 goes,’ he told GameSpot, ‘I think they're scaling back a little bit on throwing in all the classic cameos. I can say that I don't have any involvement in 7 directly.’

Despite the whole being-out-of-a-job thing, Mercer insists this could be a good thing for the series. ‘But I think it's also good of them, especially coming off of [Resident Evil 6] and its lukewarm reception, to go ahead and re-establish their roots and maybe start an original story,’ he continued. ‘And if they decide that that does well, maybe they can then marry it in with the previous stories.’

So there you go. Don’t write off the first-person weirdness that is the new game just yet. Leon says so.