(1/20) Here's a BIG OLE' tweet wall of new Resident Evil Village info from the newest Game Informer issue. I am leaving out a few things to buy it yourself, but I like to summarize these. Includes new screens from the issue.

There's A LOT new here on RE8, so let's get started.

(2/21)-Something a bit new to RE8 to focus more on the first-person perspective, narrative, horror, is we hear more internal thoughts of Ethan Winters during RE8, his inner voice. This plays into a deeper psychological horror aspect to the game, & his mental state through Village

(3/21)-Lycan are smarter & trickier than any other Resident Evil enemy to date. They can wait in stillness from rooftops, in bushes, ready to ambush you if you don't notice them. They act differently if they hunt alone or in packs. There's a variety of them too, a new type below:

(4/21)-The Village in RE8 is actually nameless, everyone just calls it the Village. There's a historical reason you'll discover in the game why this is the Village with no name.

It's also a Village of death, goat heads hung from trees, dead horses & other carcasses litter the

(5/21) streets, with much suffering happening.
-Capcom's goal with Village was to be an accumulation of the series 25-year history. To be a trinity of Survival-Horror conservative mechanics, intense horror, & refined action, they tried to look at what really worked through the

(6/21) series history, & make it better. Their goal going into this was, "What's worked for us in the past, & how can we improve it?"
-The game has a lot of callbacks to the series history. One early RE4 example is there's an early moment you get surrounded in an open environment

(7/21) swarmed by Lycan, who only back off when a bell begins tolling, and they scurry off someplace else.
-Capcom knows they didn't fully flesh out Ethan's character in RE7, the story was more focused on the other characters. He was basically a player camera. But the team felt a

(8/21) attachment to Ethan, they saw the critiques on him from RE7, they felt his story wasn't over, & decided to give Ethan his own story, & to make people as endeared to him as the team is to him, really show us who Ethan Winters is and why he's great.
-On Chris Redfield, they

(9/21) want to keep a lot of his role a mystery, but they will clarify that this title is tapping into the dark side of Chris Redfield, a side of him that's been there in the past, but it's gotten worse.
-The nameless Village in RE8 is a place time has forgotten. It's beautiful,

(10/21) but full of shadows. Part of their goal with this game was to make something that was simultaneously aesthetically pleasing, but the most grotesque the series has ever gone. The Village has a natural beauty that's soiled by its dark underbelly.
-RE8's design philosophy is

(11/21) to balance pacing of quiet, dark horror with adrenaline-pumping intense bouts of survival. Village has the largest environments in any RE game to date, which making these larger open spaces made them decide to focus on strategic depth to the game's mechanics. Village also

(12/21) has the most vertical design of any RE game outside of just wide areas. They increased Ethan's movement speed due to the openess, but to make this horror, they made sure the threat was more intense that ever, so players aren't just gunning through everything, often being

(13/21) defensive is a better strategy. Ethan can interact with lots in the environment, instead of killing enemies, if high up it's often better to guard and then kick them off, there's a focus on moment-to-moment gameplay, letting players choose paths through areas, strategize.

(14/21)-Lycans were designed with the games more open & vertical environments. They take a moment to crouch into sprinting position, but if you don't stop them, they can run on all fours super quickly. They can climb up the side of buildings, walls.
-One gameplay moment described

(15/22) is a scene where you're in a grain field. You see Lycan's entering the field from wheel barrows, other things you can stand on, the Lycans move fast through the field & you can only tell where they are by the noise of rustling, & standing tall seeing the wheat part as

(16/22) approach your location, you have choices to make to wait for them to come to you, or to try & take them out before they get that chance.
-Shooting at a bad of flour will make it explode into white powder that will temporarily stun enemies. There's a lot more environmental

(17/22) response to actions, to experiment & test with, players should keep an eye out for such things.
-Lycans have the ability to smash through things, climb things, sprint, Ethan can hold out in houses and barricade them, but he has to be careful if players take this route. An

(18/22) example being if you hear Lycan climbing up onto the roof, be careful.
-Capcom is really happy with Dimitrescu's response, they wanted to make a unique take on a Castle Count that didn't strike as stereotypical or forgettable, like other things in Village, memorable but

(19/23)a level of groundedness to it.
-There's animals you meet, like chickens, pigs, horses, fish, & more. You can hunt these animals for their meat, eggs, other things. Taking their meat to the Duke, the Duke can prepare the meat to give buffs to Ethan's base state, like health

(20/24), guard strength, increase his movement speed. The meat of animals you can hunt is used for Ethan's base stat upgrades.
-Of course, Duke also trades in money, & outside of standard upgrades, each weapon has special upgrades. Like the F2 Rifle you can buy a cheek rest to

(21/24) reduce weapon sway, or the M1897 Shotgun's hair trigger can improve rate of fire.
-Though the team has improved Village's combat, they want no misunderstanding that this is taking away from the horror or other elements.
-They think Village has the best puzzles in any RE

(22/24) game. They worked hard to make the puzzles fun, not too easy but not too hard, integrated into the world & story. To not feel random or just a puzzle for sake of a logic puzzle, but be characteristic & interesting.
-Emphasis they know good horror isn't just about facing a

(23/25) monster. It involves tapping into the imagination, building tension, betraying expectations, keeping things fresh to not grow numb to it, it's about balance, creativity, the quiet moments often mean more than the loud ones.
-They think one reason you often don't see AAA

(24/25) horror games is horror itself is already divisive if people like it, then what horror fans want is even more split. There's a challenge inherently to building a horror game that's meaningful & impactful, while also more broadly appealing. Their solution is to innovate,

(25/25) the studio has had a lot of time to look over what's worked & not worked for them, trends players like & don't in what they make, & it helps them think how they can do one better.

Village is them innovating on what's worked to do better, they think it'll surprise people.