Resident Evil series producer Masachika Kawata says the franchise's longevity depends on its willingness to change, even when that means reworking familiar pieces of one of gaming's best-known horror series.
In an interview shared for Tokyo Game Show 2026's Anniversary Title Talk, Kawata singled out Resident Evil 7 as one of Capcom's biggest creative gambles. The 2017 game pulled the series back toward close-quarters horror, switched the camera to first person and put players in control of newcomer Ethan Winters instead of returning heroes such as Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy or Jill Valentine.
Resident Evil 7 made vulnerability the point
Kawata explained that established protagonists can be difficult to use when the goal is fear because players already know them as capable survivors. Ethan gave the team a less familiar character through whom players could experience the danger. The first-person view reinforced that reset by bringing the game's decaying Louisiana house and its threats directly into the player's field of vision.
That shift followed the increasingly large-scale action of the preceding numbered games. In a 2016 Capcom interview, Kawata said the team wanted to move away from the global scale of Resident Evil 6 and create a more intimate, personal kind of horror.
For Kawata, the larger lesson is that a long-running series cannot simply repeat itself. Resident Evil can keep horror as its core while changing its perspective, cast and structure enough to avoid becoming predictable.
Remakes help maintain the release rhythm
Kawata also connected Capcom's remake program to the practical challenge of releasing Resident Evil games regularly. Rebuilding older entries gives modern players access to earlier parts of the series and lets different projects move through development alongside new installments.
He has described that strategy in similar terms before. In a July interview reported by PC Gamer, Kawata said producing a completely new entry every year would be difficult, while remakes can support the company's goal of a yearly Resident Evil release and help its teams sharpen their craft.
That does not amount to a promise of a new mainline game every year. It is a production strategy built around alternating kinds of Resident Evil projects, with reinvention doing as much work as nostalgia.
