Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a 2017 shooter video game made by Capcom Development Division 1 and Capcom.
Resident Evil 7 strips the series back to claustrophobic dread and puts you inside it. You are Ethan Winters, searching a decayed Louisiana plantation for your missing wife, and every room you enter belongs to the Baker family in ways you do not yet understand. The shift to first-person makes every creak and closed door personal. Resources are scarce, tension is constant, and the option to play the entire game in PlayStation VR turns that tension into something close to unbearable. This is survival horror restored to its roots.
Quick answers
What is Resident Evil 7: Biohazard about?
Resident Evil 7 strips the series back to claustrophobic dread and puts you inside it. You are Ethan Winters, searching a decayed Louisiana plantation for your missing wife, and every room you enter belongs to the Baker family in ways you do not yet understand. The shift to first-person makes every creak and closed door personal. Resources are scarce, tension is constant, and the option to play the entire game in PlayStation VR turns that tension into something close to unbearable. This is survival horror restored to its roots.
When was Resident Evil 7: Biohazard released?
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was released on 24 January 2017.
Who made Resident Evil 7: Biohazard?
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was made by Capcom Development Division 1 and Capcom.
Similar games
Explore Resident Evil 7: Biohazard guides
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in our writing
- Companion guide: Backwoods Horror
- Companion guide: Body Horror
- Companion guide: Home Invasion: The Complete Guide to Terror Behind the Locked Door
- Companion guide: Survival Horror
A few thoughts on Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
If the first-person claustrophobia got under your skin, the Resident Evil novelizations push the lore deeper into Body Horror territory. Resident Evil Caliban Cove expands the S.T.A.R.S. backstory with the same grim atmosphere, while George A. Romero's Resident Evil offers a different lens on the franchise's foundational terror.
Horror that traps you inside a house you can't leave
Resident Evil 7 confines Ethan to the Baker family's rotting Louisiana plantation, and that same claustrophobic dread runs through the wider Resident Evil universe in George A. Romero's Resident Evil and the research-facility horror of Resident Evil: Caliban Cove, plus Backrooms' endless liminal corridors, FROM's residents trapped in a town that won't release them, and the body horror of Junji Ito's Tomie.
Ordinary people who suddenly have to fight monsters to survive
Ethan spends Resident Evil 7 outgunned and improvising just to make it to the next room, a desperation that also drives The Last of Us' scavenge-and-run survival, Attack on Titan's untrained soldiers facing creatures many times their size, Stranger Things' kids improvising weapons against the Upside Down, and Supernatural's hunters who never quite have the right gear for the monster in front of them.
Slow-building horror where the atmosphere does the killing
Resident Evil 7 gets more of its terror from mold-stained wallpaper and distant footsteps than from any single monster, an atmosphere-first dread shared by Lee Cronin's take on The Mummy, Death's crushing Leprosy, the queasy tension running through American Psycho and Mr. Mercedes, and Blade Runner's score, which turns unease into something you can practically hear.