Resident Evil 7

{Spoiler}{Spoiler}{story}
The demo proper opens with an endearingly blunt text instruction: ‘Don’t get caught’. Which is not the sort of encouragement you’d normally need when being pursued by a murderous Louisiana hillbilly. She, apparently, is Marguerite Baker and the small sliver of backstory we’re given suggests that she and the rest of her family have been missing for a while and only recently returned.

Why Mia is creeping around their house (similar to the one from the first demo, but perhaps not exactly the same one) isn’t clear but Marguerite clearly isn’t happy about her being there. And so not getting caught is not something we need any encouragement over. Without the VR headset the graphics are a lot clearer than the first time we played the game, although there’s a VCR style scanline effect that purposefully degrades the quality and enhances the video nasty style atmosphere.

As Marguerite rants and raves, including something about feeding her ‘babies’, it all feels very influenced by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Although she also refers to some sort of female leader, or perhaps godhead, that apparently Mia has upset. With no weapons to defend yourself the only choice is to crouch down and try and avoid her, the glow from her lantern the best clue as to where she is and where she’s going.

There is a puzzle in the demo as well, involving a typically convoluted method of unlocking a door. This has you picking up an odd-looking piece of modern art and then shining it in the light so that its shadow creates the image of a spider. In other words, a textbook example of Resident Evil impracticality, that nevertheless has you panicking that you won’t solve it in time before Marguerite comes back.

But getting through the door there’s apparently no way to escape her in the end, and the short demo ends with Mia’s capture and possible demise. We speak to producer Masachika Kawata, and promotion producer Tsuyoshi Kanda, later on and they explain that the idea is to trickle out information, and examples of gameplay, from now until the game’s release in January. So exactly what happens next is left purposefully unclear.