Maybe it's because I haven't been paying too much attention, and maybe it's because Resident Evil has become increasingly silly over the years, but having sat through over an hour of new Resident Evil Village my one overarching takeaway is this: this game is completely batshit.
Neatly transposing the dank horror of Resident Evil 7's bayou setting to a European backdrop that strikes a similar tone to Resident Evil 4, Village looks like it's set to take the first-person formula of the 2017 reboot into stranger, more spectacular places. It's familiar stuff, then, with a sprinkling of new features - combat is more crunchy, with the ability to counter punch, guard or push enemies back, which comes handy when you're being hunted down by the all-new lycans - but the real meat is in the set-pieces and story.
So rather than trying to get my head around all that rich lore, I'm going to leave you in the far more capable hands of Resident Evil expert Aoife Wilson as she runs through the ramifications of all she spotted during the recent hands-off gameplay preview. There are spoilers aplenty, of course, though if you played the demo you might have had a fair bit spoiled already. If you managed to get into the demo, that is...
