sisslethecat
The drip-feed continues…
While we all wait with bated breath for really any new information from Resident Evil VII: Biohazard to come to light, the Resident Evil Ambassador Program is steadily feeding us just the smallest tidbits of info. This morning, Ambassadors received a new image, highlighting Resident Evil 7‘s herbs, which look very different from the way they’ve appeared in previous installments.
We see here not one, but three different types of healing items. Green herbs, of course, but two new ones – bottled green liquid, with small to large green crosses on them. While these could be entirely new items, I’m thinking they’re most likely this game’s version of combining herbs, a series staple. What we’re looking at is probably a combination of G+G, and G+G+G (or two green herbs, and three green herbs). These items have taken on a number of different looks over the years, from being ground into a paste on a sheet of paper in the original games, to being left powdered in a glass tube in the modern games, to the candy dot things from Resident Evil 6. The herbs themselves have also been given a visual upgrade.
Classically, the herbs have always been a green (or red, blue, yellow, and occasionally purple), leafy plant in a plant pot. It’s a visual staple of the franchise and is one of the few elements that have stayed all the way from the original titles to the modern spin-offs (in fact, the only Resident Evil game that doesn’t include herbs in any way is Umbrella Corps, which has regenerating health). This version of the classic herb looks closer to rosemary, and the pot is gone. This isn’t new, when picking up herbs in Resident Evil 2 and 3, they’d be “picked”, the inventory image for them showed them sans pot. Although the small baggy tied to the bottom has me thinking there may be more here, possibly having to actually pick herbs growing on their own, like The Witcher or something similar. That’s pure speculation, tho.
The program also highlights the appearance of a coin in the image as well, which has sent the Resident Evil community into a whole new spiral of theories and overanalysis. Obviously, we’re meant to, as the text itself points the coin out as being a mystery. This could mean a few different things, but more likely than not some sort of monetary system for purchasing items and more. While Resident Evil 6 backed away from this in favor of points that are used to purchase character upgrades over items, RE4 and 5 both had full item upgrading and purchasing. I somehow feel like RE7 won’t be going quite that far, despite how much I’d love for the Merchant to make a return (be still my heart), the emphasis on isolation and horror would seem to dictate that if it’s going to be used for anything in-game, it would be something like a vending machine of sorts. But honestly, we have no information right now other than the presence of a coin. It could quite literally mean anything, so we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s a whole new type of finger, we can guess and speculate, but until Capcom gives us a real answer, there’s just no way of knowing.
Resident Evil VII: Biohazard releases January 24th, 2017, across PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The demo is currently available right now on PS4 for PlayStation + subscribers, and we’re expecting more information on the game at TGS in September, thanks to the previous Ambassador Program image.
