New Resident Evil Village footage has serious Resident Evil 4 vibes

As part of Sony's PS5 promotion efforts, the company has released a video with tennis player Naomi Osaka testing out the machine. The first half of the above clip is mostly Spider Man: Miles Morales, but from 1:45 on we get our first real look at the PC-bound Resident Evil Village, aka Resi 8.

There's a lot to be gleaned from these clips, not least the fact that the inspiration for this game is clearly some of Resident Evil 4's greatest moments. We see the player character Ethan exploring a mostly abandoned village, and according to Osaka wondering "are they out?", suggesting this is the opening area. There's a glimpse of an elderly NPC, holed-up with a shotgun, who's surely going to die in a grisly manner. Your character can jump, clamber over obstacles, and slide, with one short clip showing a drop from a rooftop that suggests a verticality new to the series' environment design.

And best of all? I'm not even kidding here, but one clip shows the player character pushing a set of shelves in front of a window. Any Resi 4 veteran will recognise that this is hearking back to a mechanic that lay behind some off that game's greatest sequences, the ability to block doors and windows while under assault from ganados. Speaking of which...

One of my few disappointments with Resident Evil 7 was the standard enemy type, the Molded. They were alright. Another brief clip in this video shows something much more exciting: an enemy stalking the player character from the other side of the fence, moving in a manner reminiscent of the ganados. I may be reading too much into this enemy's gait, do watch it for yourself, but this looks like a return to more humanoid and intelligent enemy types.

Other small details: the return of herbs as healing items, a shotgun, incredible snow effects, Ethan's wedding ring on his left hand, item crates and explosive barrels designed to look like Resi 4's equivalents.

As you may have guessed by now, I love Resident Evil. And while it is daft to pick favourites, Resi 4 is my favourite, and I thought Resident Evil 7 was an incredible reimagining of the series in first-person. The idea of Capcom's finest working on capturing some of that Resi 4 magic in the latter style... god, take my money.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."