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2005 Ashley the epitome of beauty.
(hexbear.net)
2023 Ashley the embodiment of western d*generacy
(G*mers literally believe this)
I think I'm the only person who didn't like the original re4 that much. It marked the downfall of survival horror for me turning the genre into a hammy action fest then quickly dying out completely. I do very much like the remake though and new Ashley is superior in every way.
Everyone always regards 4 as an evolution to the genre and revolutionary. Evolution of what? Killing survival horror? 4 birthed 5 and 6 then capcom had to throw it all in the bin and start again to make 7
I think it's less that it was revolutionary for the survival horror genre and more that it was revolutionary for third person shooters. Basically every third person shooter took some design cues from RE4.
I definitely agree with you though, that it basically ended the era of horror games being mainstream.
Were they ever that mainstream? Resident Evil was the only horror mega blockbuster in the PS1 era (I'm including the first two Dino Crisis games among them since they're basically RE spinoffs) and in retrospect I don't think it was the survival horror the average gamers liked, it was blasting monsters with guns. With the exception of Silent Hill, none of the other big survival horror games came close in terms of popularity, and even then Silent Hill was a pretty distant second.
Just to illustrate what I mean, Project Zero/Fatal Frame was considered one of the major survival horror franchises of the early to mid 2000s among RE, Silent Hill and Siren, and to date the entire series has sold 1.3 million copies. In comparison, Dino Crisis 1 sold 2.3 million copies and Dino Crisis 2 1.2 million.