Everything I am about to write is more my personal empirical observations than objective reality or absolute truth.
The horror genre is a niche genre. For example, Alien: Isolation was a rich game by the standards of the genre, but it was not a commercial success enough to satisfy the publisher and launch the series. This is the reason why you, as a publisher, do not want to invest good money in a scary game, so now the indie industry has taken over the development of the genre. We have very few big-budget horror games today, and the cost of developing games is only growing.
As far as I know, photogrammetry is a great compromise between quality and time and expense. When the development of Resident Evil 7 was just beginning, the Director compared this situation to Sam Raimi. He said Sam Raimi shot the classic for little money, so that's what we should focus on.
Of course, this doesn't mean that Resident Evil 7 is a cheap game. No, of course not. But this is a relatively small game for a specific part of the mass audience.
And I believe this also applies to new remakes. More specifically, I believe that the reason why they are re-imagining is because the development strategy has changed.
When you are working on a classic game in the series, you have a small team of artists who can make any background. The geometry of the locations is very simple, so any kind of enemy will fit there, even if it is from the previous game. You don't need to think about contextual animations. Moreover, the combat system is very primitive: if in the old games you could kill crows, if you raised the gun up and did not even hit them, then in the new format you need to take into account the speed of enemies, the complex geometry of locations, and, I think, the player's waste of resources on combat. Moreover, in the classic games, crows, spiders and other enemies were used from the first game, when you need to create them from scratch for the remake. You also don't need to think about hiring and paying a group that works with actors for cutscenes, and then editing this material, making for each camera frame individual lighting in the game. So the old games had different game scenario systems and non-linear elements: they were easy to add, but they served as a way to stretch the game.
When we talk about remakes, these are different games and other difficulties. During the planning stage, employees have to take into account the time and cost of development in order to optimize production. Hence the many compromises, since the game is based on another game that was made differently: for example, the fact that Carlos took Jill to the hospital, so we didn't have a clock tower. The clock tower wasn't even meant to be part of the game, you can see that from the way it's designed. To realize the full volume of the original content, they need to spend a lot more money, and according to many factors, this may not be worth it. Or it might be worth it. We don't know, it's a matter of risks.
I think this is the reason why there will always be a big gap between developers and players if they continue to make remakes. The series is now at the stage where games can be released on an annual basis. They will be of high quality, but small. I believe this also applies to Resident Evil Village, although insiders speculate otherwise.
