Early contender for Best Surprise in GOTY 2017.
I think everyone just assumed, based on their recent track record, that RE7 would be awful - mediocre if you were a die hard optimist.
I was extremely guarded about RE7, not because of recent RE games but because of the way they were showing it off. For all I knew it would be nothing but hiding in closets with a few throwaway minor enemy encounters. The overzealous fanboys in the threads put me on edge too, shit talking anybody who happened to like RE4 onwards.
Anyways it was kind of like the Doom situation where all I'd seen was bad players on the console version and the shit multiplayer, but once I saw how the game actually plays I was all in. In RE7's case I just needed to see how an early boss fight played out.
Really, all I wanted out of RE was the Revelations formula but bent more towards the survival horror aspect, and with production values befitting RE. I've seen RE7 described as exactly that, and I'm hoping that's true.