It was the commercial failure of this reboot (thanks to YOU guys. I bought it!) that prompted the change in direction.

Personally, I liked the way the series went. Resident Evil 3 and Code Veronica were painful to play through (and the story for RE games were nEVER good). The series needed change. Go play the DLC for RE 5 to see how an updated RE1 would play. It was good but nowhere near as good as people pretend it would be. Those nostalgia goggles...

Not really.  It's still shooting zombies (or plagas, w/e), still the same visual style (although obviously more advanced) same tone, 
some of the same characters, etc.  The change is certainly far less radical than the one you proposed.

I'll defend RE5 but not RE6.  I liked RE5 as the successor to RE4.  It used many of the same set pieces and mechanics with some improvements.  Although it was less dark (both figurtively and literally) and had less horror than RE4, it stiall had the added benefit of co-op which I thought was a fresh approach for an RE game.  Regarding the story, it was adequate for what the game needed.  There were plenty of short cutscenes that drove the plot forward and I know most fans wanted to see it play out all the way to the final Wesker battle.  To say that RE5 was a bad game is perhaps overstating it bit.  It was a good game that I had loads of fun with, especially co-op and mercenaries...

Resident Evil is dead; it merely reanimated as something different with #4, and has been decomposing ever since. =/

Three posts in a row? I'll make this one and then I'm done.

Tomb Raider: Great game. Everybody loved it.
Tomb Raider II: Great game. Everybody loved it.
Tomb Raider III: Starting to get stale
Tomb Raider TLR: ...okay. Enough already!
Tomb Raider Chronicles: Please die, Lara!
Tomb Raider AoD: Fuck this franchise!

And then, we got the reboot from Crystal Dynamics and everybody was happy. When THAT franchise started getting stale, we got the Square/Enix reboot. And, for some reason, there arose this group of people who say "Oh, they changed the franchise soooo much! Why did they ruin the essence of Tomb Raider!?" They changed it because the game got stale and sales reflected it.

I've withnesed this same thing with Resident Evil. By RE3, it was just more of the same. They tried to innovate with REZero but the old fashioned RE gameplay was dated and needed to go. It was a joke of the industry. "I need to open this door. Let me find a plaque, a spark plug, the armor key, and light a candle." RE4 was a breath of fresh air, a change in direction, and the savior of the series.

I'm sorry for those who wanted more slow paced, puzzle solving, convoluted stories (well, we still get that) but that is a product of a bygone era. Enjoy the excellent but super short REHD that got overlooked by so many when it released. Hope they re-release RE0, too! But don't tell me things were better, then. I lived through it. I bought the series on PS1, Gamecube, Dreamcast, etc. It wasn't better, then. Your memories are lying to you.

Imo it already became a shooter since RE3. Ammo was no longer scarce due to the ammo crafting.

That DLC was not like RE1 at all, it was just more PEW PEW PEW/ Mila Jojovich bad-assery/ PEW PEW PEW/ Mila Jojovich bad-assery/ PEW PEW PEW...

Joke of the industry or not, this adventure aspect  was awesome, made RE a game that made you think, you had to manage the very itens you could carry, make important choices, made you think:

Do I take a extra Herb or the Key? 

Am I going to pass near that tiger statue?

Should I take a Ink Ribbon or go for broke?

There, two zombie, fight or light?

How many pieces of that crest do I already have?

There was a room with a item on the second floor, but I had no place in the inventory, time to go back?

These made the game imersive to me, like my little choices really mattered, in a actually unique way,

RE5 and RE6 were just cheap shots, just Michael Baystic steps into something else.

Altought I still praise RE5 visuals and art direction, I really miss games like RE HD, Adventure-horror-survival hybrids, so unique.

Never again, there is just no market anymore.

It is just depressing to realize this...

Resident Evil was bad because Capcom forced it to be. When they saw the sales of Resident Evil was not like the sales of other games, they tried changing to be similar to other games. I mean, look at Resident Evil 6! It has a freaking soundtrack straight from a Cristopher Nolan movie!

I know it is impossible to make a game like RE today, no one would play it, they have to make a shooter and call it RE.

I know things are like they are and I am kicking a dead horse, it just depresses me to no end.