I agree, it's not necessarily the characters themselves that have to be completely terrified all the time. The atmosphere counts a lot. It's not like Chris and Jill were convincingly scared in RE1 with the bad voice acting and dialog, yet the game itself was still scary. (Same with RE2) Albeit, the characters are experienced but they're still human and they don't want to die.Even Chris alone in a forest literally surrounded by zombies would be scary if they didn't give you a grenade launcher.
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I want more horror, but I don't want to give up my mascots completely so making them show a little more fear and trauma after all they have been through wouldn't be a bad change or addition.
In Code Veronica Chris dropped most of his items by accident. I would love for something like that to happen again. In the little bit of Revelations I have played Jill loses her items at one point too. It got way more scary and tense at that time.