It's very possible. In fact, the Resident Evil mechanics are a big influence on the project I'm working on now. And IMO, one of the best game styles suited for this engine; small but detailed environments broken up with levels, with breathtaking visuals and lightmapping, and limited enemy encounters to go easy on the engine. Anyway;
1.
Third person is possible in Fenix Mod and Project Blue. However, you would need to add your own custom animations to theplayer character for every weapon or item the character interacts with. Otherwise, when the player picks up a new weapon, it will not be shown in the character's hands.
However, stationary cameras (RE 1,2,3, etc) would be a little more tricky. I believe you can pull them off in Project Blue with scriptable cameras, but I've never tried it before.
2.
Backtracking is also very possible. Certain mods allow you to backtrack to previous levels. And certain mods allow the use of an inventory system. (Project Blue and Fenix). If you remember earlier Resident Evil games (before 4), almost every small room required a seperate loading time.
If you want to replicate this, build the rooms seperate from each other on the same level, and place a trigger zone that prompts the player to 'open the door'. When they press the action key, the trigger zone teleports them to the other side (the other room), brings up a solid black hud on the screen, and plays a heartbeat sound for three seconds. The same trigger zone placed on the other side of that door takes them back the same way.
Otherwise, you can backtrack to previous levels with a simple command. The problem with backtracking, is that every item or weapon (dynamic entity) placed in each level will respawn in the same place each time the player returns to that level. The solution I came up with and pitched to Ply, was to use the inventory system. You can run a script when each level starts, that checks if certain items (let's say Key A and Handgun) are in the player's inventory. If those items are in the inventory, they will not respawn.
3.
Boss fights are also possible. I talked about a new method
here, that's going into my own project.
Good luck with your game. I'm a big fan of Resident Evil and look forward to seeing how it turns out
Kravenwolf
