COG Considers [MASSIVE SPOILERS]
If you haven’t played or seen the ending or final arc of Resident Evil Village, final warning: we are getting deep into spoiler territory. Horror games are known for being full of surprises and taking you to unexpected places. Either through things like jump-scares or narrative leaps. Resident Evil Village has plenty of both. For our thoughts on Resident Evil Village, check out our video review.
Let’s start with the twist involving our main character of the game Ethan Winters. This curveball has been in the works since he was introduced in Resident Evil 7. Late in the game, after his fight with Karl Heisenberg, Miranda attacks Ethan and literally rips out his heart, supposedly killing him. After a brief action section as Chris Redfield, it is revealed that Ethan is still okay, relatively speaking. Ethan’s plot armor is actually the Mold that he had been fighting for the last couple of games. When at the Baker’s residence, he is killed, but the Mold brings him back to life and mutates him.
Didn’t you think it was weird how his hands keep getting chopped off and reattached or how he is injured in such gruesome ways? He just slathers on some Jesus-juice and he’s good to go. He’s actually been dead this whole time and we never really noticed it. There is a clue planted when he meets Lady Dimitrescu face to face. She sucks his blood out of his hand, an act which distracted us from the clue itself, and said that his blood tastes a little stale. That’s because she was actually sucking on dead Mold blood. When a character you have been playing as for a long time suddenly dies mid-game, that’s a big enough twist on its own, but then when they are brought back, that’s like a double-twist.
We should also talk about Chris for a while. He’s on game’s main box art, which implied he would be a big part of the game. Whether or not his role lived up to that is debatable. Then from out of nowhere, Capcom releases more art that has Chris looking like he’s going through a transformation into a werewolf or Lycan, which are fairly common enemies in the game. What’s going on? Is Chris a bad guy? Is he a Lycan? Nope. Not at all. Unless there is more content on the way that contains a stunning revelation that he is infected and bound to turn into a werewolf, this is just a blatant misdirection. Maybe it’s a metaphor for Chris not being exactly what he seems, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing kind of thing, but this Chris/Lycan art just didn’t work.
We’re not done with Chris yet. Now this is some bull. In the opening of the game, Chris and BSAA agents storm Ethan and Mia’s house and kill Mia, right in front of Ethan. We see this in some of the trailers as well. It sets Chris up to be a villain of sorts. He’s been a hero since the beginning of the series, so it would be a pretty cool take to have him take on the role of a bad guy or manipulated in some way.
It turns out that Mia was not Mia and that she was Miranda, who is the big bad of the game. Ah, the old bait and switch. For some reason, Miranda only uses this power of hers to transform into Mia. Not anybody important, just some retired scientist, so she can replace her as a mother and wife. She does this right before she tears Ethan’s heart out at the end of the game, as well, just to mess with him. For some reason, Chris puts two rounds into Miranda’s Mia head and says nothing about the truth to Ethan, who is owed an explanation at least. I mean, a government agent comes into my government-mandated protective residence, kills my wife, takes my baby daughter, takes me, and isn’t debriefed at all? A lot of pain could have been avoided if people just told each other the truth.
Resident Evil Village is great. People love the game and the praise is well deserved, but I’m a stickler for logical decisions. I think the Ethan twist was pretty good. The whole idea that was being alluded to that Chris was a villain or a werewolf was pretty lame after all is said and done. That’s just me though. What do you think about these twists from Resident Evil Village? Resident Evil Village is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Do you agree with what worked and didn’t? Let us know in the comments below.