Resident Evil Village

The first time I played a Resident Evil game was likely 1998. After hoarding Official Playstation Magazine copies given to me by a friend (because someone gifted his family one despite them not owning a PS1), I spotted a walkthrough of Resident Evil 2. All the screenshots and maps, as well as bizarre tips like “check the mayor’s skull for the key”, were very interesting to a preteen AllTheDinos. While I bounced off the game midway through a single rental from Blockbuster (on account of it being too spooky and me being terrible at it), something about it stuck in my head. After eventually falling into Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid, it was clear that I had developed an affinity for Japanese studios making homages to Western media, particularly ones containing elements of paranoia.

By the time I picked up Resident Evil 4, I had gotten a handle on my fear of scary games enough to actually play one to completion. This allowed me to take in the zaniness of RE4 in a way that cannot be fully appreciated through a walkthrough or watching a friend play. The building and releasing of tension during survival horror sections was juxtaposed against hilariously bonkers cutscenes and reveals, making the game bigger than the sum of its parts. While Resident Evil 5 may have been the direct sequel to RE4, it’s for these reasons that I believe Resident Evil Village is its spiritual successor that improves upon it in every way.

From here on out, I’m going to do my best to warn you about the most major story spoilers. However, there will be a number of smaller things that you may wish to see for yourself for the first time, which will be in the middle of paragraphs for legibility purposes. I’m also going to be using “Ethan” and “you” fairly interchangeably, except for plot stuff.

After a beautifully animated introductory cutscene and a few quiet moments in the Winters household, the game erupts into chaos. The game hands you a pistol just in time for utter bedlam in the titular village, where dozens of lycans (I’m just going to call them werewolves, actually) assault Ethan from every direction. A few more cinematic sequences and light encounters follow, and you end up dragged in front of the game’s main antagonists. Ethan navigates a harrowing escape sequence and eventually enters Castle Dimitrescu, home of the first major dungeon and the Internet’s own Lady Dimitrescu.

It’s during the exploration of this area that I fell into a groove with the game, approaching new areas with confidence and generally treating the game as more action-adventure than survival horror. As with RE4, it’s a testament to the quality of Village that this was neither a jarring nor uninvited change. In fact, it was after exploring an ancient dungeon filled with the mummies of slain housemaids that the game hit its second gear for me. Ethan navigates corridors filled with obvious circle-strafing obstacles, then finds a lever to activate a gate at the end. Right as he’s pulling this lever, his hand is severed by the heretofore unseen claws of Lady D. You run around the area, escaping by outwitting your vampiress pursuer and solving a small puzzle. As the lift ascends, Ethan places his hand on his stump, shakes some medicine water on it, and the hand is fine and fully operable less than a minute later. This sequence produced what is likely the loudest I’ve laughed at a video game ever, and I was in complete awe of how bold a statement the developers had made. While there’s a good plot-based explanation for this later, it could have potentially alienated fans craving a more realistic horror game. Instead, they embraced the schlockier aspects of horror, with the goal of entertaining the player first on their list of priorities.

You eventually find your way out of the castle, fight and kill Lady D, and acquire a key that lets you progress to the next major dungeon (as well an item that establishes your objective for the game's second act). In order to do this last bit, you’re free to explore more of the village, which changes each time you return in subtle (or unsubtle, later) ways. In my first few hours, I wondered if the village would meet the same fate as Lady D - heavily used in marketing, but a minor aspect of the game when you look at its full scope. Fortunately, the thrill of exploring the village never goes away, and it becomes a refreshing break between dungeons. Sure, there are the occasional horrific enemies in freshly unlocked areas, but the layout becomes familiar enough to turn the tables on many of your foes. I wanted to backtrack to the Castle at this point, but unfortunately, almost every major dungeon is fully shut off to you after you complete it.

In many ways, Castle Dimitrescu is the “new classic” RE Engine experience of the game, and the rest of the game charts its own path. The very next area, the Beneviento house, is very clearly a nod to Silent Hill: PT in multiple ways that have been better articulated by other people. Third is the lake and muck overseen by the childish Moreau. During navigation of the latter’s dungeon, you solve box and switch puzzles while avoiding being eaten by a large fish creature. For me, this felt like a big callback to the RE4 / RE5 period I wrote about above. More importantly, it became clear that this game is an exploration of many different kinds of horror, thinking about what makes horror fun to people, and then capitalizing on that fun while also terrifying its audience. To many people, the best moment of this game is being chased around the Beneviento basement by an enormous, monstrous baby which squeals with infantile delight every time it spots you. I can’t say I blame them.

Even great games have their low points, and for me, this was the beginning of the fourth and final “noble house” sequence of the game. In order to get to Heisenberg’s factory, you need to navigate the Stronghold. What started off as a blood-pumping action sequence where you challenge the werewolf horde to a rematch became a slog near its end. While it was satisfying to wipe out the enemy group that nearly killed Ethan at the beginning of the game, it lasted a little too long, something this game is generally great at avoiding. By the time I entered the factory, I wondered if I was going to be able to keep momentum going to reach the end and see the story I was greatly enjoying to its completion. Fortunately, I was greeted by a man fused with a propeller engine and a labyrinthine structure chock-full of Frankensteins. The boss battle for this final major dungeon was a ferromagnetic Transformer, whom I defeated thanks to the aid of a tank / dune buggy that Chris Redfield made with his bare hands. The game I loved was back.

OK but for real, it’s mega big spoiler time now. You might want to skip ahead to the bullet points after the landscape image down below.

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Naturally, your reward for defeating the final noble house boss is for Ethan to get his heart ripped out and die slowly in a burning field. Only, of course that’s not how it plays out. There’s a decoy sequence with Chris absolutely 80’s movie-ing his way through the village. Just when you begin to wonder if Ethan’s story has already ended, you return to his point of view. It turns out that he’s been dead since the beginning of Resident Evil 7 (Biohazard), and the reason he’s been able to withstand an inhuman amount of abuse is because, well, he hasn’t been human for a while. The same mold that powers all of his enemies is the only reason he’s around and on the verge of rescuing his daughter. As someone who didn’t play Biohazard and is only somewhat familiar with its plot, Village does an adequate job explaining the important elements of that game in a way that never made me lose track of the story. That’s a tough balance: offering a pleasing conclusion to a story from a previous game to fans, while also leaving the door open for new players to fully enjoy what’s happening. I’m pleased to report that Village achieves that balance, and it’s certainly something to consider for anyone else who felt they needed to play Biohazard before taking a crack at this game.

Ultimately, Ethan sacrifices himself to destroy the heart of the mold and let his family escape. An epilogue sequence concludes the opening animation and shows a teenaged or young adult Rose Winters visiting her father’s grave. There’s a tease of special abilities Rose possesses, and a note that declares the father’s story to be over. This is the only time where the plot of a Resident Evil game left me excited to see what’s next. I don’t know if Resident Evil 9 will be the final chapter of a new trilogy, kick off a new multi-part arc, or be something entirely different. The future of Resident Evil looks very bright, and it’s all thanks to Village.

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Stray Observations

• I managed to go this far without mentioning it, but I enjoyed the gunplay of the game quite a bit. It wasn't Doom (2016) or anything, but it played a lot better than I expected going in. I used an old Xbox One controller on my PC, and I never had a moment where gun responsiveness or bullet detection were an issue. Shots carried the proper impact, and enemies reacted accordingly. I still prefer the third-person shooting style of the recent remakes, but this was very well-executed.
  
  
• Also of note: my PC currently has a Radeon RX 580, which I purchased and installed in January of 2021. The game ran well on default graphical and performance settings, and it also looked gorgeous during the process. If hardware is a concern for you, it appears to do well even on older equipment (in my personal experience, anyway).
  
  
• As with the Resident Evil 2 remake, the sound design in Village is impeccable. I actually had to choose different times to play this game because the ambient noise kept making me think my toddler was waking up or my cat was preparing to hork up a hairball. The audio cues for different types of enemy were distinct enough for you to suss out exactly what's waiting behind the next corner, and I love it when games reward you for paying attention like that.
  
  
• This game is incredibly gory in ways that occasionally made me squeamish (particularly where it comes to mutilation of hands). If that's a big turn-off for you, Village may not be up your alley. I didn't dig through the settings thoroughly enough to see if there are any options to remove or lessen gore, but you can skip any cutscene if it starts to get too much to handle.
  
  
• It's still hilarious to me that, as others have observed, the developers basically went through all the Universal Studios monster archetypes in this game. We've got: werewolves, vampires, mummies, the Swamp Thing, the equivalent to The Invisible Man, and Frankenstein's Monster. No real need for a Jekyll / Hyde when everything seems to transform into a big violent brute at one point or another. But the point is that the devs clearly had fun coming up with ways to integrate all of those non-zombie creatures into the Resident Evil universe.
  
  
• My total play time was just under 12 hours, according to the in-game clock. I think it was just about perfectly paced, with the exception of Heisenberg's Stronghold as discussed above. If a relatively short playtime is a minus for you in deciding whether or not to purchase the game, it goes on sale for $30 USD fairly frequently.
  
  
• On the topic of bang-for-your-buck, Village has the standard array of postgame unlocks, obtained via currency you get from completing challenges. I grabbed the Mercenaries game (basically given to you for free), infinite handgun ammo, and a special gun not obtainable by Ethan in the main game. It's good enough to want to immediately jump into a new game using these upgrades, which should put a different spin on the game (at least early on).
  
  
• I did play a few rounds of the first level of Mercenaries, but I couldn't get an A rating to unlock the second level after two separate clears. I haven't jumped in since late February thanks to Elden Ring getting released, but I'm feeling the pull to give it another shot or two after looking up some tips online.
  
  
• Lastly, I gated this note within my mega-spoiler section, but I want to emphasize that playing Resident Evil 7 (Biohazard) is not essential to enjoying this game. If you've been remotely interested in playing Village but had reservations for one reason or another, I strongly recommend taking the plunge.