Warning! This put up accommodates spoilers for everything of Resident Evil Requiem’s story, in addition to some spoilers for the bigger Resident Evil canon. End the sport earlier than you learn this.
You do not get Resident Evil Requiem with out Resident Evil 6.
When it was launched in 2013, the return of Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, and Ada Wong was set to be the head of the collection. With RE6, the collection was going to merge its survival-horror roots with its action-horror evolution. It was going so as to add much more co-op, and it was going to inform the largest story Resident Evil had ever seen, that includes a bunch of its main characters.
Everybody hated it.
Resident Evil 6 is one thing of a multitude. Specializing in three units of characters, every operating by their very own campaigns, it tries to be survival-horror while you play as Leon, straight motion while you play as Chris, and an ongoing, Nemesis-style stalker chase while you play as Jake Wesker. (Chances are you’ll be asking: “Who?” And actually don’t be concerned about it.)
Not one of the approaches actually work, because of the bleeding-together of Resident Evil’s gameplay sensibilities. Greater than that, although, the sport’s story is genuinely complicated. Whereas it was a legitimately cool concept to have the identical story informed from three totally different views, it leaves the entire thing robust to parse. RE6 covers governmental conspiracies and unusual new villains, with a number of evil organizations, and in case you did not play by all 4 campaigns, you possible by no means understood what was happening or its significance to the general canon. Add to that some critical tonal whiplash–such as ludicrous, superhero movie-like motion set items and cutscenes–and the horror can by no means set in. That is additionally true of RE6’s critical, unhappy moments, too–like when Leon is compelled to shoot his buddy, the US President, after a viral assault has turned him right into a zombie.
RE6 encapsulates an total Resident Evil downside: Regardless of making an attempt to unify all of the totally different elements of Resident Evil’s id and canon, it merely provides extra confusion. The sport drops all kinds of group names and correct nouns that really feel significant to the general plot of the collection, if solely you could possibly maintain them straight. However simply as Resident Evil 4 was a tough shift away from the Umbrella story of the sooner video games, the following sport within the collection, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, was a tough shift away from the governmental conspiracy story of RE6–so its plot simply by no means comes along with the general collection.
RE7 and its follow-up, Resident Evil Village, have been a paradigm shift in a collection that’s just about all paradigm shifts. Each time Resident Evil reinvents itself, it additionally significantly recalibrates its story. The first 5 Resident Evils (together with Resident Evil 0 and Code: Veronica) have been fixed-camera survival-horror experiences, they usually all centered on the evil Umbrella Company creating viruses as weapons it could not management and thus destroying an entire American metropolis. In RE4, with its third-person motion strategy, we left behind viral mutations to go after a cult that contaminated individuals with mind-controlling, head-popping parasites. Resident Evil 5 went for co-op, included each viruses and parasites, and introduced again Albert Wesker, a villain of anime proportions hoping to show the entire world into mutants.
RE6 hinged on a cover-up of Umbrella and Resident Evil 2’s Raccoon Metropolis catastrophe, whereas really being a couple of man so obsessive about Ada Wong that he did a bunch of deranged science and mass homicide about it. RE7 shifts to a mind-controlling mould that might retailer the recollections of anybody it absorbed. And RE Village retconned in a tenuous connection between the mould and Umbrella, simply to maintain issues vaguely on the identical monitor.
And so we come to Resident Evil Requiem, a sport that, in its run-up to launch, drew comparisons to RE6–and created some trepidation due to them. Requiem tries as soon as once more to unify the various identities of Resident Evil. It is a first-person survival-horror sport starring a brand new protagonist, and it is a Leon-driven motion sport within the vein of RE4, operating two separate campaigns and that includes two totally different characters. Its story would see gamers return to Raccoon Metropolis, beforehand destroyed by Umbrella’s viruses and a authorities missile strike to cowl it up. Requiem appeared like a sport that will as soon as once more attempt to spin all of Resident Evil’s plates concurrently, returning to the glory days of the previous somewhat than providing any innovation.
And to a big diploma, it is true that Requiem is a greatest-hits document. However it does not revisit the previous solely to promote your nostalgia again to you, as some have stated. It is placing an finish to all that stuff that has dogged RE for years, by the unique video games and the retcons, the complicated lore and the remakes. It is closing the loop on previous Resident Evil in as many significant methods as it will possibly handle. It is the tip of 1 period for Resident Evil, and the start of one other.
Requiem is about legacy–Umbrella’s, Raccoon Metropolis’s, and Resident Evil’s. The villain, Victor Gideon, is an acolyte of his evil virus-making mentor, Umbrella co-founder Ozwell Spencer, and he is making an attempt to pay money for Elpis, Spencer’s last and strongest creation. Gideon’s plot leads him to abduct Grace Ashcroft, herself a hyperlink to the previous by her mom, Alyssa, a personality from Resident Evil Outbreak. And that attracts in our outdated pal Leon, who’s investigating Gideon’s crimes. Finally, the motion takes the characters again to the place all of it started: Raccoon Metropolis.
Hidden within the middle of the destroyed Raccoon is a(nother) secret Umbrella laboratory–the ARK. It was Umbrella’s headquarters facility, the place Spencer himself would hang around and work on viruses, and it each survived Raccoon Metropolis’s destruction on the finish of Resident Evil 2 and homes the vault that locks up Elpis, which Gideon wants Grace to assist him open.
It is within the ARK that we begin to see the story causes for why Requiem is enjoying the hits: The unhealthy guys are promoting Umbrella’s outdated stuff. Gideon, with the assistance of his buddies within the shadowy evil group The Connections, has used the ARK as a manufacturing facility. They created a variant of the T-virus to make new zombies, and you will find readouts within the lab that discuss numerous previous monster merchandise they’ve up to date for present sale, just like the Licker, the Tyrant, and the Nemesis.
The story tidbits alongside the best way additionally assist hyperlink to the opposite video games. Zeno, a brand new Wesker-looking character working with Gideon, is outwardly a member of The Connections, the group that was working with the mould in RE7 and RE: Village and has some maintain over or integration into the US authorities. We be taught that the missile strike on Raccoon Metropolis wasn’t meant to comprise the outbreak–which is made clear by the truth that it utterly failed to take action, given all of the zombies nonetheless wandering around–and was as an alternative meant to cover the ARK, Elpis, and Umbrella’s ties to those highly effective individuals.
Notes and paperwork additionally recommend The Connections have been answerable for the presidential zombification in RE6, an assault staged to eradicate him earlier than he might reveal the reality behind what occurred in Raccoon Metropolis. That means RE6’s villain, Derek Simmons, and one other spooky group known as “The Household” he was part of, are included with The Connections, too. And we hear that The Connections have been linked to Tricell, a seemingly rival company that rose up within the aftermath of Umbrella.
All this to say that Requiem is retroactively increasing on The Connections’ position within the total collection, and rapidly positioning the group because the drive behind lots of the collection’ occasions. If The Connections killed the president and are tied to Tricell, it stands to purpose that Albert Wesker and Ada Wong have been in all probability working for them way back to Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2. Requiem makes them right into a through-line for the collection: They labored with Spencer after which betrayed him, they tried to grab Umbrella’s energy for themselves, they satisfied the federal government to destroy Raccoon Metropolis to cowl their tracks, they usually assassinated the president by way of zombie virus when he threatened to blow the lid off. They tried to utilize the Las Plagas parasites in RE5 after Leon stopped Osmund Saddler’s Los Illuminados cult in RE4. And individually, they labored with Mom Miranda of RE: Village, hoping to make use of her mould to regulate minds, which led to the occasions of RE7. Now they’re working with Gideon to resurrect Umbrella’s creations with ARK, and are hoping to pay money for Elpis.
In a single story, The Connections deftly hyperlinks all the large threads left by different video games and their fixed shifts to new tales; guess now we all know why they’re known as that. However Requiem is not simply trying to tie up unfastened ends–it’s chopping them off for good.
Leon’s journey by Raccoon Metropolis sees him very pointedly destroying numerous blasts from the previous, with the sport citing outdated, vital creatures and characters to allow them to be killed as soon as and for all. He cuts his means by Plant 42, a monster from the unique Resident Evil, and faces down a Mr. X-like Tyrant that he defeats far more simply right here than in Resident Evil 2. He kills an entire heap of Lickers, the long-lasting monsters from Leon’s Raccoon Metropolis expertise.
Lastly, Leon takes on the Commander, a legendary Umbrella enforcer who is nearly actually Hunk, one other RE2 character. One of many final and better of Umbrella will get his throat slashed, and it is arduous to not see that as a metaphorical second.
After which there’s Elpis, the last word ending to the Umbrella period. Grace finds video of her mom interviewing Spencer and realizes that Elpis was his hope for undoing all of the carnage he’d launched on the world; not one other viral superweapon, however an anti-virus that will destroy all viral weapons.
We see Elpis in motion within the funniest meta second in Requiem. Zeno not solely appears to be like nearly precisely like Wesker, he even has the identical super-speed and enhanced energy of that long-time Resident Evil villain. It is closely implied that that is one other of Umbrella’s Wesker clones, and that you simply’re about to face this man as a boss in one more callback–until he foolishly injects himself with Elpis. As an alternative of changing into much more highly effective, he is reworked into an everyday man. Hilariously, Gideon places an finish to him with a single, straightforward shot to the top.
These moments aren’t simply purported to ping your RE2 nostalgia. Requiem is taking every of those iconic Resident Evil concepts and creatures and placing them down, one after the other. It is saying, with a shot to the top, that there will likely be no extra Weskers. There will likely be no extra Tyrants. There will likely be no extra T-virus. There will likely be no extra Umbrella. The final monster you struggle is Gideon, reworked into an enormous gooey Nemesis monster that is nearly precisely just like the one gamers beat in Resident Evil 3 remake, in a single final callback. And you then kill him too.
All of Umbrella’s greatest bads, its worst and best creations, fall earlier than you. Elpis is launched and all viral weapons are not any extra. Even Leon’s Raccoon Metropolis Syndrome, the illness that Raccoon Metropolis survivors have all developed and essentially the most pointed metaphor for the previous’s affect over Resident Evil’s characters, is cured. The lasting legacy of Raccoon Metropolis, and of Umbrella, is wiped away.
With Requiem, Resident Evil did what RE6 could not: It made the collection right into a coherent entire. And what’s extra, revisited its previous so it might bury a few of it–a final experience by Raccoon Metropolis, earlier than lastly leaving it within the rearview.
The collection can go ahead with a brand new, clear villain: The Connections. They have been round the entire time, both working with, or answerable for, all these of us we have seen get badly mutated earlier than somebody’s tossed us a rocket launcher so we might end them off. They’re extra highly effective than Umbrella, they usually’re nonetheless on the market, looking for new methods to regulate the world.
And now that Resident Evil has put down all its outdated horrific and disgusting concepts of how they might have accomplished that, it is free to think about all new horrific and disgusting concepts for them to attempt.