Highlights

  • Resident Evil 9 will have interesting choices to make as Capcom plans for the future of the series, with a legacy character like Chris Redfield likely to return as the lead.
  • Resident Evil games are known for their ambiguity in hinting at future directions, and the prominence of a legacy character doesn't guarantee their long-term presence in the franchise.
  • The final narrative twist in Resident Evil Village was well-crafted, but the introduction of new characters and the potential development of legacy characters may be necessary to maintain intrigue and avoid predictability in future installments.

If Resident Evil Village is a fork in the road for the franchise, Resident Evil 9 will have a lot of interesting choices to make. It seems as if Capcom has a plan for the future of the series in mind since it decided to definitively say that the so-called Winters saga had ended, which already infers a lot about what direction Resident Evil is headed. There’s no telling whether that’ll be stuck to or not, but for the time being it seems safe to presume that a legacy mascot such as Chris Redfield will once again be the lead of a main installment unless something drastic like Resident Evil 7 is in the works.

Resident Evil games are great at being ambiguous about where they’ll be headed next, ending with as little of a hint as to where the series will be taken in subsequent entries. A legacy character’s prominence in the franchise also isn’t any indication of how long they’ll be kept around, or if they’ll ever be reprised. Chris coming back wasn’t expected in Resident Evil 7, but his importance in Resident EvilVillage—especially its ending cliffhanger—suggests he could be brought back for the fifth consecutive mainline game, even if that means Resident Evil 9’s story might not be as unpredictable or novel.

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Resident Evil 9 Sticking to Fantasy Should Come with a Huge Change to Gameplay

Resident Evil Village debuted dark fantasy into its science-fiction horror, though its arsenal of weapons sadly wasn't representative of that.

Resident Evil’s Legacy Characters Come with Expectations and Baggage

Ethan Winters’ Fresh Face Meant Resident Evil Could Finally Have a Protagonist Plot Twist

Resident Evil Village had a lot on its plate and still managed to craft an incredible story for Ethan that revealed a well-thought-out plot twist in the end. Too often plot twists will rely on information that wasn’t even implicit let alone discernible, leading to a somewhat unsatisfying reveal.

Other times, plot twists can choose to say that events occurred off-screen, meaning they weren’t perceptible to begin with and therefore couldn’t have been predictable or gratifying to discover. Of course, Resident Evil Village isn’t without its narrative hiccups. The plot twist for Ethan actually having been ‘dead’ or part of the Mold hive mind since the beginning of Resident Evil7 is fantastic, and Capcom went to the effort of explaining that thoroughly with receipts that are perfectly logical.

Ethan could glue himself back together with first aid meds, which was enough for players to suspend disbelief, but the reason why it worked was because he was Mold by the time he regained consciousness and was sitting for supper with the Bakers. However, the way that Village sets this twist reveal up is largely egregious, having Miranda suddenly insert herself into Ethan and Mia’s lives and having Chris coldly neglect to tell Ethan anything.

Resident Evil’s Legacy Characters Might Not Offer Authentic Intrigue Anymore

Not much was known about Ethan and Mia beforehand, either, but legacy characters such as Chris, Leon, and Jill are all relatively open books. Jill hasn’t been seen since Resident Evil 5, at least not in the games’ canon, and if there was going to be a plot twist for her in Resident Evil 9 it would likely need to be explained away as something that happened to her between those games that players wouldn’t have seen.

The issue now with legacy characters is that unless something interesting happens to them in the narrative, they are all already fairly exhausted in terms of development that anything drastic might seem detrimentally random or obscure.

Replicating the significance and unpredictability of Ethan’s condition satisfyingly again might be quite impossible unless a new protagonist is introduced, whereas Chris taking the lead in Resident Evil 9 would need to come with yet another arc for his character to go through. At this point, that’ll always be underwhelming unless Capcom can reinvent its legacy characters in fascinating and unique ways.