Highlights

  • Resident Evil 7 set high expectations for Village, but a shocking opening involving Mia and Chris left players bewildered.
  • Resident Evil 9 should avoid misleading players like Village did with its opening, which lacked narrative purpose and trust from fans.
  • Village's success was marred by unnecessary plot twists, setting a cautionary tale for the future of the Resident Evil franchise.

Resident Evil 7 turned heads by planting seeds in a classic slasher horror atmosphere only to immediately uproot these new roots and its protagonist Ethan Winters and toss them into a fantasy horror atmosphere with Resident Evil Village. Resident Evil 7 was fully unprecedented regarding what it would achieve and what themes it would produce. It wasn’t even clear how precisely or explicitly it would connect to the greater Resident Evil mythology. Resident Evil Village was a true sequel to Resident Evil 7 and even if Resident Evil 9 behaves like a threequel it’ll have a tough time succeeding Village’s absurd inciting incident.

a (2)-3
Related
Resident Evil Hankers for More DLC Mini-Games Like 21

Resident Evil has sought to branch out with extracurricular DLCs in its last several installments and such mini-games could still be ripe for picking.

Resident Evil Village Begins with What is Believed to Be the Brutal Murder of Mia Winters

Village has a calm opening where players learn Ethan and Mia have had a child, though there are strange undertones apparent in Mia’s passive-aggressive behavior. It’s easy enough to brush that aside because Mia wasn’t given any screen time in Resident Evil 7 where she was in a normal scenario, anyhow, and now that she’s finally at home and not fearing for her life it would’ve made sense for her to not be as wholly ordinary as anyone else would be who also endured what she had.

Still, there’s enough there for players to dig into if they’re taken aback by how sharp her responses to Ethan seem. Then, before players have an opportunity to question anything going on, Chris Redfield is suddenly there—which is jarring enough given how Chris is now more aesthetically reminiscent of his Resident Evil 6 appearance—and firing a ludicrous number of silenced bullets into Mia.

Chris refuses to explain the situation to Ethan despite how much easier the entire predicament would’ve been to comprehend and stomach if he did and that narrative oversight is directly a consequence of Capcom hoping to maintain a plot twist regarding Mia and Miranda.

This wasn’t necessary, though, since the plot twist concerning Ethan’s death in Resident Evil 7 far outweighs anything to do with Mia and Miranda and eclipses that reveal fully. Either way, Chris gunning Mia down in front of Ethan and then neglecting to explain himself further was an absolutely wild choice that Resident Evil 9 can’t afford to make, nor could it ever hope to elicit the same bewilderment from players.

Resident Evil 9 Shouldn’t Try to Dupe Its Playerbase

Treating Ethan that way was also Capcom’s way of keeping players in the dark. Now that Resident Evil may have lost the trust of many of its players, a similar opening as Village’s in Resident Evil 9 won’t go over well and also probably wouldn’t be believable at face value. Details can be withheld from the protagonist if it’ll benefit the story, but Chris never had a salient reason for not simply explaining the situation to Ethan. Therefore, both Ethan and the player were misled unnecessarily.

Nothing concrete is known yet about Resident Evil 9 and, while it could attempt another huge narrative reveal, it shouldn’t go near how silly its predecessor’s introduction turned out to be. The opening is made worse with the context of the story itself and why such a choice was made because it’s purely for shock value and to trick players into maybe believing Chris is going to be Village’s lead antagonist.

That said, anyone who is familiar with Chris as a Resident Evil legacy mascot character wouldn’t ever assume he randomly became an antagonist unless there was some hidden reason as to why. It’s a failure in every regard, especially in retrospect, and unless Resident Evil can embrace and support its silliness with foolproof narrative purpose it should resist making similar decisions for its ninth mainline entry.