A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE --------------------------------------- ---- RESIDENT EVIL ---- --------------------------------------- VIDEOGAME SERIES BY CAPCOM ENTERTAINMENT Begun by Dan Birlew, 1998 Updated by Thomas Wilde with permission, 2000-2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction, Disclaimers, and Legal Jargon 2. Legend (Frequently Used Acronyms) 3. Frequently Asked Questions i. This Document and the Larger Series ii. A Rough Timeline of Events iii. RESIDENT EVIL iv. RESIDENT EVIL 2 v. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS vi. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR vii. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA viii. RESIDENT EVIL: THE MOVIE ix. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO x. RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN xi. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM xii. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK xiii. RESIDENT EVIL 4 xiv. RESIDENT EVIL EXTINCTION xv. RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION xvi. RESIDENT EVIL: UMBRELLA CHRONICLES xvii. RESIDENT EVIL 5 xviii. RESIDENT EVIL: DARKSIDE CHRONICLES xix. RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE xx. RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS xxi. RESIDENT EVIL: OPERATION RACCOON CITY xxii. RESIDENT EVIL: DAMNATION xxiii. RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION xxiv. RESIDENT EVIL 6 4. RESIDENT EVIL i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL ii. Story Differences Between Chris and Jill's Scenarios iii. RE vs. RE "2.0" iv. Random Commentary 5. RESIDENT EVIL 2 i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2 ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2 iii. Claire A/Leon B vs. Leon A/Claire B iv. The 4th Survivor v. Random Commentary 6. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS iii. Different Paths iv. Different Endings v. The Epilogue Files vi. Conclusions About The Conclusion vii. Random Commentary 7. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR iii. Different Routes iv. Conclusions About The Conclusion v. Random Commentary 8. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA iii. Conclusions About The Conclusion iv. The Ashford Family Diaries v. Random Commentary 9. RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN 10. RESIDENT EVIL: FIRE ZONE (Gun Survivor 2) 10. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM iii. Conclusions About the Conclusion iv. Random Commentary 11. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK i. Introduction ii. Scenario One: Outbreak iii. Scenario Two: Below Freezing Point iv. Scenario Three: The Hive v. Scenario Four: Hellfire vi. Scenario Five: Decisions, Decisions vii. Plot Branches and Side Notes viii. The Remain Hopeful Endings ix. The Regretful Endings x. Conclusions About the Conclusion xi. Random Commentary 12. RESIDENT EVIL 4 i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 4 ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 4 iii. ASSIGNMENT ADA iv. SEPARATE WAYS v. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter One: Ring the Church Bell vi. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Two: Rescue Luis vii. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Three: Retrieve the Sample viii. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Four: Stop Leon's Assassination ix. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Five: Obtain the Sample x. Conclusions About the Conclusion xi. Random Commentary 13. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK - FILE #2 i. Scenario One: Wild Things ii. Scenario Two: Underbelly iii. Scenario Three: Flashback iv. Scenario Four: Desperate Times v. Scenario Five: End of the Road vi. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK - FILE #2 vii. Multiple Endings viii. Plot Branches and Side Notes ix. Conclusions About the Conclusion x. Random Commentary 14. RESIDENT EVIL: UMBRELLA CHRONICLES i. Train Derailment ii. Beginnings iii. Mansion Incident iv. Nightmare v. Rebirth vi. Raccoon's Destruction vii. Death's Door viii. Fourth Survivor ix. Umbrella's End x. Dark Legacy xi. Conclusions About the Conclusion xii. Random Commentary 15. RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION i. Conclusions About The Conclusion ii. Random Commentary 16. RESIDENT EVIL 5 i. A Summary of the Events of RESIDENT EVIL 5 ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 5 iii. LOST IN NIGHTMARES iv. DESPERATE ESCAPE v. Conclusions About the Conclusion vi. Random Commentary 17. RESIDENT EVIL: DARKSIDE CHRONICLES i. Operation Javier, Part One ii. Memories of a Lost City iii. Operation Javier, Part Two iv. Game of Oblivion v. Operation Javier, Part Three vi. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: DARKSIDE CHRONICLES vii. Different Endings viii. Conclusions About the Conclusion ix. Random Commentary 18. RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS i. Prologue ii. Episode 1: Into the Depths iii. Episode 2: Double Mystery iv. Episode 3: Ghosts of Veltro v. Episode 4: A Nightmare Revisited vi. Episode 5: Secrets Uncovered vii. Episode 6: Cat and Mouse viii. Episode 7: The Regia Solis ix. Episode 8: All on the Line x. Episode 9: No Exit xi. Episode 10: Tangled Webs xii. Episode 11: Revelations xiii. Episode 12: The Queen is Dead xiv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS xv. Conclusions About The Conclusion xvi. Random Commentary 19. RESIDENT EVIL: OPERATION RACCOON CITY 20. RESIDENT EVIL 6 21. Non-Game Sources and Unanswered Questions i. Wesker's Report ii. Wesker's Report II iii. Unanswered Questions 22. Mistakes 23. Say What?! 24. About the Authors 25. Conclusion ============================================== 1. Introduction, Disclaimers, and Legal Jargon ============================================== This document is an attempt to clarify and condense the story of the long-running Resident Evil series of video games, which has one of the most complex and muddled plots in modern pop culture. It's hopefully entertaining to read, and will answer many (but by no means all) questions that a fan of the series might have about its storyline. Dan "President Evil" Birlew originally began this project in 1998. Shortly thereafter, he went to work for Brady Games as a strategy guide author, and after writing the official guide for Resident Evil 3, was legally unable to update it. I came along in late 1999 and asked if he'd mind if I took over, and he agreed. I had no idea what I was in for. Every time I say "me" or "I" in this document, it's Thomas talking; every time I say "we," I refer to the audience of RE as a whole. This document is copyright 2000-2012, Thomas Wilde, except for those clearly labeled parts that are copyright 1998, Dan Birlew. All recognizable concepts and characters from the Resident Evil series are copyright Capcom, and their usage in this document does not constitute a challenge to that copyright. All rights reserved. =========================================================================== SPOILER WARNING As a document that extensively discusses the plot of the entire series, this is one long unbroken string of unlabeled spoilers about almost every Resident Evil game. It is not a good idea to read the rest of this unless you are comfortable with this fact. =========================================================================== I welcome feedback and contributions from readers, but please consider the following: - I am not interested in reading your "theories." This is mostly because the Resident Evil fan community is a crazy corner of the Internet, and I tend to get the worst of that. - I am reasonably certain you do not have cool inside sources from Capcom, even if your uncle does work there. - This is a plotline FAQ and is not concerned with gameplay. If you're having trouble with one of the games, I recommend looking elsewhere. - This is a FAQ that is strictly concerned with the games. The novels, comics and film franchise exist within their own continuities and have no bearing on the games, and thus no bearing on this document. Alice Abernathy's existence has made me want to punt a kitten since 2002. - Yes, this is a big document, but please consult it thoroughly before writing to me. It will take you much less time to creatively use the Ctrl/Command-F function than it will to wait for me to reply, and that function will not creatively insult you. ==================================== 2. Legend (Frequently Used Acronyms) ==================================== RE = the original Resident Evil (PSX) RE:DC = Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PSX) RE1.5 = the canceled beta version of RE2 REv.2 = the Gamecube remake of RE (a.k.a. "REmake") RE0 = Resident Evil Zero RE:O = Resident Evil: Outbreak RE:O2 = Resident Evil: Outbreak - File #2 RE:UC = Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles RE:DSC = Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles RE:ORC = Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (zugzug) STARS = Special Tactics And Rescue Service. The police organization that Chris and Jill belong to in the original RE. Down to one member by the time of the Raccoon City disaster; subsequently dissolved. RPD = Raccoon Police Department BOW = Bio-Organic Weapon; an Umbrella in-house acronym used in several files. Later games in the series use it as a catch-all term for any virally-created monster. BSAA = Bio-Security Assessment Alliance; European anti-terror group founded in the early 2000s. First an advisory NGO; later revised into a legitimate international paramilitary force under the U.N. FBC = Federal Bioterror Commission; American government anti-terror organization founded in the early 2000s. Dissolved after the events of RE: Revelations with its agents and resources put into BSAA control. NGO = Non-Governmental Organization ============================= 3. Frequently Asked Questions ============================= "You can't spell analyze without anal." -- Ben Plante After a few years, certain patterns emerge. These are the most frequently asked questions that I've received as correspondence or discussed online or in person. I've listed them here at the start of the document for the reader's convenience and, frankly, for my own. I got tired of renumbering the whole thing every time a new game came out. Before e-mailing me to ask a question for this section, there are several things that you should take into consideration: 1) Occam's Razor: don't use a complicated hypothesis when a simple one will do just as well. A lot of fans of the series are accustomed to looking for vast conspiracies when common sense, even in this franchise, will do more good. If you have a question, don't overthink it. 2) These are, first and foremost, video games, and obey their own sense of logic. It may not make sense cinematically, for example, that a police station is a strange maze of hidden keys, puzzles, statuary, and intricate locks, or that an average American suburb has a massive cathedral with a dungeon and a vast maze of old mining tunnels underneath it, but this is a video game and behaves as such. 3) the series has been notorious for quite a while for its lack of attention to realistic architecture. I am fully aware that there are never enough bathrooms, that pre-ORC Raccoon City's street planning makes no sense, and that Umbrella let unmedicated schizophrenics design their facilities. This isn't quite as true of the games released after 2008 or so, but for anything earlier than that, it's to the point where it's one of the fans' running gags. 4) the Resident Evil series is in effect a long-running Japanese horror franchise, and its roots lie in the 1990s horror trend in Japan. It is also a very Japanese spin on American horror films, and the bizarre combination of the two holds some of the series's appeal. RE thus bears many of the stock characteristics of Japanese pop culture: youth worship, tentacles everywhere, biology as an inherently black science, conspiracies and hidden agendas at every turn, and so on. Most importantly, a Resident Evil game doesn't feel the need to explain much of anything. It's a tendency, in Asian horror/sf, to simply say that a thing is, whereas in Western pop culture, we often say that a thing is, and then explain what it is, how it works, and why it's there. A lot of my more confused correspondence comes from people who're expecting RE to take the latter approach, but it simply isn't going to happen. The franchise runs almost exclusively on what its developers think would be fun, scary, or awesome and they don't sweat the details. Neither should you. 5) I am not a Capcom employee and, while it may look that way, I do not have access to any more information than you do. ================================= 3i. Document and Series Questions ================================= Q. How do all these viruses work? A. This is probably the best place to start. The plot of the RE series is mostly about viruses: who's got them, who's creating them, who wants them, and what's being done with them. All of Umbrella's viruses spring from the Progenitor, which was originally discovered in Africa, contained in a rare breed of flower that was jealously guarded by an isolated tribe. Ozwell Spencer made sure to conceal the source of the virus from everyone other than a select few research assistants, most of whom he had killed shortly after the Raccoon City disaster in 1998. He then made the mistake of writing about it in explicit detail in his private journals, which fell into Tricell's hands after his death. Spencer, Edward Ashford, and James Marcus established the Umbrella corporation to support their further research into applications for the Progenitor. Earlier games also referred to the Progenitor as the "mother virus," and did so in a way where it was not clear whether or not they were the same thing. This was finally clarified in RE5. The Progenitor virus, when it infects a host, drives the creature into an uncontrollable frenzy; the tribe that guarded it would eat the flower in times of war, turning them into fearless berserkers. Further research into Progenitor yielded some minor results, such as the mutated monkeys known as the Eliminators, but Progenitor-based bioweapons proved to be absolutely impossible to control. (A lot of us joked about this when it was revealed in RE0, since Umbrella did not seem to have a great deal of control over any BOW to begin with. To be fair, though, most of the "production models" of BOW we've seen do come with some kind of implanted control mechanism, and it even works most of the time. It's just that the player's usually the target.) James Marcus created the T-Virus in January of 1978 (stated in RE0, clarified in RE5) by mixing the Progenitor virus with leech DNA, then experimenting on human test subjects. William Birkin then studied the virus for years, using it to create bioweapons such as the Hunter and Tyrant. As noted below, Birkin seems to have done more with the T-Virus than Marcus ever did, which may explain why Annette thinks William created it. When the T-Virus infects an organism, it mutates the creature into an undead monster through a process of "reanimating dead cells." Humans turn into zombies or Lickers, while animals may become aggressive, cannibalistic, carnivorous, twist into what's essentially a new species, or just get much, much bigger. The T-Virus can be transmitted aerially, despite the claims made in the Reporter's Memo file in RE3, as well as via contact with the blood or saliva of a T-virus carrier. Its effects beyond that are best described as dramatic convenience; the virus does whatever the plotline needs it to do, so its onset time, symptoms, effects, targets, and lethality all vary, almost as if it was designed to give severe migraines to anyone who's trying to make a D20 Modern RE setting. Some characters succumb to the infection almost instantly, while others, such as the cast of Outbreak, drag the process out for days. After a carrier has succumbed to the T-Virus, it becomes crucial to the organism's operation, to the point where anything that attacks the T-Virus in its system can kill or injure it. The T-Virus is also a part of the creation of monsters such as Hunters and Tyrants. The exact method in which the T-Virus is used has never been explained, but it's apparently what makes these creatures possible. Most of the later-generation viruses in the series so far, like T-Veronica and T-Abyss, are made by combining the T-Virus with something else. Umbrella was conducting research into other uses for the T-Virus at the time of the Raccoon City disaster, although it took a distinct back seat to Umbrella's bioweapon research. This includes attempts to use the T-Virus medically, by deliberately introducing it to cancer patients. This actually did work for short periods of time, but the patients always succumbed to the T-Virus in the end. This is first mentioned in passing in the "Flashback" scenario in RE:O File #2, and later becomes a plot point in RE:DSC. Umbrella possessed a number of methods to prevent or inhibit T-Virus infection. Many Umbrella employees were given access to an unspecified "antibody," which frequently but not always immunized its user from the virus. There's also a reagent which will, if given to a T-Virus carrier who's yet to exhibit any physical symptoms, prevent the infection from progressing any further. This reagent is discussed in a file in RE:O2, and is likely what was given to Jill Valentine in RE3. As of 2005, as per Degeneration, the T-Virus is available on the international black market. This has led to multiple "bio-terror" outbreaks throughout the world. The T-Virus's existence and its effects are apparently public knowledge. Very few outright cures for the T-Virus existed at the time of the Raccoon City disaster. One was the experimental serum codenamed "Daylight," created by a college professor and a renegade biologist. The other was being produced in-house by Linda, a scientist working for Umbrella. Daylight is mentioned in the RE6 manga, which suggests one of the Outbreak survivors managed to get a sample out of Raccoon City, and it is implied that Linda survived as well. By 2005, the corporation Wilpharma has produced a T-Virus vaccine, which is used to inoculate troops and protect outbreak survivors. It is apparently rare enough that it does not see widespread preventative use. After the arrest of Frederic Downing and the death of Senator Ron Davis, Wilpharma folded and was bought out by Tricell. The effect this had on the availability and reliability of the vaccine is unknown. Albert Wesker and William Birkin discovered the G-Virus in Lisa Trevor's body in 1988. The virus differs from the T-Virus in that it causes constant mutations in its host; while a victim of the T-Virus may mutate further with appropriate stimuli, the G-Virus continually mutates its host to allow it to survive whatever's thrown at it, from disease to trauma. In Lisa Trevor's case, the G-Virus enabled her to live through exposure to Ebola, the T-Virus, *and* the Nemesis parasite, among other things, although it cost Lisa her humanity and sanity. By the time of RE2, William Birkin had spent ten years working on the G-Virus. A creature infected by Birkin's G-Virus is a rapidly mutating killing machine. It possesses incredible strength and resilience, and early in its metamorphosis, can use simple tools. Damage that incapacitates the G-Type just forces it to mutate into a new, more dangerous form, and nothing short of total incineration will kill it. The detonation of the train at the end of RE2 apparently did kill William Birkin, as Ada's G-Virus sample in RE:UC ("Death's Door") is a chunk of his corpse. Disturbingly, a G-Type can also generate small embryos, which it'll try to implant in any suitable host that it can corner. Once the G-Type has achieved full maturation, its priority becomes reproduction, which it pursues at all times. If G-embryos reach maturity, they'll quickly kill their hosts and crawl off on their own, usually to metamorphose into another unique monster. The exception here is if the G-Type impregnates a blood relative; we don't know exactly what would happen next, but the process takes a lot longer and doesn't produce any immediately visible results. The G-Type may be able to tell on some level whether or not a specific human is a relative of its former self, and will deliberately target and infect that person if given the opportunity. There was an effective G-Virus vaccine, codenamed "Devil," which was given to Sherry Birkin. As of RE:DSC, Sherry is in the custody of the American government as a walking G-Virus sample, as the "Devil" vaccine only halted the virus's progress and did not actually cure it. Samples of the G-Virus also made it out of Raccoon City courtesy of both HUNK and Ada Wong, where they were delivered to Umbrella and Wesker. By 2005, the G-Virus is available for purchase on the black market much like the T-Virus. It's both incurable and uncontrollable, making it a less attractive option for a would-be terrorist. The modern-day G-Virus appears to work much faster than Birkin's original did, as Curtis Miller turns into an advanced stage of G-Type within minutes of his exposure. The Nemesis parasite was created in 1988 by one of Umbrella's French laboratories, as an attempt to circumvent the low survival rate of test subjects for the Tyrant. While the Nemesis parasite killed 100% of its hosts in 1988, that problem has apparently been solved by 1998. A Nemesis is smarter, faster, and far more durable than a Tyrant, though it lacks its predecessor's raw strength. The T-Veronica virus was created around 1983 by Alexia Ashford, by combining the T-Virus with a dead virus that Alexia found in the body of a queen ant. If it's used on a human, it'll quickly create an uncontrollable mutant with homicidal tendencies, as evidenced by both Alexander Ashford and Steve Burnside. The host of T-Veronica may retain some humanity for a little while after infection, but without further steps being taken, they'll quickly lose their humanity. If the T-Veronica host is allowed the chance to gradually come to terms with the virus, however, they can learn to exist in symbosis with it, and in so doing, will gain a tremendous amount of power. The original method, as used by Alexia Ashford, was to enter cryogenic sleep for fifteen years, gradually allowing her body to adapt to the virus. A second method was created out of desperation by a medical team employed by Javier Hidalgo in 1999, which involved replacing the host's organs with fresh ones as fast as she burned them out. The specific abilities of a successful T-Veronica host have been all over the map. Both Alexia Ashford and Manuela Hidalgo had the power to generate powerful blasts of flame by exposing their blood to air; Manuela in particular can toss fireballs that are roughly on par with a rocket-propelled grenade. Alexia further rounded off the package with shapeshifting, superhuman strength and damage resistance, telepathic control of a number of tentacles of unknown origin and construction, some degree of extrasensory perception that may or may not have involved her mutant ant colony, contact pyrokinesis, and for all we know, optic blasts. The only remaining sample of the T-Veronica virus after Alexia's death was in the body of Steve Burnside, which Wesker stole. Since then, the virus has leaked onto the black market, and was used by Javier Hidalgo in an attempt to save his daughter's life. Leon Kennedy and the U.S. government apparently spent a fair amount of time in the early 2000s specifically trying to wipe the T-Veronica virus out, but were unsuccessful as of 2008, as Tricell has samples of it for research purposes. The NE-T virus is mentioned in one of RE3's files, and may be a translation error. We don't know anything about it other than that it exists, although its name has led some to believe that it has something to do with the creation of Nemesis. A lot of excitable fans assume it's the specific strain of the virus that was used to infect Jill in RE3, but again: no proof. By 2002, Umbrella's experimentation has yielded the TG-Virus, a mixture of the T-Virus and Birkin's G-Virus. Those infected by it retain their human intelligence, but mutate into something that looks a lot like Alexia's final form. They're also protected by a powerful electromagnetic field, which can only be breached by means of a specialized particle rifle. In the event they're killed, the G-Virus immediately kicks in, starting rapid, uncontrolled expansion. The T-Abyss virus was created at some point prior to 2004, through the combination of the T-Virus and a virus, codenamed Abyss, that was found in a predatory deepsea fish. In its normal state, the T-Abyss was meant as a research project and wasn't particularly dangerous, but it was later discovered that in concentrated form, it became a dangerous mutagen. (An interesting side note is that the T-Abyss project was originally designed as a way to research "other marine bioweapons." It's not the only sea-life BOW out there.) Like the T-Virus, the T-Abyss's effects are inconsistent. Small animals like fish turn into monsters within seconds of exposure, while a lot of humans transform into "Oozes," humanoid creatures that act like they're mostly liquid. Exceptions to the rule include Skagdeads, which Jessica's Report identifies as the result of a human who has a greater than normal resistance to the virus slowly succumbing to the infection; Rachael, who's still recognizably herself after infection and turns into a bullet sponge; and Jack Norman, who doesn't mutate at all until he gives himself a second dose. The general theme of infection, however, seems to be that the T-Abyss gives its victims a degree of damage resistance that's unusual even among the other kinds of bioweapons in the series so far. The original strain of the Abyss used its hosts' reserves of fat and water to create super-dense bone and muscle, which is only accelerated by the T-Abyss. Some T-Abyss carriers actually develop bulletproof carapaces or shells. The C-Virus first appears in Resident Evil 6 in outbreaks across the planet. As of this writing, it seems to create a faster and more vicious breed of zombie than the T-Virus did. Finally, a discussion of the viruses wouldn't be complete without mentioning Ozwell Spencer's custom "Wesker Virus." We know next to nothing about its creation except that it involved the Progenitor in some significant way. Upon exposure, it allowed Wesker to endure massive trauma and "wake up" a few minutes later, healed and endowed with superhuman strength, agility, resilience, and speed. He's barely more than a baseline human immediately after his "death," but three months later he's the steel-bending speed freak we all know and love, and he only seems to get faster and stronger over time. Side effects of the "Wesker Virus" include red lizard-like eyes with a penchant for glowing dramatically, possible photosensitivity, and a dependence on a precise dosage of special serum to maintain the virus's stability. It is implied that all the surviving members of Ozwell Spencer's "Wesker Project" would be able to benefit from exposure to the virus. Q. Wait, I thought the T-Virus did something else. Are you sure? A. The very short version is this: yes, I'm sure. If you're reading something that contradicts the above write-up, it's not correct. There have been a lot of works that get the T-Virus confused with something else, including the 1998 Wildstorm comic magazine. It's also complicated by the existence of the live-action movies, where the T-Virus can give a skinny white chick superpowers while simultaneously drying up the planet's water supply and oh God my eyes are bleeding again. As far as the games go, however, this is how it all works. Q. Why doesn't your character ever catch one of these viruses? A. There are a lot of fan theories about this, ranging from the anti-viral effects of tasty green herbs to the RE protagonists possessing natural immunities (that throwaway line in Wesker's Report 2, about the T-Virus just not working on some people, is pretty much official confirmation thereof) to pseudoscientific gobbledygook about the T-Virus's infectiousness. It is also generally agreed upon that any wound a character takes that isn't in a cutscene doesn't "count" for storyline purposes; i.e. the only injury Leon incurs in the entirety of RE2 is from Annette shooting him. The simplest answer, I think, is that in a game where the object is to survive, it would be counterproductive if you were doomed from the start. That being said, RE3, Outbreak and RE4 all feature infection subplots or mechanics, and it's possible to (read: almost inevitable that you will) catch a fatal dose of the virus in RE:ORC. Q. So how about these monsters, huh? A. Many of the creatures you encounter in an average RE game are escaped bioweapons, monsters deliberately created by Umbrella's scientists for combat and ultimately profit, though Umbrella itself did not get the chance to market its creations. These monsters are usually made with the T-Virus. The most successful bioweapons are arguably the Hunter (which has come in five varieties: Hunter, Gamma Hunter, the poisonous Sweeper, the much larger Elites, and the invisible Farfarello) and the Tyrants. We've also seen a variety of Umbrella's near-misses, such as the Eliminators and Torpedo Kids. Other deliberately-created monsters include the Cerberus, Neptune, and the mutated blood-drinking plant codenamed 42. The most frequently encountered enemies in a Resident Evil game, however, are zombies, made when a human catches the T-Virus. Once a human's infected, the virus will eventually kill him, although it can take a long time depending on a variety of different factors. If an infected human is heavily injured, it's almost always going to rapidly speed up the rate at which the T-Virus works. For some reason, a carrier of the T-Virus can comfortably ignore the loss of much of its vital bits, with the exception of the brain. A body that's sustained serious brain damage cannot reanimate; a carrier that's shot or stabbed through the brain dies instantly. Unlike zombies in most other media, a T-Virus zombie can be killed by injuries to other parts of its body, but it takes a lot of raw damage to do so. The T-Virus also works on dogs, sharks, bats, crows, and many other animals in much the same way as it does a human: death, followed by the immediate desire to find and eat living things. Some animals may continue to mutate or grow, becoming giant monsters or an entirely new species. Infected animals seem to actually feel pain (i.e. the dogs yelping when shot), whereas zombies do not. Rats, on the other hand, are either mostly immune to the T-Virus or just don't go crazy when they're infected with it. With the obvious exception of Outbreak's opening movie, we've yet to see attack rats make the scene in any RE. They're one of the "monsters" in RE:O2's gallery, where you can see that they've mutated slightly, and they appear occasionally throughout the Outbreak games, but they aren't antagonists. As of REv.2, the T-Virus also has long-term mutagenic effects. After a long period of infection, a T-Virus carrier who "dies," unless incinerated or decapitated, will get back up as a faster, more durable creature. The Arklay scientists called this a "Crimson Head." One could presume that any T-Virus carrier would eventually mutate into a Crimson Head, given time, but the process apparently takes a couple of months, and in every other game in the series, the zombies are at most a week old. (The appearance of rushing waves of Crimson Heads in RE:ORC is, like the rest of RE:ORC, considered noncanon.) When the T-Virus hits the nonmammals, things start to get a little weirder; something about the viral mutation apparently allows an organism to bypass the cube-square law. Spiders and fleas become enormous, worms grow to the size of large snakes, snakes start attacking anything they can reach, and a few lucky animals evolve into enormous killing machines. The giant worms in RE3 and CV, the huge spider and giant snake in RE, and the sewer 'gator in RE2 are all examples of this. One might also lump RE3's drain deimos into this category, as well as the Mega- and Gigabites in RE:O2. Another example of an accidental creature is the Licker, which, as noted below, is the result of a zombie getting a fresh dose of the T-Virus, with a Crimson Head looking like a sort of halfway point between a zombie and a Licker. Later experiments conducted by Tricell's scientists further evolved the Licker, granting it the ability to reproduce and moving it further away from its genetic roots. The Tyrants, the creatures that traditionally serve as bosses or sub-bosses in RE, are constructed via the deliberate mutation of a human subject, utilizing both the T-Virus and a chemical called Beta Hetero Serotonin, which is found in the brains of frightened teenagers. Only one in a hundred million humans is a suitable candidate for being transformed into a Tyrant, with the rest simply dying at some point during the process. RE:UC establishes that all the Tyrants we've seen in the series so far, from the original model in the Spencer mansion to the infinite Mr. X dispensers on Sheena Island, were produced using clones of Sergei Vladimir, who took and passed the required tests for the Tyrant creation process. While this does mean that Umbrella had viable human cloning technology in the 1980s, it also explains the sheer number of Tyrants as well as their general physical resemblance to one another. Umbrella was constantly working to improve the Tyrant, refining it through multiple production models. The Tyrant-001 was created at the Arklay mansion, and died at the hands of Chris and Jill; five months later, Alfred sics the T-78 on Claire. Note that as per Survivor, every single Tyrant produced means that at least one teenager was abducted, imprisoned, and eventually subjected to brain surgery without benefit of anesthetic. The Nemesis project is an offshoot of the Tyrant research, and dates back to 1988. An organism hosting the Nemesis parasite, if he or she survives the infection, becomes the intelligent, monosyllabic yet lovable killing machine that we know from RE3. While a Nemesis lacks some of the Tyrant's raw power, it more than makes up for the lack through intelligence and sheer tenacity. The Talos is the final production model of the Tyrant, produced by Sergei Vladimir's Russian research facility in 2003. It combines the traditional virtues of a Tyrant with an unusually high degree of speed and agility. Just to hedge its bets, Sergei also sealed it inside a giant suit of riot armor and handed it a rocket launcher. Further, while the Talos will uncontrollably mutate following an initial "death," this appears to have been planned for as part of the design; a mutated Talos abandons its rocket launcher in favor of attacking with a set of freshly-sprouted tentacles. Finally, a number of monsters from the games are abandoned experiments or are considered obsolete. These include the Torpedo Kids, the Eliminators, and a species of giant wasp. The G-Type is discussed in the section on the G-Virus, above. Las Plagas aren't viruses, and are discussed in detail elsewhere in this document. All permutations thereof, such as Novistadors, Gigantes, and Regenerators, are the result of Osmund Saddler's experiments, which were carried forward by Tricell after Saddler's death. As far as we know, the research that created the Plaga monsters had nothing to do with Umbrella. Q. Which characters are definitely still alive? A. Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong, Sherry Birkin, Carlos Oliviera, Nicholai Ginovaef, HUNK, Ark Thompson, Lott and Lily Klein, Bruce McGivern, Fong Ling, Billy Coen, Ashley Graham, Angela Miller, Sheva Alomar, Rodriguez the helicopter pilot, Josh Stone, Parker Luciani, Jessica Sherawat, Raymond Vester, Keith Lumley, Quint Cetcham, Clive O'Brian, and Morgan Lansdale are all still alive at this point in the series, or at least have never been officially declared dead. Q. Which characters are definitely dead? A. Mikhail Victor, Annette Birkin, William Birkin, Greg Mura, Peter Jenkins, Marvin Branagh, Ben Bertolucci, Enrico Marini, Kenneth Sullivan, Ed Dewey, Kevin Dooley, Forest Speyer, Richard Aiken, Joseph Frost, Dario Rosso, Alfred Ashford, Rodrigo Juan Raval, Luis Sera, Ramon Salazar, Bitores Mendez, Osmund Saddler, Morpheus Duvall, Vincent Goldman, Monica, Will, Bob, Carter, Dr. Hursh, Andy, Jean, Tony, Murphy Seeker, Tyrell Patrick, Mike the helicopter pilot, Luis Sera, Ozwell Spencer, Dan Dechant, Sergei Vladimir, Ricardo Irving, Excella Gionne, Jack Norman, and Javier and Hilda Hidalgo are all dead, along with hundreds of thousands of zombies, townspeople, random cops, and other assorted innocent bystanders. Albert Wesker is dead at the moment. Q. Which characters' statuses are unknown? A. Rebecca Chambers completely disappears from the games' storyline after RE2. The Resident Evil Archives book lists her as deceased, but that's never been established; she's simply vanished and has yet to appear in any subsequent game's main story mode. I'm hesitant to write off Lisa Trevor, Alexia Ashford, or Rachael as permanently dead, since all of them are established as being almost impossible to kill. Wesker seems to finish Lisa off in RE:UC, but when her whole deal is that she can't die, it's difficult to take that seriously. Steve Burnside appears to die at the end of Code Veronica, but Wesker's cryptic comment to Claire in the final cutscene of CVX suggests that Steve may yet return somehow. Jack Krauser is ostensibly dead following his defeats at the hands of Leon and Ada. There is room to contest this, of course. At least one of the cast of the Outbreak games must have survived the city and escaped with Linda, as seen in "End of the Road," and the inclusion of Daylight in the RE6 manga suggests there was a survivor there, too. There are also a few unnamed NPCs who lived through the games by virtue of being involved in an escape route, such as the firemen in "Decisions, Decisions." Manuela Hidalgo survives in the best ending of "Operation Javier" in RE:DSC, but the canon ending is as yet unknown. It's very likely that she lived, however. Q. Why don't any RE games ever take place in daylight? A. You may as well ask why so few horror movies ever take place in daylight. Nighttime is scarier. Besides, a few of the later games have at least started during the day. Q. Where the hell is Raccoon City? A. Right now, it's scattered around that blast crater. Before the bomb, it was somewhere in "America's Midwest," and there's nothing in any RE game that would place it anywhere more specific (i.e. the police cars in RE2 have "Raccoon" license plates). It's a small metropolitan area with a trainyard, located on a river, with a large forest and a mountain range nearby, which means there aren't that many places in the midwestern U.S. where it could be. This has been a popular topic of discussion among RE fans since 1998. Theories on the subject include Illinois, since Ada mentions the Chicago branch office of Umbrella during RE2, but which has no mountain ranges, and Colorado, which has the right climate and topography to host a city like Raccoon, but which isn't technically in the Midwest. There's also a pretty good writeup on Project Umbrella that makes a strong case that Raccoon City's in southern Missouri, which would make the "Arklay Mountains" part of the Ozarks: http://projectumbrella.net/forum/Raccoon-City-Geography?page=3#comment-1012575 Q. How close to "reality" is the RE series? A. The science is, of course, almost universally nonsense. If you ever want to see somebody go off on a rant, introduce a person who has a working knowledge of biology to the Resident Evil games and just watch them go. It's like when a history major reads Dan Brown. As for the course of history, Umbrella seems to have had a massive and transformative effect on the RE-verse's Earth. In the wake of the Raccoon City disaster, the President of the United States resigned, "bioterrorism" has erupted all over the planet, the general level of human technology is higher, it has several "extra" cities and countries, and eastern Europe is apparently wracked by civil war in 2012. Basically, if you're wondering whether or not a particular real-world event happened in the RE universe, it's safe to assume that everything's about the same until 1998 or so, although the missing-persons rate is likely much higher and Umbrella's standing in for Procter and Gamble, which means most of the products on store shelves have different brand names. Post-Raccoon City, though, everything changes. Q. What is Resident Evil 1.5? A. I quote Dan Birlew, from the first version of this thesis: When the original Resident Evil topped the videogame sales charts, Capcom realized two things: they needed a sequel, and they should have put more quality into the first game. Reprogramming it, they re-released it as Resident Evil: Director's Cut in 1997. The package contained a second disk this time, a demo version of Resident Evil 2. The demo was met with extreme confusion, however. Capcom had previously released to the press screenshots of a prototype for the sequel. The demo, although definitely not the finished version, was nothing like what had been previously advertised. Internet Resident Evil fans have taken to calling this scrapped prototype game Resident Evil 1.5. Leon appeared in the game, but the earlier version of Claire was an unrelated college girl named Elza [Walker]. With blonde hair and red biking gear, she was similar to Claire only in her love of riding Harleys. The game was developed with the same map as the game that was eventually released, but the graphics were steeped in atmospheric blues and neon lighting. Evidence of widespread chaos in Raccoon City was far more plentiful and severe in this game's scenery than in the final version. The Birkins, Chief Irons, and Ada Wong were all missing from the ambivalent plotline of this game. Resident Evil 2 in this version threatened to be too much like the original. The planners wanted something that would take the storyline further. What the fans had been shown and told to expect from the sequel was not what they got. [Thomas adds: Owners of the PC/Dreamcast version of RE2 can unlock a special image gallery containing development sketches of RE2 and RE1.5, including a picture of Elza Walker and a group shot of the cast of RE1.5. Several of the same pictures appear in the Capcom Design Works artbook. It's known that several members of the final game's cast, like Robert Kendo and Marvin Branagh, were originally planned as major players in RE1.5.] [There are four movies of RE1.5 in action on the second disc of the Japanese Dual Shock Edition of RE:DC. The movies show brief gameplay sequences from various points in the game, featuring scenes set in the sewers, the RPD, and an underground complex of some sort. I recognized the RPD morgue and the elevator hallway in Birkin's lab from RE2. Also, a creature that looks a bit like the G-Type is present in several scenes; at one point, it's shown thrashing another monster.] Q. Where can I get the RE1.5 ROM/ISO? A. That's a bit more of a complicated question than you'd think. The game wasn't completed, so no copies of it were thought to exist outside of Capcom of Japan. A couple of private collectors have reportedly acquired a copy of the RE1.5 pre-alpha code via Japanese sources, but the RE fan community's been trying to get their hands on it for years without success. Every so often, a beta version of RE2 pops up on various file-sharing services. This isn't RE1.5. Instead, it's an incomplete preview build, such as what would've been given to the gaming press in 1998, and is slightly different from the final version of the game. Q. Hey, my friend says he has a copy of Resident Evil 1.5. A. Your friend lies. Destroy him. Q. Will Resident Evil 1.5 ever be officially released? A. Almost certainly not. Most sources say that Mikami wasn't happy with the way the game was going, so he canceled it and started over. Many of its environments, situations, innovations, and themes have been recycled into later games. Q. How did [character] in [game] get from [place] to [place]? There's no way for him to leave/get there! How did [character] in [game] survive in [dangerous area] with only a [weak weapon]? A. NPCs are a strange and wondrous lot, possessed of powers beyond mortal ken. These are your "helpers": the other uninfected humans who assist and/or hinder you over the course of the game. They often have abilities you do not, like infinite ammunition, no-clip codes, and forbidden secrets of ninja magic. (It should be noted for the sake of accuracy that NPC powers are not unique to the Resident Evil series. They are possessed by all NPCs in any story-driven game. Some are more blatant about it than others, and Mayu Amakura is their queen.) An NPC can move around behind the scenes of reality. Unless they briefly lose their powers, through being plot-hammered or the player taking control, an NPC can do whatever the hell he or she wants. That may include already being in a room that took you an hour to open, surviving the kind of punishment that would kill your character twice, leaving an area without using the only exit, or getting through a difficult part of the game without a scratch while armed with an empty pistol and a cocktail straw. Whenever an NPC does something that does not make any sense, these powers are to blame. Q. The Mystery of the Phantom MP5: why is it that when [throwaway NPC] dies in [game], their gun disappears? A. With the exceptions of Richard Aiken and Robert Kendo, you will never get to take a weapon from a freshly dead NPC. You can claim quite a few weapons from old corpses, but if somebody is carrying a nifty gun and then gets capped before your eyes, the gun evaporates. This trait appears to be strongly identified with machine guns, such as the MP5s or H&K 9mms carried by Hunk and his men. Many of us have learned to live with this sad state of affairs, but I used to get a fair amount of e-mail from people who'd really like to be able to grab an SMG from those dead guys on Team Delta or take Irons's Magnum or something. My answer for this is simple: I blame elves. Q. Have you read the Resident Evil Archives? A. Unfortunately. Q. Resident Evil Archives contradicts you. A. The first volume of the Resident Evil Archives is badly translated, to the point where it manages to contradict itself, let alone me. It reads more like a bad novelization with a lot of concept art thrown in. I haven't checked out the second volume yet, but my former colleague Elizabeth Ellis worked on it, so there's no way it isn't better. Q. Hey, have you read any of the novels? What do they mean to the plot? What about Trent? A. For those who don't know, there are seven Resident Evil novels, all written by S.D. (Stephani Danielle) Perry and published by Pocket Books. _The Umbrella Conspiracy_ is a novelization of Resident Evil (it's a mix of both games, where Chris explores the dormitories while Jill encounters the Tyrant), _City of the Dead_ covers the events of RE2 (Leon A/Claire B), _Nemesis_ adapts RE3 (ending #3, where the Nemesis kills Nicholai and Carlos swipes Nicholai's helicopter), _Code: Veronica_ is a novelization of CV (note: *not* CVX), and _Zero Hour_ recaps RE0. Two of the novels, _Caliban Cove_ and _Underworld_, are original stories. The former features Rebecca Chambers and a bunch of original characters, while the latter stars Claire, Leon, Rebecca, and the original characters who survived _Caliban_. The books are all right, as pulp-horror young-adult novels based on a video game go, even if-- --*my God, she uses italicized inner monologues more than she uses her omniscient viewpoint! After all, why bother with a concise narrative when you can have characters do the narration instead, even if they do it in unbelievably stilted prose*-- --Perry's writing style gets on my nerves. The novels seem to get reprinted any time a new RE game comes out, and are reasonably easy to find online. As for their canonicity, it's kind of a funny story. The novels are a remnant of the ill-fated attempt to create a Resident Evil "expanded universe" in the late nineties, which does not seem to have gone over well with the developers at Capcom. They've gone well out of their way over the course of the last twelve years to make it clear that the novels aren't canon, with RE3 in particular contradicting Perry's novels on every point it can. To expound: Capcom | Perry ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Raccoon City is in the "American | Raccoon City is in Pennsylvania, an Midwest." It had more than a | hour's drive away from New York City. hundred thousand people in it, | It had a population of eight thousand. and boasted utilities and public | services far out of proportion | to its size. | ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- On the morning of October 2nd, | Raccoon City was destroyed by a Raccoon City was bombed off the | massive fire on October 4th. Its map by the American military. | ruins are being investigated by Despite the quarantine, rescue | the CDC, with "help" from Umbrella, personnel were operating in | and the surviving S.T.A.R.S. are Raccoon right up until the end. | being (ineptly) framed for the crime. | A fixed number of survivors has | In addition to Leon, Claire, Ada, never been established, but | Sherry, Jill, and Carlos, there were between Degeneration and | about a hundred known survivors of Outbreak, we've seen a few dozen | the "fire." overall. They are apparently | rare, if Greg Green's reaction | to Claire in Degeneration is any | indication, but there are quite | a few more than we used to think | there were. | ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Jill Valentine is ex-Delta Force.| Jill Valentine is an ex-thief and She is twenty-three years old | the daughter of notorious cat and a woman. This is somewhat | burglar Dick Valentine, hence implausible, at least in our | explaining why she's the "master of universe. | unlocking." She joined the S.T.A.R.S. | because her father pressured her | to go into a line of work that | wasn't illegal. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- The S.T.A.R.S. are a unique | There are multiple S.T.A.R.S. counterterrorism squad that only | units existing within several exists within the Raccoon City | other towns, such as Exeter. They police department. | maintain close ties with the RPD | S.T.A.R.S. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Jill stays in Raccoon until she | Jill leaves town with Barry and blasts her way out of town on | Chris on September 26th, well October 1st, a day after Claire | before the T-Virus outbreak, then and Leon forcibly renovate | reenters town and leaves again on Umbrella's underground labs. | the thirtieth with Carlos. Claire and Leon enter Raccoon | Claire and Leon don't get anywhere on September 29th and leave on | near Raccoon City until the night the morning of the 30th. | of October 4th. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Claire and Leon don't part on | Claire and Leon are picked up the best of terms. Claire runs | outside Raccoon by Rebecca Chambers off, while Leon and Sherry are | and her posse from _Caliban Cove_. taken into military custody. | Leon and Claire immediately head off Leon is gently convinced to sign | to have more anti-Umbrella adventures up as a government agent, while | together in _Underworld_, and later Sherry is kept in U.S. custody | join Chris and Barry in Paris. Claire as a living G-Virus sample. | gets captured at the start of _CV_ Claire continues looking for | as part of a botched operation by Chris on her own. She and Leon | the STARS. Sherry now lives with get together at some point | her Aunt Kate, who is apparently a so she can tell him all about | good enough lawyer that it can stop the events of CV, and have | mercenary squads. buried the hatchet by 2005. | ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Rebecca Chambers doesn't really | Rebecca is the heroine of _Caliban_ do much, aside from setting the | Cove_, where she saves the world self-destruct charges, being | and stuff. Perry is fixated on cute in a jailbait way, and | Rebecca, and displays this unhealthy occasionally tossing some free | obsession by having EVERY CHARACTER healing your way. (This is even | conduct lengthy interior monologues half-true in RE0, the game that | about how smart, funny, clever, cute, Becky is ostensibly the star of.)| and brave little Becky is. It's | kind of disturbing. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Chris, Jill, Claire, and Leon | An enigmatic man named Trent, who survive their adventures by | is secretly a member of the board being smart, tough, clever, and | of directors for Umbrella, has been lucky. They're rarely given any | feeding the STARS cryptic information outside help, outside of the | since just before the Alpha Team occasional last-minute save from | went into the Spencer mansion. He a friend or fellow survivor | is also responsible for Carlos's (i.e. Carlos, Steve, Ada, etc.). | involvement with the UBCS and | generally pulls all the strings. | Even though he's well outside canon, | he continually shows up in fans' | conspiracy theories. I hate Trent. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- The official ending of RE2 is | Claire dispatches the mutated Claire A/Leon B, as per Ada's | Mr. X at the end of _City of the scenario in Umbrella Chronicles. | Dead_. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- The official ending of RE3 is | The Nemesis guts Nicholai like a the one where Nicholai survives. | rainbow trout. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- The exception to this is _Nemesis_, which comes with a disclaimer regarding this lack of continuity. _Nemesis_ follows RE3's plot faithfully, albeit with a few additional twists (Nicholai's motivations and actions are explored further, and Carlos stays with Jill as they explore the clock tower) and a couple of minor appearances by Trent. For the record, _Nemesis_ is far and away the best of the books, while _Code: Veronica_ starts fairly well but ends in a tangled mess. (In Perry's defense, she does do some interesting things with Steve, but it looks like she hit her wordcount early. The last chapters are very rushed.) Q. Will you be summarizing the novels in this document? A. Nope. There's no point, as they're not canon. I'm only bringing them up because it's entertaining to list the contrasts, and because fan work occasionally uses characters or events from the novels. Also, I used to get a lot of questions about Trent. I hate Trent so much. Q. What about the comic books? A. Wildstorm published five issues of an official Resident Evil magazine in 1998. Each issue featured several short comics featuring the cast of RE, most of which were recaps. The art was done by an assortment of pencilers who'd go on to do some high-profile work in American comics, like Lee Bermejo and Carlos d'Anda. It's often quite good. The writing, by Ted Adams and Kris Oprisko, usually isn't, although there are a couple of passable stories. (There are also a couple that are aggressively terrible, like the werewolf story. That werewolf story is the RE fan community's answer to "Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom.") The same writers would put out a four-issue limited series a few years later called Resident Evil: Fire and Ice. This original story stars the members of the STARS Charlie team as they fight Umbrella's creations. It's a pretty spectacular train wreck, with nothing in particular to recommend it. Both Fire and Ice and many stories from the original magazine have been reprinted in a recent trade paperback edition, which is a perfect gift for an RE fan in your life who you do not actually like very much. Like Perry's novels, the Wildstorm comics tried to build on the universe, and like Perry's novels, the games ignored them and did their own thing. In late 2008, Wildstorm took a third crack at the Resident Evil franchise with a new six-issue series, presumably meant to help promote the impending release of RE5, by Rick Sanchez and Jheremy Raapack. Despite Chris being on the cover of the first issue, no characters from the games appear in the book at any time. Instead, the series follows two BSAA agents, including the improbably-named "Holiday Sugarman," as they undertake a series of missions. The latest comic book was plagued with long shipping delays, with issues two and three coming out about nine months apart, and the entire series taking two and a half years to ship six issues. It reads like they slapped the Resident Evil license on a couple of randomly chosen scripts in order to move a few extra copies of the book. It's not actively painful to read the way that Adams and Oprisko's work could be, but it's not great either. You may want to read the first issue, though. In five or ten years, the "Lickers in Space" pages are going to show up as part of some games blogger's article about silly spin-off material, and you can go ahead and feel smug because you already knew about them. Q. ...and the manga? A. There have been a couple of official tie-ins. One, Prelude to Destruction, is a short and by-the-numbers two-volume story that exists as a prelude to the "Umbrella's End" scenario in RE:UC. It was never translated for release outside Japan, but you can find a fan translation on MangaFox. It's skippable, although there is a funny panel where Wesker wheel-kicks a Hunter's face off. Biohazard: Marahawa Desire is currently in publication. It serves as a prologue to RE6 and is the first chronological appearance of Piers Nivans, but has not been translated. It involves Chris and a couple of other BSAA agents dealing with an outbreak of the T-Virus at a school somewhere in Asia. Capcom has a writing credit on Marahawa Desire, so its events can be considered canon. No plans exist as of right now to officially translate it, but I know of at least two fan "scanlations" that are under way. A Chinese manga adaptation of Code Veronica by Lee Chung Hing was translated and released in North America in 2003. It's so over the top it's hilarious, with awful dialogue provided by Adams and Oprisko, and the covers recycle RE concept art in the laziest possible way. If you ever wondered how CV's plot would play out if every character was capable of punching people until they explode, pick it up. You won't be disappointed. Aside from that, there doesn't seem to be any manga worth discussing. I'll tell you this much for free, though: if somebody offers to show you an RE h-doujin, run the other way as fast as you can. Q. Why are the games becoming less bloody? A. It seems to go in cycles. RE2 and RE3 were moderately gory, then CV toned it down a great deal. The GameCube RE games ratcheted it back up again, reaching a decapitation-based crescendo in RE4, but the Outbreak games were even tamer than CV. RE5 turns the gore dial back down a bit. Q. Who's Shinji Mikami? A. If any one man can be said to be RE's creator, it's Mikami, who has a major design credit on every core RE game before 2008. He was one of the creators who formed Clover Studio, and was thus part of the group that left Capcom to form Platinum. Mikami currently works as an independent developer, on projects such as Vanquish and Suda 51's Shadows of the Damned. Q. Why'd you write/update this? A. I had a lot of free time in early 2000, and after that, I ended up as a freelance writer in the video game industry, so working on the plot analysis after that point was almost like actually working. Since then, it's been a long, strange trip, but it's entertaining. Some people do crosswords; I wrestle with the questionable continuity of a Japanese horror series. Q. How long did this take you to write? A. My first update, when this first appeared on gameFAQs.com with my name on it, took me a couple of weeks, most of which was spent on the RE3 and CV plot summaries. The considerably more in-depth version you're reading now is the result of years spent adding to and editing that original document, with near-constant feedback from readers. Q. What's with all the disclaimers and their general tone? A. When people start reading the disclaimers, I'll stop sprinkling them irritatedly and liberally throughout the analysis. My feedback for this document is something like 40% theories, and 20% questions from people who can't be bothered to look for their own answers. I don't have a lot of patience with people with low reading comprehension skills. Q. I found a magazine article that sounds a lot like this plot analysis. Have you heard about this? A. If you mean the November 2004 issue of NGC magazine, then yeah. I wrote it, although the editor did British it up a bit for print. (That bit quoted on TV Tropes, about "bleedin' zombies in the bath," is his, not mine.) If it's anything else, then tell me about it so that I may take vengeance. Q. You're missing a certain part of the plot analysis. May I write it up and send it to you? A. No thanks. Q. Why don't you want to hear my theory? Don't you have a sense of humor? A. In short: Resident Evil fans are *crazy*. While I can certainly understand a certain degree of speculation about the next game in a popular series, particularly one that's as rooted in conspiracies as RE once was, RE fans take it to extremes. The fan community isn't as bad today as it was in the late nineties and early aughts, but it still has the occasional moment of insanity. (There's a guy in Britain who used to keep me updated on his attempts to replicate the G-Virus. I did not ask him to do this.) This has been further complicated in recent years by the rise of the "shipping" community, which can be just as crazy but in a slightly less overt way, particularly since it seems like Capcom's started catering to them. In short, my desire to not hear about your &*$%ing *theory* is largely born of a desire to not become the sounding board for every lunatic in the RE fan community, because the online RE fan community is traditionally about 80% lunatics. It's nothing personal. As a general rule, if your letter contains the words "theory," "speculation," "hypothesis," "idea," "rumor," "Trent," "Paul Anderson," or "Alice," I don't want to hear about it. I'm also not in the business of validating your theory, so if you write me a letter asking me if something "could" be possible, I probably won't respond to that, either. (Yes, it *could* be possible, unless the facts blatantly contradict it. It also *could* be possible that the sun won't rise tomorrow. Possibility covers a lot of ground.) Q. Could you send me a copy/notify me when you update? A. Nope. Q. Why do you change e-mail addresses so often? A. It's my mutant power. I kill POP3 accounts. Q. Here's a joke that implies that the green herbs are marijuana! Aren't I entertaining? A. No, it's been done. The early versions of the herbs, where they were crushed onto sheets of papers, is a typical method of using herbal medicine in Japan. Q. Where can I read the games' files online? A. I've gotten into the habit of using the transcripts at projectumbrella.net. Q. Why is the series called Biohazard in Japan and China, and Resident Evil in North America and Europe? A. The heavy-metal band Biohazard has copyrighted that name in North America and Europe. Q. What movies are the games based on? A. The RE series has always worn its film influences on its sleeve. The original games are very much an extended homage to George Romero's "Dead Trilogy," and later entries in the franchise have included any number of other references or outright shot-for-shot thefts. Most of these are discussed in the individual games' entries, below. Q. What's in the future for Resident Evil? A. Lots, usually. Check your favorite videogame website for the latest information. This, being a plot summary, isn't really a good place for all your RE news. Q. How long will the series continue for, anyway? A. Degeneration and RE5 helpfully establish a new, extraordinarily flexible status quo for the RE series. It could theoretically go on for as long as video games persist as a medium. =============================== 3ii. A Rough Timeline of Events =============================== This originally started as a rough approximation of the games' timeline and rapidly spun out of control. It'll probably answer your question, but keep in mind that even I think this has gotten out of hand. 1960s: The three divisions within the Travis Trading company form a conglomerate that they name Tricell. Tricell's pharmaceutical division does a great deal of work with the research of the African explorer Henry Travis, whose writings also convince a young Ozwell Spencer to visit the continent. (Tricell file, RE5) 1960: Ozwell Spencer begins his "Wesker" experiment. (Wesker's file, RE5) 1962: Spencer commissions George Trevor, a famous architect from New York, to build a mansion for him outside Raccoon City. 1966: Ozwell Spencer, James Marcus, and Edward Ashford discover the Progenitor virus in a rare African flower. (The general timeframe is established in RE:CV, but a specific year isn't given until RE5's "History of RESIDENT EVIL" file.) Spencer installs Brandon Bailey as the overseer of the African research facility, located in the heart of the Kijuju Autonomous Zone. At first, the "facility" is a bunch of tents guarded by mercenaries, but Spencer funds the construction of a more permanent building. (various files, RE5) November 13th, 1967: George Trevor is invited to see the mansion he built for Spencer. George arrives with his wife Jessica and daughter Lisa, and finds that the invitation is a trap. Jessica and Lisa Trevor are kidnapped, and George is imprisoned beneath the mansion. (Trevor's Letters, REv.2) (Wesker's Report II conflicts slightly with the timeline listed in Trevor's Letters, as it lists Lisa being first used as a test subject three days before she arrived at the mansion.) November 14th, 1967: Jessica and Lisa Trevor are both used as test subjects for the Progenitor virus. Jessica is killed during an escape attempt, unaware that she's already been scheduled for termination. (Family Photos, REv.2) November 15th, 1967: Lisa Trevor, following an injection of the Progenitor virus, begins to lose her humanity. (Family Photos, REv.2) December 1st, 1967: George Trevor's attempts to escape lead him to an inescapable room, where Spencer has helpfully left him a tombstone. George starves to death in that room, unaware that his wife is already dead. (Trevor's Letters, REv.2) Early 1968: Spencer, Ashford, and Marcus found Umbrella, apparently by investing their own inherited fortunes. (cf. CV, RE5) In addition to its secret purpose of bioweapons research, Umbrella maintains a lucrative cover, hence the name, as a pharmaceutical corporation. By 1998, most houses on the planet have at least one Umbrella product in them. Due to Umbrella's various advantages--unlimited R&D budget, staff of sociopath geniuses, human experimentation in secret, government officials firmly in pocket--they rapidly raise the level of technology both available to themselves and to the world in general. The RE universe has working cryogenic storage and functional human cloning by the 1980s, among other things. July, 1968: Alexander Ashford accidentally kills his father Edward. CV listed Edward as dying in an unspecified accident; RE5 clarifies that he was infected with the Progenitor. This is the beginning of the Ashfords' fall from grace within the company, as Alexander acquires a reputation for incompetence. Since James Marcus doesn't care about the company, Ozwell Spencer now has absolute control over Umbrella. 1969: Brandon Bailey reports that the African facility for the study of the Progenitor virus has been completed. Bailey will spend the rest of his life there. November, 1969: The Antarctic shipping facility is completed. Alexander Ashford includes a hidden laboratory underneath it to allow him to continue his genetic experimentation in secret. 1970: Alexander Ashford officially succeeds his father as the head of the Ashford family. 1971: Alexander Ashford's intelligence experiments pay off with the births of Alexia and Alfred, who are essentially the artificial offspring of their ancestor Veronica. Alfred is simply an intelligent child, while Alexia is a genius. Alfred soon becomes utterly dependent on his sister. September 19th, 1977: James Marcus first creates the virus that he codenames "T," by mixing leech DNA with Progenitor. (Marcus' Diary 1, RE0) 1977: Albert Wesker and William Birkin begin their training at Marcus's facility. January, 1978: Marcus considers the T-Virus "complete" and announces its creation to other Umbrella employees. July, 1978: Wesker and Birkin are reassigned to the Arklay laboratory following the closure of the training facility. (Wesker's Report 2) Over the next eighteen years, Wesker and Birkin will assist in the creation of the Tyrant and the Hunter, among other bioweapons. 1981: Alexia Ashford graduates from university at the age of ten and is made a head researcher at her father's Antarctic laboratory. (Newspaper Clip, CV) She and William Birkin promptly start up a fierce rivalry. (Wesker's Report II) 1982: Alexia and Alfred test the T-Veronica virus on Alexander Ashford, creating the Nosferatu. They promptly imprison the monster in a chamber underneath the Antarctic production facility, turning him into a boogeyman for the local workers. 1983: Alexia infects herself with T-Veronica and enters cryogenic storage, after faking her own death in a laboratory accident. Alfred helps her with the cover story, but without her, he goes insane. Alfred rapidly comes to inhabit his own reality where Alexia is still awake. (Alfred's Diary, Virus Research Report, CV) 1987: Michael Warren is elected the mayor of Raccoon City, and will remain so up until its destruction. During his administration, Umbrella makes "vast" donations to Raccoon City, funding the construction of many of its facilities. In turn, many of these facilities, such as the hospital they build in 1992, have secret research laboratories or storage areas built into them. (City Guide, RE3) 1988: Umbrella France creates the Nemesis parasite. William Birkin discovers the G-Virus in Lisa Trevor's body. (Wesker's Report 2) Acting on Spencer's orders, Birkin and Wesker have James Marcus assassinated. (Investigator's Report 1, RE0) After Marcus's death, Umbrella discovers his lab under the training facility. It is sufficiently disturbing to them that they mothball the entire building. Following his assassination, Marcus's corpse falls into one of the storage tanks where he kept his leeches, and they devour him. July 1st, 1988: Wesker and Birkin's research into the Tyrant hits a snag when they discover just how low a chance a test subject has of survival. This problem is later fixed when Sergei Vladimir passes the tests. All future Tyrants are created using clones of Vladimir. 1991: Construction begins on the laboratory complex underneath Raccoon City. (History of RESIDENT EVIL, RE5) January, 1991: An unidentified man with theorized ties to the Ashfords provides information to Javier Hidalgo about using the T-Virus to cure his wife Hilda's cancer. Two months later, in April, the virus seems to have worked, and Hilda's cancer is gone. She does not regain consciousness, and Javier moves her to a private facility in June of this year. (Javier's Memorandum, RE:DSC) 1993: Construction begins on Terragrigia (Italian for "gray earth"), a solar-powered floating "city of the future." 1995: Wesker gets transferred to Umbrella's secret service. Ozwell Spencer takes Lisa Trevor from the Arklay lab, under the pretext that he's going to kill her. He is either lying or unsuccessful. (Wesker's Report 2) 1996: Wesker forms the STARS in Raccoon City, to combat a recent increase in local domestic terrorism. Most of its members are former military personnel. (Manual to original PSX RE; see below) (The games always imply that the Raccoon City STARS unit is both unique and somewhat famous. On the other hand, both the Wildstorm comic books and S.D. Perry's novels involve other STARS teams from other towns, including one that's gone international. It is also implied in RE2 that the "domestic terrorism" the STARS were founded to deal with was mostly corporate espionage.) May 14th, 1996: Yoko Suzuki is one of the participants in an unspecified T-Virus experiment. The results of the experiment are "horrible," and Greg Mura operates on Yoko to suppress her memories thereof. (Greg's cutscene, RE:O; Experiment Participants file, RE:O2) 1997: Lieutenant Billy Coen's unit of Marines is sent to Africa to intervene in a local civil war. Whatever happens next, at least twenty-three people die and Billy is charged with their murder. (Court Order For Transportation file; Billy's flashback, RE0) May 11th, 1998: the T-Virus outbreak at the Spencer mansion. Ignoring the movie, the resurrected James Marcus takes credit for the outbreak while Morpheus Duvall, for whatever reason, will eventually take the blame. (Keeper's Diary, RE v.2; dialogue, RE0; Dismissal Notice, RE:DA) June 22nd, 1998: By this point, all of the researchers and staff at the Arklay laboratory are infected with the T-Virus. The last survivors opt to kill themselves rather than become zombies. (Researcher's Will, Keeper's Diary, Letter to Ada, RE) June, 1998: the first cases of the "zombie disease" appear within Raccoon City. Many of the infected work in or around the Raccoon sewer system. (cf. M. Watchman's Diary, Sewer Manager's Diary, RE2) A series of bizarre murders are committed in the Raccoon Forest, spurring the involvement of Raccoon City's STARS unit. The murders are never solved, but they can be blamed on the packs of undead dogs that have escaped from the Spencer mansion since the outbreak. At least three of them were also committed by Ed Lester, the administrator of a country hospital located in the forest (RE:O2, "Flashback"). July 23rd, 1998: Umbrella sends a cleanup team to the old training facility in the Raccoon Forest via the Ecliptic Express passenger train, presumably to join the teams that are already at work in the facility. James Marcus, restored to a semblance of life by his leeches, attacks the train and kills almost everyone aboard. At some point, the train is stopped. Marcus also inadvertently (?) frees Billy Coen, whose police escort stops or is stopped near the train. Billy manages to escape into the train, while his police escort is killed. The STARS Bravo team, conducting aerial reconaissance of the forest, has helicopter trouble and crashes near the parked train. Rebecca Chambers and Ed Dewey investigate the train; soon afterward, Ed is killed and Rebecca is forced to cooperate with Billy for the sake of survival. Rebecca and Billy spend the next few hours being chased around the training facility and the subterranean network underneath the Raccoon Forest. July 24th, 1998: Rebecca and Billy's final showdown with James Marcus, in the treatment plant below the training facility, ends with the deaths of Marcus and his queen leech. Birkin destroys the training facility, which also gives Wesker the distraction he needs to escape from Sergei Vladimir. At dawn, Rebecca leaves Billy in the Raccoon Forest and heads to the Spencer mansion to rendezvous with Enrico Marini. July 25th, 1998: Rebecca crashes out in the mansion dorms, then meets up with Richard Aiken. As she and Richard make their way through the mansion to the attic, Sergei Vladimir is in the mansion's laboratory wiping the computers. The Alpha team begins its search for the Bravo team. They're promptly chased into the Spencer mansion. July 25th, 1998: at or around daybreak, Wesker's betrayal is revealed, the Tyrant breaks free, and the remaining members of the Alpha team escape via helicopter just before the Spencer mansion explodes. The Tyrant is destroyed on the helipad of the mansion. Wesker wakes up after his "death," resurrected and empowered by Spencer's virus, but without any of the data or BOWs he'd hoped to sell. He makes a run for safety back through the mansion, pursued by Lisa Trevor and the surviving mutants within the facility, and escapes into the woods. Lisa Trevor is caught in the explosion that levels the mansion. late July to mid-August, 1998: with no real evidence, an admittedly ridiculous story, and Brian Irons working against them, the surviving STARS are unable to persuade anyone in the RPD to believe their report. The police and media of Raccoon City conduct an investigation into Umbrella's affairs, and Umbrella reacts by briefly suspending their activities. Chris Redfield continues his investigation into Umbrella on his own. (Mail to Chief, Mail to Chris, Sewer Manager's Diary, RE2; Chris's Report, RE2 EX; Jill's Diary, RE3) Rebecca Chambers submits a report that claims Billy Coen is dead and his body has disappeared. The report seems to be taking advantage of the STARS' present bad reputation in Raccoon City, as it hints at outright incompetence among the STARS. (Rebecca's Report, RE2 EX) This is Rebecca's final appearance in the games' timeline. August 17th, 1998: Strange monsters begin to appear in Raccoon City. (Chris's Diary, RE2) August 24th, 1998: Chris and Barry both leave Raccoon City to go to Europe. Jill elects to stay behind, intending to investigate William Birkin's underground laboratory. While she's at it, she quits the RPD and drops out of sight; according to Marvin Branagh in RE2, Jill "disappeared" at the same time that Barry and Chris did. (Chris's Diary, RE2; Jill's Diary, RE3) Around September 22nd, 1998: A team of mercenaries is sent by Umbrella's French division, to William Birkin's laboratory to get a sample of the G-Virus. One of them is trigger-happy, and hilarity ensues. After the subsequent massacre, the G-Type munches on a number of virus containers, including the T-Virus. (The date comes from several files, such as the Chief's Diary in RE2.) The local population of sewer rats carries a megadose of the T-Virus up into the streets. When combined with the mild infection that's been leaking into the city since May, the virus has an immediate and horrifying impact. As seen in RE:O, there are dozens of zombies in the streets of Raccoon City a few minutes after William Birkin kills the strike team. September 23rd-27th, 1998: the long death of Raccoon City. The survivors of the outbreak take increasingly draconian measures in attempting to hold the zombies back, such as instituting martial law and using high explosives. Between the zombies themselves and the survivors' attempts to fight them, the city begins taking heavy damage. At some point during this period, the outside world places Raccoon City under a military quarantine, surrounding the city with troops and barricades. Officially, no one is allowed in or out. Unofficially, Raccoon City's airspace is 60% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 20% escape helicopters. September 24th, 1998: Brian Irons begins a process of deliberate sabotage. For no reason other than his own psychosis, he does his best to make sure that no one can escape the city via any means, including the use of Umbrella's tunnel system. He also makes it increasingly difficult for the police to effectively mobilize against the zombies, by scattering the RPD's supply of ammunition and booby-trapping its halls. (Chief's Diary, RE2) September 26th, 1998: the police muster their remaining forces and mount an all-or-nothing counterattack against the zombies. (RE3's opening movie) The siege of the RPD building begins. (Operation Report 1, RE2) Irons begins to hunt down the remaining survivors within the city. (Chief's Diary, RE2) Umbrella drops a sizable number of mercenaries into Raccoon City as members of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service. Many of the mercenaries are told their job is to rescue civilians, but others are tasked with gathering data, destroying evidence, or rounding up Umbrella's surviving employees. The UBCS takes serious losses almost immediately upon landing. (Mercenary's Pocketbook file, RE3) September 27th, 1998: By this point, most of the Raccoon police have been killed, and their final offensive has failed. The survivors pull back to the RPD's precinct house, which has already withstood at least one serious zombie attack, and attempt to find other ways of escaping. Most of the cops and civilians in the RPD die one by one over the course of the next day, at the hands of zombies, Lickers, the RPD's zombified K9 unit, or Brian Irons. (Operation Report 1, Operation Report 2, Chief's Diary, RE2; the opening movie, the Photos, RE3; "Desperate Times," RE:O2) Daytime, September 28th, 1998: The siege of the RPD ends when a small group of survivors escapes the building in a police van. A wounded Marvin Branagh is left behind, as are the few cops and civilians who've gotten stuck in the building's west wing. ("Desperate Times," RE:O2; Operation Report files, RE2) Across town, Jill shoots her way out of an apartment building, witnesses the death of Brad Vickers, and meets the Nemesis. She finds Marvin, who's passed out in the RPD's east office, but thinks he's died from his wounds. Marvin wakes up and leaves while she's fighting the Nemesis. Jill goes on to meet Carlos, Nicholai, and Mikhail, and fixes the cable car. Mikhail promptly breaks it again, crashing the car and knocking Jill unconscious. Nighttime, September 28th, 1998: Jill wakes up at the St. Michael Clock Tower. She signals the UBCS extraction chopper, which is promptly shot down by the Nemesis. Jill faces off against and "kills" the Nemesis, but it infects her with the T-Virus. Jill passes out, and Carlos takes her to the chapel. At some point between Jill leaving and Leon's arrival, Ada Wong arrives at the RPD building and begins a room-by-room search, looking for Ben Bertolucci. Late at night, September 29th, 1998: At this point, the quarantine of Raccoon City is apparently getting thin on the ground for whatever reason. Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield don't encounter any resistance as they drive into town. Claire meets Leon outside Emmy's Diner, and they head to the RPD. Claire is informed of what's happened by a wounded and delirious Marvin Branagh, while Leon is pursued by Mr. X. After murdering Michael Warren's daughter Eliza, Brian Irons dies at the hands of what was once William Birkin. Claire, Leon, Ada, and Sherry escape the RPD via the sewer system and Irons's secret passageways, then take the tram car to William Birkin's laboratory. This trip may take as long as a few hours, as later games (RE0, RE:O) establish that Birkin's lab is a fair distance away from Raccoon City. Early morning, September 29th, 1998: the "death" of Ada Wong and the final encounters with the G-Type and Mr. X. Leon, Claire, and Sherry make their escape from Raccoon City via William Birkin's train. September 29th, daytime: Claire and Leon have their unexplained argument, and Claire vanishes into the Raccoon Forest. Leon and Sherry are promptly picked up by the U.S. military. Leon is coerced into further service to the United States government, while Sherry is placed into protective custody. (Leon's epilogue, RE3; cutscene, RE:DSC) September 30th, night: HUNK, a.k.a. "Mr. Death," shoots his way through the RPD building and is evacuated, thus ensuring Umbrella ends up with a sample of the G-Virus. October 1st, 1998, the middle of the night: Jill finally wakes up. Carlos finds the T-Virus vaccine for her, learns that Nicholai is still alive, and encounters the "new" Nemesis. October 1st, near daybreak: Carlos cures Jill, who makes her way to the Dead Factory shortly after learning of the incoming missile attack. She and Carlos renew their efforts to find a ride out of town. Nicholai begins eliminating the other surviving members of the UBCS. His goal is to ensure he's the only person who can report to Umbrella about what happened in the city. He's largely successful. By the time the city is destroyed, Nicholai, Carlos, and Arnold are the only survivors of the UBCS. (Rodriguez may also count.) George Hamilton leads a small group of survivors into Raccoon University. They find Peter's body, fight off the Thanatos, and synthesize the Daylight vaccine. Nicholai assassinates Greg Mura, the Thanatos's creator, and blows up Raccoon University's administration building. The explosion draws the attention of a rescue helicopter piloted by Raccoon City firemen, who land nearby to pick up the survivors. Another group of survivors follows David King into Umbrella's laboratories, where they meet Linda and Carter. Following Carter's ill-advised attempt to exploit the Tyrant, the survivors escape into the city. Later events in the RE timeline suggest that someone saved Linda and somehow made it out of Raccoon City, but not who. Nicholai returns to the Dead Factory to attack Jill, but opts to leave her to die instead. Jill destroys the Nemesis, or at least slows it down enough that the bombing kills it. Sergei Vladimir, acting alone, steals Umbrella's central computer core and escapes the city. A heavily wounded Ada Wong makes her final bid to escape from Raccoon City, blasting her way out of Birkin's laboratory. She's able to get out of town by hitching a ride on Sergei Vladimir's helicopter. Her sample of the G-Virus ends up with Wesker. Hunk's departure from the RPD takes place at night, at some point after Claire and Leon have vacated the RPD. It could be set on either September 30th or October 1st. Dawn, October 1st, 1998: Raccoon City is blown off the map. The end of RE3 makes it look as though Raccoon was destroyed with a low-yield nuclear weapon, but the Outbreak games make it clear it was an intense conventional bombardment. Rescue teams were operating in the city right up until the bombing, and several refugees were able to make it out of the city in vehicles or on foot. early October, 1998: Leon Kennedy agrees to become an agent of the American government. (RE3 Epilogue) Sherry Birkin is taken into government custody due to her G-Virus infection. (RE:DSC) Nicholai Ginovaef submits several reports to Umbrella regarding what occurred in Raccoon City. As he is the only survivor among the UBCS's supervisors (and perhaps the only survivor of the UBCS who's still working for Umbrella), his conjecture about the cause of the outbreak is more or less accepted as fact. As far as Umbrella is concerned, William Birkin bears sole responsibility for the Raccoon City disaster. (files, Survivor) November 16th, 1998: After thirty-two years, Spencer shuts down and mothballs the research center in Kijuju. He subsequently assassinates the handful of people other than himself who had a high enough security clearance to know that the facility existed, including Brandon Bailey. (Spencer's Notebook, RE5) November, 1998: Ark Thompson's investigation of Sheena Island ends with an explosion. Ark, Lott, and Lily escape. December 17th, 1998: while investigating Umbrella to find leads on her brother's whereabouts, Claire Redfield is captured in Paris by Rodrigo Juan Raval. December 27th, 1998: shortly after she's taken to Rockfort Island, Claire is knocked unconscious. While she's out, Wesker and a team of mercenaries attack Rockfort in an attempt to find Alexia. Rodrigo frees Claire, who saves Rodrigo's life, discovers Alfred's secret, and escapes with Steve. December 28th, 1998: thanks to Alfred, Claire and Steve's plane crashes into Alexander Ashford's Antarctic hideaway. Claire manages to find an escape route, and Alfred's clever ambush fails. Claire and Steve's second escape attempt is foiled by Alexia's sudden awakening. At roughly the same time, Chris Redfield arrives at Rockfort Island. (Since the Albanoid's grown to adulthood, it's been at least ten hours since Claire was on the island.) He talks to Rodrigo, runs into Wesker, and steals one of Alfred's jets. Jill Valentine finally manages to track Chris to one of his hideouts in Europe, but arrives just after he's left for Rockfort Island. (Jill's RE3 Epilogue, RE5: History of RESIDENT EVIL) December 29th, 1998: Chris touches down in the Antarctic, saves Claire, kills Alexia, and survives his ill-advised fistfight with Wesker. Chris and Claire escape the Antarctic in Alfred's jet just as the base explodes. 1998-2002: At some point "soon after" the destruction of Raccoon City, it becomes public knowledge that Umbrella is to blame for the outbreak (RE4's introduction). Linda (and possibly Yoko Suzuki, if she survived) testifies against the company in court. Ozwell Spencer marshals a crack legal team and starts a lengthy court battle. Several survivors come forward to testify against Umbrella, but a lack of evidence (courtesy of the UBCS supervisors) hurts the government's case, as does the government's own involvement in Umbrella's activities. The political fallout from the Raccoon bombing results in the U.S. President resigning from office in disgrace. (intro, RE: Degeneration) April, 1999: An unknown agency, presumably Umbrella or a similar corporation, begins secret, unspecified field tests in the ruins of Raccoon City. The American government remains unaware of this, despite aerial surveillance. (Outbreak epilogue) 1999: Manuela Hidalgo is diagnosed with the same cancer that killed her mother. Desperate, her father Javier procures a supply of the T-Veronica virus from Wesker, and uses it as part of an ongoing treatment regimen. 2000-2003: At some point, Ramon Salazar assists the surviving Los Illuminados in recovering Las Plagas and administering it to the villagers who live near his castle. (RE4 never says when Salazar joins the cult, but since he's only twenty in 2004, it's safe to assume that it hasn't been very long.) Late 2002: Leon Kennedy and Jack Krauser go into South America looking for the crimelord Javier Hidalgo. Rumors that he's been in touch with former Umbrella personnel turn out to be extremely accurate. In the ensuing fight, Krauser is crippled, but Leon's stories about Wesker have given him an idea. Later that year, Jack Krauser fakes his own death during a mission with Leon and goes in search of Wesker. (dialogue, RE4) September 18th, 2002: Morpheus Duvall's followers steal some of the T-Virus from Umbrella's Paris facility. September 22nd, 2002: the Spencer Rain is seajacked. Bruce is ordered to infiltrate the ocean liner. September 23rd, 2002: Bruce McGivern and Fong Ling kill Morpheus, thwarting his scheme to launch the T-Virus into several American cities. February, 2003: Responding to a rumor, Chris, Jill, and an independently funded strike team attack the Umbrella Caucasus Research Facility in Russia. While the team takes heavy losses, Chris and Jill reach the test lab and kill the Talos. Wesker uses their attack as a cover to launch an assault of his own. While Chris and Jill unwittingly provide a distraction, Wesker dispatches Sergei Vladimir, reformats the Red Queen, and escapes with Umbrella's research data. Chris and Jill never realize he was there at all, although their team quickly discovers that the facility's servers have been wiped. mid-2003: At this point, the lawsuits against Umbrella, both criminal and private, have dragged on for years, slowed to a crawl by Spencer's machinations. The prosecution's case is helped by evidence seized from Umbrella's Russian facility, which is at least hinted to be an anonymous leak from Wesker. A guilty verdict is actually obtained and Ozwell Spencer becomes a wanted fugitive, but Umbrella's legal team appeals the decision. The last straw is the involvement of the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium (GPC), an international organization comprised of other pharmaceutical companies. When evidence comes to light that other corporations were unknowingly complicit in Umbrella's bioweapons research, these companies willingly offer full disclosure to help the case against Umbrella in exchange for immunity from prosecution. The trial against Umbrella ends with the company being legally dismantled, although Ozwell Spencer manages to evade arrest. (files, RE5) The BSAA is formed as an independent organization headquartered in England, funded by the GPC and intended to serve in an advisory role to government forces. Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are among the "Original Eleven" members of the BSAA. 2003-2004: The United States forms the Federal Bioterrorism Commission. (The introduction of Degeneration implies the organization was founded in 2005, but the FBC already exists by the time of the Terragrigia Panic in 2004.) Its charter is to protect the United States and its interests from biological attacks, through "the research, training, and support of the biological community." It works closely with agencies having to do with wildlife preservation and is essentially toothless. (The FBC's Charter file, Revelations) Fall, 2004: Ashley Graham, the daughter of the president of the United States, is kidnapped. After she's sighted in a rural village in Spain, Leon Kennedy is dispatched to follow up on the lead. He encounters resistance. When the dust settles, Wesker has obtained samples of Las Plagas, but Ada Wong prevents him from getting a master Plaga. The Illuminados cult is wiped out. Elsewhere, the floating "city of the future," Terragrigia, is targeted by the terrorist organization Veltro. Hundreds of Hunters are released into the city, causing a staggering number of human casualties. The end comes when Morgan Lansdale repurposes the city's solar energy system to refocus the collected sunlight directly on the city, sinking Terragrigia. The incident becomes known as the "Terragrigia Panic," and one of the most immediate consequences is the rapid expansion of the FBC's charter and funding, to the point where it's soon a private army under Lansdale's command. The members of Veltro don't get much of a chance to celebrate their victory, as Lansdale pulls a doublecross. The T-Abyss virus is released aboard their ships, and most of them are dead five days after the beginning of the Panic. The few survivors either withdraw to an isolated base in Finland, or are trapped aboard the Queen Dido when it sinks near Terragrigia. Jack Norman, the organization's leader, falls into the latter category. In the same year, newspaper articles are published that reveal the existence of BOWs to the general public. (found on the beach in Episode 1 of Revelations) 2005: Incidents of "bioterrorism," while on a steady rise since Raccoon City's destruction, reach an all-time high this year. Outbreaks of the T-Virus are reported all over the world, and have killed over one million people by the time Degeneration takes place. Wilpharma, another pharmaceutical company, manages to produce an effective T-Virus vaccine despite some undeserved bad press. Unfortunately for them, their head researcher Frederic Downing is secretly ex-Umbrella. He's helped to create the vaccine while simultaneously selling the T-Virus on the black market. Following the outbreak at Harvardville and the destruction of Wilpharma's main facility, Downing tries to escape into the night with both the virus and the vaccine, but is caught and arrested. As a result, Wilpharma's stock takes a rapid plunge, and the company is soon bought out by Tricell. In the same year, the BSAA's investigation into the whereabouts and motivations of the Veltro organization results in the arrest of Morgan Lansdale, head of the Federal Bioterror Commission. The FBC is subsequently dissolved. Clive O'Brian steps down as head of the BSAA, which is reorganized as an international anti-bioterrorism force under the auspices of the United Nations. 2006: A dying Ozwell Spencer leaks word of his location to Wesker, who has been looking for him for some time. Spencer explains the "Wesker Project" and his dreams of godhood to Wesker, who reacts by punching Spencer's lungs out. Chris and Jill arrive shortly thereafter to try to arrest Spencer. The ensuing fight ends when Jill tackles Wesker out a window. Jill Valentine is buried with honors three months later, even though no body was ever found. Chris throws himself into his work and is soon a legend in the BSAA, with more missions under his belt than any other active agent. 2006-2008: Both Jill and Wesker survive the fall from Spencer's castle. Wesker treats Jill's injuries and puts her in cold storage in the African facility, intending to use her as a guinea pig. That doesn't work as planned, so instead, he shoots her up with superdrugs and mind-control serum. Jill spends the next two years as Wesker's superhuman bodyguard and catspaw. Wesker learns about the African research facility from Spencer's notes. In conjunction with Excella Gionne and Tricell, he sends a research team to the facility to clean it up and learn what they can from it. At some point in this period, Chris receives intel that Jill may still be alive. December, 2008: The people of the Kijuju Autonomous Zone are exposed to Wesker's type-2 Plagas. March 9th, 2009: Chris travels to Africa to track down Ricardo Irving, partners up with Sheva Alomar, and discovers the KAZ has been infected. He and Sheva attempt to rendezvous with the rest of their team, but by nightfall, they and Josh Stone are the only surviving BSAA agents in the KAZ. March 10th, 2009: Chris and Sheva kill Ricardo Irving, uncover Umbrella's African facility, free Jill Valentine from Wesker's control, and foil Wesker's plans to infect the planet with Uroboros. Wesker is subsequently killed. December 24th, 2012: Chris and Piers Nivans lead a small team of BSAA field agents into Idonia, which is currently in the middle of a civil war. The squad is wiped out by the C-Virus, Chris and Piers are forced to put down their mutated comrades, and Chris promptly crawls into a bottle for the next six months. June, 2013: The events of Resident Evil 6. ======================= 3iii. RESIDENT EVIL v.2 ======================= Q. Why does it take three shots from Barry's Magnum to kill the first zombie? A. Sunspot activity, poor aim, underpacked bullets, a bulletproof *super* zombie, the planetary alignment at the time, low blood sugar, psychological trauma, the capricious whims of a mischievous God, and/or because it's "Barry-style." Pick your favorite! (This is the kind of thing that people liked to argue about before RE4 came along. Strap in.) Q. What's the official ending? A. There isn't one. RE2 states in the Mail to the Chief file that all five possible survivors of the "mansion incident" made it back to Raccoon City alive. At this point in time, it is not possible to achieve RE's real ending in any version of the game. Even the "Mansion Incident" scenario in RE:UC, a game that's specifically intended to close plot holes, completely omits Barry. Q. How many endings are there? A. According to the official strategy guide, there are five endings for each character, dependent upon who's still alive at the end of the game. If your supporting character dies, you'll get a different ending depending on whether they died before or during the final fight with the Tyrant. Q. Who captures Chris/Jill at the beginning of the game? A. Wesker, presumably. There's no one else around to do it. Q. Why does a Midwestern city have a special anti-terrorism unit in the first place? A. Wesker founded the STARS team in 1996, two years before RE and a year after he transferred from Umbrella R&D to their "secret service," as per Wesker's Report II. There are vague hints in RE2 that the "domestic terrorism" that the STARS were founded to deal with is actually fallout from Umbrella's uniquely violent brand of corporate warfare, which means the STARS team was basically another method by which Wesker could clean up Umbrella's messes. As for why they're allowed to have military-grade hardware and other such quirks, it is useful to note here that as per RE2, the chief of the Raccoon City Police Department is not merely corrupt, but would probably do circus tricks on command if Birkin told him to. Wesker wants the STARS to have anti-tank weapons, so they do. Q. Where did all the Hunters come from? A. James Marcus's training facility, which is reasonably close by. Rebecca finds the Hunters' pen at one point during RE0. Q. How do I get Rebecca killed before the second Tyrant fight? A. When you use the Helmet Key to open the office in the west wing, Chris will hear Rebecca scream. She's in the study on the second floor, where you found the Dog Whistle, being menaced by a Hunter. Wait for a good ten minutes before you go into that room, and the Hunter will kill Rebecca. Q. How do I get Barry killed before the second Tyrant fight? A. In Jill's final bout with Lisa Trevor, either don't give Barry his gun back or let Lisa hit Barry. He'll be knocked off the edge of Jessica's crypt, and drops Barry's Photograph. Q. Can I save Richard or Enrico? A. Apparently not. Q. How do I view Kenneth's film? A. You can use the equipment in the secret area in the laboratory visual room to watch Kenneth's tape. It depicts, unnervingly, the last couple of minutes of Kenneth's life. Q. What's this about Jessica's skull? A. There are two ways to defeat Lisa Trevor in the crypt. One is to shoot her until she falls off the edge of the platform; the other is to shove all four of the locking stones into the pit. (If you're playing as Jill, it's very difficult to do this *and* save Barry.) Once the sarcophagus is open, Lisa will grab her mother's skull and leap into the pit. Q. What happened to Rebecca Chambers after RE? A. We know she was there, because of RE0, and we know she survived RE, because she's mentioned in RE2's Mail to the Chief file. Beyond that, Becky's missing in action. Rebecca is listed as dead in Brady's Resident Evil Archives book. This is a mistake on their part. Q. Have you heard about the researcher John? A. Actually, yes. In brief: in RE2, Ada Wong says that she's looking for her boyfriend John, who works for Umbrella. In RE, one of the files is written by a researcher named John, who's set up the mansion's security computer with his girlfriend Ada's name as a password. John mentions that he's turning into a zombie. Therefore, he did exist, he wasn't just Ada's cover story, and by the time Ada comes looking for him, he's been dead for four months. However, when Annette meets Ada in the waste management plant in RE2 (a meeting that takes place in either scenario), Annette tells Ada point-blank that her boyfriend's dead and that he became a zombie. It's not really that obscure an issue. ==================== 3iv. RESIDENT EVIL 2 ==================== Q. Why are Claire and Leon carrying combat knives? Where did Leon get his uniform if it was his first day on the job? Why does Claire know how to use a model of grenade launcher that was obsolete by the end of the Vietnam War? What's a hunting crossbow doing in a police station? Why does a secret biology lab have a smelting tank and a subway? Why why why why why why?! A. Look, it's a video game. Calm down, take a deep breath, and remember: it's not really that important. Q. Why doesn't Leon's uniform look like anyone else's? A. Leon isn't dressed like an RPD beat cop, but he does look like Roger and Peter from the 1978 _Dawn of the Dead_. That may explain it. (Kevin, in Outbreak, is dressed in much the same way.) Q. What's the official ending of RE2? A. The official scenario order appears to be Claire A/ Leon B. Ada's scenario in Umbrella Chronicles, Death's Door, depicts her "dying" in Leon's arms. Q. Who threw the rocket launcher? A. Ada, of course. Let it go. (This is another old debate that's died down over the years. Some people used to be absolutely convinced that Annette threw the rocket launcher at the end of the B scenario, and they would argue about it for *days*.) Q. If Ada didn't actually die, then how was Leon fooled? A. It's not like he stopped to check her pulse. You could chalk it up to Leon being a freaked rookie and Ada being a good actress. Q. How do you know when RE2 takes place? A. Check the chalkboard on the wall in the west office of the RPD. It'll say that "it's today's date, September 29th." Taking this into account with RE3's timeline, this would indicate that RE2 starts late on September 29th, and ends on the morning of September 30th. Q. At the beginning of the game, don't Claire and Leon get out of the wrong sides of the police car? A. I thought so too, until Ben Plante pointed out that the burning truck in the first scene is facing to the right, when I thought it was facing left. In either scenario, Claire and Leon do in fact get out on the correct sides of the car. Q. How come that truck driver became a zombie so quickly? A. The aforementioned dramatic infection pattern of the T-Virus. (In later games, the T-Virus also works significantly faster if the infectee is seriously wounded, which actually does fit with previous games' depictions.) Q. What are the RE2 EX Files? A. RE2 was rereleased in 1999 for the N64. While Angel Studios was compressing the hell out of the game, they also added a few things, such as sixteen EX Files. Most of them aren't anything special. Some are taken straight from RE3, while others are cheap publicity for RE:CV and the early N64 version of RE0. The lone exception is a file found on one of the dead mercenaries in the sewer, which indicates their orders were given to them by Umbrella's French division. This goes a long way towards resolving a couple of major plot holes in RE2, as detailed below. Q. Why are some of the N64 files different than the PSX's? A. Some minor mistakes were fixed for the N64 port, mostly continuity issues. Q. Are there any other differences between the N64 and PSX versions? A. The N64 cart has the following changes: -- the "guest access" password in the Umbrella lab is now "NEMESIS." -- the safe in the corner office in the RPD building has a different combination. -- Claire and Leon get new alternate costumes. -- there's now a dead Hunter lying in the corner of the double-locked room in the Umbrella lab. When you examine it, you get the same message that you get if you examine the tank it's lying next to: "It looks like the remains of a failed experiment." -- after winning the game once, you unlock an option the game calls a "randomizer." At the start of a new game, most of the ammo and health pick-ups turn into something else at random. -- the Fourth Survivor minigame has a timer. Q. Where'd that dead Hunter come from? A. There are quite a few Hunters running around Birkin's lab during the "Below Freezing Point" scenario in Outbreak, which is set a few days before RE2. Q. (from Jim Stevenson) If the T-virus outbreak starts on the 22nd, then why are there reports of the "cannibal disease" before this? A. As noted in Wesker's Report II, the Raccoon Forest is one big transmission vector for the T-Virus. It was slowly working its way into the city even before the spill at Birkin's lab, and the fresh outbreak accelerated the process. Q. Who did Ada Wong work for? A. It's a common misconception that Ada worked for Umbrella. As noted by reader Justin Kitt, at the end of Leon B, Annette tells Leon that Ada works for the "Agency" (a term that is often used in American espionage fiction as shorthand for the CIA). In "Death's Door," while speaking to Ada, Wesker refers to "our organization," which implies that he and Ada are working for the same nameless entity, and he's not working for Umbrella. It's entirely possible that Ada has more than one boss during RE2, and that the nameless "organization" Wesker mentions is the Tricell corporation, but it's not confirmed. Q. Why do you call it "Mr. X"? It's a Tyrant. A. That's the name on the box that contains its action figure. Besides, it's easier to say "Mr. X" than to constantly have to specify which Tyrant I'm talking about. Give me a handle, and I'll use it. Q. Where did the Lickers come from? A. According to the Umbrella Top Secret File in Survivor, they're what happens when zombies get hit with a second dose of the T-Virus. As speculated upon in the REv.2 writeup, the existence of Crimson Heads lends a bit more credence to the Survivor file than it previously had. Further, in Outbreak, the boss of the "Hellfire" scenario is a zombie that hasn't quite finished mutating into a Licker. As Rob McGregor helpfully notes, various files in RE2, RE3, and RE:O2 indicate that many people in Raccoon City were succumbing to T-Virus infection even before the outbreak on the 22nd, particularly those who lived in the forest or worked in or around the sewer system. Q. How did Chief Irons survive the helicopter crash on the roof of the RPD building? A. By not being the guy who caught the helicopter with his face. That was somebody else. Q. What the hell is with the RPD building? The ammo's all over the place, all the equipment is hidden, all the keys are hidden... A. Chalk it up to Brian Irons. As he says in his diary, he did his best to make sure no one would survive the siege of the RPD building. In Operation Report 1, Elliot Edward writes that Irons had just scattered the RPD's weapons supply around the building out of concern over an unspecified terrorist threat. Irons has also rigged up a series of traps inside the building that are only lethal to humans, and by the end of the siege, he's actively hunting down the survivors. The short version: if something doesn't seem right to you about the fall of the RPD, you can probably blame it on Irons. Q. So what explains the statue puzzles/sewer entrance/secret doors? A. We can also blame Irons for the puzzles in the RPD. Apparently, the maniac was also letting Umbrella do the decoration. The sewer entrance, on the other hand, is the work of Thomas, the chess fanboy who hung out with the RPD's night watchman. (Do you realize that it's easier to access the weapons locker in the RPD than it is to get into the sewers?) Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Irons was out to kill everyone, how did Ben Bartolucci manage to survive? A. Irons couldn't get at Ben, presumably. During RE2, Ben's shut up in the cellblock with a conveniently wrecked van blocking him in, and before RE2, Irons's hunt for survivors encompassed the entire precinct. He wasn't limiting his activities to the RPD. As an added bonus, Irons might not even know Ben's there. He was busy, what with cops to hunt, the mayor's daughter to kill, being stuck inside a monster-infested deathtrap, getting pinned down by a flaming helicopter... Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Ben was merely hiding in jail and hadn't actually been arrested, how did Ada know he was there? A. She didn't. She'd checked everywhere else, and couldn't check the cellblock without someone else to help her push the wrecked van out of the way. She tells Leon as much. Q. (from Michael Conroy) Why did Irons leave Marvin Branagh alive? A. Marvin appears to have just gotten lucky. We know nothing about Irons's movements through the precinct in the period of time between Marvin's injury and Leon and Claire's arrival in the building. Since Marvin doesn't warn Claire about Irons, it's possible that they never saw each other. Q. What happened to Elliot Edward? A. That's a pretty good question. According to the Operation Report files, Elliot was one of the last survivors in the RPD, and participated in a last-ditch effort to escape via the sewers. The second Operation Report file contains his final message, left in the RPD to help anyone who might happen across it. We know Elliot isn't the "Ed" that Irons claims to have shot in his diary, because Elliot's final entry in the Operation Report is set two days after Ed's death in Irons's journal. We also know that Elliot was trapped on the west side of the building, because of where his reports are found, and that side of the building is sealed off in "Desperate Times." After that, Elliot passes into legend. There's a cop costume that shares his name in Outbreak, but the actual character dies during the first scenario, so it's probably not him. There's no telling what happened to Elliot next, but since the narrator calls Leon the last survivor of the RPD in the introduction to Leon B, Elliot probably didn't make it out of town. Q. {from "NYPlayboy1080") Why did Umbrella attack William Birkin to begin with? A. To come up with any sort of answer, we must turn to the Mail to the Chief file, one of the RE2 EX Files, Wesker's Report 2, and certain files in Survivor. Birkin says to Irons in the Mail to the Chief file that "I am certain that I will be appointed to be a member of the executive board for Umbrella Inc." in return for the completed G-Virus. He clearly wasn't planning to go outside of the company. (In his reports, which are available as a file in Survivor, Nicholai theorizes that the Raccoon outbreak had to have been deliberate and blames William Birkin for it. This explains the other files in Survivor, in which Birkin's responsibility is already being treated as unquestioned fact, and may also explain why, in RE5, Ozwell Spencer doesn't think the Raccoon outbreak is Umbrella's fault.) In the Operation Instructions EX File, Hunk is told to get a sample of the G-Virus "by any means necessary." These orders come from Christine Henri, the R&D manager of Umbrella's French division, who is a character from an obscure Japan-only RE audio drama called "Ada the Spy." Now, we flip back to Wesker's Report 2, in which we're told that Wesker had Ozwell Spencer lean on the French division's labs to get the Arklay facility access to the Nemesis parasite. More importantly, Wesker says outright in the second Report that he had every intention of swiping the credit for the Nemesis from the French division. With this, everything else falls into place. Birkin and Wesker steal the French division's big discovery and make a bigger one with it. Years later, after Wesker's supposed death, a group of mercenaries come to steal Birkin's big discovery on orders from the head of Umbrella France. It was revenge, pure and simple, and it went terribly wrong. Q. When did Ada reach the RPD? A. We don't know for certain, but she's had time to conduct a thorough search of the building. That suggests that she was around for at least a few hours before Leon and Claire arrived. Q. How did Ada and Sherry get out of the sewage treatment facility? A. Ada got out via the ventilation shafts, if her sudden arrival when Leon reaches the sewers is any indication. If Ada could've done that, Sherry certainly could've. Q. Did any of the other police officers survive? A. Leon is identified at the start of his B scenario as the lone survivor of the Raccoon City police department. Of all the other cops we've seen throughout the other games set during the Raccoon City disaster, the only ones that are unaccounted for are Kevin, Rita, Andy, and Elliot Edward. The rest die onscreen at some point. Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Leon was the only survivor, what about Chris, Barry, Jill, Rebecca, Wesker...? A. Chris and Barry can be assumed to have quit and are long gone, Jill quit, Rebecca's AWOL, and Wesker was supposedly dead and definitely off the RPD roll call. They were all also STARS agents, which means they technically weren't rank-and-file police officers. Note, for example, that Wesker's the only one who had a rank. Q. Why did William Birkin "impregnate" Ben Bertolucci/Chief Irons? A. Couldn't tell you on a bet. We know that li'l Willy was out to perpetuate his species, but we don't know what if any criteria he was using to pick and choose victims. Reader Logan Rapp notes that at the time William comes after either man, they're both uninjured and either alone or distracted. It may be that simple. Q. How did William get into Ben's cell? A. It looks like he tore the door open. Even William's early forms are strong enough to snap a steel railing. Q. (from "ReBiohazard6587," paraphrased) If William infects himself with the G-Virus on the 22nd, why hasn't he changed more in the intervening week? A. That's a good question, particularly since Wesker's Report 2 tells us that the G-Virus causes constant mutation. William does munch on a number of other viruses from the briefcase immediately after becoming the G-Type, which may play a role. Another point that's frequently made is that William's really *big* metamorphoses usually take place as a reaction to Leon or Claire beating the hell out of him. If nobody was shooting William between the 22nd and the 29th, his mutation may have slowed to a crawl. Alternatively, he may be shapeshifting back and forth from one form to another, as his progression of forms throughout RE2 is a little inconsistent. Q. Why is it that William changes instantly upon injection, but Sherry never changes at all? A. It's the difference between being exposed to the raw virus and being injected with an embryo. That much is apparent from the Vaccine Synthesis file in Claire A. The embryo institutes a "gradual cellular metamorphosis," as opposed to a sudden and complete takeover of the body. Q. What escaped from the holding tank in the double-locked lab? A. No one's really sure. I tend to agree with Rob MacGregor, in that the tank in the Umbrella lab is the same one that's shown in Film B, which would mean that there was a prototype Tyrant in there. Q. Where did that Tyrant go? A. You know. Out. Around. Seriously, there is an answer, but it's sort of a stretch. In RE0, as Rebecca's passing through the top floor of Birkin's lab, one of the monitors in the turntable's control room shows her a Tyrant in a storage tube. A few minutes later, as she's on the top floor of Birkin's lab waiting for an elevator, that Tyrant appears and attempts to kick her hairstyle in. The same Tyrant later reappears for a second go at her when Billy's around, and is finally destroyed when it tries to jump Wesker in RE:UC's "Beginnings" scenario. Coincidences are not useful. Tyrants are rare under the best of circumstances (unless one happens to be on Sheena Island, in which case one can find the damn things in vending machines), so this rogue Tyrant in Birkin's lab seems to be our escapee. (Some people object to this and point to the storage containers on the eighth floor of the sewage treatment facility in RE0, but that tank held one of the cockroaches.) In that case, we can attribute its escape to James Marcus, and it's been dead for two months. Case closed. The biggest problem with this is that if it's true, and it looks as though it might be, we're also expected to assume that William Birkin's the worst housekeeper in explored space. The Tyrant in his lab escaped in late July. While he's done some minor cleanup by the time the Outbreak crew drops by, the place is still trashed. Maybe Birkin just put a new, really big door on the room--sort of the mad-scientist equivalent of kicking dirty socks under the bed--and called it a day, I don't know, but it's still a flaw in the plan. Q. Who are the people in the S.T.A.R.S. group photo? A. Back row: Kevin Dooley (?), Forest Speyer, Kenneth Sullivan, Richard Aiken, Albert Wesker, Barry Burton, Brad Vickers. Front row: Ed Dewey, Enrico Marini, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Joseph Frost. Rebecca Chambers is absent. The only people in the photo who are still alive as of the current games are Chris, Barry, and Jill. All of the rest except for Wesker were killed during RE or RE0. There used to be some confusion between Kevin and Ed. The original RE's manual had Ed listed as the Bravo team's helicopter pilot, which left an unidentified guy in the STARS photo. RE0 clarified this by sticking Ed onto the Bravo team and establishing that he died well outside the mansion, while the helicopter pilot was renamed Kevin Dooley in REv.2. Q. Why isn't Rebecca in the photo? A. The photograph was apparently taken before Rebecca joined the STARS. RE0 was her first mission with the Bravo team. Q. Who's Jill's boyfriend? A. If you check Jill's desk in the STARS office, your character will remark that there's a photo of a man on it, "probably her boyfriend." This mysterious stranger has captured the hearts and minds of many obsessive RE fans, even though we're probably never going to find out who he is. If you check Jill's desk as Jill, in RE3, she doesn't mention the photo. Q. (from "ChronoDK16") How would you explain the door that won't open on the second floor of the police station? A. The door in question, which is in the same room as the statue puzzle, would lead to the second-floor lounge if it wasn't boarded up. Check the map. Q. How do you find the "secret gate" to the RPD building? A. Check the wall across from the front door to the RPD in Scenario A. When you find it, you'll see three zombies on the other side of a gate that won't open. Jill uses this gate in RE3, and Rita backs a van through it in RE:O2. Presumably Marvin locks it before Leon and Claire arrive. Q. What's the point of the P-Epsilon Gas Report file? A. It hints at something which isn't widely known about RE2. If you don't activate the anti-BOW gas using the dorm computer in scenario A, the Ivies aren't poisonous. Q. (from Michael Conroy) At the end of RE2, who sets the Umbrella headquarters computer to self-destruct--and why? A. In a way, Mr. X does. In either B scenario, Mr. X wrecks a console in the power room. That console's destruction triggers the lab's obligatory self-destruct sequence. Q. How did Hunk manage to survive in the sewers? A. Yeah, that's a little irritating. William Birkin's lab is attacked around the 22nd, but Hunk doesn't escape the sewers until the morning of the 30th, at some point after Leon and Claire have left the RPD. This means that Hunk somehow survived both a beating from Birkin *and* at least eight days of wandering around in the post-outbreak Raccoon sewer system, while carrying a vial of the G-Virus. In short, we must assume that either Hunk was extraordinarily lucky and is extraordinarily tough, or he doesn't actually spend that entire period in the sewers. As a side note, there are five dead Umbrella agents in the sewer, even though there are only four of them in Annette's FMV. It's possible that Hunk survived Birkin's rampage by being conveniently absent ("Hey, guys, I brought the sandwiches--OH MY GOD!") and is unconscious for some reason when Leon and Claire are in the sewers. Q. Why don't any of the assassins come back as zombies? A. Alert reader Duncan Brown writes in to note that there's an antibody for the T-Virus, as mentioned in RE3's Mercenary's Pocketbook file, and that Umbrella gives it to many of their employees. Birkin also kills the assassins well before he crushes the vial. Q. If Hunk and Mr. X both work for Umbrella, why does Mr. X attack Hunk? A. Because Mr. X wants, and Hunk has, the G-Virus. Mr. X isn't all that bright. It's also very likely that they aren't working for the same people. Q. (from Pedro Luchini) How did Mr. X manage to get back to the RPD in time to attack Hunk? He should be dead. A. There were five other canisters on that helicopter and we can account for maybe three of them. Hunk may have his very own Mr. X to play with. Q. A perennial favorite: was Hunk [Wesker/Billy/Enrico/Richard/ anyone at all in the RE series]? A. Okay, for the last time: Hunk gets an Epilogue File in RE3. His is the last one you unlock. In it, he is shown without his mask, and is an ordinary-looking blond white man. Hunk, whatever his true identity might be, is a unique individual, and is not simply the current pseudonym for someone else. ============================== 15iv. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ============================== Q. Why the hell is Jill dressed like that? A. Fanservice, and an easy option for novice cosplayers. The often-stated handwave about a recent heat wave in Raccoon City is something Milla Jovovich mentions in the second film's DVD commentary, and has no support in-game. Q. How come Jill can blow away zombies by the dozen, but the RPD was completely wiped out? A. The RPD didn't know what they were doing. They simply stood in one place and attempted to drive off the zombies as if they were fighting normal people, and by the time they realized that wasn't going to work, they were overrun. ("Piccolo" writes in to note that one of the cops yells "Stun 'em!" during the opening cutscene, which suggests that some of the cops were using nonlethal riot weaponry. Oops.) The survivors of that fiasco withdrew to the RPD building, which was already under siege by the time they got there, and where Brian Irons was working overtime to stab them in the back. Jill, on the other hand, knows exactly what she's up against. If you pay attention to RE3's level design, it's set largely in back alleys, side streets, and deserted tunnels, suggesting that Jill is deliberately staying away from the most infested parts of the city. She also doesn't fight when she doesn't have to; note that whenever Jill encounters zombies in a cutscene or movie, she almost always runs away. Q. (from Angela Gray) How did Nemesis know to go after Jill, since no one seemed to know she was in town? How did he find Jill to begin with? How did he keep finding Jill? A. Umbrella has a very good surveillance network, which is a plot point in CV. Furthermore, as Michael Conroy notes, Nemesis was originally after Brad and Brad leads him right to Jill. As for tracking Jill later in the game, what people seem to forget is that Nemesis is obviously intelligent. He springs ambushes, uses a firearm, opens doors, dodges grenades, shoots down the helicopter at the clock tower, and, by Jill's own admission, toys with her throughout most of the game. Even if he wasn't, though, Jill spends most of RE3 making herself as easy to track as possible; she's one of the last living people in the city and she leaves a broad trail of dead monsters, spent shells, and smoking wreckage everywhere she goes. You could probably follow her progress from orbit. Q. How did Jill know that there wasn't going to be a rescue? A. Call it an educated guess. There's supposedly a military blockade surrounding the city and enforcing a quarantine, which gives one the impression that people aren't going to be allowed out of Raccoon. (Granted, this isn't a very effective blockade, but I've ranted about this before.) Q. What happens to the [construction equipment in the RPD courtyard/boarded-up doors in the RPD building/movable statues on the RPD's second floor/the red jewel in the statue/the inscription on the goddess statue/the window in the west stairwell] between RE3 and RE2? A. Storyline-wise? Couldn't tell you. Maybe it was fixed by the same guy who steals the corpses while you're not looking. Reality-wise, RE3 was a hurried replacement for RE:CV, which jumped platforms late in its development cycle. There are a lot of minor continuity issues in the RE3 version of the RPD as a result, like the window Nemesis jumps through fixing itself overnight, but none of them are a big deal. Q. How do I get Nicholai to show up at the gas station? A. Escape from Nemesis via either the restaurant basement or the window in the press office. Q. Who's Murphy? A. He's the UBCS merc who ends up dead at the sales office. Who kills him depends on how you and Carlos dealt with Nemesis in the restaurant encounter. If you fought Nemesis or knocked him out with the gas pipes, Jill arrives right in time to see Nicholai execute Murphy. If you just ran like hell, you'll see a brief scene with Murphy and Carlos instead. Either way, Murphy dies. Q. Who's Tyrell? A. Tyrell's the UBCS merc Carlos meets in the hospital. He only gets a line if you visit the basement first. Otherwise, he blows himself up with a grenade in an attempt to take Nicholai with him. Q. Can I open the wall safe in the hospital basement? A. Even if you could, you wouldn't want to. If you visit the hospital's basement first, Tyrell will open that safe for you. Doing so sets off a bomb. Thanks, Nicholai! Q. (from Michael Conroy) Since Umbrella had already sent Nemesis to do its dirty work, why did it then send a slower, stupider Tyrant (Mr. X) just to retrieve the G-Virus? A. They have different missions, and Nemesis has its hands full right up until the moment the missiles hit. (Of course, there is the realistic answer--Nemesis was only conceived by the developers when they were making RE3, and as such didn't exist in RE2's time--but realistic answers are rarely entertaining.) Q. (from "ReBiohazard6587," paraphrased) How was Brad changed into a zombie? Did Nemesis's tentacle do it? Is that why his corpse goes missing after the second encounter with Nemesis? A. Brad could've gotten the T-Virus in a number of ways, from Nemmy's tentacle to the zombie gnawing on him in the Bar Jack. He shows up as a zombie underneath the RPD in RE2, thus explaining why his body vanishes in RE3. Since Brad died from a major head wound, he really shouldn't have become a zombie at all. See Mistakes, below. Q. Why does Umbrella have secret labs in almost every building in Raccoon City? A. Because Umbrella donated the money to build almost every building in Raccoon City, cf. the City Guide file. Raccoon was apparently not so much a city as it was the world's most extensive shell corporation. Q. Why is Marvin Branagh dead, when he's in RE2 a day later? A. He isn't dead. Next time you play the game, check that office on your way out of the RPD building. Marvin disappears when you take the Lockpick. Q. Why did Umbrella send Nemesis after Jill, when all they did was keep Chris under surveillance? A. For all we know, Umbrella *did* send something after Chris. Jill finds a trashed hideout of Chris's in her Epilogue. At the same time, Nemesis wasn't specifically after Jill. At the start of the game, Nemmy's after Brad, but starts pursuing Jill once he becomes aware of her presence. Q. (from Michael Conroy) Why does Nicholai wait until the end of RE3 to claim the bounty on Jill's head? He had three previous opportunities to bump her off when no one else was around. Why didn't he? A. He's a schemer, and Jill's a useful ally as long as she believes he's on her side. Nicholai is very careful not to make an actual enemy out of Jill until such a time as he's finished his primary objective. (An interesting side note here is that Nicholai makes a specific point of never lying to Jill: "I have no intention of helping you.") Q. Why is the rail cannon called "Paracelsus's Sword?" A. Theophrastus Bombastus "Paracelsus" von Hohenheim was a German alchemist who lived during the Renaissance. He was among the first Westerners to experiment with drugs as a method of curing diseases, and is frequently referred to as the "father of medicine." Given how the rail cannon was made for the express purpose of blowing large holes in virally created monsters, calling it Paracelsus's Sword makes some sense. (For more on Paracelsus, I refer the reader to virtually any book about alchemy ever written. Within that field, Paracelsus is one of the OGs.) Q. Who made Paracelsus's Sword? A. According to the Classified Photo file, an unspecified agency created the Sword specifically to combat Umbrella's creations. Since the Sword is found surrounded by the bodies of a U.S. Special Forces team and the file is written by someone who identifies himself as a colonel, one would assume that the cannon was made by the American government. Q. How do you get the cutscene from the summary, where Barry calls over the radio? A. Opt to jump off the bridge before you get to the Dead Factory. After the Live Choice involving Nicholai in the control tower, don't try to use the hatch. Instead, leave through the door, then immediately go back inside. This also changes the dialogue before the ending. Q. How do you know that Jill was infected with the T-Virus? A. We've no reason to think it was anything else. At this point in the series, the only two viruses in play are the T- and G-Viruses. The latter goes to work almost instantly, makes its target nearly impossible to kill, and isn't in Umbrella's possession until four days after the fight at the clock tower. Q. So why didn't she turn into a zombie right away? A. Plot convenience, mostly. It's not hard to come up with a few possibilities, but in the end, it's because the plot says so. Q. Who was Nemesis? A. A snappy dresser, a hit with the ladies, and a good friend. We mourn his passing. Q. No, really, who was Nemesis? A. Around the time of RE3's release, a quote made the rounds from Shinji Mikami that Nemesis was actually "someone we know from the past." In 1999, RE was not yet a cottage industry the way it is now, and we knew next to nothing about Umbrella or the process of Nemesis's creation. Just the same, the quote got a lot of RE fans talking about who Nemesis might have been. Since then, the question remains open; it may be that Mikami simply meant, as was suggested by reader Stonewolf, that Nemesis was an unused concept sketch for Mr. X. A few fans had come to the conclusion that Nemesis must've been Wesker, since every other major RE character except Rebecca was accounted for, it's easy to miss Wesker's death in one of Jill's endings in the original RE, and the idea of Becky Chambers being turned into a killer bioweapon roughly ten times her size was kind of silly. Wesker's return in Code Veronica and subsequent prominence in the plot sunk the theory, although you had some die-hards arguing the point for years afterward, using an increasingly tortured line of reasoning (see Say What?!, below). The big plot twist of the original Resident Evil movie was that Matt, one of the two survivors, was infected by a Nemesis parasite in the ending. Then the second movie came out and featured Nemesis being kickpunched to death by the power of love, so... yeah. Right now, as far as we fans know, the game's Nemesis is just some random Umbrella test subject who beat the odds. It is possible but unconfirmed and mostly irrelevant that he, like other Tyrants, is based on a clone of Sergei Vladimir. Q. Was Nemesis a G-Virus creature? A. According to Wesker's Report 2, the Nemesis parasite was created around 1988, before William Birkin discovered the G-Virus in Lisa Trevor's body. Furthermore, no one besides Birkin had access to the completed G-Virus before Hunk's escape on the 29th or 30th, which is at least one full day after Jill's first encounter with the Nemesis. (While corporate espionage is a realistic possibility, there's no record of any such thing in game. Occam's Razor.) Wesker's Report 2 also notes that a characteristic of creatures infected with the G-Virus is that they constantly mutate without any external stimuli. As Nemesis's only real mutation takes place after he's thrown into the waste dump at the Dead Factory, which I would count as "external stimuli," it would appear that he's G-Virus-free. Q. Was Tentacle Nemesis a mutation, or what? A. I'm of the opinion that Tentacle Nemesis is just Nemesis without the trenchcoat, since in your first encounters with Nemmy, you can see the tentacles writhing around underneath his outfit. However, fan opinion is markedly split on this issue. Q. (from Michael Conroy) Nemesis, who was designed to kill S.T.A.R.S. members, ends up hunting Umbrella mercenaries Carlos, Nicholai, and Mikhail. What's going on here? A. Nemmy never goes after Nicholai, except in the Mercenaries game, which doesn't count, and in the Ending #3 trash room ambush, where Nicholai is biting Nemmy's style. Over the course of the game, he attacks Mikhail, who was shooting at him at the time, and Carlos, who's a friend of Jill's and who has a history of shooting at Nemmy. Even then, Nemmy will usually only go after Carlos if Carlos gets in his way. (Unless you keep the fight within a camera angle featuring the exit door, Nemesis will leave the front hall at the first opportunity and head for the chapel.) Nemmy doesn't seem to have a problem with eliminating Jill's allies, because Nemmy is actually intelligent. Q. How did those zombies in the graveyard reanimate? A. It's been noted that whenever we see RE zombies actually crawl out of a graveyard in the best cinematic tradition, it's always raining. This may be another film reference, to _Return of the Living Dead_ and its contaminated rainclouds. Q. Is the girl with the briefcase at the end of the Mercenaries minigame Rebecca? Is that guy in the hood Chief Irons? A. Everybody in the Mercenaries minigame is a retextured set of polygons recycled from either RE2 or RE3. The hooded guy's animation is taken directly from RE2, when Irons spins around in his chair and points a gun at Claire, but that doesn't mean the hooded guy *is* Irons; in the same vein, that doesn't mean that the girl's Rebecca. Further, the Mercenaries game has no bearing on the plot, so their identities are meaningless. =========================== 3v. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR =========================== Q. Is this game actually canon? A. It might as well not be, but it is. RE0's introduction mentions the Sheena Island outbreak. Survivor's main contributions to the larger plot are establishing RE3's canon ending and revealing a few really unwholesome details about the production process of Tyrants. Q. What's the difference between the various paths? A. Nothing, really, except for what you fight and what you find. The exception is the second choice, as explained above. Q. Who's this little goblin guy, and why does he hate me? A. The gnome is Andy, the sewer manager. As is not readily apparent from his diary, he first encountered Ark when Ark was claiming to be Vincent Goldman. Later, Andy finds out that Vincent caused the outbreak, and since he thinks Ark is Vincent, he undertakes a mission of revenge against him. If you go to the hospital, you'll never see Andy, but he's laid a trap for you in the library and is waiting in ambush when you enter the office in the arcade. That's him on the pay 'phone at the beginning of the game, by the way. Q. Who sets off the self-destruct mechanism in the factory? A. There's no explanation on that score. It can probably be directly attributed to whoever is about to get whacked by the Tyrant, although it being Andy is a bit of a stretch. Q. Why are there so many Mr. X units running around? A. Sheena Island apparently mass-produced them. At one point, you fight a Mr. X unit on a walkway in the factory, surrounded by other Mr. Xs in glass containment tubes. If they were released with a specific purpose in mind other than killing Ark, that purpose isn't mentioned. Q. Hey, is Hunk the cleaners' commander? A. I doubt it. There's no hint whatsoever of who the cleaners' commander is, which leads me to believe that he's just some generic guy in a uniform. Survivor also hints rather strongly that the cleaners' commander dies at some point, whether you see it happen or not, and Hunk is still alive as of Code Veronica. Q. Why does the introduction to the game say that Umbrella destroyed Raccoon City? A. Because Umbrella *did* destroy Raccoon City, by honeycombing it with poorly designed secret bioweapon factories. The bomb was a formality. ================================= 3vi. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA ================================= Q. Who was Wesker working for? A. One of the long-standing questions about CV was always the issue of Wesker's employer. He obviously wasn't working for Umbrella, since he was attacking an Umbrella facility, and his uniform was marked with the cryptic acronym "HCF." Fan speculation at the time of CV's release ran high, putting Wesker in the employ of everyone from rumor-mill Umbrella competitor "Bioject" to, and I'm not kidding, Satan. RE5 belatedly answers the question in one of its unlockable files. Wesker was freelancing for an unnamed competitor of Umbrella's when he came south to punch Alexia's ticket, and his troops were mercenaries. It's probably a safe assumption that the competitor in question was Tricell, but it's still an assumption. Later games also retroactively inserted a fierce rivalry between William Birkin and Alexia, who were both famous child prodigies working at Umbrella in the early eighties. Wesker's friendship with Birkin adds another layer of justification to the attack. Q. What *was* Wesker's virus? A. This was finally answered nine years later in RE5. In Wesker's biographical file, it's mentioned that the virus that Birkin gave Wesker was something that Spencer created as part of the "Wesker Plan." Its strengths and vulnerabilities are a major part of RE5's endgame. Q. Why is Wesker collecting a bunch of other viruses if the one he's using is so much better than all of them? A. This was one of the big questions that everyone had after CV and it wasn't answered until RE5. That was a fun eight years. The virus that allows Wesker to dash around in bullet time was created specifically for the survivors of Ozwell Spencer's "Project W," all of whom were the subject of genetic tampering as infants. It's hinted that the virus would simply kill anyone other than a Wesker who took it, and even they didn't have any guarantees of survival. Spencer also dropped completely off the grid well before the mansion incident, taking his knowledge of how to make the virus with him. Q. Y'know, Steve looks a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio. Here's a witty comment about it! A. Stop that. Q. What's the difference between CVX and CV: Complete? A. CV: Complete is the Dreamcast version of CVX, and was never released outside of Japan. Q. What's the difference between CV and CVX? A. The following: -- the Easy and Very Easy difficulty settings from the Japanese release have been put back in, because not having arms shouldn't keep you from enjoying Code Veronica. -- Steve has a new haircut. Now, instead of looking like Leonardo DiCaprio, he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio without access to hair care products. -- a new cutscene featuring Wesker and Claire, triggered when Claire returns to the mansion with the Piano Roll. -- a couple of lines of dialogue have been changed. -- the ending's about three times as long, as detailed below. -- in CVX, Wesker gets a hit in on Alexia. In CV, Alexia slaps him around like a handball. -- everyone gets different character portraits in their inventory screens. (Steve is such a goober.) -- really fake-looking fire has been Photoshopped over Wesker's Battle Game victory screen. Q. How did Leon find Chris so quickly? A. Claire sent Leon Umbrella's surveillance data, so Leon knew exactly where Chris was at the time. After that, all he would've had to do is make a few telephone calls. The timing on the whole thing is a little convenient, but some time passes between Claire's departure from the island and Chris's arrival. Since the Albinoid Claire let out has grown to adulthood, we know it's been at least ten hours since she was there. Q. (from Joseph Goodman) What's the "Raccoon City Test?" A. Couldn't tell you on a bet. It's on the jewel case, but there's nothing about it in the game. We don't know what test was completed in Raccoon City (the Nemesis? the Gamma Hunters? the effects of the T-Virus on a sizable metropolitan civilian population?), or where Claire got that information in the first place. Q. (from Joseph Goodman) How did the T-Virus manage to escape at Rockfort? A. As Chris, examine the wrecked ductwork in the chemical storage locker. Chris will say that "maybe this is where the T-Virus escaped." This is as close to an explanation as we get over the course of CV, and all things considered, it's a pretty good one. It looks like someone chucked a grenade into the wrong room. Q. Where did the Gulp Worm come from? A. The same place that the Grave Digger and the giant crocodile came from: the T-Virus. No more explanation is necessary. Q. (from Joseph Goodman) Rodrigo tells Claire that Rockfort Island was attacked by a special forces team, but there's little evidence of an actual military-type battle. Why would anyone attack a worthless prison island? Where'd everyone go? A. Rodrigo's "special forces team" is actually a band of mercenaries led by Wesker. Wesker tells Claire as much in CVX. Looking at the island's layout, much of the island is off-limits due to fires, explosions, and rubble. I'd guess that the fighting is taking place on parts of the island that the player can't access. Wesker's forces are only able to take the prison and training facility a day after Alfred's men have evacuated, judging by the zombies dressed in black in Chris's game. Most of them explode when they're shot, thus proving that you should not believe Wesker when he gives you what he says is a flak jacket. As for the "worthless island" scenario, Wesker wants Alexia. Alfred's strange delusion was effective enough to convince Wesker that Alexia was on Rockfort, and he only learns otherwise once he's taken over the island. He says as much to Chris. Q. (from Michael Conroy) The servant's memo at Rockfort implied that Alexia was believed to be alive and living in seclusion, yet doesn't Alfred's diary (found in Antarctica) mention Alexia "faking her own death?" Which cover story was correct? A. The story in Alfred's diary is the truth. The confusion as to whether Alexia is dead or alive is the major plot twist of CV, Wesker's return notwithstanding. In short: Alexia faked her own death and went into coldsleep so the T-Veronica virus would be allowed to work on her. Alfred, who was monomaniacally devoted to her, began to construct an elaborate delusion that she was still around. Alfred's masquerade was good enough to trick his servants, Wesker, and himself. Meanwhile, the real Alexia has been in Antarctica since 1983. The twists go like this: Claire concludes there never was an Alexia. When you reach Antarctica, several files note that there was an Alexia once, but she died years ago. Finally, Alexia appears, and you learn over the course of time that Alexia had faked her death. Q. (from Michael Conroy) Why doesn't Alfred release Alexia from cryogenic freeze the moment he touches down in Antarctica? What's he waiting for? A. Alfred's just as surprised as the player when Alexia defrosts. Look at his face and listen to his voice. If "Game of Oblivion" winds up being the new canon, then Alfred has always had a panic button that would bring Alexia out of cryosleep, but she's apparently cranky when she wakes up. Q. (from Michael Conroy) Was Alexia even *supposed* to be released from cryo-freeze at that point in time? A. Alexia's sudden emergence from the deep freeze is the second most contested plot point in CV, right behind Wesker's survival. While it is feasible, given the timeline, for Alexia's time in cryogenic storage to have run out at some point in 1998 (Wesker's Report 2 has Alexia's "fatal accident" occurring in 1983 when she was twelve, which means her fifteen years were just about up), her dea-ex-cryotube defrosting right in time to wreck Claire and Steve's snowmobile is one of the single most convenient plot developments in the history of video games. If it's keeping you up at night, you may wish to blame Alexia's sudden return to consciousness on her powers (as S.D. Perry did in the novelization), and leave it at that. Q. (from Michael Conroy) How did Wesker find out about the T-Veronica virus? A. Various files in games that came out after Code Veronica make note of Alexia's short-lived career at Umbrella. It was apparently well known that she was working on the T-Veronica virus, which was the source of her rivalry with William Birkin. You could also observe here that Alfred is not keeping a very tight lid on things at the Antarctic facility. Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Wesker had the inside track on the T-Veronica virus, why did he attack Rockfort to begin with? A. He was looking for Alexia, and thanks to Alfred, most people thought Alexia was sitting prettily in a mansion window in South America. When Wesker fights Chris, he mentions that Alexia's "already awake," which means that at some point, he does learn what's really going on. Q. (from Michael Conroy) Since Wesker is a superhuman one-man army, why does he even *need* a special forces team to attack the island? A. Supervillains do love their cannon fodder, and Wesker can't be everywhere at once. Q. (from Michael Conroy, who asks too damn many questions) Why doesn't Rodrigo hop aboard one of the cargo planes fleeing the island? Why does he stay behind? A. Rodrigo's been gutshot, so he isn't going to move very fast, and by the time the rest of Rockfort's staff make their escape, the prison is cut off from the rest of the island. Since Claire and Steve took the only plane in the seaport, Rodrigo's got nowhere to go. Q. Why did Alfred send Claire and Steve to Antarctica? A. A few people (most recently Gary Tong) have written in to make note that autopilot systems tend to be preprogrammed to follow a single course or to fly to GPS coordinates. Q. Why are there zombies and monsters all over the place in the Antarctic base? A. To learn the answer to this question, we must consult the "Diary of D.I.J." secret file. According to it, the workers released the T-Virus deliberately, and then escaped via the cargo planes that Steve notices upon his and Claire's landing. (The CVX version of the same file changes the story, claiming that the T-Virus escaped from the planes that landed before Claire and Steve's did.) Q. How do I find this secret file? A. It's one of the random items you can get from the slot machine in the Battle Game. Once you've found it, it'll be in your file list whenever you start a new game. Q. Who's D.I.J.? A. A mouse. Specifically, he's the mouse that runs under the closing blast shutter when Alfred traps Claire in the military training facility. He shows up again in Antarctica, when Claire lets him out of the locker in Alfred's office. Reportedly, if you stay alert, you can see him again and again throughout Claire's game on Rockfort, especially if you use a GameShark to get the sniper rifle on Disc One. He is not, repeat *not*, the Ashford family's butler. We don't know what happened to Scott Harman (although the smart money says that he was one of the zombies wearing a suit marked with the Ashford crest), but unless he was in that convenient crate of explosives, he wasn't in the cargo plane when Claire fought the Tyrant. Q. How the hell can a mouse keep a diary? A. He's a very smart mouse. Q. Weren't those two mice different colors? How could it be the same mouse? A. He's a *very* smart mouse. Q. (from Jim Stevenson) How does Wesker have access to Hunters when he no longer works for Umbrella? A. Well, he did just take over an Umbrella facility. More importantly, those Hunters are being stored inside the large cases in the seaport. I don't know why they're there or why a prison facility had them (to go after escapees?), but all Wesker had to do was let them out. Q. What happens with Wesker on the third time through the game? A. Nothing. "Tips & Tricks" magazine printed that "hint" in their June 2000 issue, and it's false. Q. (from Devvrat Shukla) Why is Claire poisoned when I find her? A. Because you got a little too close to Alexander when you fought him on the helipad. Alexander's clouds of purple mist can poison Claire, and if that happens, she'll stay poisoned until Chris finds her behind the stairs. At that point, you, as Chris, will need to run back to the weapons storage locker on the second floor and get a container of serum. When you return to the front hall of the "mansion," Chris will automatically use the serum on Claire. Alexia walks in thereafter and the game continues. When you gain control of Claire in the study, she'll be in Danger condition, and will have all the items she had at the end of the Nosferatu fight with the exception of the sniper rifle. If you manage to kill Alexander on the helipad without getting poisoned, which is usually best done by landing a clean shot on his exposed heart with Alfred's sniper rifle, Claire will be fine when Chris finds her and the game skips directly to Alexia's grand entrance. Q. Why do the winged ants attack Alexia? A. I don't know whether they attack Alexia, land on her, or just get agitated. That could've been clearer. Q. Wait. Chris and Wesker are fighting in the same room where Steve shot Alfred, aren't they? Isn't that room frozen solid? A. Yeah, I thought so too, right up until I saw the submarine in the background. Chris and Wesker are fighting in an underground docking bay, and I'd presume that the submarine is the one that DIJ mentions in his diary. ============================== 3vii. RESIDENT EVIL: THE MOVIE ============================== Q. How does this fit into the games' plot? A. It doesn't. In the months leading up to the movie's release, its makers claimed it was a prequel and would answer some of the fans' questions. In its ending, one of the two survivors, Matt, is infected by what turns out to be a Nemesis parasite. The implication was that the Nemesis we fought and killed in RE3 was Matt. Then the second film came out, and that was that. While a couple of elements from the first film made it into RE:UC, the movies are set in a completely separate continuity. ========================= 3viii. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ========================= Q. So this is canon, right? A. RE0 is one of the least popular games in the core franchise, which has led a few online fans to try to declare it noncanon for various reasons. RE:UC and RE5 both make it clear that RE0 is canon, though. Q. Rebecca's a capable heroine who faces down Hunters, Tyrants, and James Marcus in RE0, but by REv.2, she's a screaming victim. What's up with that? A. Rebecca pretty clearly hits her limit right around the time she reaches the Spencer mansion. It's her first mission, she's eighteen years old, and she's one of two survivors of her team. By the time Chris runs into her, she's emotionally exhausted; her reaction to the news that Richard Aiken has died is weary resignation. Q. Where did all her weapons go? A. The "Nightmare" scenario in RE:UC follows Rebecca as she reaches the mansion, meets Richard Aiken, and gets into a fight with the Yawn in the mansion library. If her relative lack of firepower in REv.2 bothers you, assume that she expended all her extra ammunition on the Yawn. Q. How does Billy know that Rebecca's in STARS? A. She's got a STARS patch on the arm of her T-shirt. Q. Why didn't Rebecca tell Chris about what'd happened to her? She doesn't really act like she's been through a lot. A. Because there's no reason to drop a few dozen RE0 spoilers into the middle of REv.2. In-character, there are a few good reasons why Rebecca wouldn't tell Chris much of anything, such as her decision to fake Billy's death, but listing them here would be pointless speculation. Q. If Rebecca sets out for the Spencer mansion on the morning of the 25th, then what takes the Alpha team so long? Didn't they set out to find the Bravo team right after the crash? A. In the original RE, yes, the Alpha team came right after the Bravo team. In REv.2/RE0 continuity, it would appear that the Alpha team's search doesn't start until the evening of the 25th. I couldn't tell you why, but it's worthy of mention that Rebecca's radio reception sucks for most of RE0 (which is suggestive that all of the Bravo team's radios were on the fritz, making it difficult for them to call for help), and that Wesker, the commander of the Alpha team, is out at Birkin's lab for much of the 24th. Q. Didn't zombie dogs kill the MPs in the truck? A. No, Rebecca just thinks they did, which isn't a bad guess given the information she has. In the opening movie, Enrico looks away from the truck just before slime drips off the windshield, thus indicating that Marcus's leeches did it. Q. Hey, in Marcus's flashback to his assassination, was that Hu-- A. *No*. Q. Why aren't there any Crimson Heads in RE0? A. Good question, and one that's not answered in the game. Several readers have written in to mention an interview with Shinji Mikami that ran on Gamespot. Reportedly, Mikami said the Crimson Heads were deliberately left out of RE0 due to the relatively short period of time that Rebecca and Billy spend in any one location. Since the Crimson Heads require a lengthy infection time and Marcus didn't depopulate the training facility all *that* long ago, that probably makes enough sense that we can go with it. Q. Where did the Stinger come from? A. It's an experimental BOW that the train's passengers were bringing with them to the training facility, according to the Passenger's Diary file. Q. What's the point of the "Verse of Poetry" file? A. I've kicked this one around with a couple of my editors. The best thing we can come up with is that it's an oblique hint that the observatory contains the escape route. Q. If there was a big explosion in the Raccoon Forest a day before RE, why didn't anyone report it? A. Assuming that there was anyone around to see it in the first place--as the Raccoon Forest was the recent site of several vicious murders, I doubt there were a lot of people just casually hanging out in the woods right about then--all of the people who it would've been reported to are either responsible for it or being paid not to care. Wesker helped blow it up, Birkin blew it up, and the chief of the Raccoon P.D. is so far in Birkin's pocket that he's sorted Birkin's change. There was already a cover-up in the works for the "mansion incident"--see the Internal Investigation Report in RE2--so it easily could've encompassed this. Q. Why did Ozwell Spencer have James Marcus assassinated? A. Leaving aside for the moment how Marcus was obviously, visibly crazy, and how he was apparently using Umbrella's best and brightest as guinea pigs, Marcus also intended to use his invention of the T-Virus to oust Spencer (cf. Marcus's Diary 1). Q. What's up with James Marcus? A. At the time RE0 came out, Marcus threw a wrench into the RE timeline, as he'd never been mentioned before. CV makes a big deal about how Edward Ashford helped found Umbrella, and then RE0 made a big deal about how Marcus helped found Umbrella without mentioning Ashford at all. The old line of reasoning on the issue was that Alexander Ashford had been such a tremendous screw-up that Spencer tried to retroactively write Edward out of company history. It doesn't help that there's a typo in the American version's Investigator's Report 1 file. Marcus disappeared ten years ago, not twenty as the file says. Other versions do not contain this error. RE5 finally clarifies the issue by granting all three men co-founder status, although by 1970, Spencer is the only one of the three that cares about the company, and by 1988, he's the only one that's still alive. The situation then becomes this: James Marcus was one of the scientists who helped refine the Progenitor virus. When Spencer founds Umbrella, Marcus doesn't even fake interest, although he becomes the headmaster at Umbrella's training facility. He lets his assistant do most of the actual work, but new trainees William Birkin and Albert Wesker gain Marcus's trust. In the mid-seventies, Marcus concludes that the only way to get the Progenitor virus to do what he wants it to do is via human experimentation. Marcus keeps his "special" research a secret for a good long while (although he had someone in his confidence at Arklay, since one of Marcus's prisoners/test subjects gets sent there), and eventually manages to make a breakthrough with the creation of the T-Virus. He continues his private research into the creation of mutant leeches, because he is what is technically referred to as "icky," and abruptly decides he cares about Umbrella after all. That may be as simple as an interest in the company's profits. Marcus is confident the T-Virus will give him the influence he needs to oust Spencer as CEO and he's been using Umbrella's trainees as human test subjects, so Spencer has Wesker take him out in 1988. Soon thereafter, an Umbrella investigation team checks out the training facility, and upon discovering Marcus's torture chambers, they nail the doors shut and close it up. Years later, owing to a recent rapid period of growth by Umbrella, a few teams are sent to the training facility to clean the place up and reopen it. They start the job, but before they get too far into it, they run into the resurrected James Marcus. Hilarity ensues. Q. If Rebecca visits RE2's lab during RE0, then how do all the labs relate to each other? What about the treatment plants, the factories, the training facility, the Spencer mansion...? A. Okay, let's start at the top. The training facility had direct underground transit systems that linked it up with William Birkin's lab complex and the shipping lane connected to the Raccoon City sewer system, both of which were in RE2. The cable cars apparently linked the sewers to Birkin's lab's cargo entrance, and from the cargo entrance to the training facility; the positioning of the cable cars' stations would seem to indicate that the tram Rebecca rides isn't the same tram that Leon and Claire ride in RE2. (If you check in RE2, there's a big stack of oil drums in front of the corner where Rebecca's door was.) The entirety of the tunnel system looks like it makes use of a preexisting series of underground caverns. It's important to remember that in RE2, both Leon and Claire have to ride the cable car from the Raccoon City sewer system to the tram stop above Birkin's laboratory. That tram ride is basically what makes the geography work, even in the hazy, half-finished way that it does. From Outbreak, we also know that Birkin's lab has two additional sublevels, accessible via a freight entrance connected to the tunnels underneath Raccoon City. In RE2, they're inaccessible thanks to the giant plant on the facility wall; in RE0, you can't reach them because Rebecca won't go through the west door on B4. With this in mind, Rebecca's meeting with Enrico and her fight with the Tyrant are both set on the top floor of Birkin's laboratory. We're not sure exactly what caused the rockfall on this floor (although the Tyrant's a prime suspect), or what that rockfall is blocking (since the turntable's got train tracks on it and it doesn't go all the way down to Birkin's station, one would assume the rockfall destroyed another train stop). Naturally, the worst of the damage to Birkin's lab has been cleaned up by the time Leon and Claire visit. The sewage treatment plant that Ada and Sherry visit in RE2 is *not* the one that Rebecca finds Billy in. When Billy and Rebecca escape the treatment facility at the end of RE0, they're still in the middle of the Raccoon Forest, whereas RE2's plant was on the same block as the police station in midtown Raccoon City. The biggest problem here is the elevator in the trainyard of the training facility, which stops there, at a storage area outside the training facility's cable car stop, at the top floor of Birkin's laboratory, and at the power station in the former treatment plant. This would suggest that all seven floors of Birkin's laboratory, the training facility, the factory, a dam, at least two train stations, and a cable car track with at least two cars and four stops are all encompassed by a single, sprawling complex that stretches underneath the Raccoon Forest and part of Raccoon City. This further assumes that the underground rivers seen in both REv.2 and RE0 are joined to each other. You could reach this complex via the secret trams in the Raccoon City sewer system, a personnel elevator in the training facility's basement, or by walking through a subway tunnel underneath Raccoon City. Furthermore, this also means that Birkin's labs were so well-constructed that after the destruction of the training facility and presumably all the areas below and around it, they were not only still standing, but they were able to function independently. The Spencer mansion, thankfully, is a bit simpler. By the time the player reaches the entrance to the labs beneath the Spencer mansion, there aren't any places where the mansion *could* have passages connecting it to Raccoon City or the training facility. There are a couple of doors in the same area as the fountain that conceals the labs' entrance, one of which is obviously a freight entrance, but someone with a welding torch has sealed them by the time the player gets there. This could've been Wesker during his clean-up run in the mansion, or the surviving scientists trying to barricade the doors. Q. RE0's geography/map makes no sense. How can she visit Birkin's lab when it's directly underneath Raccoon City? A. This is a widespread point of discussion about RE0 and is often brought up as a reason why it either sucks or can't be canon. As noted above, though, people who bring this up usually forget about the tram ride in RE2's sewer system. Birkin's lab is actually well out in the Raccoon Forest (the top of the turntable shaft looks out on what looks like some old-growth pine trees), so Rebecca's visit there isn't that surprising. Q. (from Alex Rose, among others, paraphrased) When she gets to the warehouse from RE2, why doesn't Rebecca just go back to the RPD building? A. For one thing, the hatch is locked and Rebecca never finds the key. For another, she's got no way of knowing about the secret passageway in the RPD basement, as is suggested by the phrase "secret passageway." Rebecca has many talents, but clairvoyance isn't on the list. Q. When was the treatment plant closed? A. One of the problems that RE0 presents to the storyline enthusiast is that many of the files have dates, but no years. The Treatment Plant Manager's Diary file says that the plant was run by Umbrella, but was closed due to a sudden influx of additional waste that they couldn't process--on July 24th. Now, seeing as how the treatment plant looks like it's been abandoned for a while, how very few businesses are closed suddenly in the middle of the night, and how I find it unlikely that the manager would write an exasperated diary entry about the closing of the plant while he's hip-deep in zombies and Hunters ("July 24th: I can't believe they're closing the plant. What am I going to do for a job now? PS: Oh, yeah. AIEEEEEEEEEEE!"), I choose to believe that the diary entry was written on, at the latest, July 24th, 1997. The fresh zombies and working machinery can be attributed to another ill-fated cleanup crew. Q. Is the factory the same place as the Dead Factory in RE3? A. No. When Billy and Rebecca leave the factory via the shipping dock on the fifth floor, they're on a hill overlooking the Spencer mansion. The Dead Factory was in Raccoon City, behind the park and within a few blocks of the hospital. Q. What was that thing that came after Billy in the water? A. I subscribe to the belief that Billy's attacker was Marcus's queen leech. It's big, we know from Marcus's expository FMV that it's aquatic, and it didn't eat Billy. Q. Where the *hell* did that Tyrant come from? A. As mentioned above under RE2's FAQs, it might very well be the mysterious escapee from William Birkin's lab. =========================== 3viii. RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN =========================== Q. Does Gaiden contribute *anything* to the plot? A. Nothing about Gaiden has ever been referred to again in any other game in the series. Its big twist ending is either noncanon or reversed offscreen. ============================ 3ix. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ============================ Q. Hey, is Fong Ling Ada? A. There's no reason why she would be, aside from them both being eerily competent Chinese women. They don't look at all alike. Q. Why was Morpheus blamed for the Arklay outbreak? A. The Dismissal Notice file is Morpheus's pink slip from Umbrella, and gives the reason as his responsibility in the May 11th, 1998 incident at the Arklay laboratory. This came out of left field, and Morpheus's link with Arklay isn't explored further. With that said, we know from the intro that Morpheus isn't American; the name Duvall is French; and Morpheus's cultists managed to steal a T-Virus sample from a Paris laboratory. Meanwhile, as noted above, Wesker screwed over a French laboratory; William Birkin was "killed" by agents working for Umbrella's French division; and Morpheus's job put him in a supervising capacity. Coincidences are seldom useful. Granted, this is a list of facts without much to join them together, but there's enough here to at least come somewhere near an answer. It's possible that Morpheus is being made the scapegoat for the Arklay outbreak due to Umbrella France's responsibility for the Raccoon City outbreak. =========================== 3x. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK =========================== Q. Are the Outbreak games canon? A. Daylight from "Decisions, Decisions" is mentioned in the Marhawa Desire manga. (Doug Wright takes one look at the infected student at the Marahawa Academy and says they're going to need some Daylight.) This means that at least that scenario is canon and that one of the survivors escaped Raccoon City with it. Q. Okay, so what does *this* do to the timeline? A. Not a great deal, actually. Outbreak begins on September 22nd, shortly after the first death of William Birkin (one of twelve; collect them all!), and despite a mild continuity quirk (see Mistakes, below), it ends at the same time as RE3. "Outbreak" clearly starts on the 22nd and ends no more than a couple of hours thereafter. There's nothing here that relates to any other games' plot. "Below Freezing Point" is set on the lower levels of Birkin's laboratory. Since RE0 establishes that Birkin's lab is way the hell out in the Raccoon Forest, you've got to figure the hike under the city took a little while. Further, some time clearly elapses between the attack against Birkin and "Below Freezing Point," though it could've been anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days. You could set "BFP" anywhere from the 23rd to the 26th or so without screwing up the timeline too badly. "The Hive" takes place inside the Raccoon Hospital, where Carlos searched for a T-Virus vaccine in RE3. We know from RE3's Director's Diary file that the hospital was overrun on the 26th. Thus, "The Hive" could take place at any point from the 26th to the evening of the 30th. I initially thought that "Hellfire" was set directly after "Outbreak," as you pass the Apple Inn during the mad dash away from J's Bar, but "End of the Road" in File #2 disproves that. Since the fire department's still up and running after "Hellfire" and the street outside the Inn is clear, I'd say that "Hellfire" is set on the 23rd or 24th, when the situation's dire but not yet critical. Like "Outbreak," there's nothing in "Hellfire" that references any other RE. On the other hand, the lobby of the Apple Inn was hosting a protagonist convention in the last couple of days before Raccoon blew up; Jill and Carlos come down the street outside in RE:UC, the Outbreak crew visits it again in "End of the Road," and Ada stops by right before the missiles hit. Finally, "Decisions, Decisions" takes place just before sunrise on October 1st. The big problem here is Nicholai's presence, which is complicated by the aforementioned continuity quirk. That said, for all we know, Nicholai had his helicopter waiting on the roof. Q. How do the scenarios relate to each other, anyway? A. At this point, I consider all the scenarios within the two Outbreak games to be short stories set against the background of Raccoon City, rather than a cohesive narrative in five or ten parts. "Outbreak" is a starting point and "Decisions, Decisions" and "End of the Road" are endings, but that's about as far as I think we can go. Q. When you start "Outbreak," all eight characters are shown in J's Bar, but only three or four of them are still inside when the game starts. Where did the others go? A. If they aren't in the active group, then they're NPCs, and as such, they can do whatever the hell they want. It's suggested that Cindy and Mark are present for "Outbreak," but other than that, all bets are off. Q. Why are there so many zombies, so soon after the outbreak? A. Many files in RE2 and RE3, such as Chris's Diary, indicate that the T-Virus had already made it into Raccoon City before the attack on Birkin, with monsters appearing within the city limits as early as August 18th. Presumably, those individuals who immediately succumbed to the T-Virus were already nursing a mild dose of it before the lab attack. Q. What's Yoko's deal, anyway? A. Good question. Nobody in Outbreak gets a lot of plot except Yoko (there's a lot of inferred characterization, such as each character's special items, but very little character-driven story), which makes her the protagonist of Outbreak almost by default. If you play "Below Freezing Point" as Yoko, it becomes obvious that she worked in Birkin's laboratory before the attack. She gets a number of advantages in this scenario, like already having the map, and Monica needs Yoko's keycard to reach B4. (How did Monica get to B4 despite the plant infestation in the duct? NPC powers.) Yoko also found out about the attack in time to escape the laboratory. As noted in the next FAQ, Yoko's not trying to get out of town before "Outbreak"; she's trying to change her appearance as fast as possible. The viral spill is as much of a surprise to her as to anyone else, if her emotes are anything to go by. The question then becomes whether Yoko remembers why she knows this. As you progress through the game as Yoko, her endings all have the same theme. She knows she's forgotten something important, and it's driving her mad. The only resolution we get to this in the first Outbreak is the comment made by Greg at the end of "Decisions, Decisions." If Yoko's in your group when you meet him, Greg says that something happened to her two years ago. Yoko clearly doesn't remember it, and Greg sympathizes; it was so horrible that he doesn't blame her for forgetting. It's only in "End of the Road" in Outbreak File #2 that we get an answer. If you decrypt a second MO disk and use it in the computer in the Special Research Room, you'll find the hidden Experiment Participants file. In it, Yoko is listed among the people who participated in an unspecified T-Virus experiment on May 14th, 1996. Yoko's ad-libs during the same scenario also reveal that her memory is apparently coming back by that point, as Yoko remembers that she donated cells to help create the Tyrant. (Since she was eighteen at the time, one wonders if she was a serotonin donor.) Afterwards, Greg operated on her to tamper with her memory. It does seem odd that Umbrella can do that, but they're Umbrella. Specific memory alteration through invasive brain surgery isn't even the least possible thing they did that week. Q. Why was Yoko cutting her hair in the J's Bar bathroom? A. Yoko has trust issues (one of her ad-libs is "It's okay to trust you, right?") and she may know what's happened to Birkin. If you're an Umbrella employee whose boss just got whacked by other Umbrella employees, changing your appearance is a solid Plan A. Cutting off your hair is also a potent image in Japanese symbolism, representing a breaking of ties with the past. Other games that play with this include Final Fantasy IX and Wild ARMs 2. Q. What was in Monica's briefcase? A. The Top-Secret Memo mentions a parasite that needs to be kept in a special case. If you speak to the dying researcher on B5 as Yoko, he says that Monica took one of Birkin's projects. Odds are good that Monica's carrying that parasite, and that the parasite has something to do with the G-Virus. Since it's something that'll "wake up," I'd imagine it's an embryo. Q. What happened to Monica? A. There's some debate on the subject. I always thought that Birkin showed up to kill her for screwing around with his pet project, but some have argued otherwise. In the end, the important thing is that she got killed and infected with a G-Virus embryo, either by Birkin himself or from the viral sample in the open case. Q. If it was him, why didn't William go after the survivors? A. If you play as Yoko and speak to the scientist on B5, he mentions that Monica's stealing one of Birkin's projects ("We both know she can't handle that"). That may be enough to explain it right there, especially early in his mutation when there might still be something of Birkin left. Q. Why is the plant in Birkin's lab still alive in RE2? A. As we know from either version of RE, V-Jolt will weaken and damage a T-Virus plant, but it won't kill it outright. Further, in RE:O, you don't fry the plant's roots. It has plenty of time to regenerate between games. Q. So who cleaned out Birkin's lab in time for RE2? A. You wind up killing quite a few Hunters in BFP while you're waiting for the turntable to warm up, and the lab is equipped with that anti-BOW gas system that you really should not trigger during RE2. The lab might not have required any additional cleaning, but if it did, the only character who's alive to do it is Annette. Q. Is the leech creature in the hospital James Marcus? A. The Investigation Report file specifically notes that these leeches are different than Marcus's. Q. How does the author of the Investigation Report file know anything about Marcus's leeches? A. They were Marcus's private obsession for about a decade, as seen in RE0, and Umbrella is just crazy about archiving data. William Birkin could easily have collected additional samples from the training facility. Q. Did Ben Bertolucci escape from the Apple Inn? A. A lot of players have written in to note the presence of a man who looks a great deal like Ben Bertolucci in the ending for "Hellfire." That man is running away from the Inn as fast as his legs can carry him. Capcom's displayed a knack for reusing character models in the RE games, especially in the Outbreaks. For example, Cindy B and Mark B are both standing in the crowd during File #2's "Run Like the Wind" ending, and Carter from File #2 makes a cameo appearance in "Below Freezing Point" as the guy on B5 who gives Yoko the Magnum. Thus, it's hard to say that the running guy in "Hellfire" is meant to be Ben. Q. (from Victor Xiao) Are Daylight and the T-Virus vaccine from RE3 the same thing? A. Peter and Greg developed Daylight on their own. Greg was working for Umbrella at the time, but he apparently never bothered to tell Umbrella about Daylight. The Reagent Refinement file in RE:O2 indicates that as far as Umbrella knows, the T-Virus doesn't have a cure. The components of RE3's misnamed "vaccine," on the other hand, are just lying around the Raccoon Hospital. Presumably, it and the AT1521 mentioned in the Reagent Refinement file are the same thing, since RE5 establishes that the "vaccine" halted the T-Virus's development in Jill's system. Q. Who killed Peter Jenkins? A. Peter wasn't an Umbrella employee and knew nothing about Thanatos, so Nicholai has no reason to kill him. That would point the finger at Greg Mura (whose last name is revealed in a Yoko-specific file in "Flashback"). Q. Why does Greg hate Umbrella? A. He's a big prima donna, apparently. He resents Umbrella because they wanted to mass-produce the Thanatos bioweapon. ========================================== 3xi. RESIDENT EVIL 4 (a.k.a. Thomas Uses the Word "Assume" Fifty Times in Rapid Succession) ========================================== Q. I'm *really* confused. A. I don't blame you. Let's take it from the top. Some time ago, the Salazar family encountered a species of parasites called Las Plagas and imprisoned them below their family's castle. When Las Plagas hatch in a victim's body, they're nearly impossible to remove, although their development can be slowed with medication. The Salazar family is able to control them in some unspecified way; the only explanation given is Ada's theory in Separate Ways that the original Plaga were very sensitive to vibration. This may relate to the strange staff that Saddler carries. Fast-forward to the present day. The last living Salazar has become a member of a cult called Los Illuminados, which is led by Osmund Saddler. No one ever says what the cult's beliefs are, aside from Saddler's "I'm so awesome I should rule the world" philosophy, but there are enough bloody altars and freaky iconography lying around that we can make a few guesses. Saddler and Salazar hatch a plan. They go find Las Plagas underneath the castle and find that the parasites have survived, after a fashion, in the form of spores. They begin a long process of research and experimentation on Las Plagas, aided by biologists like Luis Sera. We can assume that Salazar funded the project. The parasite's mutagenic properties allow Salazar and Saddler to create guardian monsters, such as Los Gigantos or the Regenerators. Note that many monsters in RE4 are nearly immune to conventional attacks, and only "die" upon the destruction of their parasite. Victims of Las Plagas, the Ganados, are intelligent and appear self-aware, but are also utterly psychotic. Ganados attack any non-Ganado they see with intent to kill. Note that even when the Ganados are ostensibly out to capture Leon, Luis, Ashley, or Ada, they're using lethal force more often than not; also note that according to Luis' Memo 2 (sic), the Plagas induced psychosis in their hosts even before Saddler started experimenting on them. A Ganado also likes rotten food (every time you run through a kitchen or storeroom in RE4 or RE5, everything's been left out to spoil), doesn't care much for personal hygiene, tends to opt for melee weapons over firearms, and becomes extremely sensitive to bright light. Children cannot survive being infected with a Plaga. The leaders of Los Illuminados, such as Salazar, Saddler, and Mendez, are all hosting master Plagas. Ada theorizes at one point that the master Plagas can communicate with and control lesser Plagas via the use of ultrasonic waves. By the time Leon strolls into town, every surviving villager is either a Ganado, hosting a parasite, or an Illuminado. (The game never says what differentiates the two, aside from face paint and funky helmets. Perhaps Ganados are villagers who resisted infection, while Illuminados were members of the cult before the rediscovery of the Plagas.) The destruction surrounding Salazar's castle, the occasional proof of recent violence (the dead woman in the cabin by the village in 1-1, the fresh blood on the altar in the cliff tunnel in 2-3), and the hand-drawn sketches shown during the final credits suggest that this conversion did not occur without incident. A modern member of Los Illuminados is hosting a Plaga, and as such, can be placed under Salazar or Saddler's direct control at any time. Since there's no free will involved here and Las Plagas are capable of reproducing on their own (i.e. when the parasite jumps out of somebody's head), Saddler's plan is to use Las Plagas in a bid for world domination. Towards that end, he hires Jack Krauser, a former American soldier, to kidnap Ashley Graham, the daughter of the President of the United States. Saddler intends to inject Ashley with a parasite egg, then ransom her back to her father. Ashley, thus infected, will be able to place the President under Saddler's control. (Presumably, an infected Ashley would've been granted some abilities above and beyond those of a common Illuminado. The sample that Luis steals from the lab early in the game is important; as Saddler says in the Closure of the Church file, without that sample, Ashley's useless to them.) Krauser has other plans, however. He may be posing as a mercenary at the moment, but he's actually working for Wesker. Krauser kidnaps Ashley and delivers her to Saddler as a way of worming his way into Saddler's confidence, the better to steal a sample of the special Plagas for his real employer. Krauser has no intention of actually letting Saddler's plan come to fruition; he tells Leon as much during their knifefight in 5-2. (To go by Krauser and Ada's conversation in 5-2, they aren't after just any Plaga sample. They want the special one that Luis stole.) Saddler never really trusts Krauser, and thus never gives Krauser the chance to steal the sample. Krauser has no choice but to call for backup from a woman he despises: Ada Wong. Here's where things get tricky. The Americans find out where Ashley is, but as Mendez points out in the Alert Order file, it's not like one of the Ganados squealed. Someone had to have tipped the Americans off, and that's probably Ada, who's also the mysterious "third party" spoken of in several files. Before Leon arrives, there's no one else on the island who'd help Luis remove his Plaga. Whoever reports Ashley's whereabouts, Leon's soon dispatched to the Ganados' territory to ask a few questions about Ashley. He shows Ashley's photo to the first man he sees, who responds by trying to kill Leon with an axe. Meanwhile, a bunch of other Ganados kill the cops who drove Leon to the village and take out the bridge out of town. Leon figures that means he's on the right track, and the game gets underway. Q. So why would Ada bring Leon in in the first place? A. Ada explains her motivations in the reports that frame the chapters in Separate Ways. Leon's presence is half a distraction from what Ada's doing, and half an act of deliberate sabotage against Los Illuminados. Ada wasn't expecting the Americans to send Leon without any real backup, but she's incorporated that into her plans; Ada's confident that Leon can survive anything Los Illuminados throw at him, and while they're focused on him, she can do her job. The complication is that Wesker wants Leon dead, and Ada is supposedly working for him. The biggest problem Ada faces over the course of the game is that she's playing both sides against the middle, and by the end, she's betrayed Wesker twice over. Q. Does Ada actually care about Leon? A. In the normal game, it's easy to conclude that Ada is playing Leon like a fiddle, but Separate Ways establishes that she has at least some genuine feelings for him. She blows her cover in order to save him from Krauser. (Go ahead and laugh. I used to get this question a lot.) Q. Who's Ada really working for? A. Once you beat Separate Ways, Ada files a final report. She was a double agent and is working for another organization that is opposed to Wesker's new Umbrella. That organization wished to acquire a sample of Las Plagas for research purposes. Q. The Brady Games pamphlet enclosed with the PS2 version contradicts you on a few points. A. The booklet's... well, frankly, it's not that great. Among other things, it works from the "Leon did it all" version of RE2 found in Wesker's Report and it blames the Raccoon outbreak on the processing problems at the Dead Factory. Short version: I'm right, they're wrong. Q. Why isn't Leon better-equipped when the game starts? A. He's there to ask a few questions, not invade Spain. If anything, he's overequipped; Leon's got a handgun with a laser sight, a combat knife in a quick-release sheath, a flashlight, a grappling hook, two different radios, a portable tracking device, an attache case, a pair of binoculars, and some gum. He looks like a Bud K catalogue exploded. Q. Why don't the Ganados disarm Leon? A. Why would they? The Ganados don't think guns are dangerous, Mendez is bulletproof, they expect Leon to become a Ganado at any moment, Mendez doesn't care if individual Ganados live or die, and they were planning on killing Leon with an axe. Q. What happened to Leon's jacket? A. As you head back through the village in the second chapter of Separate Ways, one of the Ganados you kill won't dissolve. If you check his body, Ada will note that he appears to be wearing Leon's jacket. Ganados really dig on suede. Q. What was Saddler doing to Ashley with that machine? A. I can only presume that Saddler was preparing to inject Ashley with the special sample that Luis had stolen. What else would that machine be? Q. Who was Luis Sera? A. He claims to have once been a cop. As he's dying, Luis confesses that he was one of Saddler's researchers. That doesn't preclude his being a former cop, especially in the world of RE, where everyone has six careers before they hit 21, and his skill with firearms backs it up. According to Luis's diary entries, which are scattered throughout the game, Luis's job was to try to find ways that Las Plagas could be safely eliminated from an infected human's system. Saddler proceeded to use Luis's research to make Las Plagas harder to safely cure. Luis began looking to anyone and everyone for help against Saddler, including emailing a friend of his from college. As Ada mentions in her report on Luis, that friend happened to have died, and Ada intercepted the email. She contacted Luis and offered her assistance, albeit without disclosing her identity or her motivations. There's a little bit of a problem with the story, found within Separate Ways. Wesker says that they planted Luis in Saddler's employ, but Ada's report on Luis seems to contradict this. As per a recent re-translation of the Japanese script at Project Umbrella, I'm prepared to chalk this up to a typo in the original localization and consider Ada's report the real story here. Q. Why is Saddler an idiot? A. RE4 in general tends to make more sense if you assume that Saddler is a moron with all-consuming delusions of grandeur. He was already the leader of a cult of madmen, and then he shot himself up with a mutagenic parasite that's known for causing psychosis in its hosts. Even if he didn't have a bad habit of writing down his plans in explicit detail and leaving the notes where Leon can find them, Saddler seems utterly convinced that he's going to win because he's Saddler, dammit, and nothing that happens over the course of the game is enough to change his mind on the subject. An interesting note is that his whole plan would've been completely unworkable if Wesker hadn't decided to take a hand in it; without Krauser, Saddler is just a mass murderer in the middle of nowhere. Krauser also obliquely suggests that he might've foiled Saddler's plans himself if Leon hadn't shown up. Q. Who are the Merchants? A. Really creepy agents of a game mechanic. I try not to consider them part of the plot, except as a way of explaining where Leon's getting some of his equipment. They are Ganados, though; some of them have the creepy red eyes. If nothing else, though, their presence does explain how Saddler's getting ahold of all that military ordinance. For a European cult leader in the middle of BFN, the man has a lot of firepower. Q. How does Leon know Ada's been working with Wesker? A. He clearly knows something we don't. Q. When does Ada save Leon from Mendez? A. At the start of Chapter 1-3, head back into the bedroom. You'll get to see this from the other side during Chapter 2 of Separate Ways. Q. Why is Wesker planning to bring back Umbrella? A. We never learn Wesker's motivation for rebuilding Umbrella. We get Krauser's, odd though it may be (Umbrella can't keep its act together long enough to order shatterproof test tubes, let alone bring "order to this world"), but not his boss's. That said, there are plenty of possible reasons why someone might want to reorganize Umbrella, including but not limited to power, wealth, fame, and megalomania. Wesker's Report II gives the impression that Wesker didn't actually hate Umbrella. His objection was largely to Ozwell Spencer and his crazy plans. If Wesker rebuilt Umbrella, Spencer would ostensibly no longer be in the picture. In her final file during Separate Ways, Ada suggests that Umbrella served as a useful cover for the criminals of the world. Further, she notes that Wesker used Umbrella to hide behind while he came up with his own plans. Both are interesting points, but as neither argument comes directly from Wesker himself, they must be considered conjecture. Three years later during RE5, Wesker seems to have abandoned the idea of resurrecting Umbrella entirely in favor of his Uroboros project. Q. Do the Plagas mutations have anything to do with the T-Virus or G-Virus? A. There's nothing in any file in the game that would suggest such. As a matter of fact, the only people who mention Umbrella at all are Krauser and, at the end of Assignment Ada, Wesker. The mutations linked to Las Plagas are apparently the result of Saddler's experiments in the island facility. As far as we know, they were done on their own, with no influence from Umbrella. Q. Did Luis's vial contain the T-Virus? A. Luis says that he's seen a sample of the T-Virus in his police department's laboratory. Some fans interpret this as a tacit admission that Luis is a former Umbrella employee, as it seems unusual that a police station would have the T-Virus on hand. However, Luis was a cop in Madrid, the capital of Spain, and the T-Virus is a going concern worldwide. With all that in mind, a cop with Luis's background in biology who works in a major city would be familiar with the T-Virus. Q. When did Ashley see Ada? A. She was half-conscious when Leon pulled her out of Saddler's machine. Note that Ashley is weak, but walking under her own power as Leon drags her out of the room. Also, in Separate Ways, Ashley looks up during the final battle to see Ada zip-lining around the construction platforms. Q. Why is Ada dressed like that? A. Luis Sera introduces himself as a "ladies' man." He's looking to stop the Ganados and Saddler, and has found a way to destroy Las Plagas. He's also capable of moving around the area undetected (cf. the Sera and the Third Party file). Ada, conversely, wishes to steal a sample of Las Plagas and was hoping to do so secretly. She's also come by an astounding amount of knowledge about Las Plagas and has done so without being discovered or visiting the research facility. Various files, as noted above, suggest that Luis and Ada are working together despite their dissonant motivations, and Ada does look good in that dress. Q. How does Assignment: Ada fit into the storyline? A. Uneasily. It may work best if we assume that Ada's mission is set after Leon and Krauser's knife fight and between chapters Four and Five of Separate Ways. While Leon's battling Krauser, Ada circles back around the island, changes into tac gear, and mounts her own assault on what's left of Saddler's processing facility. At the end of A:A, Ada calls for evac. Assumedly, she turns the helicopter around, changes back into her dress, and gets dropped off on the road outside the battlefield. This also gives her plenty of time to plant charges throughout the island, and explains how Ada winds up on the road to the battleground despite the destruction of the ruins. In A:A's ending, Ada stores all the Plagas samples inside the case, including the one she got from Saddler. Thus, the end of A:A takes place after the end of RE4's main story mode. The advantage to this chain of events is that it gives Krauser a reason to show up at the end of A:A. The Krauser's Notes file suggests that he didn't trust Ada and was looking for a reason to kill her. Ada disarming him during the knifefight would neatly provide that reason. This is the best explanation I can come up with, but it has its own set of difficulties: -- This explanation assumes that Krauser's mutation works a bit like it does in Mercenaries. In other words, his wonder arm's retractable, though he may need to recover after he uses it. Thus, he pops it to deal with Ada, changes back into human form, then brings it back out (with considerably more drama) to fight Leon. -- You've also gotta wonder why Krauser gives up so easily in A:A, compared to what you have to do to him in Leon's game. Any ideas I'd have on the subject all involve making guesses about his motivations, which I don't like to do. -- It's a nice dress, Ada. Still, why change back into it? The alternative is to consider that the in-game action in Assignment: Ada is canonical the same way 4th Survivor in RE2 is canonical; that is to say, something very like it happened, but many of the specific events within the scenario did not, as they would not necessarily make sense. Thus, Ada did use Leon's attack on the complex as cover to steal a bunch of plaga samples, and had both her radio conversations with Wesker, but perhaps she did not fight Krauser. Q. Where did Krauser get his nifty mutated arm? A. Krauser's sporting any number of enhancements even before he sprouts the claw: superhuman agility, brief bursts of unnatural speed, taking a .45 slug to the face without messy braindeath, sassy beret, etc. The similarities to Wesker's powers are unmistakable. Since Krauser's working for Wesker, and thus for the remnants of Umbrella, it's easy enough to assume (there's that word again) that he's received several nifty upgrades as a signing bonus. After all, Umbrella has Tyrant-in-a-can in 2002, and Sergei is able to turn into a fully sentient, rational Tyrant in 2003. It's safe to assume (argh!) that by 2004, with Umbrella's entire database at his disposal, Wesker's figured out how to augment humans with Tyrant-ish powers. Q. Is Krauser infected with a Plaga? Is that where he gets his powers? A. Ada's report on Krauser seems to indicate that Krauser had his mutated arm well before he was sent to infiltrate Los Illuminados, since she's studied what he's capable of. She also notes that he's probably fallen prey to the temptations that the cult represents, but if Krauser has actually turned on Umbrella, he dies before he gets the chance to do anything about it. Krauser is also motivated to go find Wesker at the end of RE:DSC, as he's lost the full use of his arm by the end of Operation Javier. It's my opinion that Krauser is not hosting a Plaga at any point during RE4. For one thing, he still has his free will, which would seem to rule out infection; if Krauser was hosting a Plaga, Saddler wouldn't need to distrust him. Further, that distrust would seem to argue against Krauser hosting a master Plaga. It is an odd side note, however, that the special anti-Plaga laser device that you get for beating Professional Mode in the later ports of RE4 will instantly kill Krauser. It won't do a thing to chickens, crows, cows, and uninfected dogs. Q. Did Krauser survive? A. To the casual observer, no. Not only did Leon kill him, but Ada proceeded to kill him again. That said, if he came back from what looked an awful lot like death once, there's no reason why he couldn't do it twice. Krauser wound up as a popular enough character that he came back in RE:DSC and Mercenaries 3D, so Capcom may not be able to resist the temptation to resurrect him. Q. Where the hell did Krauser get spiderbots? A. He's a big Deus Ex fan. Who knew? Q. Is Ingrid Hunnigan Ada? A. This is the first really Out There question that's arisen in RE4 (the second being the surprisingly widespread and since thoroughly debunked idea that Saddler is Ozwell Spencer), so I'm including it here. The short version: you lose contact with Hunnigan shortly before meeting Ada for the first time. Ada's initially wearing sunglasses, but destroys them as a handy distraction. The next time you see Hunnigan, after the credits, she's not wearing her glasses. Hence, as the popular theory goes, Ingrid's Ada in disguise, presumably using some kind of gadget to mask her face and voice. This theory has apparently become widespread enough that it was one of the questions that PSM2 asked Masachika Kawata, the head of the team that ported RE4 to the PS2. According to him, it's not true. Q. Was Ingrid Hunnigan the "traitor"? A. No, that was Krauser. He's an American, and he admits to being Ashley's kidnapper during the knifefight in 5-2. Q. What's an ORE? A. If you check the canned food store in the basement of the island facility, Leon will remark that it reminds him of his ORE days. A quick look at acronymfinder.com indicates that ORE, among other things, can stand for Operational Readiness Evaluation/Exercise. One would presume that this is a reference to Leon's training. =============================== 3xii. RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE =============================== Q. Are you going to cover the second movie in this document? A. Hell no. You can't even *begin* to tell me it's relevant. ======================================= 15xiii. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK FILE #2 ======================================= Q. What is File #3? A. Reportedly, Outbreak was originally intended to be a single release with twenty separate scenarios, but was initially released with only five. The first game sold quite well, but the second did not, which killed plans for the release of a third and fourth. There is data on the File #2 disc from File #3, however, apparently with the intent of allowing you to import unlocked character skins back to the past game. You can unlock the File #3 characters using a GameShark, which includes Hunk and several members of his strike team. No information has been released about where the File #3 scenarios were to take place, or what they would involve. The presence of the strike team and of another guy dressed like David suggests that one stage would've been set in the sewer system. Q. When do the new scenarios take place? A. "Wild Things" is set a few days into the outbreak. The RPD is still an active force in the city and the media is still operating, which suggests it's before the 27th. The only thing that determines when "Flashback" is set is Ed's sidelong comment at the start of the scenario, about how things are getting bad in the city. There's no real way of knowing when it occurs, particularly since Ed's shenanigans don't have much to do with the outbreak. You could put it at almost any point within the first few days. "Underbelly" appears to take place at some point after the 27th, since the city's taken serious damage and the streets are becoming overrun. The first Outbreak's scenarios suggest that Raccoon didn't get *really* bad until the RPD lost the battle on the 27th. The events of "Desperate Times" take place near the end of the siege of the RPD, just before Jill Valentine visits the building on the 28th. Finally, "End of the Road," like "Decisions, Decisions," is set on the morning of October 1st, in the last hours before the bomb. Q. So what does this do to the timeline? How do all of these scenarios fit together? A. As with the first Outbreak, File #2's scenarios aren't really a cohesive, five-part narrative. Instead, it's five situations encountered throughout the outbreak, as seen through the eyes of the survivors. Compared to the first game, it's a bit more character-driven--all five scenarios do, however tangentially, involve at least one member of the cast--but it's still an anthology rather than a plotline. While some scenarios would seem to be at least coincidentally linked--for example, the end of "The Hive" could bring a group of survivors to Birkin's laboratory to participate in "Below Freezing Point"--no such connections are made in-game. Q. What order do the scenarios take place in? A. Every fan who's tried to figure this out winds up with a different answer. My version of the timeline is as follows: "Outbreak": this is the start of the Raccoon City disaster. "Hellfire": since the fire department is still running and the streets are relatively safe, I'd set this right after "Outbreak." One might consider this the story of what happens to the other four main PCs after that scenario. "Below Freezing Point": I'd set this as early in the outbreak as possible, to give Annette as much time as possible to clean the lab back out before Leon and Claire get there. It also can't be all that long after Birkin's assassination, since there are still survivors amongst the lab's staff. "Wild Things": all we know is that this is set before the 27th, since the RPD is still working on evacuating refugees. "Flashback": there's no way of knowing when this takes place, but some characters' Illusion Endings note that the survivors spend an entire day out in the forest. Thus, it's probably around the middle of the week. "The Hive": the horde of zombies outside the hospital, and the general destruction within it, suggest that this scenario's set near the end of the outbreak, prior to Carlos's visit to the hospital on October 1st. "Underbelly": the destruction in the streets at the start of the scenario would suggest that this takes place near the end of the outbreak, anywhere from the 27th to the 30th. "Desperate Times": This is one of the few scenarios that we have a date for. It's set on the 28th, a few hours before Jill arrives in RE3. "End of the Road"/"Decisions, Decisions": these take place nearly simultaneously, in the hours just before the destruction of Raccoon City. Q. What happened to Kurt at the hospital? Why is Alyssa having flashbacks? A. Kurt was an idealistic colleague of Alyssa's, who came to the hospital to investigate an ongoing scandal. Patients were dying, the details of their deaths were going unreported, and Kurt couldn't track down who was providing the hospital with its drugs. The culprit turned out to be Umbrella, of course, working through a shell corporation called Drugs Incorporated. The Clinical Report file suggests rather strongly that the drugs being used at the hospital were wholly or partially derived from the T-Virus. The treatments worked at first, but the patients would eventually become zombies. This included Dorothy Lester, who was given the treatment in 1996. However, patients were still being admitted to the hospital as late as mid-September of 1998, no more than a week before the beginning of the outbreak. If you hit the emote button a couple of times after Alyssa's flashbacks, you'll get her commentary on them. It doesn't seem that she's having sudden bursts of repressed memory, so much as she's having flashes of insight about the events that must have occurred at the hospital. She remembers the hospital, and she knows she's been there at some point to cover a story, but it takes her a little while to figure out what must've happened. It's probably understandable, since the hospital looks like it's been abandoned for years. Alyssa knows that Kurt went to the hospital to investigate the scandal, and then disappeared suddenly. It's only when she reaches Room 201 that she realizes what must've happened to him. After talking to Al, the hospital administrator, Kurt broke into the hospital at night and fell prey to the zombified patients. Alyssa's flashbacks are a combination of her memories of the place and a series of intuitive leaps. An alternative interpretation is that Alyssa was actually with Kurt on the night he broke into the hospital, but something was done to her that made her forget the incident. The flashbacks are her memories resurfacing as she revisits the area. I'm not sure I like this version, but given Yoko's revelation in "End of the Road," it's a distinct possibility. Q. What the hell happened to the RPD after the siege? A. Yeah, I'd like to thank Capcom for that one. It's bad enough that half the RPD is boarded shut during RE3, but now there's a raging inferno in the back lot, several rooms are heavily barricaded, and most of the damn building is flooded with *nerve gas*. (Apparently, Brian Irons doesn't think something's an effective deterrent unless it's banned by the Geneva Convention.) That being said, there are quite a few people who are still in the RPD or have yet to arrive there, many of whom are major players in RE2. Just to name a few, Ada Wong, Sherry Birkin, Marvin, Elliot Edward, Eliza Warren, Ben Bertolucci, the two convicts in the cellblock, and a few surviving cops (cf. the Operation Report files in RE2) are all still in the building when Rita's crew makes their escape. Brian Irons is also lurking in the background, though he may not actually be in the building; his diary in RE2 mentions that he's in the precinct, but not necessarily the precinct house. Any one of these people could account for one or more of the changes in the RPD between the end of "Desperate Times" and Jill's visit on the 28th. Particular suspects here would include Irons, whose obsession with the arrangement of his furniture was noted in RE2's Secretary's Diary file; Elliot Edward, who writes of his attempts to escape via the sewer system in RE2's Operation Report files; and Ada Wong, who says in RE2 that she's conducted a room-by-room search of most of the building. At the end of the day, however, just like the boarded-up doors in RE3, none of this really matters. It'd be nice if Capcom would cut it out, but it's irrelevant for the purposes of this document. Q. How does "Desperate Times" fit into the RE2/RE3 timeline? A. At first glance, the order of events is simple. Following the battle against the zombies on the 27th (RE3's intro), the police pull back to the RPD. The siege goes poorly, and the zombies take over the west wing of the building. (Presumably, several cops and citizens are trapped in that wing during "Desperate Times," as there are living officers in the building right up until Leon and Claire arrive on the night of the 29th.) With all of their escape routes blocked off, Marvin Branagh comes up with a plan. The setup and execution of that plan is covered in "Desperate Times," which takes place at some point late on the 27th or early on the 28th. Rita and the survivors escape the RPD at the end of "Desperate Times," and Marvin collapses in the west office. Presumably, he treats his wound or something and finds himself to be in good enough shape to try to reinforce the perimeter. He boards up or blockades the compromised parts of the building, then passes out in the west office. At some point shortly thereafter, Jill stops by to grab her Lockpick. She thinks Marvin's dead, and thus doesn't try to help him. While she's slugging it out with Nemesis, Marvin wakes up and, perhaps motivated by the sound of anti-tank rockets going off inside the building, finds somewhere else to be. (As noted above, in RE3, Marvin's body disappears the moment you find the Lockpick.) Between Jill's departure from the RPD and Leon and Claire's arrival, various events take place, presumably accounting for the dismantled barricades and rearranged rooms. Finally, on the night of the 29th, Leon and Claire reach the RPD. Claire finds Marvin barely alive in the RPD's west office, and is later forced to kill him when he becomes a zombie. So far, things are fairly simple. The big complication is in Kevin's ending in "Desperate Times," where a police car passes their van on the street. Some people think that's Leon and Claire's police car from the beginning of RE2. Personally, I don't see why people think that, as I can't see through the car's windshield. It's weird that there's another car on the street, yeah, but if it's Leon and Claire, it screws up the timeline. Either Kevin and Rita were driving around the city for a day and a half before he thought to talk to her (not inconceivable, really, as Kevin's kind of a dick), Jill's visit to the RPD on the 28th took place at some point when everyone but Marvin was behind the barricades, or the Outbreak File #2 developers were so eager to include an Easter egg that they forgot about RE3. Q. What's Marvin got against the STARS? A. There's an interesting note on the desk in the RPD's west office, where Marvin details the cops' evacuation plan. He mentions something about how they might be able to rely on the STARS, but dismisses the idea out of hand. At this point in the timeline, as far as Marvin knows, the notoriously unreliable Brad Vickers is the only member of STARS who's still in town and still alive. The other STARS dropped off the radar around the middle of August, as Marvin says at the start of RE2. Further, as established in several files in RE2, the STARS became a laughingstock upon their return to Raccoon City. Q. Doesn't Marvin know about Jill? A. He still thinks Jill's "disappeared" when he talks to Claire at the start of RE2, on the 29th. Clearly, he didn't actually see Jill on the 28th. Q. Where's the Experiment Participants file? A. After you bring Carter the MO Disk, grab a second disk off the table and decrypt it in the same mainframe. You can now use the disc in the Special Experiments room's computer to bring the file onscreen. It's garbled, but Yoko's name is still legible. Q. Why did the Tyrant turn on Carter? A. The Experiment File, found in the mezzanine near Carter, says that the Mr. X in "End of the Road" is an experimental life form code-named T-0400TP. The file then warns that the T-0400TP is mostly used to cage-match against Hunters in a test of its durability, and that if it's used outside of the experimentation chamber, the safety of the user is not guaranteed. Q. Hey, shouldn't the Apple Inn be on fire? A. The Raccoon City fire department took care of that in the closing cinematic for "Hellfire." Q. How can I get Yoko to talk about the experiment? A. Yoko seems to be more likely to uncork her ad-libs about her resurfacing memories if you're either in the lobby of the Apple Inn with Linda, or if you're on the first floor of the office building waiting for the clock to run out. Q. Where did Cindy get the money to buy a house? A. It's funny, but if you go back and look at the Cindy-specific SP items in the first game, they include the location of a stash of money that Jack was embezzling and the deed to J's Bar. She might've been able to collect on its insurance. =============================== 3xiv. RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION =============================== Q. Wh-- A. No. ================================= 3xv. RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION ================================= None yet. ======================================== 3xvi. RESIDENT EVIL: UMBRELLA CHRONICLES ======================================== Q. If the front doors of the mansion are locked when Rebecca and Richard get there, who unlocked them so the Alpha team could get in? A. One of the funny things about UC is that it turns the Spencer mansion from an isolated and largely abandoned deathtrap into Mardi Gras North. There are people going in and out of it like a Scooby Doo chase scene all damned day and at least two of them have the run of the place. You could credit either Sergei or Wesker for unlocking the doors. Q. How does Sergei have such an obedient Tyrant following him around a full day before the "mansion incident"? A. After the GameCube remake of the first game, the series has been gradually walking back from the notion that the Tyrant in the tank in the Arklay lab was the first of its kind. The in-game file on "Ivan" says that it's a customized Mr. X prototype, intended to blend in more easily with humans. ====================== 3xvii. RESIDENT EVIL 5 ====================== Q. Is Wesker really dead? A. There's an underlying theme of settling old business throughout RE5. Spencer appears for the first time and gets killed, we see the definitive origins of the T-Virus and the Progenitor, and Umbrella has been thoroughly destroyed. Wesker's death would seem to fit neatly into that thematic background; RE5 is the end of the Umbrella storyline, and thus the end of Wesker. Is he really dead, though? Given his popularity, I have very serious doubts that Wesker will stay dead, but for now it's official. Wesker isn't in Revelations at all and his being dead is a plot point in RE6. Q. If Spencer killed everyone who knew about the African research facility, how did Wesker and Tricell know about it? A. We find out about Spencer's assassinations from the Spencer's Notebook file, which is found inside Excella's abandoned briefcase on the bridge of the cruise ship. Spencer is a compulsive diarist, like everyone else in this series, and it's possible to read his journal by going into the library on the first floor of his mansion during "Lost in Nightmares." Since the BSAA is funded by Tricell, it would've been easy for Excella to get ahold of Spencer's journal and pass it along to Wesker. There's also at least one Umbrella executive, Jenny K., who managed to slip through Spencer's fingers. Q. Where was Umbrella getting all of its Progenitor virus from if it was so hard to manufacture? A. The Spencer's Notebook file, found on the ship's radar station right before the big Uroboros fight, mentions that Umbrella figured out a way around that problem at some point in the 1980s. Before then, they had to get Brandon Bailey to harvest and mail out all the samples, a job that did not do Bailey any good at all. Q. Didn't Spencer tell Wesker he was the only survivor of the "Wesker Children"? Who's Alex? A. You may find this hard to believe, but Spencer was lying. Wesker may have even known that, since you can find an internal memo written by Alex in the ship's radar station. There's at least one other Wesker still in play, and there may be a few more, as Wesker's death is noted to have brought the project's success rate down to 18%. Q. Who was that blonde woman in 2-1? A. Her name is Allyson. She's part of the viral marketing campaign for RE5, and appears in a "travel blog" found at http://kijuju.blogspot.com. Kijuju apparently had a high population of foreigners in the country on work visas, which would explain the oddly multicultural demographics of the village Majini, and Allyson was one of them. She picked a very bad time to come out of hiding. Q. Who's Ryan? Who's M. Suzuki? A. Characters from a promotional video on RE5's Japanese website that's since been taken down. Suzuki was a Special Operations Agent with the BSAA who was secretly a Tricell double agent, and leaked information to Ricardo Irving about the BSAA coming for him. Ryan was an intelligence analyst with the BSAA who was on the verge of figuring out that they had a mole in the organization. Suzuki assassinated Ryan at his desk on March 9th, 2008. After erasing Ryan's files on the Kijuju operation, she subsequently disappeared. ========================================== 3xviii. RESIDENT EVIL: DARKSIDE CHRONICLES ========================================== Q. Doesn't the good ending contradict RE4? A. It does, but Krauser's ending doesn't. It seems to me that the difference between the good ending and Krauser's ending isn't whether or not we hear Krauser's inner monologue, but whether or not it happens at all. In Krauser's ending, Manuela overcoming her infection is enough to make him think that maybe he should look into this "Wesker" fellow. Q. When did Leon mention Wesker? A. I glossed this over in the plot summary in the name of brevity. Wesker has all of two lines in "Game of Oblivion," spends the entire game stalking Claire from the shadows, and leaves a mocking note for Chris when he steals Steve Burnside's body. I'm also operating on the assumption that "Game of Oblivion" is Leon actually telling Krauser about the Ashfords while they're coughing up river water in the dam, rather than Leon trying to set a new Olympic record in the expository inner monologue. Otherwise, Krauser's either telepathic or he was studying BOWs more than he lets on. Q. Where did Javier's Umbrella contact get the T-Veronica virus? Doesn't Wesker have the only sample? A. One of the problems with the Chronicles games' original levels is that they still depend on files to deliver a lot of the behind-the-scenes exposition, and the files are obtained by shooting seemingly random background objects. It's possible to go through the entire game without seeing any of them, which means it sounds a lot like that Umbrella contact is the one who sold Javier the T-Veronica sample. That Umbrella operative that Krauser wants to talk to is the guy who sold Javier the T-Virus he used to unsuccessfully treat Hilda. Wesker, however, is responsible for selling Javier the T-Veronica virus, as well as the Anubises and Hunters he's throwing at you. That's revealed by Wesker's in-game dossier and the Communications from Wesker file. Q. Why do you say T-Veronica all the time? The game just says Veronica. A. Force of habit, mostly. Besides, we all know that's what it is. Q. Why are the T-Veronica virus's effects so different from what we saw in CV? A. It's important to note that Hidalgo actually lets T-Veronica out into the world in DSC, which nobody ever did in CV. There are exactly three characters in CV who contract it and two of them instantly go homicide monster without ever trying to spread the infection. Everything else in CV is explicitly made with the vanilla T-Virus. Hidalgo, conversely, has done some additional experimentation with it and that is how giant druglord plant-spiders are made. ============================== 3xix. RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE ============================== Q. Bu-- A. Shut it. Shut your whole face. I will turn this car around, mister. ================================ 3xx. RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS ================================ Q. I really don't get what happened in this game. A. It's complicated, and just about everyone in it besides Chris, Jill, and Keith has at least one hidden agenda (although Quint's are all kind of silly). It makes a little more sense on a second playthrough, thankfully. In 2004, Morgan Lansdale is the commissioner of the FBC, which is a joke. Lansdale knows he needs more authority to do his job, and the only way to get it is to force the U.S. government to take the threat of bioterrorism more seriously. As the head of the FBC, he has the contacts and access to get his hands on BOWs quietly, including Hunters (available on the black market as per Dead Aim) and the T-Abyss virus (a recent creation, meant for study purposes). With those, Lansdale goes to small-time terrorist leader Jack Norman, who regards Terragrigia as an example of everything he hates about modern society, and hands Norman everything he needs to launch a major attack. Since Terragrigia was co-developed by American interests, Lansdale has the legal right to get the FBC involved, and he makes sure that the FBC is in sole charge of the response to the Panic, forbidding European participation. The only concession he makes is to allow Clive O'Brian to come aboard as an advisor, but alone, O'Brian can't do much except argue with Lansdale about the use of the Regia Solis. The FBC gets slaughtered, and Lansdale gets the expanded authority he wants before the Panic is even over. (Note that Lansdale's title goes from commissioner to general in the year after the Panic, and that his powers as the head of the FBC include the authority to launch a bombing run on short notice against a target in another country. Lansdale has power to spare.) Norman's forces are celebrating their victory when--surprise!--the other shoe drops. Lansdale uses the Regia Solis satellite to sink Terragrigia, and has arranged for the T-Abyss to break free on all three of Veltro's ships. The Dido is too close to the pulse from the Regia Solis and sinks, taking Jack Norman with it, while the other two end up as ghost ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Almost every member of Veltro is killed in the outbreak, which allows Lansdale to announce that the FBC has forcibly disbanded the organization. It's a triumphant win for Morgan Lansdale, who gets everything he wants and who can justify the deaths because it'll save lives in the long run. He's even made sure to destroy the only prefabricated city on the planet, so he's not even causing any truly permanent damage. There are three wild cards left on the table, however. One is Raymond Vester, who figures out that there's something weird about the Panic while he's in it, and who sees Lansdale acting squirrely right before the satellite's fired. One is Clive O'Brian, who goes way back with Lansdale and who argued bitterly with Lansdale during the Panic about the use of the Regia Solis; he knows Lansdale's hands are dirty but can't actually prove it. Finally, there's Jack Norman, whose body never turns up anywhere and who has a smoking gun sitting on his PDA. Lansdale reports Norman dead (cf. Jessica's Report) but can't prove it. Of the three, Norman is the only real problem. Lansdale has O'Brian vastly outgunned after the Panic, as we see in Episode 12, and Lansdale has no idea Raymond's anything other than loyal. (He knows that somebody in the FBC is leaking information to O'Brian, but as per Jessica's speech in Episode 11, doesn't know who it is.) Lansdale's thus primarily concerned with finding Jack Norman and getting the PDA. Towards that end, he blocks off the ruins of Terragrigia (as Chris notes during Episode 12, the FBC blockade isn't keeping BOWs off the shore, but is doing a dandy job of keeping people from figuring out just where the blobs are coming from) and does his best to keep the Zenobia and Semiramis off of the local radar, floating around as ghost ships. This is so he can send a research team out to the Zenobia, where they develop a vaccine for the T-Abyss. Raymond gets in touch with O'Brian at some point and they compare notes. Of the two, O'Brian's got the most ability to act, but he can't do so directly or Lansdale will have him arrested. Towards that end, they come up with an elaborate plan to make it look like Veltro has suddenly begun to rebuild. Raymond's also in it to steal a sample of the T-Abyss, and is willing to assassinate the last of Lansdale's researchers to get it. His motivations are the largest unexplained factor in Revelations's plot, but the game at least obliquely suggests that he, like Wesker before him, has decided to go off on his own independent path. On the day Revelations begins, O'Brian has Parker and Jill with him researching the blobs that have washed up on shore. He's also managed to send Chris up into the mountains with Jessica, chasing an "anonymous tip" that's almost certainly fabricated, in order to find an isolated Veltro facility. At the same time, Lansdale's finally figured out where Jack Norman is--trapped inside the sunken wreckage of the Queen Dido, right in the middle of all those underwater ruins that he isn't letting anyone else investigate--and he prepares to deploy a strike team. The "emergency call" that O'Brian takes on the beach is clearly about what the FBC and Lansdale are doing (and is probably from Raymond), which forces him to accelerate his timetable. Chris and Jessica are out of radio contact due to being up in the mountains, so he acts like they've suddenly disappeared, knowing that Jill and Parker will rush off to rescue their old partners without a second thought. (It also suggests that a big part of Clive's plan is using Chris and Jill's partnership to his advantage. He needs people who are going to act without thinking, and even then, Jill almost realizes it's a setup the moment it starts.) He gives them the Zenobia's coordinates, which starts the ball rolling. Raymond and Rachael arrive at the Zenobia well before Jill and Parker do. Their game plan is to investigate the ship and turn it into a kind of guided tour for Jill and Parker, but to do so without killing them; the only player in the game's events who would include that proviso is O'Brian, so he's the guy who wrote the Mysterious Instructions file. Raymond's general approach seems to be to leave Rachael to figure out what's actually aboard the ship, then move in behind her and set things up so Jill and Parker gradually learn what Rachael's already discovered. The gas trap is a big part of that, which puts Jill and Parker out of action for a while and gives Raymond the run of the place. The beauty of O'Brian's plan is that it ties Lansdale's hands. Lansdale has put a lot of effort into making sure nobody knows where the Zenobia is or what happened aboard it, which means he can't use any of his official resources to counteract the BSAA's investigators once they're already on board the ship. Doing so would put suspicion on Lansdale, because sending FBC troops or resources after the Zenobia would raise questions about his involvement that he'd rather not answer (i.e. how he knows where and what it is, or the risk of one of his underlings discovering the lab). O'Brian's gamble is that his agents will find something he can use to take Lansdale out and will do so before Lansdale can prevent the investigation. The major complication in Raymond's plan is that the Zenobia has a lot more BOWs on it than O'Brian bargained for, and they kill Rachael. When she dies, she's just found the key to the freight elevator, which suggests she was about to go deeper into the ship and find the lab. Without her, Raymond has to abandon his original plan and shifts over into the role of FBC flunky, refusing to answer any questions about why he's on the ship and simply getting out of Jill and Parker's way. At that point, he knows Jill and Parker are now his best shot at getting off the ship alive, and he's counting on Parker speaking up in his defense. All the BSAA agents involved in the situation are sure that they're 1dealing with the sudden reappearance of Veltro right up until Quint gets his hands on the terminal in the crashed plane in Finland. He knows the moment he sees it that Veltro was as clueless about what's happening aboard the Zenobia as the BSAA is. At that point, Quint goes rogue and hacks directly into the FBC's servers, and before they lock him out and blow up the airport, he sees some of Lansdale's private files and figures out exactly what's going on. Lansdale's strike against Norman fails at around 7:30 PM on the first night, and presumably due to Norman's angry ultimatum about the T-Abyss (which may or may not have been a complete bluff, unless there's another giant T-Abyss tank aboard the Dido), doesn't try again. He figures out what's going on about the Zenobia relatively early, and his first move is to seal Jill and Parker inside the engine room and flood it (no other character has both the motive and means to pull that off and no other cause is ever established), and when that fails, he tries to sink the ship with the Regia Solis. Even after that, Lansdale stays relatively calm right up until he catches Quint hacking into the FBC's systems. At that point, all bets are off; he orders an airstrike against the airport, Jessica shows her hand, he tries to kill Chris and Jill directly, and once the Zenobia's been sunk, Lansdale subsequently shows up to arrest O'Brian. Lansdale is under the impression that the BSAA is useless and powerless, and if Chris and Jill hadn't found Jack Norman in the Dido, he'd have been right. tl;dr: Morgan Lansdale caused the Terragrigia Panic so he could turn the FBC into a paramilitary goon squad with him as its general. He's thus responsible for the deaths of thousands. Clive O'Brian and Raymond Vester figure it out and come up with a plan; in order to investigate the Panic without Lansdale noticing that's what they're doing, they're going to trick several BSAA agents into thinking that Veltro is on its way back and sending them to the Queen Zenobia under that pretext. It does not go as planned and Lansdale eventually figures out that's what's going on, but in the end, Chris and Jill successfully recover enough hard evidence to get Lansdale arrested and disband the FBC. Q. A lot could've gone wrong with that plan, though. A. A lot *did* go wrong with that plan. O'Brian is very uncomfortable in the role of chessmaster, which becomes obvious as the game goes forward, and the entire scheme flies off the rails early on when Rachael dies. He also has no idea who the mole in his organization is--if it had been Quint or Parker, his whole plan would've been blown from the start--and doesn't have any idea what's actually aboard the Zenobia. One of the reasons why Revelations's plot is so confusing is because it's that rare work of fiction where somebody crafts an intricate plan of deceit and manipulation, but it blows up on the runway almost as soon as it starts. You're not playing through O'Brian's carefully plotted scheme; you're sifting through its wreckage. Q. How did Lansdale find Norman? A. It's suggested that the FBC blockade around the ruins of Terragrigia, as seen in Episode 2, isn't there to keep the shore safe from contamination. It's there to keep civilians out while Lansdale has teams sweeping the ocean floor for the wreck of the Dido, which was Norman's last known location. Q. How does Raymond know Jessica's the mole? A. She shot him right in time to keep him from outright telling Jill and Parker that Lansdale's dirty and did so on the flimsiest possible pretext. Raymond's the only person in that room who knows Lansdale's got a mole in the BSAA, and Jessica just as much as said it was her. Q. Why's Jessica flirting with Chris? A. It doesn't seem to be part of her scheme at all. She simply has a crush on him and is irritated when he doesn't respond. This is backed up by Jessica's Report, where Jessica takes a time out to openly fantasize about Chris while she's in the middle of being interviewed by Excella Gionne. Q. Why didn't Lansdale use the Regia Solis on the Dido? A. The Solis's beam isn't a laser. It's more like a microwave pulse. (I'm actually impressed by the cutscene where it destroys Terragrigia, since it depicts a lot of sudden heat damage rather than just a big explosion.) I figure that it would not work well against a target on the ocean floor. Q. Why does Lansdale want a vaccine for the T-Abyss? A. Lansdale goes full-on cat-stroking Bond villain by the end of the game, so it's easy to forget that he's actually just as interested in saving the world as O'Brian and the BSAA are, and he's got a few perfectly valid points. In the wake of the Panic, the T-Abyss is loose in the Mediterranean Sea, so having a vaccine for it on hand is just common sense. Q. What's the deal with the airport? A. It's clearly a genuine Veltro installation that's currently engaging in BOW transport. The crashed cargo plane is full of Hunters and infected wolves, the airport's flying Veltro colors and full of people who write Veltro manifestos, and the plane was well off of any established aerial shipping routes. The suggestion is that the few members of Veltro who survived Lansdale's double-cross are now selling their leftover BOWs on the black market. What's weird is how they're all dead before the player ever gets there. The security video that Quint and Keith find shows the Veltro members getting mowed down by escaped Hunters, which also leap onto the wing of the plane as it leaves and bring it down mid-flight. (The Flight Plan file points out that the airport's its destination, not its point of departure. If it's low on fuel after a lengthy flight, that may explain why it broke apart in the crash rather than exploding.) It's an awfully convenient development, which seems to exist entirely so there's something to fight on the Finland map that isn't an armed human. Since Jessica's on her way to the airport when everyone there gets killed, though, it's tempting to pin the whole thing on Lansdale. We know from Code Veronica that Hunters are one of the few Umbrella-designed bioweapons that have a working control implant, and Lansdale's already taken out his research team on the Zenobia by remote BOW activation. Q. Where the hell did Morgan Lansdale get that much money? A. That's a pretty good question and it almost counts as a plot hole. Lansdale is the anonymous "financier" mentioned in Bernard Corti's journals, who provided Veltro with everything they needed including the use of three heavily renovated ocean liners, each of which had a crew requirement of just over a thousand, and his day job at the time was the head of an ineffectual government agency. At the very least, it can probably be safely assumed that he's up to his eyeballs in the black market for BOWs, given how he manages to come up with the T-Abyss and hundreds of Hunters without anyone noticing. The Daily Courier 1 file says that Lansdale's pre-FBC career was in espionage, which opens up a lot of options. It's easy to imagine an anti-BOW spy maintaining a personal black budget by selling off the same bioweapons that he's supposedly eliminating, but that could just be my having played too much Alpha Protocol. Q. How is it that nobody takes the threat of bioweapons seriously when it's only been six years since Raccoon City? A. People are short-sighted and stupid at times, but more importantly, you have to take into account what the average guy on the street in the RE-verse actually knows about Raccoon City. As players, we have more information about the causes and effects of the Raccoon City outbreak than almost any character, with the obvious exceptions of Wesker, Ada, and arguably Leon and Claire. If you go back and look at most of the games that surround the Raccoon outbreak, there's a ton of misinformation and outright lies being passed around about it, to the point where the President revealing the truth about Raccoon City is a big part of the plot in Resident Evil 6. Q. Why was the FBC involved in the Terragrigia Panic at all? The Mediterranean Sea isn't exactly American territory. A. As noted above, Terragrigia was a joint U.S.-European venture, and Lansdale took advantage of certain agreements thereof to take over and monopolize the official response to the Panic. O'Brian was the only representative of any other agency in Terragrigia during the Panic, and he had no power to do anything other than yell at Lansdale. (This is mentioned in the Daily Courier Report 1 file, which I've found on various websites but never once seen in-game.) Q. Who locked the communications officer inside the storeroom? A. Presumably that guy he mentions in his diary. Q. How did Jack Norman survive in a sunken ship for a year? A. He's holed up inside the ship's dining area, and the dossier on the Zenobia indicates it has a running crew of 1028. That'd mean there's probably enough food and water in storage aboard the Dido to keep a few guys fed for a pretty long time, even if they don't do any fishing. Q. Well, why didn't he just leave? A. The only method we see of exiting the Queen Dido involves a lengthy underwater swim, the use of a plasma torch, and playing Frogger with a bunch of man-eating death sponges. If Norman doesn't have scuba gear with him, he's not going anywhere, NPC powers be damned. Q. How long ago was the T-Abyss outbreak aboard the Zenobia? A. There were actually two of them, or one outbreak and one controlled release. The first was five days after the Terragrigia Panic, as Lansdale triggered an outbreak to eliminate Veltro. According to a journal found in the Zenobia's lab, most of Veltro's membership was aboard at the time. Shortly thereafter, Lansdale sends a team of researchers to the Zenobia. With Veltro's lab, their data on the T-Abyss, and the infected members of Veltro as test subjects in a controlled environment, the researchers are able to create a vaccine for the T-Abyss. They notify Lansdale of this, and once he has their research data in hand, he assassinates them by remotely releasing the BOWs in storage aboard the ship. (This is probably where the Hunters on the ship's foredeck came from.) At least two of these researchers are alive right up until Raymond Vester boards the ship, as per the TGS 2011 trailer, and Raymond uses their own supply of the T-Abyss to effectively hide their bodies. This suggests that the completion of the vaccine is a very recent development, which means it's likely that the relatively fresh corpses that Jill and Parker find upon boarding the Zenobia (the kitchen, the storeroom, the guy from the duct) are members of the research team. A complicating factor is that you can find a few different files in the ship that indicate the Zenobia's crew did not have the faintest idea what was going on for at least one of the outbreaks. It's sort of implied that Lansdale's researchers put all the T-Abyss-infected Veltro members in storage and then hired some guys to run the ship for them, but I could go either way on that. The big question is whether the Zenobia's communications officer was locked up on the promenade deck for a few days, like his diary says, or for most of a year. Q. If the T-Abyss requires exposure to a concentrated dosage for infection, how did Lansdale cause the outbreak? A. The file on its transmission vectors in the Zenobia's lab goes out of its way to mention that the T-Abyss is still pretty effective if it's taken orally, which means Lansdale could've spiked their food or water. There's at least one place aboard the Zenobia - the fountain in the casino - that has some T-Abyss rigged up to a water source. Q. Why does it take Chris and Jessica so long to find the Zenobia? Doesn't O'Brian still have the coordinates for it? A. Raymond seems to have taken care of that. The Zenobia only stands still until Jill and Parker are on board, but after that, the controls get sabotaged and it's set adrift. O'Brian's reaction to the news that the Regia Solis has been reactivated would suggest this is deliberate. He's expecting Lansdale to try and sink the ship with a satellite strike, so job one for Raymond is making sure the ship isn't where Lansdale left it. Since the first thing Rachael did was find the UAV, it's possible that O'Brian always meant for it to be used to counter the satellite. Q. What the hell did Veltro want, exactly? A. The Veltro Agent's Journal in Episode 6 suggests that they're united by a mutual belief that modern society is both decadent and corrupt. By bringing down hell upon that society, hence Norman's weird thing about Dante's Inferno, they hope to shock more people into rejecting it. Jessica's Report mentions that Veltro started as a student group that became radicalized, and the video Jack Norman released to take credit for the Panic indicated they stood in opposition to the city's development. It makes sense if you look at it in the right way; if Terragrigia was an innovation in creating sustainable urban living, it'd perpetuate and advance the same society that Veltro hated. Q. How did a whale end up in the Mediterranean to become a Malacoda? A. Fin whales are native to the Mediterranean, and it's not unheard of for a whale to accidentally wander into the sea from the Pacific. (A surprising amount of the marine biology in Revelations involves real species. I get the feeling one of the monster designers watches a lot of Discovery Channel.) Q. How did the FBC strike team get into the Queen Dido when Jill needed to cut open most of the doors? A. The recently-dead guy in a scuba suit that you find in the water in Episode 12 suggests that the FBC strike team entered the Dido through the same door that you're about to use. I blame their NPC powers for letting them circumvent the doors, or else they deliberately jammed them shut behind them. Q. Who forced Rachael to go on the Zenobia mission? A. She's an FBC agent, so I'd imagine it was Raymond. How he did it isn't mentioned. =========================================== 3xxi. RESIDENT EVIL: OPERATION RACCOON CITY =========================================== Q. Why isn't there a summary of this game? A. As noted below, ORC was explicitly designed and marketed as an "alternate universe" game. It's how RE2 and RE3 would play out if both Umbrella and the U.S. government committed a frankly ridiculous number of troops to Raccoon City right after the outbreak and they hated each other. It would take surprisingly little tweaking to fit the first five levels of the Wolfpack campaign into the canon, although you'd have to handwave a few things like the layout of Birkin's lab and Nicholai going completely off his meds. After that, though, all bets are off. The Echo Six DLC campaign has a lot of likable characters, but you end up rewriting RE3 about ten minutes into their first mission and it just gets crazier from there. All the same, ORC is deliberately not a canon game, so there's no point in covering it here. Q. Is there anything in the game for the larger series's plot? A. There are a couple of things in there that would be fun or useful if the game was canon, but most of it's just flavor. For example, Echo Six has three women in it in combat roles, which would suggest that the RE universe's U.S. doesn't have as many restrictions on female soldiers as the real world does. That in turn would do a bit to address the long-standing joke/mistake concerning Jill's military background. ================================ 3xxii. RESIDENT EVIL: DAMNATION ================================ None yet. =================================== 3xxiii. RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION =================================== Q. Seriously, I think-- A. I WILL *CUT* YOU. ====================== 3xxiv. RESIDENT EVIL 6 ====================== None yet. =================================================================== 4. RESIDENT EVIL =================================================================== In 1996, Capcom released Resident Evil for the PlayStation. RE was, and is, a strangely difficult adventure game which put the player up against an ancient mansion filled with secrets, puzzles, and, incidentally, ravenous flesh-eating zombies. While the game gained a degree of notoriety for some of the worst dialogue and voice acting in console history, it also earned a fanbase. In 2001, Capcom announced that they were remaking the original Resident Evil for the Nintendo GameCube. The remake, released in North America on May 1st, 2002, represented a new beginning for the series. This synopsis covers the storyline of the 2002 remake of RE. The original is no longer in canon. ================================================ 4i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL ================================================ In the wake of several grisly murders in the nearby forest, the Raccoon City Police Department puts the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (STARS) on the job. The STARS is a unique squad that was formed two years previously to combat domestic terrorism, and they send their six-man Bravo team, led by Enrico Marini, into the forest to investigate. The Bravo team promptly disappears. On the night of July 25th, the STARS Alpha team follows the Bravos into the forest by helicopter, looking for clues as to their disappearance. They soon find the Bravo team's helicopter, which has broken down, and its pilot, Kevin Dooley, who's been mauled to death. The creatures responsible, a pack of wild dogs, soon attack the Alpha team. Joseph Frost, their vehicular specialist, is dragged down and killed. The whole situation proves to be too much for Brad Vickers, also known as "Chickenheart," the helicopter pilot for the Alpha team. He panics and takes off, leaving the rest of the Alpha team stuck in the middle of the forest. After a headlong flight through the woods, the Alpha team takes shelter inside the nearby Spencer mansion, a supposedly abandoned country estate. They soon discover that the entire building is infested with the walking dead. The player's role in the game begins at this point. As either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, two of the five survivors of the Alpha team, the player must find out just what's happening. Chris eventually finds and partners up with Rebecca Chambers, the field medic and lone survivor of the STARS Bravo team, while Jill will be assisted by Barry Burton, a police veteran and fellow Alpha team member. The game unfolds differently depending on which character is chosen. The character's investigation of the mansion begins with Albert Wesker, the captain of the STARS Alpha team, instructing the character to check out the source of a nearby gunshot. Upon investigating, the character finds Kenneth Sullivan, a member of the Bravo team, dead at the hands of a zombie. When the character tries to report back to Wesker, he's vanished. Wesker's disappearance is the beginning of a long stretch of bad luck. The mansion is inhabited by hordes of flesh-eating zombies, killer crows, more dogs, and a giant snake. Further, the zombies must be decapitated or incinerated, or a "dead" zombie will mutate into the clawed abomination that the mansion's late inhabitants have nicknamed a "Crimson Head." Fortunately, there are more powerful weapons and ammunition hidden within the mansion, as well as stores of kerosene to use against the zombies. As the character advances through the mansion and the outlying buildings, discarded papers and uncovered journals begin to hint at what's really happened here. The people who once lived here were working on some kind of experiment, which has gone awry. Notes from the mansion's original architect, George Trevor, reveal how the men who hired him to build the mansion left him to die in its hidden labyrinths, and how they may have tortured his wife and daughter. Eventually, the character manages to unlock a door at the back of the mansion, opening the way to the graveyard and dormitories. Here, in an isolated cabin, the character is ambushed by a twisted parody of a woman. Clad in a tattered dress and shuffling towards the character on legs that have been chained together, the creature screams as it attacks. Even the character's most powerful weapons will do no good, and the character is forced to retreat. In the scientists' lodgings, the mystery only deepens. Other experiments have produced a massive, bloodthirsty plant, codenamed Plant-42, as well as a trio of mutated sharks. The character manages to dispatch the plant with the help of the scientists' notes, and the sharks are left helpless when the flooded observatory is drained. It's in the dormitories that new clues to the nature of this mansion are discovered; the powerful corporation Umbrella has something to do with these scientists, and for whatever reason, the scientists are very interested in the STARS. After Plant-42 is dispatched, Wesker reappears, claiming to have been separated from the rest of the team following a monster attack. He tells the character to return to the mansion and finish the investigation there. Upon the character's return to the mansion, a new monster appears. These "Hunters" are powerful and relentless, and rarely show up alone. Their presence makes the mansion much more dangerous than it was before, but the character is able to visit new areas using a key found in the dormitories. Thus, he's able to find the items needed to reactivate an elevator in the courtyard behind the mansion. The elevator lets the character through a secret door, which leads to an old series of mining tunnels. At one end of the tunnels, hiding in a dark cavern, the character finds Enrico Marini, the captain of the Bravo team, who's badly injured. He tells the character to stay away. STARS, he says, has been betrayed. Just as he's about to reveal the identity of the traitor, a single gunshot rings out from behind the character, killing Enrico. The character gives chase to Enrico's assassin, but the arrival of a pack of Hunters covers the assassin's escape. Yet another elevator, at the other end of the tunnels, takes the character to an underground river and a loading dock. After another encounter with the twisted creature from the cabin, the character finds a drainage ditch, which has been made, over many years, into a candle-lit hideaway. In this hideaway, which looks like nothing so much as a young girl's room, the character finds the last thing needed to open the last door back in the mansion. A ladder in the hideaway leads back up to the cabin in the graveyard, where the twisted creature was first encountered. When combined with the information in Trevor's letters, and recently discovered research notes, it starts to become clearer what the creature actually is. The last door in the mansion leads down a long flight of stairs, to the crypt of Jessica Trevor. It is guarded by the twisted creature from the cabin. The character, assisted by either Barry or Wesker, manages to open Jessica Trevor's sarcophagus, and the creature jumps into a nearby pit after taking Jessica's skull. A letter in the coffin removes all doubt; the twisted creature is Lisa Trevor, who was experimented on by Umbrella's scientists as a child. She has spent the last thirty years in agonizing pain, locked inside a constantly mutating body that cannot die. The ordeal drove her insane a long time ago. The character proceeds on alone. Trevor's crypt leads directly to an ornate fountain, which conceals the entrance to the real laboratories, deep underneath the Spencer estate. The character descends, into the dank corridors of the laboratory, where more surprises await. Not only has Wesker betrayed the STARS, but he's been complicit in this mansion's experiments all along. A slideshow in the lab's audiovisual room identifies Wesker, wearing his characteristic sunglasses, as one of the leaders of this group. He has been instructed by his supervisors at the megacorporation Umbrella to betray the STARS, in the name of covering up the accident and generating combat data for Umbrella's monsters. As if that wasn't enough, the team member that Wesker claimed to be "separated" from was actually taken prisoner. He or she is inside a dark cell in the laboratory, awaiting release. Wesker himself is preparing for his last and greatest betrayal, deep in the laboratory's storage room. He explains himself to the character, almost as if he needs someone to tell about what he has planned. He plans to doublecross Umbrella by blowing up the mansion, taking all its secrets with it. The betrayal of STARS was simply to cover his tracks as well as the company's. As the horrified character watches, Wesker unleashes the most powerful bioweapon in Umbrella's arsenal: the Tyrant, an inhumanly dangerous monster. Unfortunately for Wesker, it isn't very good at taking orders, and its first act is to gut him like a trout. Its second is to come after the player's character, who will discover that for all the Tyrant's power, it has a glass jaw. A few Magnum rounds or acid grenades drop it in its tracks. The character must now run for his life. The laboratory's self-destruct sequence has been activated (either by Wesker or by a well-meaning Rebecca), and very little time remains before the entire mansion is blown sky-high. After rescuing the captive STARS member in the back room, the character runs out to the mansion's helipad and signals Brad "Chickenheart" Vickers. Brad has been circling above the forest all this time, awaiting word from one of his teammates. He sees the character's signal flare, he descends to the helipad. Of course, it isn't that easy. With two minutes left on the self-destruct device's timer, the Tyrant bursts from the rooftop. It has shaken off the sluggishness from its months of storage, and now moves like a freight train. Even with help from Barry or Rebecca, the character is barely able to stay alive. With seconds to go before detonation, Brad Vickers drops a rocket launcher onto the helipad. An anti-tank rocket proves to be more than even the Tyrant can handle, and it's blown to pieces. The surviving STARS climb onto Brad's helicopter. As Brad lifts off, the Spencer estate explodes into a pillar of flame. The STARS are left battered and bloodied, but alive, with a story to tell that no one will believe. ===================================================== 4ii. Story Differences Between Chris and Jill's Games ===================================================== 1. At various points in Jill's game, you may run into Barry, who's acting very suspicious. You'll find him in the aquarium room on the second floor at one point, where he's destroying evidence (he'll already have torn the first couple of pages off of the Researcher's Will file). You can also overhear a conversation between him and Wesker outside Dormitory 002. To trigger the encounters with Barry, discover Kenneth's body and return to the dining room without fighting the zombie. 2. If Chris is poisoned by the giant snake, you'll take control of Rebecca, who'll have to get Chris some serum from the infirmary. If Jill's poisoned, she passes out in the hall outside the attic and wakes up in the infirmary at full health. 3. Jill can manufacture V-Jolt by herself, then use it in the boardroom in the Aqua Ring to weaken Plant-42. When she enters that room, Plant-42 will grab her, and Barry will come in with a flamethrower to rescue Jill. Chris has to fight the plant on his own, unless Richard died in the mansion's attic; if that's the case, Rebecca will have to save Chris by making V-Jolt. 4. In the final encounter with Lisa Trevor, Jill will find Barry standing over Jessica's coffin. When Barry tries to point his gun at her, Jill takes it away from him and points it at him. Then, when Lisa arrives, the player can choose whether or not to give Barry his gun back. If you do, Barry will help out in the ensuing fight with Lisa; if you don't, Lisa kills Barry by knocking him into the pit. If you keep Barry's revolver, it can kill the Tyrant with one shot. In Chris's scenario, you'll run into Wesker in Jessica's tomb, who'll aid you against Lisa. If Wesker gets knocked off of the platform, he'll reappear in the lab at the end of the game, offering no explanations. 5. If your supporting character is still alive, it will change the final encounter with Wesker: -- Chris, with Rebecca: inside the lab, Wesker will explain his motivations and shoot Rebecca in the chest. While Wesker's standing in front of the Tyrant's tank, it will wake up and gut him, stabbing right through the side of its containment tank. After Chris defeats the Tyrant, he'll find that Rebecca's still alive, thanks to her bulletproof vest, and that Wesker's definitely dead. Upon leaving the laboratory, Rebecca sets the charges in the power room, which triggers an emergency evacuation procedure and unlock all the doors in the lab. You may then rescue Jill and get to the helipad. -- Chris, alone: Wesker is slain by the Tyrant, and drops the Master Key. You can use that key to open Jill's cell door and to get to the helipad. -- Jill, with Barry: Barry will hold Jill at gunpoint when she enters the lab. Wesker will gloat to Jill about his plan, but in so doing, will let slip that the threat he's been holding against Barry was a bluff; his family isn't in any danger. Barry will unexpectedly overhear that and knock Wesker unconscious. He doesn't act in time to prevent Wesker from draining the fluid from the Tyrant's tank, however, and the Tyrant will escape shortly thereafter. It knocks Barry unconscious before it turns on Jill. After the fight, you'll find that Barry's okay, but Wesker's slipped away in the confusion. You soon find out that he's set the charges in the power room, as with Rebecca. -- Jill, alone: almost identical to Chris's scenario without Rebecca, as above. =============================================================== 4iii. Differences Between RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL "2.0" =============================================================== 1. If you're an expert player of the original game, the remake is expressly designed to mess with your head. In the event that a puzzle or ambush has carried over to the remake from the first game, there's usually a different solution, another wrinkle to the puzzle, or monsters come from completely unexpected directions. (Zombies and Hunters can open doors.) 2. Richard Aiken would die no matter what you did in the first game, regardless of how quickly you brought him the serum. In the remake, saving Richard will let him survive until you fight the giant snake (Jill's game) or enter the Aqua Ring (Chris's game), at which point he gets eaten. If you save him, he'll give you his radio, and you'll be able to take his combat shotgun after his death. Richard's death also affects your options for dealing with Plant-42. 3. The Chimera that haunt the power room now look a great deal like RE3's drain deimos. 4. As mentioned above, zombies that are "killed" without being decapitated must be incinerated. Otherwise, they'll eventually rise again as the vicious Crimson Heads. 5. It is *much* easier to get your support character killed in the remake. Getting Barry killed in the original Resident Evil required a series of bizarre choices and decisions that might or might not have worked; here, all you have to do is refuse to give him his revolver. 6. Naturally, the biggest addition to the remake is that of the unfortunate Lisa Trevor, as mentioned above. More about Lisa can be found by reading Wesker's Report 2, detailed below. 7. If Wesker "dies" in the encounter with the Tyrant, you can search his body to find a file written by William Birkin. In it, he writes about how the G-Virus is almost finished, and how he wishes he could rub his success in Alexia Ashford's face (see RE:CV, below). 8. If your support character manages to make it to the end of the game, s/he'll help you in the final battle with the Tyrant, on the helipad. During this time, if the Tyrant manages to knock your character down, it'll leave you alone in favor of grabbing your support character by the neck. Unless you shoot the Tyrant at this point, it'll kill your support character, which will cue the fifth possible ending. 9. In the original game's best ending for Jill, you could return to the power room after the self-destruct sequence to find a Chimera standing over Wesker's dead body. Such is no longer the case in the remake; the power room is empty. 10. The mansion wardrobe is now hidden in the darkened closet in the east statue room. Check the large painting against the back wall. It's actually a door. 11. Chris meets Rebecca when he enters the mansion attic; she is no longer lurking evilly in the infirmary with a can of bug spray. In REv.2, this is the first time Chris and Rebecca meet, period, since as we learn in RE0, the Raccoon Forest investigation is Rebecca's first case as a member of STARS. 12. In the helipad encounter, the Tyrant can and will bat an incoming rocket out of the way with its claw. ====================== 4iv. Random Commentary ====================== 1. I have to admit that I'm disappointed with the remake. They kept some of the stupid things, like Chris's low item capacity, and didn't address the issue of Rebecca's survival. 2. The Lisa Trevor subplot appears, at first glance, to be almost completely meaningless; it's just there to add another Tyrant-esque monster. This is largely accurate. However, if you want to see how she figures into the larger plot, it helps to hunt down a translation of Wesker's Report 2, which is discussed further below. 3. The existence of Crimson Heads in RE lends credence to the statement in Survivor that Lickers, the wall-crawling monsters first encountered in Resident Evil 2, are mutated zombies. If a zombie can mutate into a faster form that's sporting vicious claws, it's entirely feasible for it to mutate further into the still-vaguely-humanoid Licker. 4. Cinematic references in RE: -- the deer head in the study is from the 1990 remake of _Night of the Living Dead_. Deer heads from this point forward have a weird habit of showing up throughout the series. -- I may be on crack, but the end sequence of the game, with the Tyrant bursting from the rooftop, seems to be taken almost frame-for-frame from a 1990 Japanese sf film called _Zeram_. -- alert reader Jay Yencich writes to say that the opening title-screen sequence of RE is much akin to the death and zombification of Roger in _Dawn of the Dead_. -- according to Dan's official RE strategy guide, Chris and Jill's alternate costumes are from _The Mexican_ and _Terminator 2: Judgement Day_, respectively. Chris is dressing like the Brad Pitt character in the former film, while Jill is dressing like Linda Hamilton in the latter. -- Kenneth's Film is reminiscent of the shoulder cameras worn by the Marines in _Aliens_. ================================================================== 5. RESIDENT EVIL 2 ================================================================== The original RE is a straightforward horror game that leaves no real questions unanswered by the time it's over. Resident Evil 2, on the other hand, introduces the secret agendas and conspiracies that are now a hallmark of the series. In a very real sense, this game is the true beginning. ==================================================== 5iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2 by Dan Birlew ==================================================== On the night of September 29th, 1998, Claire Redfield motorbikes into Raccoon City. She is a college student, and is searching for clues in the disappearance of her older brother Chris. On the other side of town, Raccoon Police Department recruit Leon Kennedy is making his way to the Precinct for his first day of duty. Stopping to investigate a mysterious corpse in the middle of the street, he fails to notice the figures closing in behind him. Claire pulls up to a diner for a late meal, but finds that she is intended to be the next course. Both characters are surrounded by zombies. They collide in the alley behind the diner, where Leon saves Claire. Finding an abandoned police cruiser, they make a run for it. In the car they get acquainted, while Claire finds a gun in the glove compartment. But they are not alone. In an amazing sequence, a zombie leaps out of the backseat and struggles with Leon. The rookie loses control of the vehicle and they crash into a wall. The zombie flies through the windshield. Before they can catch a breath, a dying trucker bears down on them in a massive gas tanker. The two leap out of the wreck as the tanker collides and flips over, exploding in a huge ball of flame. The characters are separated by the blaze, and each must make their individual way through the game. This is the point at which the player begins, choosing which character to assume based on which of the two game disks are loaded. When the player finishes with one character's adventure, the save file enables the player to approach the same game from the other character's perspective, in a reverse game. Thus, the scenarios progress as either Claire A & Leon B, or Leon A & Claire B. There are differences in each game, and there are differences in each combination. In addition, whatever the first character does in their scenario affects the second character's game. For the purpose of brevity, this synopsis will follow the plot as it occurs in the Claire A & Leon B combination, which is by far the more structurally sound of the two scenario combinations. Claire begins on the Raccoon City streets, now overrun by the zombies who have come out due to the crash. By baiting them in a certain direction, she figures out that she can create openings in their ranks and slip past them. She ducks into a gun shop, hoping to find ammo for her weapon. Inside, the clerk points a crossbow at her. After she convinces him that she's not a zombie, he locks his door. With a slightly sexist attitude, he admits he doesn't know what is happening in Raccoon City or where the zombies have come from. Claire finds some ammunition for her gun and starts to move on just as the undead lay siege to the store. Crashing through the display window, they tackle the shop's employee and chew him to pieces on the floor. Unable to save the man, Claire's only hope is to run through the back door. (In the N64 RE2 'port, we find out this man's name is Robert Kendo, and he's the owner of the gun shop.) Weaving her way through the slow moving ghouls, she makes her way to the police station. S.T.A.R.S. helicopter pilot Brad Vickers is encountered near the precinct, recently deceased and come back by diabolic means. Executing this former hero, Claire enters the Raccoon Police Department. She finds that the place has been electronically locked and barricaded against an apparent siege by the undead. Leon finds himself directly behind the Police Department. He has a shorter run than Claire, but must find the key to get into the maintenance shed at the back of the Precinct. All the while, flesh eaters converge on him. He gets lucky and finds a back stairway to the roof of the station, but he witnesses a rescue attempt fail. A helicopter appears overhead. There is a lone precinct survivor on the roof, signaling to it. Zombies attack the unfortunate wretch. He sprays random machine gun fire everywhere, accidentally killing the helicopter's pilot. The helicopter crashes into the station and explodes into flames. There's a water tank near the wreckage that can be used to put out the fire, but Leon will need a valve handle. Claire finds a cop lying on the floor of an office, seriously wounded and dying. (In RE3, we learn that the cop's name is Marvin Branagh.) In a brief speech, he tells Claire that her brother Chris, and the other S.T.A.R.S., tried to get them to believe that they'd encountered zombies in the woods outside Raccoon, but no one would listen to them. He gives her the card key that will open the electronic locks in the Precinct. He tells her to rescue the other survivors in the police station and get out. When she starts to protest, the half-disemboweled officer sticks a gun in her face and rudely orders her out. He locks the door behind her. Claire accesses the computer in the main hall, unlocks the doors, and continues on. In the zombie-infested office on the first floor, Leon finds the necessary tool to put out the fire. When he opens the water tank and douses the blaze, another helicopter appears overhead. This one is towing a rack of huge cylinders. One of them detaches and drops. The bomb-like container blows apart, revealing a huge humanoid creature. The giant crashes through the roof of the precinct. The trenchcoated menace heads right for Leon, who empties his weapon into the stalking monstrosity before it falls. When Leon leaves the room, the sinister intruder rises... and follows. Little does Leon know, but anyone who had survived the mansion incident might recognize this creature as a new and improved version of the Tyrant. At the same time on different sides of the station, Claire and Leon both encounter a new and deadly lifeform. Amphibious and spider-like, these creatures look like crawling people turned inside out. They lash out with claws and an incredibly long and sharp tongue. Police documents refer to these creatures as "lickers," and no one knows where they came from. On the second floor of the west wing of the precinct house, Claire finds the S.T.A.R.S. office and the log kept by her big brother Chris. This document explains that he and the other S.T.A.R.S. members had no luck investigating the involvement of the Umbrella Corporation in the mansion lab incident. They departed for Europe to search for Umbrella's main headquarters. Suddenly a fax comes in, addressed to Chris. A federal investigation on Umbrella has yielded naught for clues, but an inquiry posted to the internal affairs division by Chris regarding Raccoon Police Chief Brian Irons has been answered. By his record, the Chief would appear to be a deranged genius and former rapist. Back outside the office, Claire catches sight of a young girl being pursued by a zombie. While Claire dispatches this thing, the fleeing little girl bumps into Leon. Frightened out of her mind, she ducks into a small opening in a broken door before he can stop her. Leon and Claire reunite. Leon admits that this place is dangerous, and Claire suggests that they split up and look for the girl and a safe exit. The rookie cop gives her a radio so they can keep in contact. Leon finds the two parts of a police operation report, detailing the events of the past few days. The courageous citizens of Raccoon made a grim standoff in the precinct house against the flesh-eating undead. But some escaped the precinct through the exit to the basement in the east wing. He also finds a note addressed to him from the RPD, and the party favors for a surprise welcome party they were planning to throw for him. It seems his party has been cancelled. He heads for the basement while Claire is startled by a woman's screaming on the second floor. In order to save whoever's in trouble, she needs a bomb to clear the helicopter wreckage. Nearby, she finds the key to unlock the door downstairs and save the wounded cop. When she returns to him, he has been fighting off zombies unsuccessfully. Claire now learns why he rudely forced her to leave him. He rises, transforms into a zombie, and attacks her. Sadly, Claire incinerates him. She finds a detonator and a chunk of plastique, and heads back upstairs. In the basement, Leon is fired upon by a beautiful woman named Ada Wong. She's looking for a reporter named Ben Bertolucci in one of the basement jail cells. After Leon graciously helps her clear some wreckage out of the way, she ditches him. He tries to catch up to her, but instead finds the incarcerated reporter in one of the jail cells. Ada catches up to them now, but where she went first is a mystery. Questioning Ben, Ada reveals that she's looking for her boyfriend John, who works out of an Umbrella branch office in Chicago. He disappeared in this area some months ago. Ben refuses to tell her what he knows about what's happening in Raccoon City. Just then, a monstrous roar fills the air. Ben has locked himself in his cell for protection and refuses to leave, but directs the others how to get out of the Precinct. Ada takes off, and Leon runs after her. Claire detonates the plastique near the helicopter wreckage upstairs. She finds an office full of stuffed trophy animals... and a more gruesome trophy on the desk. The Mayor's daughter lies sprawled out, a medium-sized wound at her abdomen. Behind the desk sits Police Chief Brian Irons. He has completely lost his mind. Although the girl's wound looks like a bullet hole, he claims that she was attacked by a zombie, and that she will resurrect within an hour. The only way to stop the zombification is to decapitate the victim or put a bullet through the brain. He admits that taxidermy used to be his hobby (which links him to the Umbrella mansion, because of all the stuffed trophies found by the S.T.A.R.S. team there). He asks to be left alone, and Claire is only too willing to get away from him. In the room next to the Chief's office, Claire hears the quick footsteps of someone fleeing from her. She finds the little girl crouched in the dark. She radios Leon to let him know that she cleared the helicopter wreckage and found the little girl. The little girl says her name is Sherry Birkin, and her parents work at the Umbrella plant. Her mother called her during the T-virus outbreak and instructed her to go to the police station for safety. She has heard her father's voice in the station, but can't find him. Also, a creature is stalking her. A mighty roar emanates from nearby. Sherry runs off, and Claire tries to pursue her. In the office, the Chief and the dead woman's body have disappeared. However, he has left behind his diary detailing the extents of his depravity. Leon has found the sewer system that runs under the city. In the processing plant, he comes across what appears to be the exit door but doesn't have all the necessary keys to get through. Going back, he finds Ada also investigating the sewage plant. She has found an open vent shaft that she can get through with a boost. She hits the ground on the other side, startling the same little girl Leon and Claire encountered previously. As she runs off, Ada notices that the little girl dropped her pendant. Amused, she decides to keep it in case they meet again. After a quick search, she finds a precinct key and returns to where Leon waits. She throws the key back through the vent, but she can't get back herself because the vent is too high. Once again, Ada runs off on her own against Leon's orders. Leon returns to the precinct house, searching for the last few keys he needs to get out. While looking for clues on the first floor, the horrible Tyrant bursts through the wall, and only falls after Leon empties his shotgun into it. Leon races upstairs and finds more items he needs. The Tyrant follows. Again, Leon is forced to shoot it out with this brute. The thing is finally subdued, even if only for the moment. After gathering several keys of her own, Claire finally catches up to Sherry in the Chief's office. Behind the desk is a secret elevator, and Claire makes Sherry stay behind while she goes to investigate. The elevator lowers her into some kind of custom dungeon beneath the precinct, lit by flickering torches. As Claire cautiously creeps down the hall, she hears the Chief scream. In his private chamber, Chief Irons is backed into a corner by a hideous mutating creature. Something shoots out of this thing's hand and down Irons's throat. In a hideous torture room, Claire finds the Chief, ranting, raving, and armed. He explains to Claire that his town has been torn apart by the experimental monsters of the Umbrella corporation. He tells her that a man named William Birkin is to blame. Claire recognizes the name. Irons states that Sherry is Birkin's daughter. Completely paranoid, the Chief is ready to kill Claire. Before he can execute her, something bursts through his upper torso from within. A small creature leaps out of Irons and falls down an open chute nearby. Claire follows this thing, only to see it quickly grow into some kind of horrible infant. The thing attacks her, but she destroys it fairly easily. She runs back to the second floor to get Sherry; their escape route is now clear. Leon makes his way to the precinct's clock tower where he finds the final piece in the Chief's bizarre architectural puzzle. Now able to exit the police station, he finds an open dust chute and slides back down to the basement. Upon landing, he hears Ben screaming in the jail cell nearby. Leon runs to the reporter's aid, but is too late. The same thing that impregnated Irons has gutted Ben. The dying reporter gives Leon a document which entangles Raccoon City's chief of police in a government conspiracy. In terrible pain, Ben dies. Ada finally catches up to Leon, and they read this document together. It is a series of letters from William Birkin to the police chief, describing in detail how Umbrella was bribing the chief to keep secret their actions in the town. Birkin had learned that Umbrella sent spies to steal his research. Ada then rushes off, explaining only that she has to find John. She thinks he's in the chemical plant. Leon is prevented from following by another call from Claire. She has found a different exit from the precinct and will join him in the sewers. Leon runs after Ada, but in the sewage plant, he is confronted by the mutating Dr. Birkin. The scientist wrenches a steel pipe off of the wall and attacks Leon with it. Leon empties a full clip of Magnum bullets into the scientist, who doesn't fall. Instead, Birkin dives into the muck of the sewers. In the sewer beneath the station, Sherry is separated from Claire when a drainage chute opens and sucks her into a lower level. Sherry runs for safety, finding herself in a garbage room. Just when she finds a nice shiny trinket, the floor springs open and dumps her into the garbage hold. Knocked unconscious, she fails to see a monster slouch out of the darkness. Birkin has found his daughter at last. Ada abruptly rejoins Leon, and he admonishes her for running off. She agrees to stick with him, for now. Searching everywhere to find Sherry, Claire runs into her mother, Annette. The suspicious woman worked with her husband William on a bioweapon called the G-Virus, a mutagenic substance that turns whatever it infects into a giant monster. Birkin injected himself with the virus when armed Umbrella agents seized the virus from him. When Birkin was accidentally shot, he used the virus to keep himself alive. The G-Virus rejuvenates dead cells, but it also mutates them. He became a monster, a "G-Type," and hunted his killers down. The T-Virus leaked from his laboratory after the attack, and was carried into Raccoon City by the rats in the sewers. The G-Virus seeks to spread by finding other host bodies. When Annette learns that Sherry is in the chemical plant, she becomes upset. The virus can only be spread through a complimentary genetic host. Birkin will try to find and impregnate Sherry with a virus embryo. From somewhere close, they hear the little girl scream. Claire sends Annette searching in the opposite direction and continues on. Leon and Ada search the chemical plant for weapons and ammunition. They bump into the frantic Annette. Ada chases the armed scientist. Annette turns and fires on her pursuer, but Leon jumps in front of Ada and takes the bullet. While Leon lies unconscious and seriously wounded, Ada chooses to run after Annette. Claire finds the garbage dump and spots Sherry, lying unconscious on a heap of rubble. She calls out to the little girl, but a gigantic alligator hears her and attacks. Claire runs back down the corridor and finds a switch to release a gas canister. When the alligator grabs the canister in its huge maw, Claire shoots the cylinder. The resulting explosion flings chunks of the sewer beast's head everywhere. Moving to Sherry, Claire spots somesort of red worm slithering away; it is one of William's embryos. Stirring, Sherry complains of stomach pains. Claire assures her that everything will be all right. She leads Sherry out of the spider-infested sewers, past the bodies of several soldiers wearing gas masks... Ada hounds the scientist through the sewers to the central control area. Annette blasts Ada's gun out of her hand, an adept shot for a scientist. She advances on Ada, interrogating her. Learning that Ada is looking for her boyfriend John, Annette realizes that she's talking about one of the researchers at the mansion lab. She knows that John turned into a zombie, and then died when the lab was destroyed. She makes it seem that William was working at the mansion as well, and that he developed the G-Virus there. Annette starts to explain the new G-Virus to Ada when she spots her daughter's pendant around the woman's neck. In a suddenly aggressive manner, she demands to have it. A cat fight ensues, ending with Ada punching Annette and sending her flying over the rail. Inside Sherry's pendant, Ada finds a secret compartment containing a sample of the G-Virus. Claire and Sherry discover an underground tramcar. After powering it up, they ride for some distance to an unknown dock. Apparently they aren't out of danger yet, as the grunts of the undead are heard nearby. Claire blasts through corridors full of zombies. They arrive at a train turntable platform. Inside the engine car, Claire finds the key to the control panel outside. An alarm sounds upon activation, and the girls run back inside the car. The entire platform disengages and drops. It seems they have found some sort of large secret elevator. Sherry is overcome by her stomach pains and passes out. Her monstrous father shows up, threatening to smash the traincar to pieces. Claire runs outside and ducks a steel rod flung at her by William. The screaming madman mutates, growing a new head and a vicious-looking claw. Claire quickly pelts the thing with enough flame grenades to burn down a forest. When the G-Type is finally face down in a pool of its own blood, Claire runs back into the train car. The elevator finishes its descent, and she carries the unconscious girl into an Umbrella loading dock. It would seem she has discovered a large underground laboratory. A slightly delirious Leon awakens and hunts for Ada. He finds her in the subterranean garbage dump. After bandaging his bullet wound, she lets him know that John is dead. She doesn't seem terribly upset though, and insists they get out of the sewage plant. At the tram platform, Leon recalls the car. They board and head for the train elevator. On route, they are attacked by the G-Type, which isn't dead yet. It stabs one gigantic claw through the ceiling over and over, seeking the passengers. Ada fires at the hand, blowing off one of the fingers. The monster retreats. The two slip out of the tram and make for the train platform. Claire sets Sherry on a cot in the security office. She gives Sherry her vest to keep her warm. The girl stirs, and lets Claire know that she trusts her and depends on her. Claire assures her that she will find something to cure her. Leon has to recall the train elevator platform. Leaving Ada in the control room, he descends to a secret security room and there finds the necessary key. When he flips on the surveillance camera aimed at the door he just entered, he sees Umbrella's ugliest and most fearsome agent hot on his trail. After one more battle with this 'Mr. X', Leon returns to the upper control room to find Ada unharmed. He recalls the elevator from there and they descend to the lab. But their moment alone is not to be enjoyed. William is back, and he exacts a terrible revenge against Ada. His claw shoots through the wall, stabbing her in the back. She passes out, and Leon goes out to fight William. The G-Type has grown two new arms and doubled in size. Leon pumps the thing full of shotgun blasts before it does any good. Bleeding heavily, William leaps onto the elevator shaft wall and leaves Leon alone. In the lab, Claire figures out that the main power conduit has been shut down. She finds a fuse for power connection, and then she is free to explore the lab. Umbrella has conducted further experiments with plant vegetation, as a titanic vine grows up from the bottom of one shaft. Its offspring slide along the ground, spitting acid at her. Worse, there is an even stronger variety of the "lickers" here than those encountered before. The elevator platform's engine overheats, and it stops on an upper floor of the lab. Leon leaves the wounded Ada in the train car while he goes searching for something to patch her wound. He crawls through a vent duct and drops into a corridor. The elevator platform restarts and continues to descend. Leon has lost Ada again. He finds an emergency elevator that will take him down to where Ada has gone, but it needs power. He finds a door to a "Power Room," but it is locked. In a room with a huge smelting pit, he fights his way through the tougher new breed of "lickers." He connects the emergency elevator's power and goes up to the lab. In what is obviously William Birkin's former experiment room, he finds the power room key and goes back to the first level. Leon runs off the elevator, but not very far. Annette Birkin somehow sneaks up on him, brandishing a pistol and a vial of blue liquid. She accuses him of being a spy, just like the girl he's with. Leon denies that Ada is a spy, and Annette laughs. She's done a background check on Ada, and has discovered that Ada works for "the Agency." She's an undercover agent, using her relationship with John, the researcher, to gather information on Umbrella. Annette declares that no one will take her husband's virus from her, and prepares to shoot Leon. Mr. X suddenly crashes through the ceiling behind Leon. Annette flees. Evading the powerful giant, Leon gets to the power room and unlocks it. The monster has followed him, and now the rookie cop is cornered. Shots ring out. Ada is back, blasting away at the unholy behemoth. Unfortunately, she runs out of bullets. As she reloads, the Tyrant seizes her and lifts her into the air. Ada fires several rounds point blank into his face. Temporarily blinded, the giant swings Ada into a control panel, denting the panel and probably breaking every bone in her body. Blood gushing from his face, Mr. X falls off the platform into the smelting pit. Leon runs to Ada's side. In her last moments, she tells him that she's fallen in love with him. Leon kisses her passionately. Ada goes limp and dies. Leon screams in grief. Near Ada's body, Leon finds a master key that fell out of Ada's pocket when Mr. X dropped her. After Claire finds a keycard in the research room, Annette pops up again. She's still armed and dangerous, and somehow knows that Claire tried to kill William. After Claire tells Annette that Sherry has been infected by the G-Type, the monster growls nearby. Excited, Annette runs after him. William crashes out of the ceiling, still alive. More monster than human now, he cuts his own wife down with one terrible claw swipe. When Claire rounds the corner he leaps back up into the ceiling. A dying Annette begs Claire to save her daughter, giving her detailed instructions on how to create an antidote to the G-Virus, using materials that can be found somewhere in the lab. The damaged central unit in the power room is wracked by explosions. Lightning bolts course up and down the huge column. A computer voice comes online to announce that the self-destruct sequence has been activated, and all personnel should evacuate to the cargo train platform at the lowest floor of the lab. At the edge of the iron smelting pit, a gigantic clawed hand emerges from the red hot pool. Mr. X isn't down for good yet, and he may be more dangerous than ever. Claire runs out to the monitor room. A motion detector alerts her that someone else is in the lab. Leon is onscreen, emerging from the power room. Claire tells him to go back to the security office to rescue Sherry while she creates the G-virus antidote. Leon rides the elevator back down into the lab, and retrieves the barely conscious girl. He uses the master key in the elevator to take the emergency access tube and reach the lab's escape route, a high-speed train. Following the instructions for the G-Virus vaccine, Claire rushes to the VAM room on the Lab's fourth floor. Killing several last zombies, she finds a vaccine cartridge. Reading the instructions for the "Devil" vaccine, she inserts the cartridge into the machine and starts it up, allowing the base vaccine to be synthesized. She takes the cartridge and heads back down to Birkin's lab. Leon finds the train without power. Laying Sherry on the cot inside, he finds a platform key at the back of the train and hurries to power up their escape transport. Claire inserts the base vaccine into the virus antidote synthesizer in Birkin's lab, and the machine creates the "Devil" automatically. On her way back out, she accesses a corridor to the experimental containment room, where she finds a huge cargo elevator that will take her down to the train platform. An explosion rocks the entire lab. The computer announces that the self-destruct sequence has begun. There are only five minutes remaining until total detonation. Leon races across a bridge over the train to the opposite platform. There he unlocks the containment chamber for the power plugs for the train's generator. He takes the plugs into the next room and inserts them into the power grid. The computer warns him that the power will be completely shut down momentarily in order to power up the train. In the blackout, a huge creature lands behind him. A transformed Mr. X is ablaze from his dip in the molten vat. With two huge claws, he charges at Leon, knocking the poor guy from one end of the room to the other. Suddenly another familiar shape appears, at the top of the gantry over them. Still wearing Sherry's pendant, Ada drops Leon a rocket launcher. The cop recognizes her, but doesn't have a moment to spare. He dives for the launcher, scoops it up, and fires at his vicious adversary. The creature explodes into a dozen body parts. The power comes back on and so do the lights. With two minutes until detonation, Leon runs back to the train. Waiting patiently for the elevator to reach her floor, Claire's thoughts are suddenly interrupted as something smashes through the ceiling right above her. She backs up just in time to avoid being squashed as the G-Type drops into the room. She fires several grenades into the genetic monstrosity, but all she does is trigger yet another mutation. The creature's newest form is doglike, pursuing Claire on four legs and slashing at her with a mouthful of jagged fangs. Claire runs around the room, playing matador as it charges at her. Finally, her weapons have an impact on the thing, and it dissolves into a puddle of genetic jelly. Claire's elevator arrives, right on cue, and she descends to the train loading platform. Leon finds the train platform crawling with naked zombies. Blowing their heads off left and right, he fights his way to the switch that opens the gate blocking the train's path, and throws it. As the gates open, he returns to the train and starts it up. Slowly, the train comes to life. Claire gets to the platform just as the train is taking off. She sees Leon, leaning out an open door, yelling for her to get on. She misses that opportunity, but luckily there is another open door. Once she's inside, the Umbrella lab completes its detonation sequence in a huge explosion. The train rocks, throwing a still-unconscious Sherry to the floor. Claire quickly administers the vaccine to her and they wait. Finally, Sherry comes to and thanks Claire for saving her. Leon thinks that the danger is over, but Claire disagrees. She still has to find her brother. Leon moves up into the cockpit. Still upset, he says goodbye to Ada. The train suddenly lurches. Leon moves back into the cabin with the girls. No one can figure out what the disturbance was. Leon runs toward the back of the train. The train is equipped with the same computer system as the lab. The computer warns them that a bio-hazardous material has been detected on board. The train will detonate in just two minutes. The cabin is locked, and Leon is unable to get back to Sherry and Claire. He runs to the back of the train to search the cargo compartments. At the rear, giant tentacles smash through the ceiling. Leon races back to the front as the G-Type makes an encore appearance. Birkin is now nothing more than a gigantic black blob, pulling itself forward with four huge tentacles. Leon blasts the thing until it loses solidity once more. Then he heads back toward the cabin. =================================================== 5iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2 =================================================== Leon, standing on the gap between the train's two cars, tries to get back inside and discovers the door has locked. Claire can't open it from the other side. The biohazard is still present, apparently... and still after Sherry. The G-Type has reformed, and attempts to smash into the cabin. Claire, not knowing where Leon is, tells Sherry to hide. Sherry opens a vent to the cockpit and crawls through. She promises Claire that she can stop the train. Leon is on top of the engine car, climbing up to the cockpit. He looks behind him to see the G-Type's tentacles searching for him. The main body of the G-Type smashes into the cabin. In order to hide, Claire climbs down through a hatch and hangs onto the bottom of the train while it's still moving. Leon rips open an escape hatch on the roof of the cockpit. Sherry hasn't had so much luck figuring out which button to push. Leon spots the emergency stop switch immediately and points it out to her. Sherry slams her fist on the button. The train brakes. Sparks shoot out from behind the wheels as the transport slows, dousing Claire in a shower of yellow fire. She fights to hold on. The train stops. The computer warns that the train will detonate in thirty seconds. Claire crawls out of her hiding spot and with a sigh of relief, spots daylight at the exit of the train tunnel. Leon and Sherry are out, looking for Claire at the front of the train. She joins them just as the G-Type smashes into the cockpit. The heroes dash for the mouth of the tunnel, through which they can see the rising sun. They've lived to see the morning of September 30th. The monster's tentacles smash through the cockpit windshield, searching for its enemies. The computer counts down, 5, 4, 3, 2... At the last second, the G-Type realizes what's about to happen. The heroes leap clear of the tunnel. The transport train detonates quickly car by car, from the rear to the front. A vicious geyser of fire blasts out of the tunnel. Claire and Sherry get up, commenting that they both look pretty awful. Leon rises, but is already moving off, saying they don't have time to waste. Claire wonders why. Leon turns and tells them, "Hey, it's up to us to take out Umbrella." Blackout. Heavy metal theme music and the credits roll. =========================================================== 5v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B by Dan Birlew =========================================================== If you play the game in the opposite order, starting with Leon first, the plot is different in several respects: 1. Sherry keeps her pendant throughout the game. This means that Ada never obtains the pendant or the G-Virus sample it contains. Also, Mr. X wants the G-Virus, so he goes after Sherry and Claire and not Leon and Ada. 2. Annette explains William's mutation and the cause of the outbreak to Ada, rather than to Claire. Claire finds Annette after Ada knocks her over the rail, and Annette falls unconscious soon afterwards. 3. Sherry is never impregnated with a G-Type embryo, so Claire doesn't have to create a G-Virus antidote. Thus, no mention of an antidote is heard. 4. Ben Bertolucci is impregnated by Birkin with a G-Type embryo that later bursts out of him. Why Birkin would implant him with this is never discussed or explained. 5. Chief Irons is ripped in half by Birkin. 6. Annette is fatally wounded when the G-Type pounds on the ceiling in the lab and drops a pipe on her head. Leon takes the G-Virus sample that she is holding. 7. Leon confronts Ada about being a spy. Annette, barely alive, shoots Ada. Leon's love falls over the rail into a deep chasm. Enraged, Leon tosses the G-Virus after her. 8. In the game's finales, Leon confronts the G-Type while Claire battles Mr. X. Likewise, while escaping from the RPD, Claire fights the G-Type embryo and Leon is attacked by Dr. Birkin. 9. In Claire's final confrontations with Mr. X, she lures him into the smelting pool by tossing Sherry's pendant with the G-Virus over the side. On the trainpower platform, Claire is aided in her battle against the mutated Mr. X by Ada. This provides a larger mystery than the previously explored scenario. How did Ada survive such a fall? 10. At the end of the closing movie, it is Claire instead of Leon who leads them off, saying, "Chris... I have to find you." Perhaps the reasons why the previous plot summary focused on Claire A/ Leon B are now clear. The focus scenario is much richer in plot and explanations. There is not as great a leap of faith required to believe that Ada still lives. Resident Evil 2 is a game much richer in story than its predecessor, as is evidenced by the number of pages needed to summarize the plot versus that of the original Resident Evil. In this chapter of the story, questions are raised. Some are answered, while others may never be solved. ============================== 5vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame by Dan Birlew ============================== A couple of secret games are available to the most capable of Resident Evil survivors. With the right timing, skill, and stamina, players will receive an A ranking in Resident Evil 2. While the secret weapons gained make for a fun replay, the most interesting aspect of this ranking is a new playable character named "Hunk." The players are asked to create a new save file for a minigame called The 4th Survivor, the special mission suitable only for this seasoned Umbrella agent. The 4th Survivor is a "battle game." The player is given a limited amount of ammunition, a simple goal, and an enormous army of evil monsters to outwit in order to survive. This side-adventure is a true test of a player's survival skills. Whether it is his real name or a codename is uncertain, but Hunk is certainly a buff character. Dressed in militaristic biohazard containment gear, Hunk's eyes glow with the power of his infrared goggles. He runs much faster than the usual Resident Evil playable character, even when seriously wounded. Playing as Hunk requires a good amount of quick thinking and strategy on the part of the player. While some strategies can be useful every time, the game's enemies sometimes react differently to Hunk. This means that The 4th Survivor is always a challenge, even to seasoned Resident Evil veterans. ========================================== 5vii. A Brief Summary of The 4th Survivor by Dan Birlew ========================================== The game begins in a total blackout. Someone is thinking, "G-...G-Virus... I have to deliver it to Umbrella..." The scene opens at the end of the sewer station, sometime after Ada and Leon have made their way to the Lab, but before the end of the regular game. A body floats face down in the muck, one of the Umbrella infiltrators sent to steal the G-Virus from renegade scientist William Birkin. The body stirs, shifts, and shows signs of life. Slowly, Hunk regains consciousness and rises. After a quick look around, Hunk pulls out his radio. "Alpha team here," he says through his gas mask, "Mission accomplished." "Roger," confirms another agent on the radio. "We'll meet at the rendezvous point." A map cuts in. A blinking beacon light shows Hunk that he has to get to the second floor roof of the RPD precinct house in order to be airlifted out. Hunk takes off up the stairs. Between this stealthy agent and his goal is a small army of the evil dead. Zombies plague his flight, along with giant spiders, killer dogs, and slithering botanical experiments. He has only a limited amount of ammunition, and must balance his present needs against what he may encounter in the future. Luckily he has some herbs to heal himself and treat poisons, but it's not a lot. Leon and Claire have already taken all of the ammunition from the RPD, so Hunk is stuck with what he has. The zombies have retaken the Precinct in greater numbers than ever before, and have laid several traps for the unfortunate Umbrella agent. With some skill, he just barely avoids these. But as he nears his goal, the insanity grows. Each room bears an ever-greater horde of ghouls, quickly converging on the lone survivalist. Shaking off his attackers, he clears a pathway out with the barrel of his gore-splattered gun. After several close calls, Hunk tops a staircase to the second floor of the RPD. He's halfway home, but the nightmare is not yet over. Stomping toward him is a monstrosity he has only heard rumors about at his agency. At long last, Umbrella has perfected the Tyrant, and they've sent it after the G-Virus. Somehow able to sense that Hunk possesses a sample, the monster attacks him. Reasoning with the beast would be no use, so Hunk evades the slowly advancing thing and moves on. In the final hallway, Hunk meets the Tyrant once again. How it got over here so quickly is a real mystery, one Hunk doesn't have time to solve. Evading the hulk yet again, the agent reaches the roof and lights his last flare to signal for a rescue. The pick-up chopper swoops overhead immediately, as if it has only been a block away this entire time. It hovers over the precinct for an unbearably long moment, then a bright spotlight is trained on Hunk. Impatiently, he waves for them to come down and get him. The helicopter quickly lands and airlifts the tired and wounded operative. As the Umbrella chopper soars off into the ominous skies, a brief epilogue appears on the screen. The agent has delivered the virus to Umbrella, promising that this is the end of one nightmare, but only the beginning of another. ======================================= 5viii. Conclusions About the Conclusion ======================================= 1. William Birkin's laboratory and research have been destroyed, although samples of the G-Virus have made it back to Umbrella. 2. Somehow Umbrella has almost perfected a Tyrant, and has more at their disposal. Their research continues elsewhere. 3. Leon, Claire, and Sherry have all survived. 4. Ada has also survived, although it's nine years and six games later before we find out exactly how. 5. Raccoon City is in ruins. 6. Leon has a new mission in life, while Claire continues hers. 7. The rest of the S.T.A.R.S. team may be somewhere in Europe. ====================== 5ix. Random Commentary ====================== 1. As pointed out by Dan Birlew in the original version of this document, Tofu, another hidden character, is also accessible in RE2. However, he is a block of bean curd with a knife and a hat. 2. Mr. X isn't really very committed to his mission. He seems to deliberately put it on hold a couple of times to go after the player. This is most obvious in either B scenario, where Mr. X leaves the character carrying the G-sample alone in order to go down the elevator shaft after the player. 3. The fact that nobody has bothered to clean out the STARS office is a running gag in the RE fan community. 4. Annette's claim that William Birkin created the T-Virus was contested by files in Survivor and CV, and is flatly contradicted by RE0. By now it can be considered to have been thoroughly retconned, or that Annette only thinks William invented it. 5. Note that "The 4th Survivor" is the first RE minigame to actually figure into the plot. We won't see this again until Assignment: Ada in RE4. 6. In the years since RE2 was released, virtually every environment in it has been used as the setting for some part of another game. Much of the RPD was recycled for RE3 and RE:O2's "Desperate Times" scenario, Rebecca visits part of the shipping lanes underneath the city in RE0, RE:O's "Below Freezing Point" scenario is set in Birkin's laboratory, and Jill fights the Nemesis in the RPD's west hallway and roof in RE:UC. 7. The original PlayStation version of RE2 is unique in that any time you die, it often fades to a gory scene where the monster that kills you finishes you off. Zombies and dogs rip out your throat, Ivies bite off your head, Lickers impale you through the chest with their tongues, and so on. Later versions of RE2 omit this completely. 8. Cinematic references in RE2: -- the Umbrella lab is sort of a mixed bag of film influences; I recognized bits taken from _Day of the Dead_, _Return of the Living Dead Part 2_, and _Return of the Living Dead Part 3_. -- Leon is dressed more like Peter and Roger in _Dawn of the Dead_ than like any other officer in the RPD. -- the giant alligator may be a reference to the undead alligators at the beginning of _Day of the Dead_. -- okay, so I mentioned _Zeram_, right? The big pink quasi-embryo that crawls out of Irons/Ben, as well as the little pink embryos that crawl out of *that*, look a lot like a similar creature, which is spawned by an alien, in _Zeram_. ============================================================= 6. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ============================================================= RE3 has had a greater impact than one would expect. It comes off like it was thrown together in a hurry to cover a gap in the schedule, and has a lot of recycled content, but it also introduced one of the most famous monsters in the series: the unstoppable, unpredictable Nemesis. Set a day before RE2 begins, and concluding two days after RE2 ends, RE3 stars Jill Valentine. After the mansion incident, she stayed in Raccoon City, quit the police force, and went underground. Now, with almost no survivors left in the city, she makes a final bid for survival: her last escape. ===================================================== 6i. A Summary of the Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ===================================================== Jill's escape attempt begins with an explosion, as she comes flying out of an apartment building. Jill takes shelter inside a nearby warehouse and meets another survivor. She tries to get him to come with her, but he refuses to leave the warehouse. Jill tells him that their only hope is to get out of town, but he shuts himself inside a nearby trailer rather than listen. Alone, Jill leaves the warehouse. The streets are disturbingly quiet, with only the occasional zombie wandering around. As she sneaks through a back alley, a man suddenly bursts out of a closet, pursued by a mob of zombies. Jill recognizes him as Brad Vickers, and runs after him. After chasing him through the streets and back alleys of Raccoon, Jill finds Brad inside a local bar. They briefly talk about what's happened to the city. Brad, although he's wounded, gets up, telling Jill that "he's comin' for us. We're all gonna die! He's after S.T.A.R.S. members. There's no escape!" With that, he leaves the bar. Outside, Brad's nowhere to be found, so Jill sets out on her own. She emerges onto the street in front of the RPD building. Both ends of the street are blocked by car crashes, but a nearby alleyway leads further uptown. The door to it is locked, but Jill left a set of lockpicks in her desk at the RPD. She heads there. In front of the RPD building, Brad Vickers finds Jill again. He looks like someone dropped a truck on him. He starts to say something, but is cut off by the arrival of a new monster, a humanoid creature dressed in black leather. Its face is permanently stuck in a lipless grimace, it has the skin of a burn victim, and large tentacles writhe underneath its coat. Jill is frozen in horror as the creature grabs Brad by the face and lifts him into the air. It kills Brad by stabbing him through the skull with a tentacle, throws away his body, and advances on Jill, muttering a single word: "...S.T.A.R.S...." Jill's weapons seem to have no effect on the creature. She ducks inside the RPD building and slams the doors behind her. Although the doors buckle under the creature's attack, they don't give. Safe for the moment, Jill searches the building for equipment and ammunition. More than half of the building has been sealed off by the few surviving police, but she can still get to her old office. The S.T.A.R.S. office is wrecked. Someone has deliberately broken the radio and the desks have been ransacked. As Jill leaves with her lockpicks, the radio plays an incoming transmission from someone named Carlos. His unit has been cut off and no survivors have been found. He asks for anyone who can hear him to respond, but the broken radio can only receive transmissions. All Jill can do is wish him luck as she leaves. The only warning Jill gets before the creature returns is the sound of shattering glass. It jumps through a window on the first floor of the RPD, toting a rocket launcher in one hand. Dodging a barrage of missiles, Jill barely manages to get out of the RPD building alive. She picks the lock on the alleyway door and keeps running, but the creature has vanished. As Jill makes her way uptown, she finds a dead man wearing the Umbrella logo. She searches the corpse and finds his diary, which also contains his suicide note. He was a member of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service, a mercenary team maintained by Umbrella, but the diary doesn't mention why they were sent into Raccoon City. More dead UBCS soldiers turn up elsewhere. One is lying in front of a nearby parking garage, killed by a pack of zombie dogs. Another has fallen victim to a new creature, a bizarre breed of giant, mutated insect. These "drain deimos" are surprisingly dangerous, but shots to their unarmored belly kill them in seconds. Jill steps back onto the street outside the construction site, and sees a man run into a restaurant. Jill follows him inside. He introduces himself as Carlos Oliviera, a corporal in the UBCS, and asks if Jill's okay. When she expresses disbelief--Jill can't believe that anyone from Umbrella cares whether she's okay or not--Carlos elaborates: his squad was told to rescue Raccoon's civilians, but the mission went wrong the moment they landed. Before he can continue, the creature stalking Jill reappears, coming in through the restaurant's back door. As the creature charges, Jill notices a gas leak in the restaurant's kitchen. She and Carlos hide behind the counter, and as the creature stops next to the leaking pipes, Jill throws a lit oil lamp at it. The ensuing explosion nearly kills both Jill and Carlos, but knocks the creature out. As they leave the restaurant, Jill asks Carlos why his squad was sent to Raccoon. Carlos's answer--that they're rescuing civilians--isn't good enough for Jill, since the destruction of Raccoon is largely Umbrella's fault. Carlos replies that he and his fellow mercenaries are just hired hands, and if Umbrella had some kind of ulterior motive for sending them in, he doesn't know what it is. If Jill wants answers, she's asking the wrong guy. The sound of shattering glass inside the restaurant cuts him off. Carlos invites Jill to join his squad, and runs off. Jill starts to follow Carlos, but the creature comes after her again, seemingly unhurt. After losing the creature in Raccoon's shopping district, Jill hides inside the offices of the Raccoon Press. Inside, she finds another gemstone that matches one she found in the RPD building. They turn out to be the missing parts to a time lock on the gates to Raccoon's city hall. Jill repairs the lock and opens the gates. The city hall is boarded up, and looks as though it's been undergoing the same kind of siege as the RPD. Past it is a trainyard, where one of Raccoon City's cable cars is parked. Inside the cable car, Jill meets a gray-haired man wearing the same logos as Carlos. Jill greets him, assuming he's one of Carlos's teammates. The man insultingly asks her how she managed to survive. Jill replies that she's a S.T.A.R.S. member, which seems to satisfy him. He walks into the next car, leaving Jill alone with a badly wounded and delirious UBCS officer. Jill examines him, concluding that there's not a lot she can do for him, and follows the grey-haired man. Carlos is in the next cable car, and renews his invitation from earlier. The gray-haired man, who is apparently Carlos's commander, says that they can't trust Jill. Before Jill can respond, Carlos says that they need her help, as their unit has been reduced to Carlos, the gray-haired man, and Lieutenant Mikhail, the injured man in the last cable car. His commander, Nicholai, grudgingly agrees, and tells them about his plan. An extraction helicopter is waiting for a signal from their team. The designated landing zone is by the St. Michael Clock Tower, a Raccoon City landmark. Nicholai intends to use the cable car as a mobile shield to get them through Raccoon City, although the car will require repairs first. Carlos and Jill agree to this plan, and the three of them split up to look for parts for the cable car. Jill heads to a nearby gas station first, to get motor oil. Carlos enters the station behind her, but a mob of zombies sniffs them out. As Carlos keeps watch, Jill finds a locked cabinet with oil in it. Carlos steps outside to fight off the zombies. Jill hurriedly opens the lock and grabs the oil. Before she can get outside, a live wire falls into a pool of motor oil in the gas station's garage, starting a fire. Jill sprints out the front door as the place burns down around her. Outside, Jill finds Carlos slumped against the wall, next to a pile of dead zombies. Jill briefly thinks he's been killed, but Carlos shakily gets to his feet. The fire suddenly spreads outside, to the pools of gasoline leaking from wrecked cars, and then to the gas station's pumps. Jill and Carlos barely escape an explosion that completely destroys both the gas station and most of the block that it's on. As they pull themselves to their feet, Carlos tells Jill that he's going to look for extra equipment. He leaves. Jill finds some engine parts and returns to the cable car to fix it. Outside the cable car, Mikhail, despite his wounds, massacres a horde of zombies before collapsing. Jill runs up to him and demands to know if he has a death wish. Mikhail insists that he cannot stop fighting just because he's wounded. Even though the zombies are innocent victims as well, as Jill says, Mikhail sees no reason why he should take responsibility for anything that's happened to Raccoon. After all, none of the UBCS soldiers are really involved with the company. Jill agrees, and says that that's the only reason she's trusting the UBCS at all. Jill helps Mikhail back into the cable car and tells him to rest. She also tries to repair the cable car's engine. She has everything she needs, except a special additive for the motor oil. She heads back into Raccoon, towards an Umbrella-owned sales office. On her way, Jill stops by the warehouse in downtown Raccoon where she had taken shelter earlier. Inside, she finds a group of zombies greedily devouring the body of the man who'd refused to come with her. In the trailer that the man was hiding in, Jill finds a book where he has written his final words. His name was Dario Rosso, and he had always meant to be a novelist. When Jill reaches the office, Nicholai is already there. He has just killed another UBCS trooper who was infected with the T-Virus. Jill demands that Nicholai explain why he shot the man, who was still conscious. Nicholai explains to Jill, as if it's obvious, that it took fewer bullets to kill the man before he became a zombie. Jill lets herself into the office's storage locker, where she finds the additive she needs. At the same time, another horde of zombies finds the sales office. Jill hears Nicholai scream. When she fights her way back into the office, both Nicholai and the UBCS mercenary's body are gone. On her way back to the cable car, Jill has another encounter with her stalker outside City Hall. Once again, Jill runs for her life. The creature doesn't follow her to the next street, and before Jill can wonder why, the ground crumbles under her feet. She's dumped into part of the Raccoon sewer system, which a large, mutated worm has claimed as its own. Jill escapes from the sewers via a conveniently located emergency ladder. Jill finishes her repair work on the cable car. Carlos walks in, and Jill tells him that Nicholai won't be joining them. Carlos grimly accepts the news, and offers to drive the cable car. The car begins to glide smoothly away from the station, but it shakes suddenly from a tremendous impact. Jill investigates, and finds that the creature stalking her has busted into the cable car. With nowhere to run, Jill opens fire, knocking it down with a fusillade of nitrogen-laced grenade rounds. The creature gets right back up again, seemingly unhurt by an attack that would have killed anything else. Suddenly, Mikhail opens fire on the creature with his assault rifle, commanding Jill to get out of the cable car. The creature advances on Mikhail, whose rifle jams at exactly the wrong moment. The creature backhands him against the wall, then throws him across the cable car. A tentacle emerges from the creature's hand, coiling around its wrist like a striking snake, and it walks towards Mikhail to finish him off. Just before it reaches him, Mikhail rolls over, pulls a grenade from his vest, and pulls the pin. The resulting explosion knocks the creature out of the back of the cable car, kills Mikhail, and destroys the cable car's brakes. Jill pulls the emergency stop, but the car doesn't slow down until it hits a wall. Jill blacks out. Jill regains consciousness alone in the courtyard of the St. Michael Clock Tower, next to the twisted ruin of the cable car. Night has fallen and the sky's cleared. She finds Carlos inside the tower, who's now convinced that Umbrella has no intentions of letting them out of town alive. Before he can get hysterical, Jill slaps him, asking him if he's just going to give up. Carlos retorts that he just can't handle what's happening, and runs off. The clock tower is nearly deserted, except for the occasional zombie or giant spider. Jill finds several more dead mercenaries within it, one of whom is carrying a copy of the UBCS's mission plan. Sure enough, they were here to rescue civilians, but were specifically after Umbrella's employees. It's a moot point now, however, as both the mercenaries and the handful of civilians they successfully saved have been killed. The UBCS's extraction chopper is in the suburbs of Raccoon, waiting for someone to signal it by ringing the clock tower's bell. Jill runs up to the bell tower, and finds that the mechanical ringer has been dismantled. Solving another of the puzzles that seem to be everywhere in Raccoon City, she finds a key to a storeroom. On the balcony of the clock tower, the creature returns, seemingly unhurt. Jill rips the wiring out of one of the clock tower's searchlights and electrocutes the creature. As it lies twitching, Jill makes her escape, but once again, it gets up and gives chase. For some reason, though, it doesn't follow her downstairs. In the storeroom, Jill finds an ornate gear that'll fit in the bell's ringer. She runs back upstairs and installs it. The bell starts to ring, and as Jill rushes outside, the extraction chopper flies into sight. Jill waves it down, and for a moment, thinks that she's finally safe. She is, of course, wrong. A missile strikes the helicopter in midair, sending it crashing into the tower and showering the courtyard in burning debris. Jill looks up to see the creature standing on top of the clock tower, its missile launcher in its hand. It jumps down in front of her, intent upon finishing her off once and for all. Before Jill can react, the creature stabs her with one of its tentacles, and Jill immediately begins to feel shaky and ill. She's infected. Suddenly, Carlos arrives and attacks the creature. The creature, more annoyed than hurt, returns fire. Carlos is stunned by a near-miss, but manages to blow up the missile launcher. As he passes out, Jill opens fire on the creature, hitting it with everything she has. The creature, after taking enough damage to kill an army, finally staggers, then falls into the flames from the burning helicopter. Jill limps over to Carlos and collapses. Jill is unconscious for two days, during which Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield make their own escape from Raccoon City. She wakes up in the chapel of the clock tower after midnight on October 1st. Carlos has been watching over her. She doesn't feel any pain from her infection, but that in itself worries her. Jill makes Carlos promise that if she turns into a zombie, he'll kill her. Carlos says that he'll find something to help her, and that she'll be safe in the chapel until he returns. Carlos leaves the clock tower through a door in the storeroom, and finds that he's down the street from a hospital. He investigates, hoping to find something to cure Jill. The hospital lobby is strewn with dead men and partially locked down with a steel shutter. As Carlos enters, a zombie slowly shuffles towards him from the back of the room. Before Carlos can shoot it, something decapitates the zombie from behind. A new creature screams at Carlos; Jill would recognize it as a Hunter. After a vicious, albeit brief, fight Carlos kills the creature and enters the head doctor's office. Carlos takes the head doctor's private elevator to the fourth floor. The hospital is crawling with Hunters and the occasional zombie. There, in the hospital's file room, he finds Nicholai, who is holding a smoking gun and standing over the body of another UBCS member. Carlos has a lot of questions for Nicholai, but the only answer Nicholai has is that he--Nicholai--is "one of the supervisors." That's all Carlos needs to know. Nicholai points his gun at Carlos, but before he can fire, the man on the floor pulls the pin on a grenade. Both Carlos and Nicholai run for cover, and Nicholai is thrown out the fourth-floor window. Carlos is confused about what just happened, but he continues his search. To his surprise, he finds another of Umbrella's laboratories in the hospital's basement, where two creatures are floating in incubation tanks. They look like Hunters, but where the Hunters Carlos has been fighting are sort of generically reptilian, these appear to be deliberately patterned after frogs. (These are probably the MA-121 Hunters mentioned in RE2's EX Files.) Carlos finds a set of instructions in the lab. Using them to operate the laboratory's machines, he creates a vaccine effective against the T-Virus. Running back to the clock tower, he finds a surprise waiting for him in the hospital lobby. Someone has set explosives to demolish the hospital. Carlos leaves the hospital at a dead run, taking cover from the explosion inside the alley leading to the clock tower. The hospital collapses in on itself in a burst of flame. In the clock tower, the ceilings are buckling and groaning, as if the tower is planning on following the hospital's lead. As Carlos crosses the clock tower's front hall, the creaking intensifies into a pounding. With a sudden crash, the creature that has chased Jill throughout Raccoon City breaks through the wall. The creature's heavy coat has burned away, revealing that it's covered in writhing tentacles. Carlos tries to fight the thing, but it's only interested in getting to Jill. Fortunately, Carlos beats it to the chapel. Carlos gives Jill the vaccine. The drug takes effect almost immediately, and Jill wakes up. She asks Carlos what happened to him, and Carlos says that he just had another fight with the monster. Jill wonders aloud whether the creature can be stopped at all. Carlos says that he's sure it can, but he doesn't sound convinced. Jill realizes that the creature is toying with them. Carlos then tells her about Nicholai's survival, and warns her that although he doesn't know what Nicholai has planned, he's sure that Nicholai is their enemy. Claiming that he has to "take care of some things," Carlos leaves. Jill runs into the creature as she leaves the chapel. She leads it a merry chase through the clock tower, losing it along the way, and ducks into Raccoon's city park. The park is infested with monsters, but Jill easily takes care of them. Inside the tool shed in a local graveyard, Jill breaks through a bricked-up doorway and discovers an abandoned Umbrella command center. Several documents are scattered throughout the room. One of them, a report from one of the supervisors, finally gives her a name for the creature that's been chasing her; Umbrella calls it the "Nemesis," and they sent it to kill the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members. The unnamed supervisor continues to speculate that if the Nemesis is still loose in the city, then the S.T.A.R.S. must be very hard to kill... but they can't hope to evade it much longer. Nicholai is waiting for Jill when she leaves the command center. He's impressed by her survival, but refuses to help Jill in any way. When Jill asks him, he admits that the true mission of the UBCS was to gather data on Umbrella's bioweapons in a combat situation, but no one ever expected the UBCS units to be completely wiped out. After a sudden tremor shakes the ground, Nicholai runs off. As Jill follows Nicholai, the earth falls out from under her. The giant worm that Jill fought in the Raccoon sewer system is back, but not for long. The worm destroys the graveyard trying to kill Jill, and she responds with a barrage of bullets and grenades. When Jill climbs out of the wreckage of the graveyard, she leaves the worm's cooling corpse on the ground behind her. The park has been overrun by a fresh wave of zombies while Jill fought the worm, but they're little more than annoyances at this point. On one of the park's isolated footpaths, Jill finds two more dead UBCS soldiers, one of whom is clutching a set of orders from Umbrella. The orders confirm what Nicholai said earlier. The supervisors were also instructed to destroy the hospital and all the data stored inside it. Umbrella is covering its tracks, and for some reason, a lot of their supervisors are winding up dead. The footpath leads to a rickety bridge, which in turn leads to an abandoned factory. As Jill walks across the bridge towards it, the Nemesis jumps onto the bridge in front of her. Jill leaps off the bridge, into the river below. The Nemesis, after she's gone, turns and walks towards the factory. Underneath the bridge, Jill finds an entrance to an old sewer duct, and from there finds her way into the factory. A quintet of zombies spring a crude ambush on her, but Carlos arrives and saves Jill a second time. Jill thanks him, and he tells her that a missile is going to be launched into the center of the city at dawn, which is coming soon. The two of them have to split up and find some way to escape, or they'll be caught in the blast. Carlos puts a hand on Jill's cheek and tells her to watch out for Nicholai. The factory is nowhere near as abandoned as it was supposed to be. Umbrella has been conducting experiments with the T-Virus here and using the facility to dispose of toxic waste; as a result, the factory is crawling with Stingers, Hunters, and powerful, mutated zombies. As Jill explores, a sudden burst of gunfire sends her running for cover. Chortling, Nicholai locks himself inside the radio room. Jill accidentally stumbles into the facility's trash room. Not only does the door lock behind her, but the room's automated systems come online; in five minutes, the room will automatically dump everything in it into the factory's waste area, which will almost certainly be fatal. Just as Jill thinks things can't get any worse, the trash room's lights come on, revealing an old friend. The Nemesis has been waiting for her. For the first time in four days, Jill gets lucky. She ducks underneath one of the Nemesis's wild swings, and it tears open a pipe on the wall. Whatever is flowing through the pipe is corrosive enough to burn off half of the Nemesis's tentacles almost instantly. As the Nemesis recovers, Jill shoots out another pipe, drenching it in acid a second time, and then a third. The Nemesis screams, covered in horrible burns. It falls down, and doesn't get back up. Jill notices the body of an Umbrella scientist in one of the trash heaps. She searches his pockets and finds a keycard which unlocks the trash room doors. As she gets out, the Nemesis's body is dumped into the waste pool. The factory's speakers crackle to life, and a woman's voice reports that a missile attack has been detected. Jill runs towards the door Nicholai went through and unlocks it with her new keycard. The door leads to a communications tower. As Jill picks up a portable radar receiver, the radio suddenly comes to life. Outside, Nicholai taunts Jill from a helicopter, and rakes the tower with a burst of machine-gun fire. Apparently, he's the one who's been killing off the rest of the UBCS, simply so Nicholai could get more bargaining power when it comes time to negotiate his bonus with Umbrella. He says that he had also intended to collect a bounty which Umbrella had placed on Jill's head, but he decides to fly away instead. Jill, he says, is doomed anyway. Carlos runs in. He hasn't had any luck in finding an escape route, but he refuses to give up. He frantically uses the radio to scan all frequencies. A familiar voice comes over the radio. Someone else is coming in a helicopter, specifically for Jill. All the two of them have to do is meet it at the factory's helipad. The factory's systems alert Jill and Carlos that the missile has been launched, and unlock the door to the helipad. Jill heads there, and Carlos runs back into the factory to make last-minute preparations. Apparently, the factory used a scrapyard as their landing zone. Jill runs through a maze of crushed and stripped cars, and finds that a small war was fought here recently. Several dead U.S. Special Forces soldiers are lying outside of the factory's power room, as well as the burning corpse of a mutant (actually a Mr. X unit, like the one that attacked Leon the day before). An official report is on the ground near one of them, accompanied by a photograph of an experimental new weapon code-named "Paracelsus's Sword." The report specifically mentions using it to fight Umbrella's bioweapons. The Sword is an enormous rail cannon, and looks like just the thing to take out a Tyrant, but it's far too big to have been snuck in. There's a mystery here, but Jill doesn't have time to figure it out. Jill enters the power room, and an explosion from outside seals the door shut behind her. Dead bioweapons are lying everywhere, including several Mr. X units, one mutated, with several dead soldiers lying among them. (Alert reader Petri Rantala points out that the dead, clawed Tyrant in the corner has claws on both hands, which would lead one to believe that it's a mutated Mr. X rather than an old Tyrant.) On the other side of the room, Jill finds the Paracelsus's Sword cannon, still hooked up to the factory's power plant and aimed directly at the dead Tyrant. Jill tries to turn it on. The cannon's computer tells her to hook up several oversized batteries strewn around the room. As Jill shoves the first battery into place, she hears the sound of dripping water behind her. Chemicals slowly begin to leak into the room. Jill turns around, and the Nemesis's "corpse" falls through a hole in the ceiling. It squirms towards her, mutating with every move it makes. Jill frantically hooks up the last two batteries to the rail cannon, but it doesn't charge quickly enough. She's forced to use what's left of her ammunition in a final struggle against the Nemesis, which retaliates by spraying a toxic stream of the waste chemicals that should have killed it. Eventually, bleeding heavily, the Nemesis shakily retreats to the far side of the room, seemingly intent on eating one of the dead Tyrants' corpses. This puts it directly in line with the rail cannon, which is now charged. The rail cannon's blast shakes the room, tears through a four-foot block of scrap metal, vaporizes the Tyrant's corpse, and doesn't really look like it hurts the Nemesis much at all. A second blast finally sends the Nemesis screaming to the ground. Jill checks the radar receiver, which tells her that she has less than five minutes before the missiles hit. Before she can leave, the Nemesis gets back up for one last attempt to kill her, firing a blast of venom at her head. Jill rolls out of the way, grabs a Magnum revolver from a dead soldier, and slowly pursues the writhing Nemesis across the room. She empties its cylinder into the Nemesis, and finally, bleeding from every pore, it stops moving. Jill leaves the power room and takes an elevator up to the helipad. Carlos takes the elevator up just after she does and runs forward, lighting a signal flare. A blue-and-white helicopter slowly descends to the ground in front of Carlos, and both he and Jill climb aboard with a few minutes to spare. ============================================================= 6iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ============================================================= Jill thanks the helicopter's pilot, who says that he couldn't just let her die. Jill seems to recognize him and leans forward. The pilot turns to her and asks her, "Are you ready to finish this?" (The pilot's apparently supposed to be Barry Burton, although it's never said out loud.) A flash of light outside the window draws Jill's attention. The missile flies past the helicopter and hits the center of Raccoon City. The surviving zombies look up in confusion at the bright light, just before they're consumed in a wave of fire. All that remains of Raccoon City is a smoking crater. As the helicopter flies east, Jill, looking out the window at what used to be Raccoon, vows that Umbrella is going down. We're shown a news broadcast. The morning's top news story is, of course, the strike on Raccoon. The President and Congress planned and executed the destruction of Raccoon City, which has been "literally wiped off the map." More than a hundred thousand casualties are expected. "Our hearts go out to the citizens... of Raccoon City." ==================== 6iv. Different Paths ==================== The game's basic plotline can vary each time you play through it. However, while the details change, the fundamental events are always the same (Nicholai apparently dies at some point before you activate the cable car, Jill always finds Carlos somewhere inside the clock tower, etc.), so they aren't worth listing in full here. For most of the choices, I've just kinda picked the one that I liked more and used it for the summary. The exception is that I deliberately placed Carlos in the gas station. Nicholai is a huge badass, but I'm not willing to believe that he's enough of a badass to survive an explosion that levels a city block (unless the explosion, as Vincent Merken and I have theorized, knocked him through a plot hole). I can accept a lot, but that's just crazy. ===================== 6v. Different Endings ===================== The ending I've used for the summary is apparently the official one; one of the files in Resident Evil: Survivor is written by Nicholai on October 5th, and the brief summary of RE3 given in RE5 indicates that Barry flew Jill out of the city. Ending #2: Instead of negotiating with Nicholai, Jill blows him out of the sky. Aside from that small yet satisfying detail, this is the same as Ending #1. Ending #3: Instead of jumping off the bridge, Jill shoves the Nemesis off and walks into the abandoned factory via the front door. She and Carlos meet up in the second-floor break room, where a visibly exhausted Carlos tells her about the incoming missiles. Things proceed as above after that, but when Jill reaches the trash room, she's ambushed by Nicholai. From cover in front of the trash room, Nicholai explains that there's a "modest" bounty offered by Umbrella for whoever kills Jill, which he intends to collect. Jill tells him, basically, to stick it. Nicholai replies by firing a couple more shots at Jill. Something, probably the Nemesis, grabs Nicholai from behind. Jill hears him scream, followed by some wet crunching sounds. When she rounds the corner, she finds Nicholai's dead body hanging off of the pipes in the ceiling. When Jill reaches the communications tower, she hears an incoming transmission from Carlos. Carlos tells her to take the nearby radar receiver and meet him elsewhere. After Jill's showdown with the Nemesis, she rides the elevator up to find Carlos waiting for her in Nicholai's helicopter. Jill watches Raccoon explode as they fly off, saying that this time, "they've gone too far." ======================= 6vi. The Epilogue Files ======================= Every time the game is beaten on Hard Mode, an Epilogue is shown after the credits and ranking screen. There are eight Epilogues, each dealing with a major character from RE; in order, the files are about Jill, Chris, Barry, Leon, Claire, Sherry, Ada, and Hunk. Each file is about a paragraph long, and is accompanied by original character art. From the Epilogue Files, we know the following: -- after escaping Raccoon, Jill found one of Chris's hideouts. It was trashed, but Chris wasn't there. She plans to keep looking for Chris so the two of them can finally take down Umbrella. Carlos and Barry may or may not be with her. -- Barry has left his family. He doesn't intend to return to them until he's paid his friends back for betraying them. -- after they escaped the lab at the end of RE2, Leon angrily told Claire to leave him and Sherry alone. She promised to return, and disappeared into the woods near Raccoon. -- Leon has been made some kind of unspecified offer by either the U.S. government or someone claiming to represent them. He attempted to get them to leave Sherry out of this offer, but she "knows too much." We do not know what Leon's response to the offer was. -- Sherry is in the custody of the U.S. Army, and is waiting for Claire to come back. -- the woman who had called herself Ada Wong survived. She is leaving that identity behind and preparing for another mission. -- Hunk is a little crazy, and has a tendency to be the only survivor of his missions. He's seen without his mask in his file. ====================================== 6vii. Conclusions About the Conclusion ====================================== 1. Raccoon City has been destroyed. As many as a hundred thousand people could have died during the outbreak. 2. Jill and Carlos have survived, thanks to Barry Burton. 3. A vaccine exists for the T-Virus, and it's been given to Jill. She's now immune to it and, as per RE5, pretty much everything else. 4. Ada and Hunk are both still alive. This brings the known total of Raccoon survivors to eight, out of more than a hundred thousand. 5. Jill is newly dedicated to the destruction of Umbrella. She's looking for Chris. 6. Umbrella is actively seeking the deaths of the remaining S.T.A.R.S. They have a "modest" price on Jill's head. 7. Claire Redfield is somewhere in America, continuing her search for her brother. 8. Leon Kennedy and Sherry Birkin are in government custody. 9. Leon has gotten an unspecified "offer" from someone claiming to be a government agent. (It is elaborated upon in RE:DSC.) 10. The U.S. government has attacked at least one Umbrella facility with very little, if any, success. 11. Umbrella actually tried to *stop* the government from blowing up Raccoon. Apparently, there's something else going on here that we don't know about. 12. Hunk survived. Umbrella has a sample of the G-Virus. 13. Someone on the development team hated Brad's guts. ======================== 6viii. Random Commentary ======================== 1. In the power room, scattered amidst the dead Tyrants, are shards of red containment capsules, similar to the one that Umbrella used to transport Mr. X in RE2. If anyone was wondering where that helicopter might have gone after it visited the RPD, it isn't a enormous intuitive leap to say it went to the Dead Factory. 2. The military blockade around Raccoon that's got Jill so worried is apparently manned by spider monkeys. Neither Leon or Claire so much as see a blockade, and we've seen no fewer than eight helicopters, some unmarked, enter and leave Raccoon's airspace without any problems. (Count 'em. You might even come up with a few that I missed. Remember, RE:ORC doesn't count.) 3. The Mercenaries minigame, while horrifyingly addictive, doesn't really apply to the storyline. I would've thought that this was obvious, but apparently, it isn't. 4. For those who didn't know, RE3 was subtitled Last Escape in Japan. This is why Jill uses that phrase a lot. (Personally, I think it should've been the subtitle of the American version, but that's me.) 5. Although the back of the game's case says that Jill quit S.T.A.R.S., she never says as much in the game. As a matter of fact, she claims membership several times ("Hey, I'm no ordinary civvie!" Shut up, Jill). 6. According to an article in Game Informer, Nemesis's design was one of the rejected designs for Mr. X. In the sketch they published, Nemmy's rocket launcher was an elaborate rifle. 7. As established by the epilogue of Outbreak, the bomb that destroyed Raccoon City wasn't actually a nuclear weapon. Further, the missile Jill and Carlos see was just the first of many. 8. It's become clear relatively recently that Nicholai's last name was apparently meant to be "Zinoviev," and became "Ginovaef" through a translation error. I don't intend to change it in this document (I can either get three or four emails about the name, or several dozen asking why I'm saying it wrong), but I did want to include a note on the subject. 9. Cinematic parallels in RE3: -- _Return of the Living Dead_ also had an ending which involved a missile attack. The end scenes of the movie and the end scenes of RE3, showing the missile arcing towards ground zero, aren't identical but are thematically similar. -- furthermore, _Return of the Living Dead_ also has a scene where a small army of zombies rush a police barricade. -- the power station sequence is much like a scene in _Return of the Living Dead, Part 2_, especially if you opt to electrify the zombies. -- according to my co-worker Alicia Ashby, the bombing of Raccoon City reflects a very common plot point in Japanese pop culture. Man, you drop two nukes on some people and they just never let you forget about it. =================================================================== 7. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR =================================================================== Also known as the first entry in the Gun Survivor series, Survivor is a light-gun game for the PlayStation, which notoriously was released in North America without light-gun support. This is not the only reason it's widely considered the armpit of the series, but it's a big one. It's a canon game, however, and to a plot enthusiast, Survivor's files have a lot of useful information. Set two months after the Raccoon City outbreak, it's the story of a guy on an isolated island who can't figure out who he is or why there are zombies everywhere. ========================================================== 7i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR ========================================================== In late November of 1998, an isolated city called Sheena Island is the site of another T-Virus outbreak. In a short time, Sheena Island is a ghost town, chiefly inhabited by Umbrella's monsters. As the undead mill through the streets, a helicopter flies over the town. A man in white, holding a gun, clings to one of the helicopter's landing struts and yells, "You won't get away!" He fires once and the helicopter bursts into flames. As the helicopter plummets towards the street, the man in white falls off. Some time later, a man in jeans and a brown parka wakes up next to a burning helicopter. He doesn't remember anything about who he is, where he is, or what he's doing there. He has the clothes on his back and a Glock 17 handgun. The man, our hero, sets out to explore the city. On the next street over, he finds the body of the man in white, who looks like he's dead. Our hero finds a set of dogtags in the man's hand, identifying him as Ark Thompson. Our hero thinks that the man looks familiar, but a zombie interrupts his examination. He executes it and finds a rusted key in its pocket. The key unlocks the front door of a nearby church. The church is small and relatively well-maintained; the only discordant note is the Umbrella logo, carved into the wall above the altar. In the church manager's office, our hero finds the man's diary, where he has written about the destruction of the American city of Raccoon at the hands of the renegade scientist William Birkin. Our hero leaves through the back door of the church, to an isolated street where a pay phone is ringing. Whoever it is hangs up as soon as our hero answers the phone. After a brief fight with a pair of Lickers, our hero finds his way to another ringing pay phone. He picks it up, and whoever is on the other end calls him Vincent. Our hero is confused, but the man continues talking, calling him a murderer. He denies it, demanding more information from the man on the phone, but the man hangs up. Suddenly, helicopters appear overhead. Our hero ducks into a nearby arcade as men in the black and blue uniforms of SWAT officers descend from overhead. Their commander, his voice muffled by a respirator, reminds them of their orders; they are to cleanse the area of its infection. Inside the arcade, our hero sees a team of cleaners dispatch two zombies, but then they attack him. Apparently, "cleansing the area" is a synonym for "killing all the witnesses." Up close, the "cleaners" look more like gorillas dressed in body armor than anything else; their arms reach almost to their feet, and they roll around on their knuckles like apes. They're remarkably fragile, though, and our hero easily dispatches them. As they die, they scream like wildcats, and their bodies dissolve into nothing. Our hero, as he searches the arcade, is nearly killed by a sniper. The sniper yells a threat at "Vincent," but doesn't take another shot. Our hero sneaks out of the arcade's basement, jimmying open a manhole and entering the sewers. The sewers are blissfully quiet. In the manager's office, our hero finds the man's diary. He has written about his meeting with Vincent, the cruel and vicious man who was promoted to the post of the city's supreme commander. When the manager took a picture of Vincent for a souvenir, Vincent got angry. As our hero searches the manager's desk, he finds the picture of Vincent. It is of himself. Clearly, our hero concludes, he must be Vincent. He must be this cruel man that he keeps hearing about. As he contemplates this, a young boy enters the manager's office behind him. As Vincent turns around, the boy begs him not to kill him. Vincent is confused, and tells the boy that he won't hurt him, but the boy doesn't listen, and runs away. Vincent gives chase. The boy's exit route leads straight to the front doors of a place that claims to be Paradise. It's actually a prison. Inside, Vincent kills several zombies and finds the diary of the prison's warden. He refers to the prisoners as "guinea pigs," and has written that a "mass suicide" that had taken place in mid-October was, in fact, an escape attempt. Vincent quelled it by shooting down the boys as they ran, then intimidated the prison's chief into misreporting the incident back to Umbrella. As bad as that is, the cell block is worse. Vincent finds the diary of one of the former prisoners on a bed in one of the cells. The prisoner was a boy, abducted from the Congo in late August and brought to Sheena Island. He and his fellow prisoners were all young, between fourteen and twenty years of age, and were gathered from all over the world. According to the boy, everyone in Sheena Island was an Umbrella employee, even the women and the children. While he and his fellow prisoners weren't mistreated, the guards took one of them to a factory, elsewhere on the island, every so often. Whoever was taken would never come back. The boy eventually found out why, by eavesdropping on a conversation between some factory workers in the nightclub. For whatever reason, the factory workers were ordered by Vincent to take the prisoners, the "guinea pigs," and extract some kind of material from their brains. The boy heard this, and immediately resolved to escape. When word of the disaster at Raccoon City reached Steena Island, the prisoners used the guards' uneasiness to stage their escape attempt. One way or another, the boy writes, he's probably dead, but he'd rather die trying to escape. Vincent finds a coil of rope nearby, and uses the boy's planned escape route by climbing down the side of one of the guard towers. At the bottom of the tower, Vincent finds himself face-to-face with a massive, trenchcoated figure. Clearly inhuman, it attacks Vincent, and takes nearly three dozen bullets before it falls. While Vincent has no idea what he's just killed, Leon would recognize it as Mr. X. Two more of the creatures are waiting for Vincent inside a nearby nightclub. Barely evading them, Vincent bursts out the front door, and finds himself across the street from a skyscraper bearing the Umbrella logo. Clearly, he thinks, this is where Umbrella controlled the island from. Memories flash through his mind as he looks at the building, but they come and go too quickly. The office is populated by zombies, Lickers, and the occasional Hunter. Vincent blasts his way to the thirteenth floor, into what would appear to have once been the office of the supreme commander: his office. There's been extensive fire damage recently. A bank of security monitors is still active, and he can see a little girl sitting at a console elsewhere in the building. Vincent finds his own diary on his old desk. In it, he's written about many things, such as the escape attempt that he thwarted via gunfire, and a boy named Lott who told him about a spy on the island. His final entries speak of a plot amongst his subordinates on the island. Due to his brutal execution of the escapees, his subordinates planned to gather evidence about the incident and report it to Vincent's superiors at Umbrella. Vincent, in a fit of insane rage, unleashed the T-Virus on Sheena Island, making it look like an accident. Now he intends to dispatch the spy and return to Umbrella for his reward. Vincent's search is interrupted by a Mr. X unit punching through the wall. After another intense gunfight, Vincent picks a keycard out of the rubble. The keycard opens a door further down the hallway, to the security office. As Vincent enters the office, he hears an aged voice, claiming to be his mother. His mother begs him to stop committing his horrible crimes and just come home. When he rounds the corner, he finds the little girl, who's listening to one of Vincent's own telephone conversations on tape. He tries to talk to the girl, who's upset and crying, but someone nearly caves his skull in from behind with a baseball bat. It's the boy from earlier, who threatens Vincent, then grabs his sister, Lily, and runs for it. On the security desk, Vincent finds yet more allegations against himself. A document, apparently written by one of the leaders of the conspiracy against him, says that not only did Vincent kill one of his colleagues for a promotion before coming to Sheena Island, but through tapping Vincent's 'phone, the conspirators had unquestionable proof that Vincent killed the escapees and hushed it up. If Vincent hadn't destroyed Sheena Island, he'd probably have wound up in a prison somewhere. Vincent pockets the document and runs after the children. While he's waiting for an elevator, Mr. X catches up to Vincent once again. Another volley of gunfire takes the creature down, and Vincent takes the elevator back down to the first floor. He pursues the children through a parking garage, and through an overflowing rain gutter choked with Hunters. Finally, Vincent finds his way out of the gutter, to a small, well-furnished house. He finds Lott's diary, and in the same room, he finds Lily hiding in a closet. She tells him that Lott has gone to the nearby factory, hoping to find a way out, but she's afraid that with all the monsters in the factory, Lott will be killed. Vincent decides that no matter who he was in the past, that's not who he is now, and tells Lily that he'll save Lott. He leaves Lily in her house, and enters the factory. Lily wasn't kidding. The factory is overrun with lickers, Hunters, zombies, and dogs. Vincent barely manages to stay alive as he activates a tram car, taking him to another part of the factory. He dispatches yet another Mr. X, only to find himself dumped onto a mountain path where *four* of the creatures are standing guard. These creatures are smarter than the ones he's fought before, shielding their faces from Vincent's attack and rushing forward to try and knock him off of the path. Vincent blasts through them, fighting his way to the top of the mountain. The factory's entrance is a once-palatial mansion, now falling in on itself. As Vincent picks his way through the wreckage, he hears Lott scream from somewhere below. He makes his way downstairs. Yet *another* Mr. X is waiting to greet Vincent. He blows it away and proceeds into a control room, where he finds a Magnum revolver, the controls to an elevator, and a panicked confession written by one of the factory workers. The worker is hysterical over his work in the factory, which involves removing parts of the brains of the "guinea pigs," the teenage prisoners, and using those parts to create Tyrants. Vincent has ordered that this operation be carried out without anesthetic, which is driving the factory worker insane with guilt and grief. After reading this, Vincent activates the elevator, which carries him deeper into Umbrella's factory. More zombies, Lickers, and Hunters, led by yet another Mr. X, are waiting for Vincent. More of Umbrella's experiments in the creation of plant life are stored in tanks in this area, and, of course, they escape at the worst possible time. With luck, stealth, and sheer firepower, Vincent avoids or dispatches them all. Finally, he catches up to Lott, just in time to save the boy's life. Lott thanks Vincent, who starts to explain his actions. Lott stares at him blankly, and tells him that he's not Vincent after all. His name is Ark Thompson. Lott had told the real Vincent about Ark's arrival; Ark was the spy Vincent mentioned in his diary. As Ark tries to digest this, a woman's voice comes over the factory's speakers. Someone has triggered the base's self-destruct mechanisms. Ark asks Lott how they can get out of the factory, and Lott says that there's a railway system nearby. Ark says that he'll go there and set it up. He tells Lott to go back and get his sister. Lott takes off. As Ark heads through the next door, his memories suddenly return to him in a rush. His friend Leon Kennedy had asked him to come to Sheena Island and investigate it, and he'd posed as Vincent to do so. That's how he had introduced himself to Andy, the sewer manager, and how Lott had found out about the "spy." Ark had been ransacking Vincent's office when Vincent himself snuck up on him. Vincent had been ready to shoot Ark, but Ark overpowered him and escaped. During the scuffle, Vincent grabbed onto a set of dogtags Ark was wearing and pulled them off, which is why he had them in his hand when Ark found his body. As Ark attempted to take off in a helicopter, Vincent grabbed onto the landing gear and took a shot at him, which made the helicopter crash. Ark unlocks the way to the railway station, and finds himself in a final laboratory. At the lab's end is a vaguely humanoid creature, floating in a vat. It is roughly the size of a teenage boy, but has blue skin, no visible gender, and short claws on its left arm. A nearby document, written by the real Vincent Goldman, tells of how the prisoners were to be used. The process that creates Tyrants requires a chemical called Beta Hetero Nonserotonin. The chemical can only be found in the brains of human beings between the ages of fourteen and twenty, and is secreted by the pituitary gland when the human in question is extremely terrified or tense. Vincent's recommendation is to perform the necessary operation without anesthesia, which will cause the brain to secrete plenty of the needed chemical. Ark pockets this last file, takes a key from the lab, and heads towards the railway station. Unfortunately, some old friends have invited themselves to the party. Ark is confronted outside the Tyrant's lab by the leader of the Cleaners, who is surprised that Ark is still alive. Just before he can shoot Ark, he is suddenly impaled from behind. The Tyrant, fresh from its storage vat, pulls its claws out of the man's back and advances on Ark. Luckily, it's still sluggish from its imprisonment, and Ark overcomes it with relative ease. He leaves it in a bloody pile on the floor, and is long gone when it stands back up and roars. The Cleaners are waiting for Ark on the path to the railway station, but compared to what he's been fighting, they're barely a threat at all. He blasts through their ranks and finds Lott and Lily waiting for him at the railway station. Ark opens the gate on the subway tunnel, just in time for the Cleaners to spring one last ambush. Ark foils their plans, and jumps into the train as it takes off. The train takes them to an isolated helipad, and luckily, there's still a helicopter on the ground. Lott and Lily climb into the helicopter, but before Ark can join them, a large shape crashes down in the middle of the helipad. The Tyrant has returned. =========================================================== 7ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR =========================================================== As one might expect, the Tyrant has mutated after its earlier defeat. It is now much faster and stronger, and Ark can barely keep up with it. He blasts it again and again with acid-laced grenades and high-caliber bullets, dodging its claw swipes and mad lunges. For once, the Tyrant's unstable genetics work against it. Ark's assault eventually triggers another mutation; the Tyrant's muscles swell, to the point where it can barely move. It's still dangerous, but it's no longer able to dodge Ark's gunfire. Eventually, it can't stand up to his attacks any longer and collapses. Ark hastily scrambles aboard the helicopter and takes off. As he flies away from Sheena Island, the factory detonates. The explosion utterly destroys Umbrella's factory and devastates the remainder of the island. Suddenly, the helicopter shakes. Ark looks out the window, and finds that once more, he's acquired a stowaway. The Tyrant slowly pulls itself on board the helicopter, towards Lott and Lily. Ark banks the helicopter, putting the Tyrant in line with one of the helicopter's onboard missiles. He fires, and the missile takes the Tyrant in the stomach. It screams in rage as it's carried away from the helicopter by the impact, right up until Ark fires his second missile at it. The Tyrant disappears in a flash of fire. In the helicopter, Lott and Lily hold each other. Finally, Lily asks Ark where they're going. He says that he doesn't know, but they can fly as long as they have fuel. ====================== 7iii. Different Routes ====================== Survivor frequently makes you pick where to go, usually by offering a choice between three doors or something like that. Most of the time, the only real difference between routes is what you fight and what you'll find. Please note that you can never double back and choose another route once you've picked one, and that it's impossible to collect all of the guns and files on a single run through the game. The exception here is the second choice of direction, where you pick between the Library, the Arcade, and the Hospital. Which of these you pick determines what cutscene you see, and who shows up to get slaughtered by the Tyrant at the end of the game. If you enter the Arcade, you'll see a brief cutscene, as described above, where the Cleaners descend upon the city. The leader of the Cleaners is the lucky victim on this route. Upon going into the Library, you'll meet Andy the sewer manager, who will beg for his life right up until you hear the sound of an approaching helicopter. Andy will suddenly turn on you, and try to catch you in a deathtrap on the second floor. For his efforts, he gets to be the Tyrant's victim. Finally, if you choose the Hospital, Vincent will come back from the dead. He watches Ark enter the hospital through the security cameras in his office, and unleashes a Mr. X unit to track you down. Vincent is the only one to hear the Cleaners' arrival, and he muses aloud that Umbrella must be in a hurry. At the end of the game, he gets to die again at the claws of the Tyrant. Much like in my summary of RE3, I chose a route at random and went with it. To duplicate my summary, go to the Church and the Arcade, exit the Prison through the guard tower, run through Heaven's Night, and take the door on the right when you leave the Factory. ===================================== 7iv. Conclusions about the Conclusion ===================================== 1. Ark Thompson, Lott, and Lily have survived. 2. Vincent Goldman is dead. Good riddance. 3. Nicholai Ginovaef survived Raccoon City. His plan to be the only person able to bring information to Umbrella has paid off. 4. Sheena Island has been destroyed, along with its laboratories and its research. Umbrella has apparently lost a major facility for production of its bioweapons. 5. Leon Kennedy is alive and is still working against Umbrella. 6. Umbrella is a lot more depraved than we thought. Each Tyrant that's created means that a teenager died screaming. 7. Umbrella isn't merely a powerful corporation. In some parts of the world, it's a nation unto itself, capable of building entire cities. ================== 7v. Random Musings ================== 1. Say what you will about how lame CV's ending is, but Survivor's is much, much worse. 2. Separated at birth: Andy, and Chrono Cross's Sprigg? 3. I really don't care for this game. I can see how it'd be a lot more fun with a light gun, but with a control pad, it becomes incredibly frustrating. 4. Alert reader Phoenix notes that the endings of Survivor and George Romero's _Dawn of the Dead_ are remarkably similar. 5. Johannes Lemken writes to point out that Goldman is also the name of the villain in House of the Dead 2. ================================================================= 8. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA ================================================================= CV's an odd game, and has been reevaluated several times since it came out. It jumped platforms at least once, from PSOne to Dreamcast, and often comes off like it was designed by committee. It reintroduces Wesker to the series as its trademark supervillain, has some of the creepiest environments in the series, and is the last "classic" game in the main series. Code Veronica was originally released on the Dreamcast in 2000, where it became one of the best-selling releases in the system's life. It was later rereleased as Code Veronica X, which features several extra cutscenes and a much longer ending. All CVX-exclusive scenes will be enclosed in [brackets] during the summary. =============================================================== 8i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA =============================================================== In December of 1998, Claire Redfield travels to Paris and infiltrates an Umbrella facility there, hoping to find clues to the whereabouts of her brother Chris. She's discovered, and a chase ensues. As she runs from a pair of armed guards, she's blinded by a searchlight coming in through the window. When her eyes clear, she sees an attack helicopter hovering outside the building. As the helicopter's chaingun begins to warm up, Claire doubles back and ducks into the hallway as the helicopter opens fire. It shreds the two guards who were chasing her, but Claire manages to stay one step ahead of its arc of fire. The helicopter chases Claire the rest of the way down the hall. Just before its gunfire catches up with her, Claire jumps through an open door and down a flight of stairs. She rolls to her feet and finds herself eye-to-eye with at least two dozen of Umbrella's guards, all of whom are pointing guns at her. As they walk forward, Claire sees that they're standing in front of a tank full of flammable chemicals. Claire puts her hands up, drops her gun, hits the floor, catches the gun before it hits the ground, and puts her last three bullets into the tank. The resulting explosion sends the guards flying. Claire gets to her feet as another guard comes down the stairs. Both she and the guard react at the same time, shoving their guns in each other's faces, but the guard's gun has bullets in it. Hers doesn't. Ten days later, Claire is taken to an isolated prison by helicopter. She spends most of the ride there with a bag over her head. A guard tells her what her serial number is, takes the bag off, and welcomes her to her new home. Another guard cracks Claire in the face with the butt of his rifle, and she blacks out. She wakes up in a dank cell, somewhere underground. As Claire stands up, the cell shakes with distant explosions. It sounds as though a war is being fought aboveground. The lights flicker and die, leaving Claire alone in the darkness. Slowly, someone clutching his stomach shambles into the room and stands outside Claire's cell door. Claire uses her lighter to see who it is, and is surprised to see the face of the man who took her prisoner in Paris. The man unlocks her cell and opens the door. As Claire hesitantly steps out, he slumps into a nearby chair and pulls a bottle of medicine out of his pocket. It's empty, and he throws it against the floor in frustration. Without looking up, he tells Claire that this place is finished. They've been attacked by what he thinks is a "special forces team." Claire's free to leave the prison grounds, but he warns her that she has no chance of getting off the island. Before leaving the cellblock, Claire picks up a knife and notes that the man needs hemostatic medicine. A manifest on the desk tells her that the man's name is Rodrigo Juan Raval, and that he's a member of Umbrella's medical division. It's raining gently when Claire gets outside. The cellblock opens into a small graveyard. A truck has crashed through the wall, and is burning merrily. Suddenly, it explodes. A burning man climbs out of the driver's seat, and one look tells Claire that the man's become a zombie. Somehow, the T-Virus has been released. As Claire backs away from the burning zombie, more emerge from open graves all around her. Claire scrambles to her feet and runs through the nearest door. Claire gets about two steps out of the door when someone opens fire on her from a guard tower. Taking cover behind the crashed truck, she grabs a handgun off of a dead man and returns fire, shattering the gunman's spotlight and forcing him to take cover. The man screams. Claire demands that he tell her who he is. The man--a boy, really--is glad to see that she's not a zombie like he'd thought, and hops down from the tower. He introduces himself as Steve, another prisoner, and says that he's looking for an airport that he'd heard was on the island. Claire tries to follow him as he leaves, but Steve claims that she'd only slow him down. The prison is only lightly populated with zombies, so Claire doesn't have much trouble as she searches the place. Inside a nearby mess hall, she finds a map of the facility, as well as one of the other prisoners' diaries. The prisoner had managed to figure out that the island is south of the equator. The prison's file room and computer lab is nearby. Claire runs into Steve, who's playing with one of the computers. Steve asks her if she's related to Chris Redfield. When she says she is, he shows her that Chris is under electronic surveillance by Umbrella. Claire uses the computer's Internet connection to forward Chris's location to Leon Kennedy via e-mail, hoping that Leon can figure out some way to help her. Steve tells her that the latitude and longitude of the prison is stored on the computer and, with a snort, suggests that she have Leon forward that to her brother so he can come help them out. Claire thinks it's a good idea and does so, but Steve indignantly claims to have just been kidding; Chris won't come to help them. Claire denies this. Steve says angrily that other people will just let you down, and storms out of the computer lab. Claire is left alone again, wondering what Steve's problem is. Using one of the machines in the file room to forge a key, Claire lets herself out the prison's front gate. A recent rockfall has blocked the main exit and destroyed the main bridge, so Claire runs up a nearby staircase instead. To her surprise, she's now standing in front of a military training facility on one side, and a mansion on the other. She decides to investigate the mansion first. The mansion hasn't escaped damage in the recent assault, but the interior is more or less intact. Claire finds an ornate locked door in a study on the second floor, but instead of keys, the door is molded so as to accept a pair of guns. In the same room, she finds a diary kept by one of the servants that lived here. The servant talks about his master, Alfred, and how Alfred is incredibly secretive about his relationship with his sister Alexia. No one is allowed near her, or has even seen her except at a distance, sitting in the window of Alfred's house. Someone's private war museum is on the first floor. Antique handguns and models of battleships line the walls. Claire presses a button near a sculpture of a giant ant, and an old movie begins to play on the room's screen. The movie features two blond-haired, beautiful children, a boy and a girl, obviously twins. Slowly, the boy plucks the wings off of a dragonfly, and sets the helpless insect in an ant farm to be devoured. As the dragonfly writhes, the boy turns to the girl, and both share an innocent smile. The end of the movie coincides with a secret door opening in the corner of the room. Claire finds a pair of gold-inlaid Luger handguns inside, but taking them from their wall mount sets off a trap. The door slams shut, and hidden heaters turn the secret room into a furnace. Claire quickly replaces the guns and tries to leave the mansion, but as she reaches the front door, she hears Steve scream for help. She returns to the museum to find that he's fallen into the same trap, but refuses to put the Lugers back on the wall. Claire quickly figures out the room's computer systems and releases the secret door, freeing Steve. Claire recognizes the Lugers as what she needs to open the door in the study, but Steve refuses to give them to her unless she gives him something fully automatic. Once again, he runs off. In the front hall of the mansion, Claire notices a laser sight as it focuses on her head. She dives to the side and hides behind a pillar. The gunman, a blond man dressed in a blend of preppy fashion and military gear, demands that she tell him who her friends are. He's convinced that Claire deliberately let herself be captured so she could lead her allies to his base to destroy it. Claire says that she doesn't know what he's talking about, but he doesn't believe her. His name is Alfred Ashford, he says, commander of the base. Claire retorts that he must be one of Umbrella's low-ranking employees if he's in command of such a small, isolated facility. Alfred angrily tells her that his family, the Ashfords, is one of the oldest and greatest in the world. His grandfather was one of the original founders of Umbrella Incorporated. He leaves in a huff, telling Claire that she's just a rat in a cage. A strange setup outside the palace, when Claire plays with it, brings a submarine to the surface. She goes inside, and finds that the sub's a glorified underwater elevator. It takes her to a hidden seaport, where a fueled-up cargo plane is waiting. Even better, Claire's already found one of the three proofs she needs to work its access elevator. Claire finds a keycard inside an abandoned cargo bay, and heads back to the military training facility to see what it unlocks. The training yard is guarded by an enormous worm, which tunnels under the ground and attempts to devour Claire. She dodges it and runs into the facility. Stairs just inside the entrance lead to a lab on the second floor. The lab's experiment area is locked down due to environmental pollution. As Claire walks by the lab's observation window, a man in a biohazard suit desperately beats against it, trying to get her to open the door. Claire can't, and helplessly watches as something behind the man grabs him. The man's skull is crushed against the glass. As he sinks to the floor, a recording on the overhead speakers alerts Claire that the area has been contaminated, and will be locked down for ventilation. Claire barely makes it out of the lab before it seals itself. Claire finds extra ammunition in the facility's locker room, then sets out to explore the rest of the first floor. As she walks down a hallway, a steel gate silently shuts behind her. In the next room, Alfred Ashford tries to ambush her, and fails. Claire dodges his badly aimed gunfire and runs up to the balcony where he's aiming from, but Alfred is already gone. She chases him in the only direction he could've run in, but he seals every door behind her from somewhere else in the complex. As the final door locks, he jeers at her from a hidden speaker, telling her that he's prepared a special surprise for her. He hopes that she won't die too quickly. The only door that Alfred's left unlocked leads to a storeroom. A discarded pair of Ingram submachine guns lies on the balcony with Claire. She picks them up, just in time to watch a door on the other side of the room open. A new creature makes it way in; it resembles a zombie, except it only has one long arm. Its upper body is bulging with muscle. As Claire watches in horror, the creature's arm stretches to an impossible length, grabbing a pipe in the ceiling and using it to swing over to her. Claire barely manages to kill the creature. As the rubber man falls dead, Alfred opens a door via remote control. Claire tries to walk through it, but another rubber man drops from the ceiling and seizes her head with its arm. Claire struggles vainly against it as it hoists her into the air, threatening to either crush her skull or suffocate her. Suddenly, a window above the creature shatters. Steve dives through it, blasting the rubber man with the Lugers. Roaring in pain, the rubber man drops Claire. Steve drives it backward with a barrage of gunfire, kicks it into the corner, and finishes it off with a final gunshot to the head. He walks over and greets Claire, claiming to be her "knight in shining armor." Claire denies that he's any such thing, but offers him the Ingrams she found in exchange for his Lugers. Steve accepts the trade. Suddenly, the floor they're on begins to descend. When the floor stops moving, Steve runs ahead of Claire through the nearest door, anxious for an opportunity to try out his "new toys." Claire catches back up to him on a bridge overlooking the facility's sewer system, probably by following the long trail of spent shells and dead zombies he's left behind him. Steve claims that this is why Claire needs him around; he'll watch her back. He then contradicts himself, saying that the Ingrams he's been using are more reliable than any person. Claire, who's still confused by him, asks him why he's on this island, and where his family is. Steve's response is to yell that he doesn't want to talk about it and to shoot at the wall. He runs into a nearby elevator, and Claire follows. The path Alfred has set for them leads to a balcony overlooking a motor pool. As Claire runs up to Steve, the balcony collapses underneath them. Steve falls free, but Claire is pinned underneath a chunk of rubble. A zombie shambles towards Steve, who raises his Ingrams, but doesn't fire. Claire yells at him to shoot it, but Steve freezes. The zombie turns towards Claire. Steve hesitates for a single long moment, then levels both Ingrams at the zombie and yells, "FATHER!" He empties both guns into the zombie and sinks to his knees, sobbing. Steve explains to Claire that his father used to work for Umbrella, but had begun stealing information and auctioning it off to the highest bidder. Umbrella caught him. Steve's mother was killed, and he and his father were sent to this prison. He despises his father for being so reckless and stupid. Claire comforts him, telling him to rest, and leaves him alone to mourn. Alfred has apparently given up on his "deathtrap." The only other problems Claire encounters in the military facility are zombies and the odd mutated dog. In a storeroom, she finds a copy of the Ashford family crest, which depicts an eagle clutching a halberd in its claws. The crest is forged of some kind of blue metal, while the halberd seems to be inlaid gold. Elsewhere in the facility, the crest opens a compartment containing a copy of Alfred's personal keycard. Using that and the card she found earlier, Claire is able to unlock most of the doors inside the base. Among other things, she finds a grenade launcher and the medicine that Rodrigo needs. Claire unlocks another door to find a monitor room. The screens are still lit up. Inside, she finds the second key to the cargo plane's door, as well as data on a creature called an "Albanoid," the result of injecting the T-Virus into a salamander. The creature is capable of generating powerful electric shocks, and reaches adulthood only ten hours after being "born." One of the monitors displays the access password to the contaminated lab she was in earlier, as well as letting her know that the lab's systems have finished the ventilation process. Inside the lab, Claire takes a painting she finds on the wall. As she does so, an infant Albanoid breaks out of one of the nearby storage vats. Before Claire can do anything, the insanely quick creature disappears into one of the ventilation shafts. Claire is forced to escape from the lab a second time, as the automated systems declare the lab contaminated and permanently seal the area. In the storeroom where Claire found the Ashfords' crest, she uses the painting to solve a puzzle. The wall of the storeroom slides back, revealing an elaborate diorama of the facility and a golden key. Heading back to the mansion, Claire uses the Lugers to unlock the door in the study. The door leads to what looks like Alfred's private office. Using his computer, Claire discovers yet another secret passage, leading through an abandoned aqueduct to an enormous house, sitting high up the side of a mountain. Claire heads towards it as lightning and thunder crash in the distance, and a woman's mocking laughter echoes over the island. The house has been hit fairly hard by the assault on the island. It's guarded by rubber men, but Claire easily avoids them and gets inside. The interior of the house is a twisted parody of childhood, with either dolls or books covering every available surface. A larger-than-life doll dangles from the chandelier hook in the ceiling, eviscerated. Most of the furniture is sized for children, or for dolls. On the house's second floor, Claire walks in on a conversation between Alfred and his until-now-absent sister, Alexia. As Claire lurks outside her bedroom window, Alexia asks an unseen Alfred what's taking so long, when his opponent is only a little girl. Alfred's success is necessary, Alexia continues, to restore the honor of the Ashford family. Alfred insists that he doesn't need to be reminded. He intends to raise Alexia to the position of leader of the once-again-glorious Ashford family. Alexia sees Claire, but chalks it up to her own imagination. The twins, having finished their conversation, leave. Cautiously, Claire enters the twins' bedrooms, but no one is in either of them, and she didn't see either of them in the hall. A locked secret door above the bed in Alexia's room tells her why. Both rooms feature an ornate, locked music box, both of which require yet another unique key. Claire finds a silver key in Alexia's room and heads back to the mansion. Claire uses the keys she's found to unlock several doors inside the palace. One door leads to a boardroom, where, after a frantic battle with a pair of rubber men, she finds another copy of the Ashfords' crest. Another room, a private casino, is apparently where Alfred goes for recreation. The last and largest room in the palace is a shrine to the past leaders of the Ashford family. An oil painting of a twelve-year-old Alfred is in the place of highest honor. An inscription tells the onlooker to find the family's real master, with a history of the Ashfords lying underneath it. When Claire solves the puzzle, the picture of Alfred rotates, revealing a painting of an adult Alexia. Underneath her picture, Claire finds an ant-shaped key that will fit the music box in Alexia's bedroom. With nowhere to go for now, Claire takes the crest back to the prison, where it unlocks a door she saw earlier. The door leads to the prison's medical facility, which is guarded by a mob of zombies. Claire dispatches them handily. Inside the medical facility, she finds stacked body bags and the journal of the facility's doctor. The doctor is apparently just as sick and crazy as everyone else who works for Umbrella, and Alfred lets him use the base's prisoners to pursue his "studies." If the base hadn't been attacked, Claire herself might've been one of the doctor's guinea pigs. Claire investigates the prison's crematorium, which has little of interest besides a small chair in the corner, sized for a child. When she comes back, one of the body bags is empty, and a zombie in a lab coat is feeding desperately on the dissected corpse. The doctor has apparently returned. Claire shoots him dead, and finds a glass eye on his body. The eye fits in the doctor's anatomical dummy, which opens a secret passage to the doctor's private chambers, filled with antique but well-used torture devices. Blood cakes the floor. Claire finds a roll of piano music in this hellish place, and leaves as soon as she can. Rodrigo is still in the dark cellblock when Claire gets back there. She gives him the vial of medicine. A surprised Rodrigo thanks her, but refuses any further help. Claire lets him keep her lighter, and mentions that it was a gift from her brother. In gratitude, Rodrigo gives her a set of lockpicks, and urges her to leave while she still can. [Claire returns to Alfred's palace. As she puts her hands on the front door, someone behind her says her name. She asks who he is, and he claims he is a "ghost from the past, come back to haunt your brother Chris." Claire recognizes the man as Wesker. Wesker says that it's good to see her; he attacked the island, but wasn't expecting Claire to be there. Now Chris will definitely show up, he says with a smile. Claire says that she doesn't know what went on between Wesker and Chris, but Chris isn't the kind of person Wesker seems to think he is. Wesker's response is to grab Claire by the throat and toss her away. [He walks up to Claire, who's struggling to move, and cruelly puts one foot on her shoulder. It will pain Chris to see Claire die, Wesker says, but he's interrupted by a radio message. Whoever it is apparently has new information, and Wesker winds up walking away. Apparently, Claire may still be of use to him, Wesker says. He looks back at Claire, and his eyes glow red through his sunglasses. Claire gasps, and Wesker, his body blurring with sudden speed, jumps over the patio railing into darkness.] The piano roll from the torture chamber fits in the piano in Alfred's recreation room. As the piano plays the same song that Alfred's music box did, a secret panel in one of the slot machines swings open. Inside, Claire finds the key to Alfred's music box. The music boxes are the disguised keys to a secret door in Alfred's bedroom. Claire goes through to find herself standing on a full-sized merry-go-round with only two horses. The room is filled with toys and keepsakes of the twins' childhood. A golden dragonfly sits on a child's chair, across the room from a painting of an ant. The ant's mouth is a concealed keyhole. Remembering the movie in Alfred's museum, Claire plucks the dragonfly's wings off and puts it in the ant's "mouth." Behind her, the merry-go-round starts up again and turns, orienting itself so Claire can climb up to yet another level in the room. The final tier of Alfred's hideaway is a well-cared-for study. Thick, well-thumbed books on biology, chemistry, and genetics fill the bookcases on the walls. A newspaper clipping on a stool is about a 10-year-old girl, maybe Alexia, who graduated from a university with top honors. She was offered a job as a head researcher by Umbrella Incorporated. On top of one of the bookcases, Claire finds Alfred's private diary. He has written of his unwholesome obsession with his sister; he regards Alexia as his queen, a woman who the entire world must worship. Claire takes the diary, and finds that it hides the final key to the cargo plane. She can finally escape. As she climbs down into Alexia's bedroom, Alexia herself somehow sneaks up on Claire. Holding Alfred's rifle, Alexia says that for the glory of the Ashfords, Claire must die. Claire dodges Alexia's first shot, but she knows the second won't miss. Alexia moves in for the kill. Suddenly, Steve kicks in the bedroom door. He sees Alexia at the same time she sees him, and each point their weapon at the other. Alexia fires first, grazing Steve. As Steve falls to the floor, he returns the favor with a wild burst from one of his Ingrams. Alexia retreats into Alfred's bedroom through a secret door. Steve and Claire cautiously follow Alexia. At the end of a trail of blood, Claire finds a blond wig on Alfred's music box. As she picks it up, Alfred suddenly jumps from above his bed, meaning to crush Claire's skull with the butt of his rifle. Claire dodges, and as Alfred takes a second swing, Steve kicks him across the room and holds him at gunpoint. Alfred drags himself shakily to his feet, and accidentally catches a glimpse of himself in the bedroom window. He's wearing the same makeup that Alexia was. Screaming insanely, Alfred runs, and a shocked Steve lets him go. Steve, confused, asks what just happened. Claire, realizing that she never did see Alfred during his "conversation" with Alexia, concludes that there must never have really been an Alexia. Alfred went to such extremes to hide Alexia from everyone on the island because he thought he *was* Alexia. This weirds Steve out, who decides that now they *really* have to get out of this place (forget about the undead monsters; it takes a *transvestite* to bother our man Steve). No sooner does he say that than alarm klaxons start ringing all over the factory. Alfred has activated the base's self-destruct system by remote control. Several cargo planes fly overhead as Claire and Steve leave the mansion. Steve guesses that the other survivors are on them. Quickly, Claire and Steve follow their example and run for the underwater airport. Claire's keys unlock the cargo plane's door, and Steve sets into the pilot's seat. He begins to prepare the plane for takeoff, but the airport's maintenance bridge is in the way. Claire volunteers to raise the bridge while Steve gets ready to take off. Claire dashes across the airport and throws a switch, raising the bridge. This forces her to take the long way around to get back to the plane. Claire uses the airport's cargo elevator to return to the training facility's courtyard. A female voice, almost exactly the same as the one she heard in William Birkin's lab, tells Claire that the facility will explode in five minutes. As Claire boards the elevator, Alfred has reached the training facility's monitor room. Speaking in Alexia's voice, he swears revenge on Claire. He types a series of passwords into a computer and punches a red button. A lab elsewhere in the facility suddenly powers up. Automated systems defrost a storage tank marked T-078. It swings open, and a new creature steps out. It looks nearly human, save for its chalk-white skin and lack of gender. Both arms terminate in clublike, spiked protrusions. A new Tyrant has been unleashed. Claire starts running the moment the elevator opens. As she turns the corner towards Alfred's palace, the Tyrant breaks down a fence and steps into her way. It wades through a hail of explosive bolts, only to collapse at Claire's feet. Claire jumps over its body and takes off towards the airport. Steve is anxiously waiting for her when Claire gets back to the plane. He takes off just as the base begins to rock with scattered explosions. They get into the air without a hitch, and for a moment, Claire dares to think that their ordeal is over. Steve tells her that he hopes she finds her brother, because he now knows what it's like to be alone in the world. After an uncomfortable silence, he changes the subject, asking her where she wants to go. Claire suggests Hawaii, and Steve sets a course. Back on the island, Alfred runs to the antique tank he keeps outside the military training facility. He opens a hatch on its back and moves the tank forward, revealing yet another secret passage. Using a special key, a minature gold halberd like the one on his family crest, Alfred opens the door at the passage's end, which leads to a hangar. Alfred climbs into a Harrier jet marked with the Ashfords' crest, and promises Claire to show her what real terror is all about. A sudden impact shakes the cargo plane. Steve looks at the plane's instruments, and somehow, the cargo bay's door has come open. Claire volunteers to check it out. Claire finds a stowaway in the cargo bay: the Tyrant. It roars in anger, and one of its spikes grows into a vicious claw. Claire's weapons only seem to slow the creature down, but fortunately, the cargo catapult is loaded and ready to fire. Claire leads the Tyrant near the open cargo bay door, dodges one of its mad lunges, and hits the switch on the catapult. A crate full of explosives is fired at the weakened Tyrant, knocking it out the cargo hatch. Before they can hit the ocean, the crate explodes. As she walks into the cockpit, Steve asks Claire what was wrong. Claire nonchalantly tells him that it was nothing. As Steve grins, the plane's autopilot suddenly turns on. Steve tries to turn manual control back on, with no luck. Alfred's sneering face appears on a screen above the pilot's seat. With a chuckle, he tells Claire and Steve that he's selected a new destination for them. Several hours pass. Steve is slumped against the side of the cockpit, with Claire asleep on his shoulder. He turns to look at her, and slowly lowers his face to hers. Just before he can kiss her, Claire starts to wake up, and Steve jerks away. Standing up, he looks out the plane's window and realizes that the plane is descending. Steve looks at the plane's instruments and sees that they're over Antarctica. As the plane heads towards the ground, Claire sees a small facility on the ground. Parked outside it are the cargo planes that they saw leave the island. Apparently, Umbrella owns this base as well. The plane's autopilot apparently doesn't know how to land. It descends to the base's runway, but goes into a skid. The plane crashes into the side of the base. Both Claire and Steve are knocked unconscious. More time passes. Claire wakes up on the floor of the plane's cockpit and wakes Steve up, who's surprised that he's still alive. Umbrella's base is constructed around a deep chasm of some sort. Steve kicks the plane's door out and jumps down onto the base's balcony. As Claire jumps out, he catches her, but accidentally falls down with her on top of him. After a few seconds' worth of cheap sexual tension, Claire gets to her feet and offers Steve her hand. Steve ignores her and gets up. At his suggestion, they split up to look for a way out. Alone, Claire explores the base. In a barracks for Umbrella's employees, she's caught in a crude ambush by a quartet of zombies. The base may look deserted, but it's still inhabited by its share of monsters. The base appears to be both a mine, although Claire never finds out what it's mining for, and a warehouse for Umbrella's chemical shipments. One of the miners has left his diary behind. He has written about both Alfred's tyranny as a supervisor, and the creature that's rumored to haunt the base. The miners call him "Nosferatu," and say that late at night, you can hear him roar. A richly furnished office on the base's second floor belongs to Alfred, and inside, Claire finds a note written to Alfred from his family's butler, offering Alfred condolences on his sister's death. There *was* an Alexia Ashford, but according to the letter, she died in an unspecified accident fifteen years ago, soon after Alfred's father was killed. Alfred was forced to assume the responsibilities of an adult at a young age, and lost his beloved sister soon afterward. His insanity starts to make a little more sense. A second folder contains a report/confession by Alexander Ashford, the twins' father and the original architect of this base. His report concerns the founding of Umbrella, the creation of the T-Virus, the death of his own father, and the Ashfords' fall from grace. The most interesting revelation is the fact that there's a great deal of competition in the field of T-Virus research. Umbrella isn't the only company in the world that deals in monsters. After dealing with the base's meager population of zombies, dogs, and giant spiders, Claire reactivates the base's generator. Now that the lights are back on, Claire searches Alfred's office again and finds a hidden switch. Pushing it slides a door back, revealing a room with a mesh floor. Far below this room, a screaming man is blindfolded, gagged, and shackled to the wall. An ornate battle axe is embedded in the wall with its haft across his chest. His scream is a completely inhuman, bonechilling sound. This must be the "Nosferatu" that the miner was writing about. Claire finds the key to the base's machine room and leaves Nosferatu's prison. The base's mining drill can be controlled from the machine room. Claire meets back up with Steve, who tells her that there's an Australian outpost seven miles from the base. If they can use the drill to break out of the base, they might be able to reach the outpost. Steve takes control of the drill and starts to guide it towards the wall, but at a crucial moment, he's staring dreamily at Claire instead of watching what he's doing. He winds up smashing open a pipe filled with toxic gas, which fills the mining and machine rooms. Claire grabs him by the scruff of the neck and yanks him out of the room. Steve gets outside and immediately starts beating himself up over being so stupid. Claire tells him to not blame himself. (Not right *now*, anyway.) Whatever happens, they'll escape, and they'll do it together. Steve is cheered up by this, and runs off to find a way to fix what he's done. Claire, using a gas mask and a reshaped valve handle, proceeds to do it for him by shutting off the flow of gas through the pipes. The air clears in the mining room. Claire takes off the gas mask and is immediately ambushed by a freshly arrived Alfred Ashford. Steve arrives in the nick of time, and, after a short gunfight, shoots Alfred in the chest. Alfred falls over the railing of the machine room to the floor of the mining room, next to one of the yawning pits that the base was built on top of. He staggers to his feet, but the edge of the pit crumbles underneath him. Alfred falls out of sight, screaming. After he disappears, something at the bottom of the pit roars in rage. Claire picks up Alfred's sniper rifle and gets into the mining drill with Steve. Steve throws the drill into gear and drives forward through the wall. The heat produced by the drill melts the ice on the other side of the wall, which in turn floods most of the base. In his prison below Alfred's office, Nosferatu roars. His chest splits open with a sickening crack, revealing his oversized first-generation-Tyrant-esque heart. With casual ease, he pulls himself away from the wall, snapping steel shackles like spiderwebs. The axe across his chest is thrown across the room and sticks in the floor. Steve and Claire get out of the drill. They climb up to the top of a nearby helipad, and find a staircase on the other side. Claire is about to go down the stairs when she sees Nosferatu at their bottom, coming up. Steve steps in front of her and points his Ingrams at Nosferatu, yelling for it to back off. Suddenly, an enormous mandible, like that of a praying mantis, sprouts from the Nosferatu's back and swats Steve, sending him tumbling off of the edge of the helipad. Claire runs to where Steve fell, to find him clinging by one hand to one of the helipad's support struts. Steve begs Claire to run and save herself. Claire replies that she'll help him up as soon as she (and I quote) waxes the monster. Using Alfred's rifle, Claire puts a bullet straight through the Nosferatu's heart. Claire helps Steve up. Steve apologizes; despite having saved her life at least three times in the last day, he feels that he failed her against Nosferatu. Claire claps him on the shoulder and tells him to forget it. Steve stands up, clutching the bullet wound Claire just accidentally hit, and quietly promises that next time, he will protect her. At the bottom of the stairs, Claire and Steve find a snowmobile. Claire gets into the driver's seat and starts it up. It'll easily reach the Australian outpost. Somewhere in the base, Alfred Ashford drags himself down a long hallway. He is mortally wounded. In his own voice, he promises Claire that things aren't over between them. Alfred collapses inside a laboratory, on a set of stairs leading to a raised platform. In a faint voice, he says Alexia's name. Suddenly, a series of computers and monitors activate. A cylinder rises in front of Alfred and defrosts. Fluid drains out of it, revealing the form of a naked, blonde woman. "Alexia... you're finally awake. Alexia..." Alfred says, and dies. The woman's eyes widen in anger. Claire and Steve talk and joke as they drive towards freedom. Something enormous, moving so fast that it's unidentifiable, shatters the roof of Umbrella's Antarctic base and races towards Claire and Steve's snowmobile. Steve sees it in the rearview mirror just before it reaches them. Whatever it is, it hits the snowmobile with stunning force and knocks it onto its side. The thing that hit it lashes around the snowmobile like a boa constrictor, slamming it into the ground. The naked woman sits on the stairs where Alfred died, cradling her brother's head. She hums to herself quietly as she strokes his hair. On one of the nearby monitors, she is watching the snowmobile burn. Meanwhile, back on Rockfort, a small boat drops off a single passenger. Slowly, Chris Redfield climbs hand-over-hand up a sheer cliff, burdened by a heavy bag filled with equipment. As he hauls himself up, one of his handholds breaks away, and Chris accidentally drops his bag into the ocean. Grimly, he continues onward, finding a cave on the side of the cliff. The cave has been turned into a mausoleum. Chris has been in it for a few seconds when the ground shakes. Something nearby roars, and Chris's entrance collapses. A man is slumped against the wall of the mausoleum. Rodrigo, whose wounds haven't gotten much better, has made his way here from the cellblock. He says that he had thought he was the only man on the island who was still alive. Chris replies that he's looking for a girl named Claire Redfield. Rodrigo recognizes the name and tells Chris that he's wasting his time; Rodrigo helped her escape, and he's sure that she was on one of the planes that left the island. Chris thanks him for helping out. Suddenly, the worm Claire encountered returns. Chris is able to get out of its way, but Rodrigo cannot. The worm swallows him whole and disappears into the soft earth of the mausoleum. Chris catches up to the worm in a large cave nearby. If he hadn't dropped his bag, he'd have something more appropriate to the job, but all he has is his Glock handgun. The worm is soft-bodied, though, and the handgun proves to be enough. After Chris shoots it a few dozen times, the worm spasms and dies, spitting Rodrigo out onto the cave floor. Mortally wounded, Rodrigo tells Chris to leave the island, and gives him the lighter that Claire gave Rodrigo earlier. Rodrigo says that it'll be good to see his family again, and dies. An elevator has been cut into the cave wall. Sadly, Chris leaves Rodrigo's body behind and takes the elevator down, winding up in the military training facility's motor pool. The military training facility has weathered the base's self-destruct sequence surprisingly well. Chris finds his way outside, to the courtyard where Alfred kept his tank. Alfred's escape route is obvious, but he's puzzle-locked it with an incomplete version of the Ashfords' crest. Chris hooks up a battery to a lift system in the motor pool, which takes him up to the balcony. He finds a document and a key on a shelf, where they've apparently been discarded. The document is a report on the properties of a new metal alloy called Duploid. While Duploid is remarkably durable, a combination of two common chemicals will dissolve it. This metal is what the Ashford crests were made out of. A door on the balcony leads to the hall outside the facility control room. Inside, someone is singing. Chris runs in. The main screen of the control room shows a woman in an evening gown, cradling a dead man in her lap. (Alexia is dressed exactly how Alfred dressed, when he was pretending to be her.) Chris watches her sing, unsure as to how to react, until the screen goes dark. In the airport, near where Claire boarded the cargo plane, a man in black curses as he watches Alexia sing; she's not supposed to be fully conscious yet. Another security monitor comes on, showing Chris. The man in black is surprised to see Chris, but immediately arranges a surprise for him. He activates a small hovercraft by remote control and opens a large white storage device. Slowly, a reptilian creature climbs out; although it looks different, it is unmistakably a Hunter. As the hovercraft flies away, the man in black laughs. [CVX: the man in black's monologue is slightly different. It will also make you instantly lose all respect for Wesker.] In the room where Alfred ambushed Claire, one of the Ashford crests is lying in plain sight. No sooner has Chris seen it than it falls through a hole in the floor. Chris realizes that if he dissolves the crest, he'll be left with a golden halberd which'll unlock the secret door underneath the tank. That means he has to figure out how to get into the base's underground waterway. He takes the elevator to the basement. Most of the basement has been flooded with toxic gas after the failure of the ventilation system, but a staircase that was raised when Claire was here has now fallen. At its bottom, Chris appropriates a shotgun and walks through a storage room, right by the cylinder from which Alfred released the Tyrant. The key from the balcony unlocks a storage locker, in which Chris finds one of the chemicals he needs to dissolve the crest. In a pile of wrecked transport crates on the facility's cargo elevator, he also finds a doorknob, which he can use to open a door on the second floor. He kneels to pick it up, and a beam of red light shines on his back. Chris looks up to see a small hovercraft, equipped with a spotlight. It sounds an alarm. In response, a pair of Hunters leap down on Chris from the top of the elevator shaft. Chris barely evades them. The hovercrafts are suddenly everywhere in the base. If they detect Chris, an alarm sounds, and a Hunter arrives almost immediately. Chris carefully avoids the hovercrafts' motion detectors, as well as a swarm of fresh zombies. These zombies are dressed in black military gear and wearing night-vision goggles. Obviously, the people who invaded the facility, whoever they are, are having their own problems. On the second floor, Chris finds a small model of a tank. Earlier, Chris has seen the diorama of the facility, so he heads back there. The tank model fits into an empty space on the diorama. A secret panel hisses open behind Chris, revealing a lever guarded by laser beams, a trio of keyholes, a book, and a key to the cargo elevator. The book is one of Alfred's diaries, where he has written about his plans to build a new bridge from the facility to his mansion, using the labor of his prisoners. The entrance he uses now, which takes him to his mansion via the facility's underground waterway, is sealed by what Alfred calls the "diorama trick." On his way back to the cargo elevator, Chris is walking through the storage room when he hears chuckling behind him. He turns to find the man in black... Albert Wesker. Somehow, Wesker is still alive. Chris realizes that it must've been Wesker who attacked the facility, which means Wesker attacked his sister. [CV Complete note: this dialogue is slightly different.] Chris raises his gun to shoot Wesker. Suddenly, Wesker is a blur. He covers the space between him and Chris in a fraction of a second and knocks Chris across the room. With superhuman speed and strength, Wesker races over to where Chris landed and picks him up by the throat. As Chris struggles to breathe, Wesker tells him that since Chris spoiled his plans, Wesker has "sold his soul" to a new employer. Furthermore, Wesker's figured out that Claire isn't on the island any more; she's with Alexia, in the Antarctic. Wesker begins to slowly strangle Chris. Chris punches Wesker in the face, knocking off his sunglasses. This reveals Wesker's eyes. To Chris's shock, they are yellow. Their pupils are slitted like a cat's. A screen by the storage cylinders lights up, showing Alexia Ashford. She laughs, and the screen goes blank. Wesker, surprised, throws Chris across the room and into one of the storage cylinders. A rubber man is released into the room from the broken cylinder, and by the time Chris has dealt with it, Wesker has disappeared. Chris takes the cargo elevator up to the first floor of the facility. The side of the elevator shaft has been breached, which leads to the partially collapsed front hall. Scattered fires are still burning fitfully. Chris navigates through what's left of the first floor and finds the controls to the ventilation system. He turns it back on, clearing the toxic gas from the basement. In the basement, by someone's work desk, Chris finds the other chemical he needs. Mixing them together, he creates a compound that'll dissolve Duploid. The front door of the facility is unlocked and undamaged. Chris walks outside, and while the door to the palace has been blocked by rubble, the airport elevator still works. Chris rides it down. The airport is just about untouched, although it's now populated by Hunters and a handful of zombies. Chris fights his way to the bridge controls and lowers the bridge that Claire raised. On the airport's control platform, Chris finds the three keys that Claire used to open the cargo plane; they'll also fit in the keyholes by Alfred's diorama. When Chris uses the three keys, the diorama slides back into the wall to reveal an escape hatch in the floor. The tunnel to Alfred's mansion has partially collapsed, making access to the mansion impossible, but the Ashfords' family crest is lying in a pool of water. It's guarded by an enormous creature that looks like a cross between a manta ray and an electric eel. This is the Albanoid that Claire saw earlier, and it has reached adulthood. Chris jumps into the water, grabs the crest, and scrambles back out before the creature can electrocute him. The crest dissolves when Chris uses the chemical mixture on it, leaving him with a golden halberd. Finally, Chris can see what's at the end of Alfred's secret passage. The "key" lets him into Alfred's private hangar. One of Alfred's private Harrier jets is brought to Chris by automated machinery. Chris smiles and climbs in. Chris flies to Antarctica, and lands in an underground hangar by Umbrella's base. He takes the elevator up to the base's balcony. Claire and Steve's plane is still sticking out of the wall, but to Chris's surprise, a pair of tentacles are lying across the balcony, almost as if they're standing guard over something. After he shoots them a few times, the tentacles withdraw in a spray of green blood. Most of the base's second floor has frozen into a solid block of ice. Alfred's office is still untouched. Inside, Chris uses the halberd key to open a locked bookcase. Inside, he finds an old diary of Alfred Ashford's and an oddly labelled paperweight. Alfred has written about, among other things, the "secret" of his and Alexia's birth, the experiment that turned his father into a monster, and Alexia's decision to experiment on herself. Alexia Ashford, after faking her own death, has been in cryogenic storage for the last fifteen years. Alfred also writes that there's a secret passage in the base, and he needs the three jewels worn by each member of the Ashford family to open it. Chris makes a note of this before he leaves. Earlier, when Claire was at this base, part of the walkway above the sorter had collapsed, keeping her from going through the doors on the other side of the room. Now, Chris can just jump off of the walkway and run across the ice to the other half of the catwalk. A crane hook is stuck in the ice, but Chris needs a key to work the hook's controls. He leaves through the nearest door, but as he does, he doesn't see a massive shape moving beneath him. In a hallway, Chris finds two more of Wesker's hovercraft waiting for him. Apparently, Wesker has come to Antarctica as well. He adroitly dodges the hovercrafts' searchlights and ducks into a nearby elevator. On the next floor down, he finds a switchboard and turns the base's power back on, reactivating a series of elevators. The fifth floor of the base has a strange room that's familiar to Chris; it's a near-exact replica of the front hall of the Spenser mansion. (It is now more accurate to say that it's a near-exact replica of the PSX RE's mansion; it bears next to no resemblance to the REv.2 Spencer estate.) A hall leading out of it, lined with biohazard suits, has a statue of a tiger at its end that resembles one in that other mansion's basement. Chris steps out of the elevator onto the base's sixth floor, and stops. An enormous anthill has been built here, towering above the floor and surrounded by thousands of mutated ants. Chris forges through the ants to the laboratories on either side of the anthill. One lab hasn't been used for a while, and Chris finds Alexia's research notes inside. She somehow fused the remnants of a virus from the body of a queen ant with the T-Virus, creating a new virus that she refers to as the "T-Veronica," after her ancestor. This virus is what she used to turn her father into a monster, and what she used on herself. The other lab is cutting-edge and has been carefully maintained. There's a trail of blood leading to it. The inside of the room is lined with supercomputers, each one of which is hooked up to a strange mechanism at the far corner of the room. Chris activates it by solving another of Alfred's puzzles, and a cryogenic tube shoots up behind Chris. Alfred's corpse falls out of the tube. Chris recognizes Alfred's ring as one of the three proofs he read about, and takes it. Back on the second floor, Chris finds the key to the crane in an aquarium, of all places. He starts up the crane, and it breaks through the ice. Alexander Ashford's dead body is impaled on the crane's hook. Chris recoils in shock and disgust. Behind the body, Alexia Ashford is standing on the other side of the room. She laughs at him, and asks Chris how he wants to die. A spider, bigger than any Chris has yet seen, bursts forth from the hole in the ice. Chris throws himself out of the crane's control room as the spider crushes it. Alexia has disappeared. Fortunately, while her spider is huge, it isn't smart or fast, and Chris can run circles around it. Before he leaves, Chris takes an earring from Alexander's body. Back in the replica of the Spencer mansion's front hall, Chris finds a painting of the last generation of Ashfords, with hollows at Alexander's ear, Alfred's finger, and Alexia's throat. The jewels from Alfred's ring and Alexander's earring fit perfectly. Behind the mansion's staircase, Chris finally finds Claire, unconscious inside a coccoon. He cuts her out of it and waits until she wakes up. She hugs him, and tells him that she can't leave until they find Steve. She explains who Steve is, and says that they were separated. From the balcony, Alexia laughs at Claire and Chris. Holding Alfred's rifle, she promises to destroy the "genetically inferior siblings" before disappearing through a nearby door. Chris and Claire give chase, with Claire in the lead. As Chris ascends the stairs, a tentacle bursts through the wall and destroys the balcony beneath him. Chris falls to the floor, and both he and Claire are knocked unconscious. The tentacle, which looks like an eyeless snake, descends to the floor and examines Chris before disappearing back through the hole in the wall. Claire is the first to wake up. She leans over the edge of the destroyed balcony to look at Chris, who is awake and clutching at his leg. From behind the door Alexia went through, she hears Steve scream. Chris tells her to save him, and that he'll be fine. With a final look at Chris, Claire runs. Two more tentacles try to ambush Claire as she runs after Alexia, but she cuts them down with bursts of rifle fire. She emerges in a cellblock, with Alexia nowhere in sight. One of the cells has been turned into storage for antique weapons, and underneath a cannon, Claire finds a blue binder. A note inside, written by Alexander, tells the reader how to arm the base's self-destruct system. The password, of course, is "Veronica." Inside the cannon is a keycard, suspended in a glass sphere. Claire shatters the glass and takes the keycard. The closest place where Alexia could've gone is an empty room with a lowered gate. Claire opens the gate with the keycard, but as she does so, the door to the cellblock audibly locks. Beyond the gate is a hallway lined with suits of armor. At its end is the room that once imprisoned Alexander Ashford. It now imprisons Steve Burnside. Claire hits a switch on the wall, and Steve's shackles open. The battle axe across his chest refuses to budge, even with both of them pushing it. Steve tells Claire that the crazy woman, Alexia, said she was going to perform the same experiment on him that she did on her father. Suddenly, Steve's voice distorts. He clutches at his chest, and screams for Claire to help him. Blood bursts from his neck, cutting him off. He rumbles, deep and guttural, and Claire backs away from him in horror. Steve's body begins to expand and change, growing bone spurs and vicious claws. His skin turns green and scaly, and he easily triples in size. His head, grotesquely, is nearly unchanged. With no effort whatsoever, he wrenches the battle axe from the wall and stands up. Steve, or the creature that Steve has become, roars, and swings the axe at Claire. At the same time, the gate at the end of the hall begins to lower. Claire's weapons don't do more than slow Steve down. Ducking Steve's axe, Claire rolls underneath the gate as it closes. She can already tell that the gate won't hold for long, and the door to the cellblock is locked. Steve begins to hack at the gate with the axe. A tentacle bursts through the wall next to Claire. With impossible speed, it wraps around her and pulls her into the air. Claire struggles helplessly. Steve finally destroys the gate. He steps through the wreckage and pulls his axe back. He swings it at Claire's head... and stops. In a deep, guttural voice, he says Claire's name. With a furious roar, he cuts the tentacle holding Claire, and she falls to the floor. The tentacle thrashes, like a thing in pain, and lashes out with its bloody stump. Steve is hit with bonecrushing force. As the tentacle withdraws, Steve slowly becomes human once more. Claire runs over to him, to find that he's been mortally wounded. Claire begs him to hold on, and tells him that her brother's come to save them. Steve says that he can't keep the promise he made, to escape with her. He tells Claire that he's glad to have met her, and that he loves her. Steve dies. Claire, cradling his body, bursts into tears. Back in the ruins of the mansion's front hall, Chris is hiding amidst the rubble. Alexia stands regally at the top of the staircase, while Wesker is at the bottom. Wesker, who still isn't wearing his sunglasses, says that he has been sent to obtain the T-Veronica virus, the only sample of which is now inside Alexia's body. He demands that Alexia come with him. Alexia says that Wesker isn't worthy of the virus's power. She descends the stairs towards him, and suddenly bursts into flames. Her clothing burns away. In the middle of the fire, Alexia changes. Her skin turns slate-gray, and parts of her body begin to look like the chitinous exoskeleton of an insect. At the top of the stairs, she was human; when she reaches Wesker, she is anything but. Wesker gawks at her and Alexia casually backhands him. Despite his own superhuman strength, Wesker tumbles across the room. He shakily hauls himself to his feet. Alexia gently hops off of the stairs, across the twenty feet that now separate her from Wesker, and hits him again. Wesker goes tumbling into the corner of the room. Alexia turns to smile at Chris, as if she's known where he was all along. Seeing that Alexia's distracted, Wesker runs for the mansion's front door. Alexia gestures, and suddenly, a wall of flame springs up in front of the door. She's not fast enough to stop him. Chris makes his own move as Alexia attacks Wesker, dashing towards and up the main stairs. Alexia makes another gesture, and Chris is nearly incinerated by another wall of fire. He tumbles back down the stairs, and Alexia steps in front of him. [Or, in CVX: [Wesker recovers in midair from Alexia's uppercut, landing on his feet. Alexia confidently moves in for the kill, slinging flaming ichor from her hands. Wesker, trying desperately to avoid her, runs away from her... and *up the wall*. As fire crawls up the wall behind him and breaks out on his clothing, Wesker springs off the wall and delivers a powerful right cross to Alexia's jaw. [Alexia spins, dazed, and throws another spray of fire in Wesker's direction. Wesker is standing in front of Chris, so both men have to get out of the way. As they stand, Wesker and Chris notice each other. Wesker grins faintly, and says, "Chris, as one of my best men, I want you to handle this." He then breaks for the door. Alexia is too slow, and her offhand attempt to incinerate Wesker misses. Chris tries to get away, as with the other version of this scene, but he's a little too late.] Chris runs from Alexia, whose every gesture sprays some kind of ichor or blood across the floor. Where it lands, it burns, creating a short-lived wall of fire. Chris retaliates with his Magnum. After six rounds to the chest, Alexia falls. In the ashes of her clothing, Chris finds a red jewel in a choker--the final Ashford family proof. Putting it in the painting, he opens Alexander's secret passage. As the door shuts behind Chris, Alexia slowly climbs to her feet. Alfred has remodeled Alexander's hideaway into a set of children's bedrooms, identical to those on Rockfort Island. Chris finds little of interest in them besides another pair of locked music boxes with parts missing from their lids. Chris inserts two jewels he has found, and a secret passage opens, just as it did for Claire in the prison's mansion. Above the bedrooms, Chris finds an old dining room, lined with portraits of the Ashfords. Alexander Ashford's picture has been crudely defaced. An ant farm is on the table, in which sits a golden dragonfly. Chris pockets it. Although he has no way of knowing it, he's standing in the room where, long ago, Alfred and Alexia were filmed as they killed a dragonfly. Fighting his way through a fresh swarm of zombies, Chris finds an abandoned lab where Alexander Ashford must once have pursued his research. A journal on the countertop contains the secret that made Alfred and Alexia destroy their father; they were never his real children. They were the result of Alexander's experiments in genetically determining intelligence. If the twins are Ashfords at all, it's because Alexander's experiment used a sample of Veronica's DNA. They're more her "children" than his. Alexander's lab connects to the cellblock. Chris hears Claire sobbing on the other side of a locked door, and tries to open it. The door is electronically locked, and Chris can't break it down. Claire tells Chris that Steve is dead, and pushes the binder under the door with the keycard in it. She's read in the binder that, once the self-destruct system to the base is activated, all the locks in the base automatically disengage to expedite an evacuation. Once she's free, the emergency elevator to the base's hangar is close by. They can easily escape before the base explodes. The control room is locked, but the golden dragonfly serves as a key. Discordantly, the floor leading up to the control room is made of steel mesh, and if Chris looks down, he can see the top of Alexia's anthill. Chris uses the keycard to gain access to the control room's computers and inputs the password: the final code Veronica. The base's nuclear reactors decouple and prepare for detonation, while the system releases the automatic locks. A countdown begins. Outside the control room, Claire runs up to Chris and hugs him. Before they can get to the emergency elevator, a tentacle bursts through the floor. Its "mouth" opens wide, and it regurgitates the naked body of Alexia Ashford. The tentacle itself loses its cohesion, flowing onto Alexia's body. The resulting substance covers her and hardens into chitinous plates, like an insect's exoskeleton. As Alexia transforms, Chris spots a nearby emergency locker. The labels on the outside say that it contains an anti-BOW weapon called a "linear launcher." Chris and Claire hurriedly open the locker. Unfortunately, the launcher isn't charged, and slowly begins to power up. Alexia turns and smiles at the Redfields, once again covered in her gray armor. Chris tells Claire to get to the elevator, while he keeps Alexia busy. Claire tells Chris not to die on her, and breaks into a run. Alexia throws a wall of fire in front of Claire, and advances towards her. Before Alexia can kill Claire, Chris shoots her in the chest. Alexia crumples to the floor and her fires die, giving Claire a chance to escape. Alexia begins to undergo a terrible transformation. Her body expands like Steve's, changing into something much larger. [The following sequence is not in CVX: [Chris looks away from Alexia and smiles at Claire, who is watching through the glass wall of the elevator shaft. The car descends, taking Claire out of sight and leaving Chris alone with Alexia.] Alexia's latest incarnation is a sickeningly pregnant cross between an ant and a woman. As she finishes her transformation, her face, the only part of her that's still recognizably human, twists into a contemptuous smile. She attacks Chris with small "soldier ants" and her ubiquitous tentacles, both of which spring forth from her bloated torso. Chris returns fire with Claire's grenade launcher, showering Alexia's body with explosive rounds. After a vicious fight where the two seem to be evenly matched, Alexia finally screams in pain. Her lower body breaks apart, dissolving into nothing. Suddenly, swarms of winged ants burst from the anthill underneath Chris's feet. They cover their queen, and Alexia seems to absorb their mass into herself. She rises like a phoenix from the ruins of her body, taking on the form of an enormous, winged ant. At the same time, the linear launcher finishes charging. ================================================================ 8ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA ================================================================ Chris pulls the linear launcher free from its housing. Alexia's newest form buzzes around him, tossing spurts of flaming ichor, but she's nowhere near as powerful as she was before. Apparently, "linear launcher" is Umbrella-speak for "plasma rifle." When Chris pulls the trigger, a burst of energy strikes Alexia in the chest. It shines inside her for a moment like a star, and for a moment, Alexia seems like she might survive even this... ...but then she explodes, nearly liquified by the force of the blast. Chris drops the launcher and takes cover as the platform is showered with gore. At the same time Alexia dies, the base begins to shake with small explosions, as the self-destruct sequence enters its final stage. [Chris staggers down the staircase from the laboratory to find Wesker... with Claire. He has Claire in a headlock, and tosses her ahead of him through a hole in the wall. Chris gives chase, following Wesker down a long, zombie-infested hallway. Chris dodges the zombies, shoulder-blocking one out of his way, and emerges in an underground seaport. [Wesker is standing by a docked submarine with Claire. He tells Chris that the T-Veronica virus turned out to be nothing, but Wesker's revenge will be so much sweeter. Chris tells Wesker to let Claire go, and Wesker tosses her across the room. [Wesker tells Chris and Claire that he'd originally come to get Alexia, but now that it's over with, he can get on to his other job: revenge. Chris says that Alexia is gone, and Wesker's response is that it doesn't really matter; now, he has Steve's body. Steve still has enough of the "T-Alexia" virus in him to work with. "Maybe he'll come back from the dead one day," Wesker says, "like I did, to see your sister." [Claire nearly attacks Wesker, but Chris holds her back and tells her to go. It's his job to finish this. Claire tells Chris to remember his promise, and leaves. [Chris and Wesker face each other as Claire runs off. Chris tells Wesker to "say hello to my teammates, who you killed!" Wesker takes off his sunglasses and says, "I don't know where you get your confidence, Chris." He drops them to the floor and walks towards Chris, who hits him with an iron bar. Wesker takes one shot across the face, blocks the second with his arm--bending the bar--and hits Chris in the face. Chris goes sprawling, and Wesker presses his advantage. He may not be human any longer, Wesker says, but his newfound power more than makes up for it. A final uppercut sends a dazed Chris sprawling. [As Wesker prepares to finish Chris off, Chris notices a load of steel beams, suspended overhead on a pulley. Wesker leaps into the air for a final, killing blow, but Chris manages to get out of the way. He hits a lever and drops the steel beams on Wesker, who looks up just in time to intercept the first I-beam with his face. Wesker gets buried underneath the pile of girders. Unfortunately, it isn't enough. [Wesker gets up, visibly staggering ("Nice try."), and Chris, likewise, climbs back to his feet. As they prepare to start the fight again, one of the smaller explosions suddenly takes out a nearby bit of machinery, and a gout of flame separates them. They're cut off from each other by falling debris, and Wesker's struck by the fire. Holding his horribly burned face, Wesker promises Chris that the next time they meet, he'll kill him. "Next time," Chris says, and runs out of the room. Wesker stands amidst the wreckage and laughs.] Chris runs to the emergency elevator, hoping he's not too late. Under the platform where Alexia died, her army of mutant ants burst into flames, which in turn ignites her anthill. Chris barely manages to get into the elevator before the entire fifth floor of Alexander Ashford's hideaway is scoured clean by fire. As Chris's car descends, flames chase him down the elevator shaft. Claire is in Alfred's jet, waiting for Chris, when the elevator opens. Chris gets one step out of it before the firestorm hits, blowing him off of the balcony and to an undignified landing on the nosecone of the jet. Claire asks if Chris is all right. His response is to say, with a smile, that she knows he always keeps his promises. The jet rises out of the base's hangar in a cloud of flame. Claire puts her hand on Chris's shoulder, asking him to never leave her alone again. Chris replies that he's sorry, but they have a job to do. They've got to destroy Umbrella once and for all. As Chris and Claire fly away, Umbrella's Antarctic base and the legacy of the Ashford family are consumed in an explosion. ====================================== 8iii. Conclusions About The Conclusion ====================================== 1. Claire and Chris Redfield have both survived; as usual, it was through the creative employ of self-destruct mechanisms. (If Umbrella ever really wanted to kill Chris, all they'd have to do is lure him someplace without a self-destruct device.) 2. Albert Wesker has also survived. By RE4, he's managed to patch that unfortunate facial burn right up. 3. Steve Burnside may or may not be dead. While he did die onscreen, Wesker's statement in CVX leaves the door open for him to return. 4. Rodrigo Juan Raval did not survive. 5. Alexander, Alexia, and Alfred Ashford are dead. Unless a distant relative shows up in a future game, the "proud Ashford family" has died out. 6. Albert Wesker is looking to collect as many bioweapons as he can. 7. Umbrella is not the only company performing research on the T-Virus and in fact have vicious competition in that particular field. 8. Edward Ashford and "Lord" Ozwell Spencer founded Umbrella. We don't know exactly how old this makes Umbrella, but it places its founding within the last hundred years or so, as Edward was Alexia and Alfred's "grandfather." 9. Ashford and Spencer also discovered the "mother virus." 10. Umbrella is still making Tyrants, and seems to have ironed most of the kinks out of them. 11. Umbrella is far more powerful than was previously thought. 12. Albert Wesker stole Steve Burnside's body before he escaped, which means the T-Veronica virus is still in play. =============================== 8iv. The Ashford Family Diaries =============================== The Ashford family is intricately linked with the history of Umbrella, and thus with the background story of the Resident Evil series. CV tells this particular story, but it does so haphazardly; the relevant information is in files scattered throughout the game, and at least one of them is very easy to miss. Therefore, in this section, I've assembled the known facts about the Ashford family and put them together in a rough chronological order. The noble legacy of the Ashford family begins with Veronica Ashford, about five generations ago. They're constantly referred to as "glorious" throughout the game, but we're never told why. A nobleman named Lord Spencer (whose first name is given in an RE2 EX File as "Ozwell") and Edward Ashford, Alfred and Alexia's grandfather, discovered the "mother virus." The details of where it came from are dealt with in RE5, and RE0 establishes that the "mother virus," a.k.a. the Progenitor, was the precursor to the T-Virus. By the time RE begins in 1998, Umbrella's the kind of inescapable megacorporation that drives most cyberpunk plots. It is noted in RE0 to have grown particularly rapidly in the time leading up to the Arklay outbreak. In addition to the bioweapons research that drives RE's plot, Umbrella makes and sells various pharmaceutical products. Edward had a son, Alexander, who got a degree in genetics and assisted his father with his research. In 1970, Alexander caused an accident, during which Edward was infected by the Progenitor virus and killed. As a result, Spencer rapidly gained more power over Umbrella, and Umbrella lost ground to its competitors in the field of T-Virus research. The death of Edward marks the beginning of the Ashfords' fall from grace. (In RE0 and REv.2, we get a bit of Umbrella's official history of itself, and there isn't an Ashford to be seen anywhere in it. Instead, James Marcus--an obsessive researcher who says in his private diary that he didn't really get involved when Spencer started Umbrella--is given credit as the co-founder. Alexander may have managed to anger Spencer enough that he tried to write the Ashfords out of the company's history.) In an attempt to gain back some respect, Alexander commissioned the construction of a research facility in the Antarctic, which involved the renovation of a transport terminal. Inside the facility, he had a series of rooms built in the image of the Spencer mansion, where Alexander could cherish his memories in peace. Finally, inside this replicated mansion, Alexander constructed a private lab that only he had access to. He codenamed this project "Veronica," after the legendary founder of the Ashfords. Later, Alexander isolated the gene that controlled intelligence within the human genome, and developed a way to deliberately manipulate it. To test it, he impregnated a surrogate mother with an embryo that he made using a sample of the genes of Veronica Ashford. To his surprise, the woman gave birth to fraternal twins, who he named Alfred and Alexia and raised in his Antarctic hideaway. Alfred was smart, but Alexia was a genius, and Alexander regarded her as the literal reincarnation of Veronica. After she graduated from college at the age of ten, Alexia soon had a job as a head researcher for Umbrella Incorporated. Early in their lives, the twins became fascinated by ants. Alexia would later write that an anthill represented her ideal version of society, with dull worker drones existing only to serve the needs of their queen. The events depicted in the movie in Alfred's war museum seem to have permanently left their mark on him, as the motif of dragonflies and ants is repeated endlessly inside his private chambers. (I don't believe for a second that this is intentional on Capcom's part, but it's interesting to note how the dragonfly-ant theme plays out over the course of the game. Early on, to escape from Alfred, Claire must recreate his torture of the dragonfly, plucking the wings off of the dragonfly object and placing it in an ant's mouth. Later, Alexia becomes what's basically a queen ant, complete with an anthill and her own swarm of mutant soldier ants. To kill her, Chris uses a dragonfly object to unlock the door that leads to her death. When he reassembles the object, the dragonfly returns to life, and plays a part in the destruction of the anthill. (Furthermore, as someone else noted, Alexia writes in her lab notes that she considers all other humans to be "ants," beneath her notice. In her final form, Alexia resembles nothing so much as a dragonfly, and is killed by Chris, who would presumably qualify as an "ant." Therefore, not only has Chris symbolically undone the torture of the original dragonfly, but Alexia, in her last moments, *is* the dragonfly, maimed and struggling vainly to survive. (...I just scared myself half to death. Let's move on.) Alexia conducted private experiments on ants, assisted by Alfred, who she refers to in her private diaries as a "loyal but inept soldier ant." (Alfred, as an adult, seems to have taken that comment to heart; he dresses like a toy soldier, is obviously fascinated by war, and the man can't shoot straight. He has a laser sight and a starlight scope and he *still* misses everything he shoots at.) Inside the body of a queen ant, perhaps the same queen ant that Chris finds dead in the Antarctic base, she found traces of an ancient virus. Mixing this with the T-Virus her "grandfather" discovered, she created the virus that she named T-Veronica. The twins grew to hate their "father." Alfred eventually figured out how to get into Alexander's private lab, where he learned the truth about his and Alexia's birth. Soon afterward, Alexia deliberately infected Alexander with the T-Veronica virus as an experiment, transforming him into the homicidal mutant that would become known as "Nosferatu." The twins somehow managed to imprison Alexander underneath the base in the Antarctic. As far as anyone else was concerned, Alexander Ashford simply vanished. It doesn't seem likely that many people missed him. Alexia continued her research, and decided to conduct further experiments on herself. She theorized that cold storage would slow down the infection, allowing an infected organism to peacefully coexist with the virus and eventually adapt to it. The process would take fifteen years. Over Alfred's objections, she infected herself and went into cold sleep in a secret lab underneath the Antarctic laboratory. Either Alfred or Alexia came up with a cover story for this, saying that Alexia had died in an unspecified lab accident. (Of course, she would eventually reappear, but she'd be rich, an adult, and theoretically omnipotent. It didn't have to be a *good* cover story.) No one learned the truth until Alexia woke up, although the Ashfords' family butler at the time, Tom Dorson, came very close to figuring it out. (Note that by the time of Code Veronica, Scott Harman has been Alfred's butler for four years. Tom Dorson may have gotten a little *too* close.) Alfred was forced to assume Alexander's responsibilities at a young age, and the problem was compounded by his sister's "death." Umbrella gave him a meaningless position as the commander of an isolated prison in the southern hemisphere. Alfred became obsessed with returning the Ashfords to glory. Alfred's obsession was the least of his mental problems. The most obvious is, of course, how he coped with Alexia's "death"; unable to live without her, he simply constructed a delusion in which Alexia was still around. (I could also add that Alfred's version of Alexia is apparently far kinder towards him than Alexia ever was.) The extent to which he went to maintain that delusion is one of the more disturbing things in CV. Even if you ignore his obsession and denial, it looks like he consulted Alexia on the decoration of the Rockfort mansion. (Would a ten-year-old biochemist prodigy *ever* be that obsessed with dolls, or is that another facet of Alexia's megalomania?) The end of this story, naturally, is the story of Code: Veronica. ===================== 8v. Random Commentary ===================== 1. As was pointed out on the now-defunct Evil-Online message boards, Claire looks *very* different than she did in RE2. Moreso than any other character, I'd really like to know what happened to her between games. 2. It's an interesting touch that Chris still wears gear with RPD and S.T.A.R.S. insignias on it. 3. People were excited that CV would return to RE's "tradition" of lousy voice actors, and they weren't disappointed. Claire and Chris's actors are decent and Rodrigo's voice actor is actually very good, but the rest... 4. Alfred Ashford could change clothes faster than any man alive. Somehow, he managed to change from an evening gown and long gloves into his preppy-soldier outfit in about twenty seconds with a bullet in his arm. 5. Steve is annoying at first, but he does have his moments. It's interesting to watch his character develop; at first, he balances his anger at his father with his need to show off for Claire, who's the only pretty girl around. After he kills his father, he attaches himself to Claire, who's the only friend he's got left. Some real thought was obviously put into Steve's personality dynamic, and it's a shame that a lot of it was shot down by a mediocre voice actor. (In his defense, Steve's voice acting gets better the further you get into the game, and improves markedly right after Steve is forced to shoot his father. The actor does a great job with Steve's death scene.) 6. Note the nods to Silent Hill (the crematorium) and Parasite Eve (Alexia's shapeshifting). 7. The Resident Evil tradition of characters being far too young to have the skills they're supposed to possess continues. Chris is a former fighter pilot (he's had enough flight training to handle the Harrier jet) *and* an ex-cop at 25; Jill is a munitions expert, classical pianist, chemist, gunsmith, mechanic, ex-cop, ex-Delta Force, *and* the god damn Master of Unlocking at 23; Claire is a demolitions expert, burglar, motorcyclist, locksmith, and a student of the John Woo school of physically impossible gunfighting at 19; Rebecca is supposed to be a trained medic, helicopter mechanic, and a member of an elite police unit at 18; and Steve is a crack pilot, gunman, and can operate any kind of heavy machinery at the tender age of 17. Sherry must have been hiding her *true* power. 8. The back of Claire's vest bears a new design and the words "Let Me Live," which are only legible near the end of the game. This is the same design that's on the back of her jacket if she's wearing her alternate "biker" outfit in RE2. 9. CV is the only Resident Evil game so far that hasn't ended at sunrise. It's full morning when Chris arrives in the Antarctic, and it looks like high noon when he flies out with Claire. 10. Watch _Mission: Impossible II_ and then play through CV. See how many similarities you can spot. 11. Alexander's hideaway is the first time in the series that someone sets up a deliberate visual parallel with the Spencer mansion. It happens again in RE5's "Lost in Nightmares" DLC and Revelations. 12. You can get a slightly alternate cutscene if you trigger the Alexia/Wesker showdown fight before you use the Crane Key. It's not a shocking revelation or anything, but it does spare you one of the stupidest lines in the game. 13. Cinematic parallels in RE:CV: -- the Bandersnatch is seemingly patterned after a similar monster in _Return of the Living Dead Part 3_. -- more _Return of the Living Dead 3_-referencing fun can be had in the laboratory scene, where the man in the clean suit meets a messy demise against the observation window. It's taken almost frame for frame from _RotLD3_. -- much of Rockfort Island, particularly the mess hall, looks like the military base in George Romero's _Day of the Dead_. -- in _Dawn of the Dead_, Peter picks up a sniper rifle like Alfred's and says, "Ain't it a crime? The only person who could ever miss with this gun would be the sucker with the bread to buy it." -- pseudonymous reader "Clearman" points out that Alfred's masquerade as Alexia would appear to be patterned after Alfred Hitchcock's _Psycho_. -- Steve's necklace looks like the monitoring devices/explosive charges in Kenji Fukusaku's _Battle Royale_. -- as many have noted, Steve's slaying of the Bandersnatch and Wesker's fighting style would both seem to owe heavy stylistic debts to _The Matrix_ (which, in turn, owes heavy stylistic debts to wuxia). =================================================================== 7. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO =================================================================== RE0 was originally developed as an N64 game, but was moved to the Nintendo GameCube and completely rebuilt. It's the "behind the scenes" story of the original RE, set at the start of the STARS Bravo team's doomed mission in the Raccoon Forest. The player takes the roles of both Rebecca Chambers, the Bravo team's rookie medic, and Billy Coen, an escaped prisoner, switching between them at will using a new "zapping" mechanic. RE0 was marketed as a game that would answer a lot of the leftover questions concerning the storyline so far, but mostly confused things even further by introducing James Marcus to the already-convoluted history of Umbrella. It also managed to avoid answering the real question that most fans still have to this day: where's Rebecca? There are several occasions throughout RE0 where you have to split Rebecca and Billy up. For the sake of the plot summary, I've gone with whoever I used at the time, as there's no real difference. The one exception is when you go back through the train at the start of the game and encounter the zombie of Edward Dewey. Rebecca gets a cutscene there, while Billy does not. ===================================================== 7i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ===================================================== July 23rd, 1998: A passenger train heading through the Raccoon Forest is attacked by a swarm of hideous, mutated leeches, as a man in white robes watches from a nearby hill. A massacre ensues. Two hours later, the STARS Bravo team--Enrico Marini, Richard Aiken, Kenneth Sullivan, Ed Dewey, Forest Speyer, and, on her first mission, new recruit Rebecca Chambers-- flies over the area by helicopter. They're in the middle of the investigation of the recent murders in the suburbs of Raccoon City. Rebecca, who's telling us this story after the fact, muses that they had no idea what was about to happen, and no chance of survival. A sudden engine failure forces Kevin, the Bravo team's pilot, to make an emergency landing. On the ground, the STARS find they've landed near the wreck of a military transport vehicle, which is surrounded by dead military police, their faces twisted into painful grimaces. Enrico investigates the truck, but Rebecca finds the MPs' orders before he sees the slime dripping off of the truck's windshield. The MPs were transporting former lieutenant Billy Coen, age twenty-six, to a nearby military base. Following his court-martial the day before, Coen was to be executed. Naturally, Enrico and Richard figure that Coen's to blame for the dead soldiers. Enrico tells his men to split up and survey the area, but to stay alert for Coen. Rebecca goes off, alone, and discovers the train, the Ecliptic Express, which has come to a full stop. When she gets on board, Rebecca finds that all the passengers are dead. Several of them are still moving. The conductor's office and engine room are both locked, and bloody papers found in a passenger cabin hint that the passengers were up to something. Apparently, the train held a cleanup team headed to an undisclosed, previously abandoned location, with the intention of reopening it, but bloodstains obscure the finer details. On a ravaged body near the engine room, Rebecca finds a key that'll open the dining car, but at the same time, Billy Coen, splattered with blood and still wearing a pair of handcuffs on one wrist, finds her. He holds her at gunpoint, but soon discovers that Rebecca, an unnerved rookie, isn't much of a threat. He puts his gun away and walks off, ignoring her claims that she's arresting him. Rebecca watches Billy leave, but before she can follow, Edward Dewey crashes through a window. Edward, who's been attacked by what looks like a pack of wild dogs, tells Rebecca that "it's worse than... there are... zombies and monsters in the woods..." He then succumbs to his wounds. As Rebecca tries to get him to wake back up, she's interrupted by a pair of undead dogs, who crash through the windows after their prey. She shoots them to death, then, realizing she can't help Edward, goes after Coen. Enrico calls Rebecca on her radio as she steps back into the darkened passenger car. They've found out more about Billy Coen; his court-martial was for murder, and he may have killed as many as twenty-three people. He's also been recently institutionalized. Enrico tells Rebecca to be on her guard, as Coen wouldn't think twice about killing her. In the dining car, Billy manages, once again, to sneak up on Rebecca. He suggests that they work together, as there are "some freaked-out things" on the train with them. Rebecca angrily tells him that she doesn't need the help of a "wanted felon." Billy condescendingly retorts that he'll wait right there. Leaving Billy behind, Rebecca investigates the dining room. Seated at one of the tables is an old man in a ragged suit, his eyes open but unmoving. Rebecca touches the man, and gently shakes him. He turns to look at her... and his head falls off of his shoulders with a dry crack. As Rebecca screams, the man's body writhes for a moment, then dissolves into a mass of glistening leeches. The leeches suddenly pile back atop each other, reassembling into a new and twisted body with the old man's face. This "leech zombie" attacks Rebecca with its rubbery limbs. Rebecca empties a full clip into the creature without much obvious effect, until a lucky shot blows off part of its head. The creature breaks back down into a swarm of a thousand leeches, which rush onto Rebecca's body, covering her in slime and dragging her to the floor. Suddenly, one of the leeches on Rebecca's body explodes. Billy keeps firing, slaying a couple more leeches as they leap to attack him, and the creatures finally withdraw. As Billy checks on Rebecca, who's slimy and out of breath but otherwise fine, they both notice a strange man watching them from outside the train. The train abruptly starts moving again. Billy suggests that they should check out the engine car, and repeats his earlier point: they need to work together. Rebecca grudgingly accepts that, but tells Billy that she'll shoot him if he tries anything funny. Billy not only says that he's okay with that, but he tosses Rebecca a box of bullets. The train's automatic doors are locked, owing to a lack of power. Rebecca, using a ladder at the back of the engine car, crawls onto the roof of the train, where she finds that something's disconnected the power coupling. She reconnects it, and finds that this "something" is yet another form of malevolent slime. It knocks her through a hole in the roof, into the kitchen. Here, Rebecca finds a key they need, but can't leave the kitchen car because the door's lock is jammed. Rebecca sends the key to Billy via a dumbwaiter. He can now get into the lower floor of the kitchen. The key opens the conductor's office, where Billy finds a locked briefcase and a ladder leading up to the bar. Here, he finds an icepick, which seems like just the thing to unjam the door in the kitchen, and an old hunting shotgun on the bed in a private cabin. When he passes back through the bar to give Rebecca the icepick, he's attacked by a giant scorpion, which tears through the roof of the train and destroys the bar. Billy blasts at it with his new shotgun until the creature collapses to the floor. Billy and Rebecca meet back up in the kitchen, and find one of the keys they need for the briefcase in the baggage car. They also appropriate a grappling gun from its housing on the back of the car, which Rebecca uses to climb back onto the roof. In a passenger cabin, Rebecca finds the second key they need to unlock the briefcase. She finds Billy again outside the conductor's office, where they open the case to find the keycard for the door to the control room. As Rebecca unlocks the control room door, she overhears half of a radio conversation between a gas-masked, armored soldier and his commander. The soldier reports that "Delta team" has gained control of the train. The man's commander, unknown to Rebecca, is Albert Wesker. He and William Birkin are commanding the Delta team from an unknown location. Birkin, frustrated, says that he has no idea how the lab *and* the mansion could've been contaminated. Wesker covers the microphone and says that it doesn't matter now. He orders the soldier aboard the train to destroy it. That soldier never gets the chance. Both he and a nearby confederate are abruptly killed by a swarm of leeches. Billy and Rebecca step over the soldiers' bodies and enter the control room. Inside, they find that they've only got a few minutes before the train, bereft of a conductor, is going to crash. Rebecca takes a keycard off of the desk and tells Billy to wait while she triggers the brake at the rear of the train. Rebecca blasts back through the train, and, in the process, is forced to kill the zombie that was once Edward Dewey. She and Billy manage to put the train's emergency brakes on, but not in time to avoid slamming into a blocked-off tunnel, well away from the train's usual route. When Billy and Rebecca come to, they're in an underground station somewhere, currently destroyed and set aflame by the train's impact. A nearby door leads to a sewer tunnel, which in turn has a ladder leading up to a trapdoor. When Billy pushes the trapdoor open, he and Rebecca climb up into the front hall of a mansion. Weakly lit by oil lamps and low-wattage bulbs, and so long uninhabited that clouds of dust come up from the floors with each step, the centerpieces of the decoration are the Umbrella logo, set into the floor above the words "Umbrella Research Center," and a cracked and faded oil portrait of an old man. The plaque below the portrait reads "James Marcus -- First General Manager." Rebecca gasps; she's seen this man before. His was the face the leeches took on when they formed a human shape. Wesker and Birkin watch Billy and Rebecca from their surveillance station. Birkin asks who they are, and Wesker tells him that Rebecca's a rookie member of STARS. Neither of them know who Billy is, however. Suddenly, an ancient public address system broadcasts a message. It's from James Marcus, who requests that everyone remain silent while he goes back over the three pillars of Umbrella's motto: unity, discipline, and obedience. As Wesker and Birkin try to figure out who played that message, every screen in their station abruptly displays the man in white. He laughs at them, and claims responsibility for the contamination of both the lab and the train. His motive, he continues, is revenge against Umbrella. A mass of leeches appears in front of the man, and rises up to form, once again, the semblance of a human: the old man from the dining car, James Marcus. The younger man looks into the camera and tells Wesker and Birkin that ten years ago, they both helped assassinate James Marcus. Now, the time has come for revenge. Billy and Rebecca find out quickly that the training facility isn't empty. Several cleanup crews have arrived here recently to reopen the facility, and all of them have fallen victim to the T-Virus. The front doors are blocked with a strange barricade, so they're forced to further explore the old house. As they move throughout the facility, disposing of its undead population and circumventing a series of obstacles, they encounter two more leech zombies, and several documents left lying around by the cleanup teams or the original teaching staff. In a large open area that might've once been intended to feed and house animals, Rebecca finds a key, right before she's attacked and captured by an enormous, mutated centipede. Billy manages to kill it with a volley of well-aimed pistol fire. That key opens the doors to the meeting area and the surprisingly clean office of the head of the training facility. An old entry in the assistant headmaster's diary speaks of a given class of trainees, and how the only worthwhile ones in the lot are "scholar Will" and "practical Al." The headmaster further notes that James Marcus had told him to constantly pit Will and Al, who were already naturally competitive, against each other. This is the first time Marcus has shown any interest in the facility he's ostensibly in charge of. A hidden piece of metal in the headmaster's office proves to be the last part Rebecca and Billy need to fix the time clock on the facility's third floor. Doing so unlocks the doors to a meeting room on the second floor and a screening room, the latter of which provides the security disc that undoes the locks on the odd "knight barricades" that've sealed several doors. Naturally, escape won't be as easy as simply walking through the newly open front door, as the dilapidation that pervades the facility has claimed the bridge that serves as the facility's front walk. The training facility is on a cliff overlooking a river, and it's a long way down. They do have other options. One of those options is the facility's observatory, which an old memo implies is an escape route. A room on the second floor, the office of some strange chess fetishist, once belonged to James Marcus himself. Billy solves a puzzle on the floor, which opens a secret compartment in the desk that hides Marcus's diary. The diary, which is at least twenty years old, details Marcus's creation of a virus he calls "Progenitor" and the synthesis of a virus he codenamed "T," for "tyrant," by mixing the Progenitor virus with the DNA of a leech. Marcus's personal experiments all involved leeches, and shortly after he made some kind of breakthrough owing to the use of experimentation on humans, Spencer began to quietly investigate Marcus's research. Marcus's final entry notes that if anyone interferes with his project, they'll be his next test subjects. Marcus's portrait in the front hall of the facility turns out to be concealing a secret door, which leads into the facility's basement. There, Billy and Rebecca find an isolated cell built of stone. A nearby prisoner manifest suggests that this is a detainment center for Umbrella's prisoners and test subjects. Billy gives Rebecca a boost so she can reach an air vent. When she crawls through and lands on the other side, she finds she's landed in a bloody, often-used torture chamber, complete with an iron maiden. The facility's circuit box is also in this room. Rebecca turns the power back on, which cuts off an inconvenient steam jet in the facility's boiler room, but also alerts the strange young man. He muses, watching Rebecca on the surveillance system, that she's trespassing. Somewhere else, a cage opens, and something snarls as it's unleashed. Rebecca is warily examining the torture chamber when, suddenly, something springs onto her back. When she throws it off, it turns out to be a mutated, hostile baboon, its claws and teeth extended into vicious hooks. The "Eliminator" pounces again, and Rebecca dodges to the side. As she rolls to her feet, the floor gives way underneath her. On the top floor of William Birkin's private lab, Birkin pores over a sheaf of paper. He asks Wesker if this is really the identity of the strange young man. Wesker's response is simple: whoever it is, if the conspiracy to expose Spencer's assassination of Marcus is revealed, Wesker, Birkin, *and* Spencer's careers are over. Wesker's reaction is equally simple: he intends to leave Umbrella. All Wesker needs is some more combat data on the T-Virus weapon, and for that, he's got the STARS. Birkin, on the other hand, needs more time to perfect his G-Virus. He tells Wesker that he intends to activate the facility's self-destruct system, blowing the facility and all evidence within it to pieces. Rebecca, hanging above a long fall into the river, radios Billy for help. Billy runs back through the facility, blowing away several Eliminators as he goes, and finally finds Rebecca on the second subbasement. He grabs her arm just before she falls. As Billy pulls Rebecca back onto solid ground, she thanks him. He replies that he was just keeping his word. They agreed to work together, after all. Rebecca's radio beeps, signaling her of an incoming call from Enrico Marini. He asks her if she's found Coen yet; while looking directly at Billy, she tells Enrico that she hasn't, but she'll keep an eye out for him. Rebecca smiles at Billy, and says that her great career in law enforcement's probably over; it's her first mission, and she's already disobeying orders. At least she probably won't live long enough to regret it. She switches topics suddenly, asking Billy if he really did murder twenty-three people. She doesn't intend to judge him, but she just has to know. Billy tells her that, around "this time last year," his unit was sent into the African jungle on a mission to intervene in a local civil war. Their target was a guerilla force's hideout. By the time that his unit reached its destination, the heat and the guerillas had cost them dearly. Only four of them were left. They discovered that their entire mission had been based on faulty information. The "guerilla hideout" was, in fact, just a small village full of innocent people. Billy's commander refused to cut their losses and head out; instead, he had his men herd the villagers into a group and prepare to open fire. In his flashback, Billy remembers trying to talk his leader out of killing the villagers, but his leader wasn't listening. He struck Billy with the stock of his rifle, and opened fire. Billy shuts up. Rebecca asks if he really did kill all those innocent people, but Billy's done with this topic: "That was then, this is now." Rebecca tells him that her teammates think he killed those MPs in the forest, but now she doesn't think he did. She thinks it was those zombie dogs. Billy, once again, says that it doesn't matter; he's either got to turn himself in and serve his sentence, or keep running for as long as possible. That ends the conversation. The second subbasement apparently served the facility's trainees as a barracks and storage area. In a formerly well-furnished bedroom, Rebecca and Billy find a large heavy plate in the fireplace, which would fit neatly in a control panel in the observatory. Further down, in the third and last subbasement, Billy finds both the last key they need and a pair of Hunters in a small maze, like the ones zoologists use to test the intelligence of rats. The key is in a pile of human bones, and is guarded by a pair of Hunters. It opens a door on the second floor of the facility, leading to the recreational area. The leech zombies have returned for another go, but by now, Rebecca and Billy have discovered the zombies' vulnerability to fire. Burning the leech zombies to death with Molotov cocktails, Rebecca finds another plate caught in a vise in the facility's machine lab, while Billy appropriates a battery from the wine cellar. That battery fits into a makeshift elevator, used by the cleanup crew, and provides them with the stepping stone (or crate, as it were) they need to claim the last plate from a column outside the facility. When all three plates are put into the control panel in the observatory, there's a sudden rumbling. When Rebecca and Billy look outside, they realize that the observatory itself has rotated. The door they came in through now leads to the facility's second-floor balcony, and the locked door on the other side of the observatory leads to an old chapel. The chapel's front door is locked, but the lock is, for whatever reason, connected to a floor plate in a nearby atrium. Billy steps on the plate while Rebecca investigates the chapel, which has become the new home of a gigantic, mutated bat. Rebecca kills the creature with a few napalm-laced grenades and, using the hookshot that they picked up on the train, reaches the roof. From the rooftop, Rebecca climbs down into the church's garden, where she's able to activate an elevator. This elevator takes her and Billy down into the secret facility beneath the chapel: James Marcus's laboratory. The laboratory was also targeted by Umbrella's cleanup team, to judge by the relatively fresh corpses and zombies that shamble around its halls. It's also, naturally, haunted by a couple of leech zombies. Using the hookshot to circumvent a collapsed stairwell, Rebecca climbs up onto the floor above, where Marcus did his experimentation. Communicating via radio and sending items to each other via the laboratory's dumbwaiter, Rebecca and Billy work in concert to unlock the puzzles of the lab. Finally, after discovering a pair of jeweled leeches in Marcus's file room and study, Billy and Rebecca manage to open the door to a newly-constructed cable car. While looking for the parts they need to reactivate the car, Billy stumbles upon an old black-and-white photograph in Marcus's old, yet spotless, study. The person in it is a dead ringer for the man they've seen controlling the leeches, but the note on the back of the photo congratulates "James" for graduating from university in 1939. Billy concludes that the man they've seen must be Marcus's son or grandson. When they find the parts they need, Rebecca hookshots into the cable car's control room via a hole in the floor, and reactivates the car. As they prepare to board the train, disaster strikes. A single Eliminator jumps from the roof of the cable car, onto Billy, and both of them plummet into the chasm below. Rebecca rushes to the edge, but is ambushed by another leech zombie. She incinerates it. Alone, Rebecca reactivates the cable car once again, which had been sabotaged by the leech zombie, and heads into the unknown. The car takes her to an isolated warehouse somewhere, which is attached to a freight turntable for railroad cars. (Two months from now, Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy will use this turntable to reach William Birkin's lab, and a group of survivors will escape that lab the same way.) Appropriating a Magnum from a dead man in the cable car, Rebecca finds a key in a control room along the turntable's shaft, where the only working monitor is displaying a picture of a twisted-looking, white-skinned humanoid creature preserved in a storage tube. Rebecca then brings the turntable up to meet her. The turntable takes her to the top floor of an unknown complex. A rockfall blocks progress from one direction, and Rebecca decides against a full search of the area. When she approaches a nearby elevator, she hears it start up. When the doors open, Enrico Marini steps out. Marini tells Rebecca that the rest of the Bravo team should've met him here by now. If they go straight from here, he says, they should reach an old mansion where Umbrella is carrying out experiments. He tells Rebecca to come with him, but she tells him she'll catch up with him later. She has to find Billy. Enrico tries to persuade her to come with him, since he's sure Coen won't make it, but Rebecca convinces him she'll be all right. As Enrico walks away, Rebecca, in voiceover, tells us that she never saw Enrico again. A discarded key by Enrico's elevator works on the door of another elevator, over by the rockfall. Rebecca takes the key and starts up the elevator, but as she does so, something crawls out of the rubble behind her. A day from now, Wesker will tell the other STARS what this thing is: a Tyrant. Now, all Rebecca knows is that it's enormously powerful, incredibly ugly, and coming after her. It takes nearly two full clips from Rebecca's Magnum before it falls. The newly arrived elevator has several destinations, like the train station underneath the training facility, but the only place Rebecca hasn't seen yet is the fourth level. As she takes the elevator down, the young man and his posse of leeches watches her over yet another closed-circuit camera. He says out loud, as though she can hear him, that she and her friends no longer amuse him. Now, he says, nothing will stop him from getting his revenge. The elevator drops Rebecca off on a narrow bridge, over an aquaduct or river. Below her, she sees Billy, unconscious but alive, hanging off of a twisted chunk of concrete and rebar in the middle of the river. Rebecca shouts his name, just before something enormous slams into Billy from under the surface of the water and dislodges him from his handhold. Billy yells in pain as he's thrown downriver. Rebecca's bridge leads to a power control room. Some computer work restores electricity to the area, which lets Rebecca take a nearby lift down. She finds herself in an abandoned sewage treatment plant, which, like the training facility, is crawling with zombies and monsters, including the occasional Hunter. Rebecca fights her way through several levels of the plant, dispatching yet another leech zombie en route. When Rebecca finds him, Billy is lying unconscious on a metal grate, thrown there by the current of the river rushing by below him. As he wakes up, coughing up water, Billy sees something. Rebecca asks him what's wrong, then follows his gaze over to a pile of stripped skeletons, brownish from decay and age, lying in a puddle of slime so thick that it has yet to filter down through the grate underneath it. Billy, looking at the grinning skulls, has a flashback to the dead villagers in Africa. Rebecca asks what could've done this, and Billy's answer is that they must be the remnants of Marcus's test subjects. "Marcus must still have been messing around with the mother virus!" Together again, Rebecca and Billy go back into the factory. Like the facility, the factory is a maze of puzzles, broken or near-broken machinery, monsters, and locked doors. As Rebecca and Billy make their way through these obstacles, the Tyrant reappears on the ninth level of the factory, only to go down in a hail of shotgun and Magnum fire. Rebecca separates from Billy for a short time, to unlock a door and throw a switch. This lowers the floodgate on the plant's dam, allowing Billy and Rebecca to reach the plant's incinerator. When they do, they find it hasn't been used for that purpose for quite awhile; instead, now it's the spawning grounds for an army of leeches. From the walkway above them, the young man in white welcomes them to the "party," since it is, after all, their wake. Billy demands answers, and to know who the man is. The man's response is to change his face. He ages several decades in a second, until the man is clearly James Marcus. Ten years ago, Marcus tells Rebecca and Billy, Spencer had him assassinated. He was hard at work on his pet project, the leeches, when two men in full armor burst in and opened fire with submachineguns. Through Marcus's mind's eye, we see his last moments as a human: a young Wesker and Birkin standing over him, Birkin promising to take over Marcus's research, and then his last moments, as he sank into a watery grave. Marcus's queen leech found his dead body, crawled inside his mouth and began to spawn. Somehow, the T-Virus inside the leech resurrected Marcus as a monster. Now, Marcus says, he's returned, and "the world will burn in an inferno of hate!" Billy shakes his fist at Marcus and tells him that he'll pay for what he's done. Marcus keeps laughing-- --right up until he vomits a stream of leeches. He gets a look of horrified surprise on his face, and his body begins to expand and run like candle wax. Marcus turns into an inhuman creature, the ultimate expression of the "leech zombies" Rebecca and Billy have been fighting all night. Marcus's claims almost come true. He attacks with vomited streams of acid and the stretching tentacles that now serve him as arms. After enduring enough small-arms fire to kill a dozen ordinary men, or a couple of Tyrants, Marcus screams with the slithering voice of a leech zombie and falls silent. Two keys fall out of what were once Marcus's pockets. Billy and Rebecca use those keys to open a final safety door on the other side of the incinerator, to find a freight elevator that leads up to the previously-unavailable fifth level. With a sigh of relief, Rebecca throws the elevator's switch. ========================================= 7ii. The Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ========================================= The elevator shakes suddenly, as something explodes near the bottom of the shaft. Billy sees it first: it's Marcus's queen leech, grown into a grotesque monster the size of a truck, and it's heading up the elevator shaft after them. For a few moments, it looks as though they might outrun it, but as the elevator reaches the end of its track, the queen leech slams into it. The elevator platform tips over, throwing Billy and Rebecca into the treatment center's shipping dock; at the same time, William Birkin makes good on his earlier threat. A self-destruct countdown is initiated. The leech slithers onto the floor, attacking Billy and Rebecca with sprays of an unknown, noxious fluid and its bloated psuedopods. It's soft-bodied and slow, but it's also enormous; despite their best efforts, Billy and Rebecca's weapons can't do more than slow the queen leech down. Overhead, the ceiling of the shipping dock opens a bit and lets in the sunlight. The leech shies away from the light, and Rebecca realizes that the leech's somehow vulnerable to it. Billy volunteers to distract the queen while Rebecca opens the shutters the rest of the way. While Billy continues the fight against the queen, Rebecca undoes the locks on the dock's ceiling. A couple of minutes later, Rebecca hits the last lock and the ceiling opens, bathing the queen leech in full, direct sunlight. Enraged and in pain, it lashes out, knocking both humans sprawling. As Rebecca gets back up, she notices a heavy revolver hidden behind a stack of crates. She seizes it and throws the gun to Billy. Billy catches the gun, takes aim, and fires, apparently finding the one explosive round in the cylinder. The queen leech, wounded and burning, has had enough, and the heavy bullet blows a hole through its body. It screams and falls apart, the pieces of its body plummeting back down the elevator shaft, and into the rising fireball as the facility explodes below them. Billy and Rebecca make a mad dash for safety. The Umbrella training facility is engulfed in flames a few minutes later. Billy and Rebecca watch it explode from the safety of a nearby hill. Billy, before collapsing onto the grass, pops his handcuffs off and throws them into the woods. Rebecca, from her new vantage point, notices the Spencer mansion is only a couple of miles away. She takes Billy's dogtags, puts them around her neck, and tells him that "officially... Lieutenant Billy Coen is dead." She salutes him, and heads down the hill, to meet up with the rest of her team. Billy watches her go. She doesn't look back. Billy finally gives her a thumbs-up that she doesn't see, and says, "Thank you... Rebecca," before going on his way. ====================================== 7iii. Conclusions About the Conclusion ====================================== 1. Rebecca Chambers, obviously, has survived. Her whereabouts following the "mansion incident" are still unknown. 2. Billy Coen survived, and was last seen in the Raccoon Forest. Thanks to Rebecca, he's been reported dead (cf. the Rebecca's Report EX File in RE2). His current whereabouts are unknown. 3. James Marcus, the true creator of the T-Virus, is probably dead. 4. Another virus, the "Progenitor," was created by Umbrella in the early to mid-seventies. James Marcus and perhaps Ozwell Spencer were either its creators, or were at least on the team that created it. It's the same thing as the "mother virus." 5. The T-Virus was derived from a combination of the Progenitor virus and the DNA of a leech by James Marcus in 1978. After Marcus's assassination, Birkin took over Marcus's projects, which may be why everyone in RE2 thinks Birkin created the T-Virus. ====================== 7iv. Random Commentary ====================== 1. The weirdest thing about RE0's plot is that it isn't about Billy or Rebecca at all. They've stumbled into the middle of a grudge match between Marcus and Wesker, and by rights, Wesker should be the protagonist. Instead, he's barely in it and you're caught in the fallout. 2. Would it have killed Capcom to have included *something* about where Rebecca's been since the end of RE? A still shot would've done the trick, or a couple of paragraphs of text. 3. There's a lot more going on with Billy and the incident in Africa than the game lets on. For one thing, he recognizes the skeletons in the treatment facility on sight. 4. The murder investigation in the Raccoon Forest was Rebecca's first case as a member of STARS. She and Leon would have a lot to talk about, I think. (This also explains why Chris had to introduce himself to Rebecca in REv.2.) 5. The final battle against the queen leech is like a demented beerslam of all the final encounters in every RE game up to this point, plus the movie. The fight takes place with a five-minute timer, on a helipad, against a giant slithery "queen" that attacks with gouts of disgusting fluid, and the main character must stay alive until he's provided with the weapon he needs to win. The final blow's dealt by someone's carelessly discarded revolver, accompanied by a cheesy one-liner and gratuitous bullet time. 6. There are more new monsters in RE0 than in any other RE game to date. The Eliminators, giant cockroaches, the giant centipede, Lurkers, the giant bat, the leech zombie, the Stinger... 7. Marcus's assassination is carried out by a couple of gas-masked goons with submachineguns. This means that Umbrella's black-ops troops are now two for two on indirectly making their targets into virus-fueled killing machines. 8. Is it just me, or does RE0's music sound a *lot* like Silent Hill 2's? 9. If you're curious as to how Rebecca chose to deal with her promise to Billy at the end of the game, her official report on the Bravo team's investigation can be found in the N64 version of RE2, in the "Rebecca's Report" EX File. (The EX File in question is flawed, though, or else it's based upon a version of the game's plotline that changed between 1999 and 2002. In it, Rebecca misspells Billy's name as "Koen," and says he was an Ensign, a rank that doesn't exist in the Marine Corps. It actually ends up looking like Rebecca's trying to look as incompetent as possible while she writes it.) 10. Daniel Weissenberger has a note that's sufficiently bizarre to be worth sharing: "James Marcus's death scene reminded me more than a little of the fate of the Swamp Thing when Alan Moore took over writing the comic. The fact that Marcus was very, very dead when the Queen Leech entered him, along with the fact that the less-advanced leech zombies have the habit of creating a primitive humanoid 'skin,' suggest that the James Marcus Billy and Becky encounter isn't actually James at all. Rather, it's possible that, as in the ubiquitous 'planarian worm' experiment, James' leeches devoured him and absorbed his consciousness, turning them into a swarm of worms that think that they're James Marcus." I suppose if there's a Queen fanboy over at Capcom, a Swamp Thing fanboy's also a possibility. 11. You've got to wonder if the Lurkers and the Gamma Hunters are at all related. 12. The Eliminators remind me of an obscure American horror film, _Shakma_, about a killer baboon, but I kind of doubt that's more than a coincidence. Five people have seen that movie. ================================================================ 8. RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN ================================================================ RE: Gaiden has more or less been declared non-canon, which removes the need to discuss it in this document. If you're curious, Efrem Orizzonte's analysis of Gaiden is available at www.gamefaqs.com. ================================================================= 9. RESIDENT EVIL: FIRE ZONE ================================================================= Also known as Resident Evil: Gun Survivor 2, this Namco/Capcom collaboration is a vague retelling of Code Veronica. It stars Claire, Steve, and a liberal helping of every monster in the RE series. It's also a dream that Claire's having as she's lying unconscious in the crashed plane in Antarctica. As such, it has no bearing on the plot. ================================================================== 10. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ================================================================== Also known as--deep breath--Biohazard Gun Survivor 4: Heroes Never Die, Dead Aim is a light-gun shooter for the PlayStation 2. For a few years, it was actually the last game in the series's chronology. Set in September of 2002, Dead Aim follows Bruce McGivern, a covert operative with a special anti-Umbrella unit within the United States Strategic Command, and Fong Ling, an agent in China's Safety Department. Their current mission is to find and stop Morpheus Duvall, a bitter ex-Umbrella employee who's taken over an ocean liner the company owns, and who's threatening both the U.S. and China with the T-Virus. =========================================================== 10i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM =========================================================== September 23rd, 2002: Bruce McGivern opens his eyes. The man standing behind him has Bruce's own gun pressed against Bruce's head, and comments on how Americans seem compelled to use ugly weapons. They're both standing on the top deck of the Spencer Rain. Bruce turns around and snarls, "Morpheus." Morpheus prepares to pull the trigger, but Bruce sees something he doesn't: the woman standing on the roof of the cabin, and the primed grenade she tosses onto the deck. Bruce runs for cover, and gets away without injury. After the explosion, Morpheus has disappeared, as has the woman. Bruce reclaims his pistol, kicks open a vent cover, and drops into one of the Spencer Rain's guest cabins. The Spencer Rain normally carries a full load of rich and powerful passengers. Now they're a full load of rich and powerful zombies, slowly waking up as they smell fresh prey. Bruce uses a discarded key to get into the VIP lounge, where he finds the keycard he needs to reach the central stairs. As he steps through the latter door, his radio beeps. It's his boss, telling him of Morpheus's demands: five billion dollars by tomorrow at midnight. The conversation is cut short when a woman--the same woman who saved Bruce's life earlier--kicks the radio out of Bruce's hand. It goes over the railing and shatters against the floor below, as the woman slams Bruce into a wall. He manages to gasp out that she must be the "Chinese security girl," so they're in the same business. She lets go of him, and notes that the same business does not necessarily mean the same side. She knows Bruce's name, but he doesn't know hers. Bruce catches his breath, then raises his hands, and the woman attacks him again. Bruce loses his gun, but manages to kick the woman's legs out. When she falls, Bruce holds her down, and asks for her name. She introduces herself as Fong Ling, and presses Bruce's own gun to his chin. He lets her up, and asks if they might not be able to cooperate. She scoffs at the idea, drops his gun at his feet, and takes off. Bruce's new keycard unlocks two doors on the third floor, which lead to the VIP suites. The VIPs apparently didn't go down without a fight, as Bruce finds a silenced pistol and semiautomatic handgun in the wreckage. He also digs up a crewman's ID card, which is needed to open another set of doors on the second floor. Heading west, Bruce goes through the hall outside the dining room, stopping to grab an abandoned shotgun from the kitchen. On the pool deck, Bruce finds a hatch leading into the hold, and a key sticking out of the control panel. The valve handle he needs is back to the east, on the other side of the ship. Fighting his way back across the passenger deck, Bruce finds the storeroom he's looking for. The valve handle is inside on a shelf. As Bruce leaves, an enormous, long-fingered hand bursts through the window and punches him in the chest. He falls down, the wind knocked out of him, just as Fong Ling arrives. She takes the valve handle and runs back towards the pool deck, telling Bruce that he should just go home. The zombie population of the lower decks is now fully awake, and Fong Ling has to fight for every step she takes. When she returns to the pool deck and attaches the valve handle, Bruce is one step behind her. As they trade quips, a critically wounded and furious Morpheus watches via closed-circuit television. He snarls and presses a switch. A garage-style door opens at the back of the pool deck, unleashing two massive, hook-limbed reptilian creatures: a new, larger breed of Hunters. They work as a team, dodging Bruce's bullets and trying to catch him between them. As he fights, Fong Ling struggles with the rusty valve, and gets the hatch open right as the second Hunter falls dead. The two agents descend into the hold of the ship. Morpheus, dying from his wounds, watches them go, and raises a syringe. Triumphantly, he sticks it into his own body, and begins to crackle with electricity. The Spencer Rain's hold is populated by the undead remnants of most of its former crew. They spring a couple of crude ambushes on Bruce as he heads across the ship, through the boiler room, and up a lift. A locked door requires another keycard, so Bruce heads in the other direction. On the other side of the ship's cargo room, Bruce walks into a richly furnished presentation theater. A crewmember's diary mentions that the presentation room is off-limits to the crew, and it's immediately obvious why. Four bioweapon storage tanks are up on stage, on either side of a podium. One of the tanks is broken, and the other three are empty. Bruce picks up a discarded crowbar and an open binder, the latter of which contains notes on recent Umbrella creations. After entries on the new "Elite" Hunter and an improved, long-limbed Tyrant, Bruce reads about the experimental TG-Virus, a blending of the T- and G-Viruses that results in the carrier developing a powerful electromagnetic field that renders it bulletproof. Bruce pockets the file and heads back to the cargo room. Before he can leave, though, he hears the click of heels on metal; someone's coming. He slides in next to the presentation room's door and waits to see who it is. It turns out to be a "what," not a "who." The creature--a chitinous, clawed parody of a woman--slides through the door and grabs Bruce by the throat. The creature chides Bruce on still using an ugly gun. Bruce realizes suddenly that this is Morpheus, infected with the TG-Virus. Just as the file said, Morpheus is now completely immune to small-arms fire. The virus has also lent him (her?) supernatural speed, strength, and agility. Left with no other option, Bruce runs for it. Morpheus has seemingly given up the chase when Bruce reaches the cargo room. He pries open several crates before finding the keycard he needs in one of them, then heads back towards the locked door. Somehow, Morpheus appears again, in front of Bruce, and is hot on his heels as Bruce sprints towards the engine room. Fong Ling is already there, trying to open an electronically locked door. Bruce runs into the hatch behind her and slams the door, which is barely strong enough to keep Morpheus out. Fong Ling squirms through the window above the locked door. While Bruce holds Morpheus back, she restores power and unlocks the door. As Bruce stumbles into the engine room, Morpheus gives up the chase. He's suddenly gone. Fong Ling also leaves, cheerfully calling Bruce a "don-gua." She says it means he's cool. When Fong Ling unlocked the engine room door, she also unlocked the door to a monitor room over by the presentation area. Inside, Bruce finds a key to the recreation room, inside the bar on the second deck, and a bloodstained, four-year-old reorganization notice. Morpheus Duvall was blamed for the Spencer mansion outbreak, and Umbrella fired him. The reasons for his attacking the Spencer Rain become a bit clearer. Heading up through the presentation room, Bruce finds himself back in the main staircase in the ship's VIP area. His new key lets him into the stairs behind the bar, and into the captain's quarters. The captain himself has become a particularly tenacious zombie. Bruce puts him out of his misery and takes his Magnum. A door at the back of the captain's quarters leads up another flight of stairs, to the ship's bridge. Fong Ling is, as usual, one step ahead of Bruce, and is wrestling with the helm when he arrives. At the same time, alarms go off. The ship is about to crash into an island and the helm's frozen. They've got five minutes. Suddenly, the zombified bridge crew bursts into the room. Bruce stays behind to deal with them, while Fong Ling sprints for the exit. Dispatching the zombies, Bruce follows her outside to the ship's helipad. Bruce comes through the door as something strikes Fong Ling to the ground. She cradles her arm and begins to stand, and Bruce runs up to get in front of her. Fong Ling's assailant is the same creature that attacked Bruce outside the storeroom, and was mentioned in the dossier Bruce read: it is the new, improved Tyrant. Bruce tells Fong Ling to go after Morpheus as he takes it on. In the dossier, Bruce read of a design flaw in the Tyrant. He soon finds it for himself; every time he shoots the creature in the misshapen hump on its back, it convulses and a spray of blood douses the deck. Bruce concentrates fire on that hump, dodging the Tyrant's mad dashes and flying axehandle punches. After a few minutes of this, the Tyrant falls dead at his feet. There's no sign of Fong Ling or Morpheus, and the ship is seconds away from crashing. With no other choice, Bruce jumps over the side. The Spencer Rain hits the island and explodes. Bruce swims ashore, to find the island a burned-out, abandoned husk. Walking through town, Bruce finds a hatch in the ground; the chain-link fence that once protected it has melted, and is still throwing off sparks. Morpheus has come this way. Bruce follows him down, into the island's sewers. Five years ago, this island was an Umbrella facility, meant to store and dispose of their failed experiments. Morpheus was in command here, but he was arrogant and botched the job. All that remains of the place now are the surviving failed bioweapons and an occasional zombie. A cave-in has sealed part of the waterways; a scattering of spent shells and a discarded grenade launcher hint at what might have caused the destruction. Some of those bioweapons include the planarian "Torpedo Kids," acid-secreting monsters that fly like missiles through the sewers. Bruce avoids them and the old zombies that have taken up residence here, then finds a working radio. He gets in touch with his superiors, who tell Bruce that if Morpheus's demands are not met, he intends to fire T-Virus-laden missiles at several major cities. The Chinese government has already given in, but the United States, as Bruce's superior says, does not negotiate with terrorists. Bruce now has the safety of the entire nation in his hands. Meanwhile, in the waterways a level below Bruce, Fong Ling has found her own way inside the facility. She remains utterly still as an enormous creature, fat and stinking, shambles by, never looking in her direction. It leaves the area without incident, and Fong Ling sneaks off in the other direction. Traversing the waterways, Fong Ling dispatches several zombies and finds her way outside onto the facility's heliport. Suddenly, beams of red light appear from the sky, one of which focuses on her forehead. Bruce appears out of nowhere, shouts her name, and tackles her to the ground. In orbit above the island, a Chinese satellite focuses a beam of energy on the ground where Fong Ling stood a moment ago, leaving a smoking crater. Bruce and Fong Ling run inside the nearest building. Another blast strikes the roof of the building, and Bruce pulls out a knife. He advances on Fong Ling, who asks him what he's doing, right before he cuts into the tattoo on her left arm. Bruce pulls a microchip out from under Fong Ling's skin and crushes it under his boot. Miles overhead, the satellite's targeting beam flickers and goes out. Looking out the building's window, Bruce says to Fong Ling that apparently, the Chinese were willing to sacrifice one of their best agents. Fong Ling replies that she still intends to finish her mission. Then, with half a smile, she notes that since he saved her this time, she supposes she should thank him. Bruce brushes it off; he's a "don-gua," after all. Leaving Fong Ling behind, Bruce heads deeper into the facility. Dusty hallways and wreckage eventually give way to another maze, this one of concrete and metal; a note Bruce finds in an old storeroom says that this facility actually had another laboratory, three hundred feet below the ocean's surface. The only path Bruce can take seems to lead to that facility. Older zombies and frog-like mutants that the scientists here called Glimmers haunt the halls, as do zombies of a more recent vintage. The facility on the island's surface may be abandoned, but the one below the water was apparently operational until very recently. Bruce reaches the elevator to the underwater lab in one piece, but as he pushes the button, the fat mutant that Fong Ling had seen earlier attacks him. Bruce has read an old file on the creature, codenamed Alpha by the scientists that had accidentally created it. They blinded it and placed a metal spike into its brain, as part of their study of its reactions to stimuli. The result is an enormously powerful creature that navigates entirely by its keen sense of hearing. Bruce creeps away from the Alpha, which cannot find him as long as he stays quiet. In a vicious game of hide and seek, Bruce shoots the Alpha to death with his silenced pistol, and the creature dies, unable to find what's killing it. Fong Ling catches up to Bruce as he steps into the elevator. Unfortunately, so does Morpheus, who drops onto the roof of the elevator car and severs its cable. Bruce hits the emergency brake, which stops the car right near the topmost level of the underwater facility. Morpheus's weight and the elevator's velocity don't keep it stopped for long, and Fong Ling barely escapes before the elevator plummets out of sight, taking Bruce with it. Alone, Fong Ling continues into the facility. Its staff has succumbed to yet another T-Virus infestation. The lab is running on emergency power, which has deactivated the executive elevator. Fong Ling turns the power back on and proceeds down to Morpheus's office. Fong Ling runs into the room to find it empty, save for a live monitor wall. A soothing female voice announces that the missiles are being prepared for launch. Fong Ling freezes upon hearing that news, which is more than enough time for Morpheus to get the drop on her. Meanwhile, Bruce wakes up, bruised but alive on the bottom floor of the laboratory. A door has been padlocked shut, preventing him from reaching the executive elevator. Bruce is forced to take the long way around. He uses a digital recorder and the facility's voice mail to get past a door with a voice-triggered lock, only to encounter a swarm of mutated wasps. The scientists called them "Halberds," and they've infested the facility's incinerator. That's where Bruce finds the Halberds' queen, which can barely move, and which relies upon its spawn to defend it. Bruce blasts it to pieces. The incinerator is the only way into the facility's main lab. Inside, Bruce discovers an open weapons locker that contains a futuristic-looking rifle. Its manual is on a nearby desk. It is a charged particle rifle, designed to penetrate the field that surrounds a TG-Virus carrier. A dead scientist in the same room holds the key to the padlock from earlier. Going back the way he came, Bruce opens the formerly locked door and finds Morpheus's office, where he's left his diary. Morpheus had originally intended to use Umbrella's influence and money to construct his greatest achievement, a kingdom in Africa where "beauty is the absolute authority." The chair also hides a switch, which reveals a secret door. Bruce opens it, just as the monitor bank on the wall reveals Morpheus, standing over the prone body of Fong Ling. Morpheus taunts Bruce, just before destroying the camera. Bruce runs down into the silo, towards a showdown with Morpheus. Morpheus is still far faster than Bruce, and has mastered his new powers. He can now generate and throw bolts of lightning. This does him very little good. The particle rifle performs as advertised, cutting through Morpheus's electromagnetic field. After taking a few shots from it, Morpheus crashes to the floor and lies still, seemingly dead. Bruce runs to the platform where Fong Ling lies, and finds she was only unconscious. She chastises him for seeing to her when he has missiles to defuse, but he chalks it up to his being a "don-gua." The countdown starts, giving them five minutes to save the world. They use a nearby console to call up a map of the missile silo, which turns out to be a virtual maze. Fong Ling volunteers to stay behind and call out directions using the facility's PA system while Bruce runs to the silo. Bruce agrees and takes off. Behind him, as he disappears through the door, Morpheus's body convulses, and begins to change, before pulling itself upright. ============================================================= 10ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ============================================================= Bruce heads towards the missile silo at a full run, but he's barely reached the first door when Fong Ling shouts a warning. The G-Virus in Morpheus's bloodstream has done its work, expanding Morpheus into a kind of quadrapedal blob. It shatters the door and oozes along the bridge towards Bruce, roaring. The particle rifle's battery is dead. Bruce runs for his life. The corridors of the silo are occupied only by a few zombies. Bruce heads across a narrow catwalk, to a door that winds up being locked, and Morpheus bursts out of the hallways right behind him. As Fong Ling frantically tries to remotely unlock the door, Bruce turns to fight. While he's lost his electromagnetic field, Morpheus's sheer mass renders him nearly immune to small-arms fire. It's only when Bruce manages to put a bullet into Morpheus's head, which slides into and out of Morpheus's body like a retractable tumor, that he's able to do any kind of damage. Finally, Fong Ling unlocks the door, and Bruce runs through it. She guides Bruce the rest of the way, and then abandons her console to catch up with him. The door to the missile silo, unfortunately, is locked, and Morpheus is still right on Bruce's heels. Grimly, Bruce pulls out his pistol. Morpheus marches across the bridge and Bruce meets him with a hail of gunfire, directed against Morpheus's exposed head. Just as the countdown reaches its final minute and as Bruce is running out of ammunition, Morpheus leaves himself open for one second too long. Bruce takes one final shot, putting a bullet squarely into Morpheus's forehead. Even this does not kill him, as the G-Virus begins another mutation. As Bruce and Fong Ling look on in shock, Morpheus's body swells into something enormous, crackling with electricity. Maybe Morpheus crushes something delicate, or his bioelectric aura ignites the rockets' fuel. Either way, he winds up doing Bruce and Fong Ling's job for them. The entire lab facility is destroyed, and the missiles go up with it. A trio of helicopters race towards the site of the explosion. Everything seems quiet for a moment, before a yellow pod breaks the surface of the water. Its roof falls off, and a flare shoots into the sky. Bruce and Fong Ling have somehow managed to escape. Bruce says to Fong Ling that their mission's apparently over. He says suddenly, like it's just occurred to him, that she should come back to America with him. Fong Ling hesitates for a second before declining. She belongs to China. Bruce shrugs it off, and says that he really is an idiot. Fong Ling smiles and asks him if he'd known what a "don-gua" was the entire time. Bruce shrugs, and says he's been to China before. She smiles and gives him a kiss. ================================================================== 10iii. Conclusions About the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ================================================================== 1. Bruce McGivern and Fong Ling have both survived. 2. Morpheus Duvall probably didn't. (After Wesker, I now have to add "probably" to every statement like this I make ever again.) 3. Four years after the Raccoon City outbreak, Umbrella is still in business, although there's at least one American law enforcement agency with a squad specifically tasked to destroy the company. 4. The American government knows that Umbrella makes bioweapons, and that their virus was responsible for the Raccoon City outbreak. 5. While it hadn't been tested by the time of the seajacking, Umbrella managed at some point to fuse the T- and G-Viruses together. The result's basically a bulletproof, intelligent Tyrant in a can, which would be one of the most dangerous bioweapons in their arsenal if you couldn't poke it to death with a sharp stick. 6. Umbrella markets its bioweapons. Before Dead Aim, this was an assumption; now we know for sure. ======================= 10iv. Random Commentary ======================= 1. Looking at RE:DA in light of the post-Raccoon timeline established by RE4, RE5, and RE:UC, it makes a weird sort of retroactive sense. In 2002, as per RE:UC, Umbrella is fading fast and spending most of its remaining money on attempts to keep the various legal actions against it tied up in court. The Spencer Rain, as a mobile auction block for Umbrella, could be seen as an attempt by the surviving executives to generate some quick capital towards their legal defense, since it's the first time in the series's chronology that Umbrella's ever been seen selling its bioweapons. It also means that in a weird way, Duvall is partially responsible for the fall of Umbrella. An early file on the Spencer Rain indicates that the ship was full of high rollers, there to bid on Umbrella-brand bioweaponry, and Duvall killed them all. If he hadn't, Umbrella might have actually made enough money to defend itself in court. 2. Dead Aim boasts the most sensible environments of any game in the series so far. There are plenty of bathrooms, and the labs have everything you'd expect a lab to have. The only sour note is the oddly mazelike missile silo. 3. So the Spencer Rain sank into the ocean, where fish will no doubt devour the tender flesh of all the dead T-Virus carriers. Nice one, Bruce. 4. Fong Ling's kind of complex. I can see why she might've warmed up towards Bruce, since he saved her from the satellite and he's got this dogged habit of being nice to her regardless of whatever else is going on, but Bruce's conversation in the waterways radio room adds another wrinkle: the Chinese government had capitulated to Morpheus's demands. That raises the question of whether their laser strike was an attempt to destroy the facility, or to assassinate their agent before she could defect or be captured. 5. Boy, TG-Virus Morpheus looks like Alexia Ashford, doesn't he? I wonder why. (For that matter, the Alpha and the Insane Cancers in Silent Hill 3 look remarkably similar.) 6. The enemies in Dead Aim, while they aren't particularly difficult to defeat, are still a particularly vicious lot. Umbrella's bioweapons are apparently improving very rapidly. (It is weird how the most dangerous monsters in the game are the "mistakes" under the lab facility.) ======================================================================== 11. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK ======================================================================== At the time of its release, Outbreak was a clumsy game with a badly-coded game-finder UI, which we all raked over the coals for its hilariously long load times and its lack of voice-chat support. Since then, with the rise of games like Left 4 Dead and RE5, Outbreak seems like it was ahead of its time. Set during the Raccoon City disaster, Outbreak is a series of five short scenarios that take place at various times and areas throughout the city. It was originally thought to be non-canon, or at least a part of canon that didn't really intersect with the main franchise at all, but the RE6 manga may prove otherwise. ============= 11i. Prologue ============= As the rats watch, William Birkin becomes something more, and less, than human. He's more than a match for the team of mercenaries that were sent to steal the G-Virus from him. One of the men is still alive as William moves on, but the rats are there to finish the job. All he can do is writhe in agony as he's devoured. Aboveground, later, an all-night bar is serving its eight customers. A ninth runs in, and goes straight to the women's room. She's a skinny Japanese girl who quickly changes into a more casual outfit, then frantically cuts off most of her hair with a pair of scissors. Meanwhile, at the bar, two security guards are having a drink, even though one of them is clearly ill. A few minutes later, someone punches his way into the diner. He's not alone. The bartender tries to reason with the newcomers, but he's quickly dragged down and, to the horror of the customers, eaten. The eight remaining survivors--Alyssa Ashcroft, a journalist; Cindy Lennox, the bar's waitress; Yoko Suzuki, the girl in the bathroom; Kevin Ryman, a police officer; Mark Wilkins, a Vietnam veteran and security guard, who's worried about his sick co-worker Bob; George Hamilton, a surgeon; David King, a plumber; and Jim Chapman, a puzzle fanatic who works on the subway--are suddenly under siege. ============================ 11ii. Scenario One: Outbreak ============================ The survivors blockade the door with some heavy barrels and rush upstairs. The bar's upper floors are under renovation, which allows the survivors to improvise a barricade using some spare lumber and a nailgun, but that doesn't hold the zombies back for long. Pursued the whole way, the survivors fight their way to the roof and knock down a weak section of the safety fence next to the roof's edge. The survivors then jump to the next building, an apartment complex, and take its elevator down. When they reach the street, the survivors run into a couple of frantic policemen who're trying to hold the zombies back, one of whom is killed as they watch. The survivors push a police car into place and lock the emergency brake, creating an improvised roadblock. With the surviving cop, Raymond, providing cover fire, the survivors bust through a gate on the street. A parked fuel truck gives Raymond an idea, but he dies at the hands of the zombies before he can carry it out himself. The survivors act on his plan, opening the valve on the truck and flooding the street with gasoline. The survivors ignite the fuel with Raymond's lighter and dive into a nearby canal just before the tanker goes up. The survivors swim into a dry part of the sewer, then climb up onto the streets near the Apple Inn. A few injured civilians have gathered here for transport to a safe place, via a police van. However, that transport's slowed down by the barricades that've been erected throughout the city. Finally, the van stops outside the Raccoon Mall, unable to go any further. The survivors tool up from the police's store of weapons and keep moving on foot. At the Raccoon Mall, the survivors find a trio of policemen. One, Harry, is struggling frantically with a bomb; two more, Elliott and Eric, are firing at a horde of zombies who're barely restrained by a barricade. As the survivors arrive, the policemen are overrun, and the last living cop retreats away from the pieces of the bomb. At his request, the survivors fight off the zombies, reassemble the bomb's detonator, and set it off, destroying most of the zombies and the street they're standing on. Following the explosion, the survivors report to one of the RPD's trauma centers. As they muse on what they've been through and what's to come, a police van carries them away. Outside Raccoon City, the Army begins to build roadblocks. As a helicopter flies overhead, we can hear a news report: toxic waste has been spilled throughout Raccoon City. ========================================= 11iii. Scenario Two: Below Freezing Point ========================================= A frightened Umbrella employee is shot to death by a woman with a pistol. The woman wipes his blood off the window of a storage unit, and says aloud that there's no turning back. The survivors, with Yoko's help, have found their way to a secret subway station deep underneath Raccoon City. A large gate opens, revealing a parked train. Nearby, the woman is trying to get that train started, but it's not working. As the survivors enter the facility, a warning shot caroms off the ground at their feet. The woman brandishes her gun, but stops when she sees Yoko. Her name's Monica, and she's holding a briefcase that Yoko recognizes. Monica decides to let Yoko live in exchange for Yoko's ID card. When Yoko hands it over, Monica runs off, telling Yoko to "have a nice life... what's left of it." With little choice, the survivors explore the complex. The subway station leads to a wrecked elevator shaft, which allows them to enter the facility interior via a ventilation duct. They've stumbled upon the secret labs of William Birkin, deep underneath the Raccoon forest. A massive, mutated plant blocks their progress up the lab's central shaft, but that's easily solved when they find the lab's chemical locker. A dose of V-Jolt shrivels the plant's roots, allowing the survivors to go further into the complex. Two floors up, Monica attempts to escape via the turntable elevator. She turns the key, but the elevator won't budge; the extreme cold is screwing with its systems. Monica mutters darkly about how everything seems to be broken, just before something attacks her from behind. Meanwhile, the survivors find their way to the facility's main power room. The topmost floors have been frozen solid, and are strewn with icy statues of strange creatures: Hunters. The survivors find one of the facility's researchers dead at the controls to the climate control system, with a note nearby explaining his motivation. Several of the lab's test subjects had gotten loose and were killing the staff. The researcher was mortally wounded, but managed to turn the lab's temperature down to zero degrees, freezing the Hunters in their tracks. A bit of further exploration reveals an escape route: a parked train on a large turntable, with the discarded key nearby. Unfortunately, it's also frozen shut. In order to activate it, the survivors are forced to defrost the climate control system with a blowtorch and turn it off. This wakes the Hunters up. Bloodied but alive, the survivors return to the turntable and start its activation sequence. In the next five minutes, they must battle the facility's remaining zombies, drawn by the sound of the turntable's loudspeaker. In the middle of the chaos, Monica reappears. Her specimen case is open. She falls down near the turntable, dead or unconscious. The survivors manage to hold the zombies off and take the turntable up. Far below, Monica's body convulses and churns. Something small and pink bursts out of her chest and crawls up the elevator shaft. By the time it reaches the turntable's stop, the creature is strong enough to burst through plate steel. It rapidly develops into a twelve-foot-tall killing machine: an immature G-Type. It attacks the battered survivors with a pair of wickedly curved claws and its wriggling spawn, and absorbs their gunfire without visible effect. Finally, one of the survivors reaches the turntable's control panel and activates the train. The G-Type is struck head-on by the turntable car, which finishes it off. The survivors activate the turntable train for a final trip. They're safe for now, but the outbreak isn't over yet. ============================== 11iv. Scenario Three: The Hive ============================== A group of the survivors have made it to the Raccoon Hospital, where they've gathered in an empty room. Outside, the street is crawling with hungry undead; inside, the hospital's almost deserted. A doctor enters the room. He apologizes for startling the survivors, and warns them that the hospital isn't as safe as it might look. At the moment, the power's gone out, and he's trying to find out why. The survivors search the hospital for weapons and supplies. They find that the hospital's staff has been killed almost to a man, either by the few zombies inside the building or by a new threat. One of the dead nurses has written a final statement that neatly describes the creature that killed him, a writhing mass of leeches that has taken a vaguely humanoid shape. It's stalking the few humans left in the hospital via the ventilation system, and inflicts vicious wounds that stubbornly refuse to close. Its victims rapidly succumb either to blood loss induced by the leeches' potent anticoagulant, or to the massive doses of the T-Virus that the leeches are carrying. Not long after the survivors find the nurse's message, the leech creature finds them, emerging from the ductwork to attack. THe doctor they met upon arrival manages to get the power back on, but is killed by the leech creature shortly thereafter. The survivors' weapons have no effect on the leech creature, but they soon find that it navigates almost entirely by its sense of smell. They're able to distract it with transfusion packs while they search for a more permanent solution, which is hidden in the hospital's basement. Raccoon Hospital houses a secret research laboratory for the Umbrella Corporation. Umbrella's staff has not only studied the leech creature's weaknesses, but their facility contains a setup meant for studying subjects' vulnerability to extreme temperatures. The survivors throw a blood pack into the laboratory's test area, and when the leech creature rushes to feed, they slam the door and turn up the heat. The leeches quickly shrivel and die, leaving behind the doctor's corpse. The survivors use the doctor's keycard to unlock a door in the second subbasement. Inside, they find a motorboat parked on a flooded part of the city sewer. One of the hospital's employees was also on Umbrella's payroll, and insisted upon an more elegant mode of transport through the sewer tunnels than slogging through waist-deep water. The survivors pile into his motorboat and take off. Their trip doesn't last long. They've made it about a hundred feet before they find out where all the leeches are coming from: a hideous spawning ground at the entrance to the sewer system, complete with an enormous queen leech the size of a large shark. The survivors fight it as best they can, but in the waist-deep water of the sewers, they're at a serious disadvantage. Finally, one of them lures the queen leech further down the tunnel and fires at the sewer pipes, sparking an explosion. The queen leech is caught full-on, and goes down in flames. With little choice, the survivors continue into Raccoon's flooded sewers on foot. Yet again, they've managed to live where so many others have died. ============================ 11v. Scenario Four: Hellfire ============================ The zombies are closing in. Surrounded by undead on all sides, the survivors rush into the courtyard of the abandoned Apple Inn, a three-story luxury hotel, and bar the door. As the survivors catch their breath, a pair of firemen are investigating the Inn's boiler room. They're preparing to search for survivors when one notices that the boiler is shaking dangerously. They're too slow to react, however, and both firemen are killed in the ensuing explosion. The same explosion rips through several floors of the hotel, setting it ablaze, and seals the courtyard door. The survivors are now trapped in the Apple Inn. The survivors split up. One group heads into the building through the boiler room, where they find the unfortunate firemen's bodies, and climb a ladder to the third floor. The other group starts at the Inn's first floor and works its way up. The Apple Inn is on fire, but not yet falling down. The survivors must contend with not only zombies and the mutants that the RPD will soon name "Lickers," but random gusts of superheated air. All of their potential exit routes are blocked, either by locked doors or the damage and fire caused by the boiler explosion. After searching for and finding a pair of keys, the survivors manage to open a secret door in the hotel's security office and reactivate the power to the emergency system. They can now reach the lobby via a safety ladder on its balcony. The hotel's side door is unobstructed, but not for long. The survivors' dash for safety is blocked by the appearance of a more powerful breed of Licker, caught somewhere between its human and inhuman forms. It hangs from the ceiling and lashes out with its prehensile tongue, choking the life from any human who gets within its range. Fortunately for the survivors, they've found new weapons as they've searched the hotel. The Licker goes down in a hail of buckshot and acid-laced grenades. As it dies, the sound of the fight gets a fireman's attention from outside the hotel, and he hacks the side door open with an axe. Outside the Apple Inn, the survivors watch as the Raccoon City fire department tends to a very few living humans. The fireman who rescued them says that the whole city's starting to burn. Not only is this not over yet, but it's going to get much worse. ========================================= 11vi. Scenario Five: Decisions, Decisions ========================================= Somewhere in Raccoon City, a man with an Umbrella logo on his shirt is working on a project. He muses to himself that an organization is harmed by excessive growth. Apparently, someone wants him to try and mass-produce his "masterpiece": a humanoid figure sleeping inside a stasis tube. It looks slightly like a hairless black man, but its external heart, yellow irisless eyes, and claws identify it as a new breed of the Tyrant. Meanwhile, the survivors have made it to one of the refugee centers within Raccoon City. It's nearly empty. George walks by a brick wall that's been turned into a makeshift bulletin board, and finds a note from his friend Peter Jenkins. Peter's waiting for George at Raccoon University, and has news that only George will understand. Several hours later, in the grey hours before dawn on October 1st, George leads a group of survivors to Raccoon University's administration building. They find that it's almost deserted, inhabited only by a handful of zombies. They explore the building and stumble upon a concealed study in the lobby of the entrance hall. Inside, they find Peter, dead and slumped over his desk. He's surrounded by notes on a cure for the T-Virus that's infected them all, which he refers to by the code-name of Daylight. As he says, in the Daylight, you don't need an Umbrella. Peter has developed this cure in conjunction with a biologist named Greg (you find out in "Flashback" in File #2 that Greg's last name is Mura), whose input was crucial to the successful completion of the project. However, Greg is apparently still employed by Umbrella, much to Peter's horror; Peter has written in his journal about how Greg has effectively betrayed him. The journal, as well as many of Peter's private notes, have been partially destroyed. There are three required ingredients for Daylight, according to Peter's notes. The base is being kept in a storage tank in the basement. The other two are going to be harder to get; one is a sizable amount of bee poison, while the other is blood from a creature infected by the T-Virus. The survivors split up and look for the parts of the cure. To get the poison, one group ventures into the old subway tunnels below the university and goes hunting for mutant bees. The other explores the purification center near the waterfront, where Umbrella has stored several of its Gamma Hunters. They recover a sample of the formula's base. Both groups succeed, and head back towards the university. En route, they see a number of armed men fighting a large humanoid monster--Greg's "masterpiece," the Thanatos--in the university's parking lot. While four gunmen keep up an ineffective attack, a fifth--Nicholai Ginovaef--uses a scoped rifle to fire a dart into the creature's shoulder. The dart's an automated syringe, which takes a sample of the creature's blood. This enrages it, and it makes short work of the gunmen on the ground. Once they're dead, the Thanatos leaps into the university. Nicholai watches it go, and muses aloud that it's probably on its way to "that man." By the time the survivors reach the lot, the creature's gone and the soldiers are dead. An inspection of their bodies reveals the name of their organization--the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service--and their orders: to destroy the creature, remove all traces of its presence, kill any witnesses, and get a sample of its blood. If they cannot move or destroy the creature, they're to destroy the area where they found it. The survivors find their way back to the university's entrance hall, just in time to be the Thanatos's next victims. Their guns prove to be useless against it. Thinking fast, one of the survivors lures the creature into a back hallway and zaps it with some faulty electrical wiring. This stuns the creature, albeit briefly, and allows the survivors to grab the autosyringe that's still sticking out of its shoulder. Quickly, they head to the third floor of the university, where the Thanatos cannot follow, and place the ingredients for Daylight into the reagent generator. It begins to work, but five minutes later, the power shuts down. The survivors search for a way to turn it back on, and in so doing, find a pair of nearly empty rooms. One is a makeshift morgue, containing a sizable arsenal, two dead humans, and two dead Hunters; the other contains several computers, which are wired into the building's security systems. The creator of the Thanatos has been watching their progress. He greets them cordially as they enter, and says that he appreciates their help. Daylight is the only hope against the scourge of the T-Virus. As a backhanded thank you for gathering Daylight's ingredients, Greg tells the survivors that they're going to get to play with his ultimate creation. His evil villain speech is cut short by Nicholai Ginovaef, who's lurking in the ventwork overhead with a silenced pistol. He fires once, killing Greg, and leaves. The survivors use Greg's computer to open all the locks in the administration building. At the same time, they find that while they were waiting on the reagent generator, Greg's assassin planted demolition charges throughout Raccoon University. They have seven minutes before the building explodes. The survivors grab several doses of Daylight from the reagent generator, and easily make it outside before the bombs go off. The Thanatos is still inside when the university collapses, burying it under tons of rubble. A pair of firemen in a rescue helicopter see the explosion and fly down to see what happened. They see the survivors, and one of them shouts through a megaphone that they'll pick the survivors up, but they have to hurry. The pilot shines a spotlight on the gate to the university's back lot. The survivors make one final run for safety. Unfortunately, the Thanatos has also survived, though it's seriously injured. One of its arms is gone, torn from its body, but the trademark resilience of a Tyrant has allowed it to survive. Its remaining arm has mutated to compensate, sprouting an enormous claw. A frantic battle ensues. The survivors employ every weapon they have and everything they can find, from the dead mercenaries' guns to clubs and knives. The Thanatos seems to be able to take anything they can dish out, but finally, their assault has an effect. The Thanatos collapses onto its face and stops moving. The firemen land nearby, in a clearing surrounded by wrecked tanks. This, too, is liberally stocked with ammunition and weapons, including an ampoule shooter. This comes in handy shortly thereafter, as the survivors are attacked yet again by the Thanatos. This time, they're ready for it, and load the ampoule shooter with a dose of Daylight. A single shot is all it takes. A red light appears from cracks in its torso, and the Thanatos screams as it falls to pieces. ================================================================ 11vii. A Summary of the Conclusion(s) of RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK ================================================================ Six months later, a fighter jet flies high over the crater that was once Raccoon City. It takes a few photographs of the wreckage, then flies on quickly. Amidst the wreckage, in a small office suspended high above the ground, a balding man in a lab coat is brought a copy of the jet's surveillance photos. Raccoon City looks vaguely like a pawprint on the ground, and the man concludes that nothing human could still be alive in the wreckage. Just then, he receives a phone call. Whoever's on the other end tells him that they're scheduled to begin soon. The balding man agrees; they intend to drop the experiments in groups of four, beginning with the T-4 units. We pan out from the office, past the blasted wreckage of the buildings and streets, to see that the ruins of Raccoon City are surrounded by a fence. It's marked with a biohazard symbol. ================================== 11viii. The Remain Hopeful Endings ================================== Outbreak has quite a few endings, determined by what characters are still alive following the fight with the Thanatos and what you've done with the Daylight vaccine. The only scenario that matters here is "Decisions, Decisions." After Greg's death, you can use his computers to reactivate the reagent generator. It'll produce doses of Daylight at thirty-second intervals, apparently indefinitely; I've gotten as many as five, although if you stick around too long, you'll be killed when Nicholai's bombs go off. What you do or don't do with the Daylight determines what ending you get. If you cure your active character with Daylight and you've got at least one other dose of it in your inventory at the end of the game, you'll get the character-specific "Remain Hopeful" ending. Note that to get the Remain Hopeful ending, you'll need to have cured yourself of the T-Virus *and* to have a sample of Daylight in your character's inventory at the end of the game. Alyssa: Alyssa leans back in the helicopter's seat. Just thinking about the column she has to write is giving her a headache. Noticing Alyssa's discomfort, one of the firemen offers her painkillers. She notices the Umbrella logo on the box, and refuses with a wan smile. Cindy: With Raccoon City destroyed, Cindy smiles faintly and realizes she's out of a job. She sees that one of the firemen is wounded, and bandages his leg with a strip from her skirt. Cindy concludes that there are any number of things she can do now. David: Just as David's about to relax, the fireman in the helicopter with him opens his eyes, which are covered with a milky film. He's a zombie, and so's the pilot. They come towards him... and David wakes up with the pilot's hand on his shoulder. He's having a nightmare in the helicopter. George: George is about to close his eyes and rest, but he realizes he has one last duty to perform. His friend died to get the secret of Daylight out to the world, and it's George's job to make sure that happens. Jim: "Does it really work?" Jim wonders, as he flips the sample of Daylight over in his hand. He accidentally drops it, and it nearly tumbles out the open door. Jim leaps to grab it, and is only prevented from falling out of the helicopter himself by the fireman's quick reflexes. Jim thanks him, and cradles the sample of Daylight in his shaking hands. Kevin: He closes his eyes and lets out a relieved sigh. Kevin reaches into his vest pocket, produces his last STARS exam, and rips it into shreds. Tossing the paper out of the helicopter, Kevin decides that he'll figure out what he'll do with the rest of his life after he takes a nap. Mark: Mark prays aloud that nothing like that ever happens to him again. "It's us," he says aloud, to himself. "Mankind." Yoko: She remembers what Greg said to her, and wonders what it is she's forgotten. If there's a secret hiding inside her, Yoko realizes she can't run away from it. Holding the sample of Daylight, she resolves that whatever happens next, she'll see it through to the end. ========================= 11ix. The Special Endings ========================= If you don't have an extra Daylight but you're virus-free, or if you're still afflicted but you've got the Daylight in your inventory, you'll get the Regretful Ending. Your character has survived, but is tormented by what he or she has given up in the process. Alternatively, if you don't have a Daylight in your inventory at all and you're still infected with the T-Virus, you'll get the Chopper Zombie ending, where your character slowly succumbs to the T-Virus in the rescue helicopter. Although he or she is still vaguely self-aware, he or she loses control and attacks the pilot from behind. Finally, four characters have special endings. In singleplayer mode, you must be playing as Alyssa, Mark, Jim, or George. To get the special ending, you must make sure that Yoko, David, Kevin, or Cindy, respectively, are still alive after the fight with the Thanatos. You must also still be infected with the T-Virus, and you must not have a sample of Daylight in your inventory at the end of the game. You can still use a dose of Daylight to kill the Thanatos. Alyssa, with Yoko: Alyssa decides to remain in Raccoon City. Escaping while she's still infected would be monstrous, she thinks, even for someone as self-obsessed as she is. Inside a building near the university, Yoko helps Alyssa get online. Alyssa emails her final report to an unnamed colleague, complete with photos of the zombies. Once the upload is finished, Alyssa yanks the laptop's wires out and dashes it against the floor, laughing bitterly. She and Yoko walk to the window to watch the missiles come in. Just before the moment of impact, Alyssa says, "We win, right?" Yoko says, her face blank, "Sure." Mark, with David: Unable to leave the city, Mark and David do the next best thing. David fixes the abandoned police tank in the courtyard, and Mark settles in behind the wheel. David mans the turret, and they charge into the hordes of zombies that've gathered in the streets. They're still fighting when the missiles hit. Jim, with Kevin: We fade in on Jim whining. He understands why he can't leave the city, but he would've preferred to get stuck with a woman, rather than with Kevin. Kevin quietly reloads his gun, and when he notices Jim's stopped talking, he looks up. Jim is paralyzed with fear, as he's seen the Thanatos getting back to its feet. Kevin smiles, and takes aim. As it prepares to charge, Kevin says, "Let's finish this like men." He fires at the Thanatos as the first missiles hit. George, with Cindy: Cindy admits to feeling "strange," and George says that he feels the same way. It'll all be over soon, he promises. They hold hands and watch the missiles come down. ===================================== 11x. Conclusions About the Conclusion ===================================== 1. There are no official survivors, with the possible exception of the two firemen who were piloting the helicopter. The best endings in Outbreak aren't about survival; they're about good deaths. (That being said, if any of the Remain Hopeful endings were to become official, I'd figure it'd be Yoko's; she has plot-related reasons to be around for "Decisions, Decisions," as opposed to "End of the Road" in File #2.) 2. The Daylight figures into the plot of Biohazard - Marhawa Desire, a manga starring Chris that serves as a prequel to RE6. Thus, at least one of the survivors lived through the destruction of the university and escaped with a sample. 3. The explosion that destroyed Raccoon City wasn't nuclear. There's actual wreckage as opposed to dust and glass, and the ruins don't appear to be radioactive. 4. Despite the military blockade, there were surviving rescue crews that were making a last-minute effort to get people out of the city before the bombs hit. Leon refers to survivors of Raccoon City as "rare" in Degeneration, but there are apparently more of them than are indicated by RE2 or RE3. ===================================== 11x. Scenario Branches and Side Notes ===================================== 1. Among all the eight main characters, only Yoko has anything like a real, character-driven storyline. Several NPCs in "Below Freezing Point" know her and will reveal some plot information, and there's a special cutscene if Yoko is in the group when the survivors meet Greg in "Decisions, Decisions." 2. If George isn't a PC or AIPC during "Decisions, Decisions," you'll find him mortally wounded near the manhole that leads down into the abandoned subway system, surrounded by his pills. 3. If Yoko isn't a PC or AIPC during "Below Freezing Point," she'll show up as a zombie either in the chemical locker or in the B8F office. ======================= 11xi. Random Commentary ======================= 1. Outbreak was something of a failed experiment, but if you could get the online working, it was also weirdly addictive. The one real problem with it was its custom interface for finding games online, which was unique to the game and badly coded. The lack of voice chat also makes "The Hive" nearly impossible, as it's very easy to accidentally go to the wrong floor of the hospital and end up alone with no way to meet up with your crew. 2. Outbreak's also sort of a love letter to the hardcore fans of the "classic" games, particularly as you move on to the higher difficulties. It's designed for people who really love to fight Hunters with knives. 3. The Raccoon Today file ("An Eerie Voice From Underground") refers obliquely to Brian Irons. I originally thought it was about Lisa Trevor, but the long blonde hair was a big clue. 4. I've gotta know; is the Valve Handle some kind of running gag with the developers? 5. I wonder if the sabotaged tram in "Below Freezing Point" is the work of Brian Irons. He mentions in the Chief's Diary file in RE2 that he's deliberately making sure no one can escape via the "lower levels." =================================================================== 12. RESIDENT EVIL 4 =================================================================== Resident Evil 4 went through three separate revisions. The first became the original Devil May Cry; the second was abandoned. The third was a complete reinvention of the series as an over-the-top action-horror game that gave not only the franchise but the entire action genre a shot in the arm. RE4 is one of the primary influences on modern third-person shooters. It differs dramatically from the survival-horror games that came before it, however, and represents a permanent paradigm shift for the RE series as a whole. It's the most popular game in the franchise among mainstream players, and one of the most contentious within the fan community. ================================================= i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 4 ================================================= Umbrella has been destroyed. Despite their efforts, it came to light that they were to blame for the destruction of Raccoon City. The government proceeded to suspend Umbrella's accounts, crashing its stock and driving it out of business. It's been six years since Leon Kennedy survived the Raccoon City outbreak. He's spent those years in training as an agent of the American government, and is now assigned to the U.S. Secret Service. However, shortly before Leon was to start his new job, the President's daughter Ashley is kidnapped. American intelligence soon picks up a lead as to where to find Ashley, and Leon's sent to investigate. Word arrives that she's been spotted in a small, rural village in Spain, and Leon gets a ride into the countryside from a couple of bumbling Spanish cops, who seem amused by the whole thing. None of them notice that they're being followed. The cops decide to wait in the car, near the rickety rope bridge that separates the village from what passes for its main road. Leon gets out to start his investigation, and gets an introductory call on his GRVT visual radio from Ingrid Hunnigan, another agent who's monitoring his progress. A nearby signpost simply says "Pueblo," "village," as though nothing else in the world could be known by that name. The road's blocked by a parked truck, so Leon checks out a nearby house. Inside, he finds one man, who curses at him in Spanish. Leon apologizes and tries to leave quietly, but when he turns his back, the man nearly brains Leon with an axe. The villager ignores Leon's warnings, and forces Leon to kill him. He doesn't seem to feel any pain or to be afraid of Leon's gun. Outside, the truck's engine starts. Leon heads to a window in time to see it tearing down the path towards the police car. He hears gunshots, then a crash. At the same time, more villagers have arrived. Several are holding the front door shut. Leon searches the rest of the house, and finds a stack of withered body parts underneath the stairs. Clearly, these people have been preying on travelers for some time. He dives out a window, and gets attacked by more villagers. Like the first, they instantly rush towards Leon, wielding farm tools with intent to kill; like the first, they wade through gunfire and show no fear. Th1e crash Leon heard earlier was from the truck hitting the parked police car. The crash has broken the rope bridge and sent both cars into the river below. With no way back, Leon heads forward, towards the village, and through the villagers' gauntlet of armed men and crude booby traps. When Leon reaches the village, he hangs back for a second and studies it through binoculars. Calling it a village may be giving it too much credit; it's a collection of rickety shacks. The villagers are tending farm animals and harvesting hay, with neither electricity or running water. The villagers have impaled one of the policemen and burned him at the stake in the center of town. When they see Leon, they attack him en masse. As Leon fights a running battle through the village, he finds an old shotgun and a cache of grenades, neither of which the villagers have thought to use against him. Instead, they wield Molotov cocktails or their farming tools. Leon is forced to take shelter in one of the larger houses and barricade the door. The villagers come through the windows, and climb up ladders to reach the second floor. Worse luck, one of them fires up a chainsaw. Appropriating the old shotgun, Leon defends himself as best he can, killing a dozen villagers or more. They only stop when, out of nowhere, a church bell begins to ring from somewhere nearby. The survivors retreat through a metal door in the town square. Leon is left alone in an empty village. A note in one of the cabins, written by "Chief" Bitores Mendez, is a message to the villagers telling them to stay alert. It warns the villagers to watch out for an American agent, and has a recent photo of Leon attached to it. It also says that their captive is being held in a building past the farm. His course set, Leon heads down a side trail. The retreating villagers have taken the time to set up more traps and ambushes to defend the building, a fire-damaged old house. The villagers' prisoner is a Spanish man Leon's age, bound and gagged inside a wardrobe. Leon frees him, and finds that unlike the others, he's still lucid. Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of two more farmers, accompanied by a large bald man wearing a heavy overcoat. The prisoner says bitterly that the latter's the "big cheese": Chief Bitores Mendez. Leon rushes Mendez and throws a powerful roundhouse kick. Effortlessly, Mendez catches Leon's foot and throws him backward. Leon crashes through a rotten table and falls unconscious. While he's out, someone injects something into Leon's neck. When he wakes up, he's in some other building, chained to the prisoner. The villagers took Leon's jacket, but not his guns. Leon wakes the prisoner up, and asks him if he's seen Ashley. The prisoner's heard about the President's daughter, who's being kept in the village's church. The prisoner introduces himself as Luis, a former Madrid police officer and current "ladies' man." Leon says that he used to be a cop himself, and mentions that he was involved in the Raccoon City outbreak. Luis recognizes the name, and says he's seen a sample of the T-Virus in a laboratory. Suddenly, a villager toting an axe barges into the room. Neither Luis nor Leon can get free, but when the villager swings, Leon manages to use the descending axe to break their bonds. On the villager's next lunge, Leon breaks his neck. Luis runs away, and Leon checks in with Hunnigan. Leon blasts his way across a bridge, back in the general direction of the village. He finally comes to the first modern-looking house he's seen yet. He enters through the back door, and finds a modest bedroom. Leon takes a key from the dresser, and reads a note that's been left on the bed. The Chief of the village was ordered to leave Leon alive by a "Lord Saddler." Leon overhears a muted conversation through the bedroom door, and slowly pushes it open. Mendez grabs him by the throat again and begins to slowly strangle him. As Leon helplessly tries to escape his grip, Mendez inspects his face. Finally, he drops Leon, saying that Leon shares their blood. He returns to his bedroom, leaving Leon to wonder what he was talking about. Hunnigan calls Leon, and tells him what she's learned. A religious cult called Los Illuminados is apparently involved with the situation. Leon tells her what's just happened, and she urges him to find the church. Leon rushes back into Mendez's bedroom to get some answers, but gets ambushed. The only thing that saves him is the sudden intervention of a woman in a red dress, who fires at Mendez from outside. Mendez leaps out the window to deal with her as she climbs up onto the roof. Once again, Leon's left with more questions than answers. With little else to do, Leon leaves the house and heads back to the village. His new key fits the door in the town square, allowing him to reach the village church via a cave tunnel. The front door of the church is, of course, shut and locked. Leon sets out to find the key. The path behind the church leads him across a rope bridge, where he finds another of Mendez's notes in a cabin. The villagers are currently all occupied trying to track Luis down, as he's stolen something from them that could somehow render Ashley "useless." Mendez writes that "the agent," Leon, will never make it across the lake alive; their "Lord" has awakened something called Del Lago. When Leon reaches the lake's shore, he's just in time to see two villagers dump the other policeman's body in the lake. As Leon watches, something enormous comes up out of the water and devours the corpse. With little choice in the matter, Leon steals a motorboat and heads across the lake. He's nearly knocked out of the boat by the monster, a hideous mutant the size of a whale. In the wake of its passing, the boat's anchor falls out and hooks onto Del Lago's back, forcing Leon to follow after it. Fortunately, the boat contains a stock of harpoons. After Leon sticks a couple of dozen spears into it, Del Lago retreats to the bottom of the lake. Leon manages to cut himself free before he's dragged down with it. Leon takes the boat to the other side of the lake. He barely makes it onto land before something in his chest starts to spasm. He staggers into a cabin and passes out. He wakes up later, after a nightmare, to find that night's fallen. A slightly worried Hunnigan contacts him and tells him she's been trying to reach him for six hours. Leon shrugs it off and says he'll continue with his mission. There's a note on a bed near where he passed out. It's unsigned, but tells him that if he wants to get Ashley, he'll need an item that's hidden in the waterfall, but he'll also need to watch out for something called "El Gigante." The anonymous writer concludes that what's happening with Leon's body is beyond his/her power to fix. As Leon heads towards the waterfall, he runs into yet another pair of villagers on the road. One of them, as he advances, shudders and twitches. Finally, his head explodes and is quickly replaced by a shaking mass of razor-sharp tendrils. This new creature is dangerous, but fragile, and one seems to be hiding inside most of the villagers' heads. Leon fights through the rest of the waterfall's guards and uses the villagers' dam to divert the river's current. In a cavern behind the waterfall, Leon finds a round insignia that'll fit in the church's door. Taking it opens a secret passage that leads to the other side of the lake. Leon quickly finds out just what El Gigante is. A group of villagers drag it into a clearing near the church, where it promptly snaps its bonds and kills the lot of them. It's a large ogrish thing, vaguely humanoid and nearly invulnerable. After it absorbs a few slugs to the face, however, one of the tendriled creatures emerges from between its shoulder blades. Leon hits the Gigante with everything he has, and when it's stunned, he carves at the growth with his knife. When the parasite dies, so does El Gigante. Leon runs back to the church, where he finds that the round insignia opens the door. Inside, on the second floor, he finally finds a scared Ashley Graham. Leon explains who he is, then radios Hunnigan for extraction. As they try to leave the church, a robed man steps in front of the altar and tells Leon that he'll take Ashley. He introduces himself as Osmund Saddler, the leader of Los Illuminados. His plan is to show the United States that it can't police the world, while simultaneously shaking it down for some much-needed cash. He also tells Leon that Ashley's been injected with the same thing he has: their "power," a.k.a. their "gift." Leon and Ashley are less than enthused by this. When a pair of crossbow-wielding monks burst in through the front door, Leon grabs Ashley and dives through the stained-glass window. Their designated extraction point is a clearing past the farm. Leon and Ashley make a run for it. Along the way, Leon finds a new note by one of the Illuminados, possibly Saddler himself, about Luis. Somehow, Luis is not only evading pursuit, but he's managed to remove the "egg" that the Illuminados injected him with. The note's author points to this as proof that a third party is involved. Leon and Ashley manage to make it past the farm before Hunnigan calls with some bad news: their evac chopper's been shot down. Hunnigan tells Leon to proceed to the extraction point regardless. As they cross a bridge, Ashley sees a mob of villagers with torches on the road behind them. They run away, only to find another mob in their path. With no other choice, Leon and Ashley run into a nearby cabin and barricade the door. Luis is already inside, and introduces himself to Ashley. The villagers attack soon afterward, laying siege to the cabin. Leon and Luis fight a losing battle, slaying dozens, but the villagers keep coming. Just when it seems as though the cabin will be overrun, the villagers withdraw. Luis claims that he "forgot something," and casually goes off on his own. Leon and Ashley, for their part, leave the cabin and open a new gate. It leads, via a roundabout and dangerous route, to a long bridge over the river, a large door with yet another strange lock, and an old ski lift. Leon finds a note in a house, written by Mendez and dropped by a villager, that says there's an ambush waiting for them at the bottom of the lift. Mendez is down there, and the gate will only open "before his gaze." Leon takes care of a few carloads of villagers as he and Ashley ride the lift down. The path at the bottom of the lift terminates in a dilapidated barn: the perfect place for an ambush. Leon tells Ashley to hide while he investigates. Somehow, once Leon's inside, Mendez still manages to get the drop on him. Mendez throws Leon across the barn, then turns around and casually twists the steel doorhandles into origami. Leon manages to roll away from Mendez's next attack, and kicks an oil drum at Mendez. Despite Mendez's contemptuous smile, Leon shoots the drum, setting the barn on fire and revealing Mendez as inhuman. His spine elongates, pulling his upper torso free from his legs with a wet tearing sound; his arms lengthen and sprout long claws. This new Mendez advances towards Leon. He promptly catches thirty-seven shotgun blasts straight to the face. His exposed spine snaps, forcing Mendez to pull his upper body around with a strange, monkeylike gait, attacking Leon without warning from virtually any direction. Leon continues to pour buckshot into the twisted thing that was once Bitores Mendez, until Mendez finally falls dead. His glass eye falls out, and Leon pockets it. The eye proves to be what Mendez meant when he said his gaze would open the next gate; a scanner attached to the lock recognizes a code etched onto the eye's iris. Leon and Ashley walk through, onto a wide path leading to a well-maintained, ancient castle. This is their backup extraction point, but the sudden arrival of a posse of villagers, too many to fight, forces them to take shelter in the castle. The castle's crawling with white-skinned men in black robes: Illuminados. As Leon enters, he receives another call from Hunnigan, but her signal dies. One gunfight later, Leon and Ashley are crossing the castle's battlements when Luis catches up to them. He claims to have a drug that'll stop their convulsions, but finds that he's lost it somewhere. Luis tells Leon and Ashley that he knows they're infected, and asks if they've been coughing up blood. They both nod, and Luis curses; this means their eggs have hatched. Luis turns around to leave, saying he'll go back and find the drug. Ashley offers to go with him, but Luis brushes her off. Leon asks why Luis is helping them. His answer: "Because it makes me feel better. Let's just leave it at that." Leon and Ashley, alone again, progress further into the castle. In a torchlit antechamber, they meet the castle's lord, Ramon Salazar, who appears to be a pasty and withered old man. He offers them the chance to surrender, as they're his "brethren"; Leon, predictably, refuses the offer. Salazar points out that they'd rather take the girl alive, but Leon's marked for death. As he leaves, Leon reassures a distraught Ashley that they'll find a cure for their infection. After Salazar's departure, a large stone plinth rises into Leon and Ashley's path. It's marked with a fresco that's conspicuously missing a few pieces. With no way to get through it, they're forced to take a detour through the castle's prison. There, they find another note on the wall, another dispatch from Saddler or Salazar about Luis Sera. Apparently, Luis stole several vaccines and an unnamed sample. The note's author takes this as further proof of his theory that another agency is somehow involved, and urges the note's readers to make the sample's reacquisition a top priority. Leon investigates the prison, and finds a switch he needs inside one of the cells. To reach it, he must defeat a blind, armored prisoner who wields a pair of wickedly sharp claws. Fortunately, Leon's able to exploit its blindness by shooting at a pair of bells in the prison; while it swings wildly at the ringing sound, Leon blasts at the parasite on its back. It dies when the parasite does. After dispatching a sizable number of Illuminados, Leon and Ashley reach an enormous ballroom. Suddenly, Ashley begins to cough helplessly, drenching her hands with her own blood. When Leon tries to help her, she pushes him aside and runs, straight into one of Salazar's traps. Ashley winds up strapped to a secret door, which promptly revolves out of sight, while Leon is prevented from reaching her by several sets of spring-loaded spears. As she disappears, Leon yells that he's coming for her. He receives a call on his radio from, of all people, Salazar. They've jacked into his transmissions. Salazar tells Leon that he's unleashed some of his "pets" into the castle's sewer, just to keep him company. These "pets" turn out to be large mutated insects, capable of camouflaging themselves and of sticking to walls. Leon will later find out they're called "Novistadors." For right now, he's hard-pressed to stay alive as he passes through the castle's dungeon, which has been repurposed into an archaic sewer system. In the old cellblock, Leon finds a set of notes signed by Luis, who's written the beginning of a biological treatise on parasites called "Las Plagas" and their victims, the "Ganados" - the Spanish word for "cattle." The Plagas are a species of parasite with the ability to control their hosts. When Leon finds his way out of the sewer, he's above an Illuminado prayer meeting. Leon disrupts that with violence, then heads deeper into the castle. In a lushly furnished gallery, he has a shootout with one of Salazar's red-robed lieutenants, who attacks Leon with a mounted machine gun. This is an unwise decision, as Leon can run faster than the turret can rotate. Leon also finds documents in the gallery written by Ramon Salazar. Salazar writes about the Illuminados, who were once a powerful local religious group. Salazar's ancestors had oppressed the Illuminados, but Salazar, as a member of the cult, felt the need to make it up to them. To do so, he and Saddler have released Las Plagas, which were once sealed away underneath the castle, and somehow "rejuvenated" them. Salazar sees the Plagas' powers as a way to save people's souls, as a man without free will cannot sin. Leon promptly catches up to Salazar on the other side of the gallery. Salazar reveals two interesting things: one is that despite his appearance, he's only twenty years old. The other is that unlike the Ganados and Illuminados, Salazar isn't a "puppet of the parasites." He's in complete control of them. He demonstrates this by siccing a small army of Illuminados on Leon, including several that are armed with anti-tank weapons. When the smoke clears, Leon's found an ornamental goat, one part of the fresco puzzle. His next encounter with Salazar comes in the castle's gardens, a hedge maze inhabited by infected hunting dogs. Again, Salazar calls to tell Leon his death is imminent; at the end of the call, Salazar mentions he has another "rat" to chase down. Leon blasts his way through the hedge maze and finds the keys he needs to escape. His exit door leads to a luxurious guest bedroom, and an ambush. A woman pokes a gun into his back from behind. Leon whirls on her, disarming her and putting his knife to her neck. Leon tosses her pistol away, as she takes off and drops her sunglasses. Leon instantly recognizes her as Ada Wong. She smiles and says, "Long time no see." Leon's not as glad to see her, as he's heard that she's been working with Wesker. Ada, still smiling, doesn't deny it, and compliments him on having done his homework. Leon tries to ask another question, but just then, Ada's sunglasses explode in a flash of white light. When Leon's eyes clear, Ada's rearmed herself and jumped out the bedroom window. Leon, still half-blind, has no choice but to let her go. The bedroom apparently belongs to Salazar, or perhaps even Saddler himself. A note on a table speaks of the female intruder, and has several pictures of Ada attached. Since they've discovered her, the note's author concludes that she's responsible for removing Luis's egg, she's after the sample, and she's probably working for someone else. The focus of the Illuminados' operation has switched to Ada, and Luis is now expendable. Leon receives a gory demonstration of this shortly thereafter. Luis catches up to Leon in a large ballroom. He has the Plagas sample, but doesn't get the chance to say much before something slams into his back. A tendril rips through his chest and throws him into the air. Luis drops the sample, and Saddler is there to catch it. Saddler leaves, promising Leon that Salazar will deal with him. Luis, still clinging to life somehow, makes a confession: he was one of Saddler's researchers. With his last bit of strength, he gives Leon a drug that'll slow down the development of the Plagas inside him, and begs Leon to get the sample back from Saddler. Then, Luis dies. With the drug in hand, Leon hears a familiar voice. He's standing directly above Ashley, who's still strapped down. Leon carefully destroys her bonds, and continues to defend her from above as the Illuminados storm the room. Ashley grabs a key off one of the dead Illuminados and escapes through a nearby door. Ashley finds herself in a dusty, little-used part of the castle, used mostly for storage. She evades a couple of unarmed monks and finds her way into several unlit storerooms; fortunately, someone has left a flashlight near their entrance. In the oldest and dustiest of these rooms, Ashley finds a crest marked with the Salazar family's emblem, and a serpent ornament that serves as another piece of the plinth fresco. At the same time, she also finds that Las Plagas are not limited to infecting human or even living hosts; some of them have taken up residence within ancient suits of plate armor. Ashley manages to dodge the Plagas and make her way back to an earlier room, where the Salazar family's crest opens a secret door. Within is a ladder, leading upstairs. Ashley rejoins Leon, and the two of them renew their attempts to escape, despite Salazar's acidic commentary via radio. Leon backtracks briefly so he and Ashley can work together to access a locked treasure room, inside which is a large-caliber revolver. In another room, where clockwork gears and chaindriven flamethrowers guard a narrow path over a constant flow of lava, Leon finds the final piece of the plinth fresco. Nearby, a small tram carries Leon and Ashley back across the castle grounds, to the ballroom with the plinth. Another tram is waiting for them. This one carries them to a slightly newer part of the castle, where Leon finds another note on a table. It tells of Luis's death at Saddler's hands, the recaptured sample, and a renewal of purpose for the Illuminados; with the sample back in their hands, they can focus their efforts on capturing Ada and Ashley. Salazar springs yet another pair of traps on Leon and Ashley, neither of which prevent Leon from getting a golden cup: the Queen's Grail. The King's Grail is guarded by several of the armored Plagas Ashley encountered earlier. Both items are needed to open the next door. It leads, unexpectedly, to an enormous antechamber dominated by an equally enormous, pulsing green egg sac: the spawning grounds of the Novistados. Suddenly, one of them swoops down and grabs Ashley, flying off with her through the tower's open ceiling. Leon's left to contend with several flying Novistados, and once again, to rescue Ashley. Leon manages to get outside onto the battlements just in time to see Ashley being escorted into one of the towers by a retinue of Illuminados. Leon fights his way across the battlements and through the castle's clock tower. Salazar is holding Ashley in a sort of throne room, where he's got yet another trap waiting for Leon: an old-fashioned pitfall. Fortunately, Leon has a grappling hook with him, which he uses to arrest his fall. Salazar, growing increasingly frustrated, sends one of his robed companions, his "right hand," after Leon. The depths of the castle are apparently where Salazar's ancestors had sealed the Plagas away; ancient stonework eventually gives way to the trappings of a modern industrial project. Leon finds an elevator that's been powered down, and goes to reactivate it. When he does, something attacks him. It strikes without warning, swinging at him from random directions with a barbed tendril. Leon manages to stay a step ahead of it, and retreats into the power room. It follows him, and when Leon flips the elevator's circuit breaker, it's trapped inside with him. Leon uses a nearby tank of liquid nitrogen to freeze it solid and shatter it. At the same time, somewhere else, Saddler tells a man dressed in military fatigues to get "the girl" and dispose of Leon. Leon's elevator takes him down into some mining tunnels, where a squad of Ganados are hard at work. They've found some gold, but the focus of their exploration is Las Plagas. They've even found some Plaga fossils, suggesting that the parasites are much older than they thought. The mining tunnels eventually yield to a series of natural caves, used as a breeding ground for the Novistadors and a storage area. A bizarre-looking elevator at the caverns' end takes Leon up to a set of ruins. Ada's left a note for Leon pinned to the door of a small cabin. She's learned that drugs can neutralize a Plaga before it hatches; otherwise, it can be removed from its host via extraordinarily risky surgery. She cautions Leon that Ashley was injected well before he was, and her time is running out. Leon moves through a series of ruins, which begin to paint a disturbing picture. The area around Salazar's castle must've once been a large village, if not a town in its own right, but what hasn't been burned down looks like it was blown up. One of the burned-out shacks has a gate in its floor, leading down into an ancient set of catacombs. These, too, are being excavated by Ganados, leading to Leon fighting off most of the mining crew over the course of a hell-for-leather cart ride. At its end, he claims the key he needs to get back into the castle. Inside, Leon finds himself at the feet of a giant clockwork statue of Salazar, operated by a squad of Illuminados. As he tries to leave, the statue comes after him, smashing the castle as it goes. Leon barely manages to stay one step ahead of it, and leaps to safety as the statue destroys the bridge outside. Inside the tower, Salazar sardonically applauds, and congratulates Leon on being alive to join them. Salazar reaches for another lever, to catch Leon in yet another trap, but Leon pins Salazar's hand to the wall with his knife. Salazar screams like a girl and runs for safety, with Leon close behind. Their final showdown comes at the top of the tower. Here is apparently where Las Plagas are bred; a massive broodqueen drops the parasites by the dozen, while Salazar looks on. When Leon runs into the room, Ashley's nowhere to be found; as Salazar tells him, sneering, they've just taken her to a nearby island. He just missed her. Meanwhile, Salazar has one last trick up his sleeve. The broodqueen's tendrils envelop and draw him into it, mutating them into a new form before Leon's eyes. This new creature is built around a core that's still recognizably Salazar, and lashes out at Leon with its head and tendrils. Leon dodges its attacks and blasts at its head. When a lucky shot strikes home, the creature roars, and Salazar is left vulnerable. Leon takes the opportunity to put half a dozen .45 slugs into Salazar's chest. With its guiding intelligence dead, the rest of the creature quickly follows. Leon quickly climbs back down to the base of the tower, where he finds one last motorboat parked at the docks. Ada Wong is behind the wheel, and offers him a ride. Leon hesitantly agrees. Ada and Leon drive to the island in silence, Leon pensive, Ada smiling enigmatically. As they reach the coastline, Ada stands up and fires a grappling hook up to the cliff face. She claims she has some business to take care of, and bails out of the boat. Leon's left to bring it back under control and dock it; as he does, Saddler calls him on the radio. He and Leon exchange barbs before Saddler signs off. The island facility is heavily guarded by a new breed of Ganados, dressed in fatigues and armor, and wielding a generally higher quality of weapons. One even attacks Leon with a Gatling gun. Fortunately, despite their fortifications and weaponry, Ganados don't really work well as a group. That and some fast thinking are all that keeps Leon alive as he mounts his assault on the facility. He manages to stay a few steps behind Ashley's captors, but the heavy resistance slows him down. Leon blasts his way into the island's lab complex via its kitchens. In the facility's security room, a closed-circuit camera feed shows a cell elsewhere in the building. Ashley is being held prisoner inside by a pair of Ganados. They turn off the camera, but they're too late: now Leon knows where Ashley is. As he gets closer to that area, the opposition begins to thin out. Leon enters a much quieter, dimly lit part of the facility, where very few Ganados remain to oppose him. He's forced to search the area for a keycard before he can get any further. One room is a crude operating theater. Leon finds the keycard he needs on the body of a dead doctor, apparently killed in the middle of implanting a Plaga into an unwilling host, and another of Luis's notes. This one is about a creature called a "Regenerator," one of Saddler's experimental bioweapons. As Leon tries to leave the room, he gets to see one up close. It's a slow, grey-skinned humanoid, and when it's shot, it heals almost instantly. Leon is forced to run. His new keycard opens the walk-in freezer, which the Ganados have been using for storage purposes. Inside, he finds several frozen corpses, both human and Plagas; a keycard rewriter; and an infrared rifle scope. Using the latter, he's able to target the leechlike Plagas that live inside Regenerators and destroy them, thus killing the Regenerator. After rewriting the keycard, Leon sets out for the waste disposal facility, and Ashley's cell. It is, of course, locked when Leon gets there. He goes a bit further into the facility, alone, to find its key. Neglected corridors give way to a clean, well-used state-of-the-art research laboratory, complete with a watchdog: a mutated Regenerator bristling with spikes. It's also got the keycard to Ashley's cell, forcing Leon to destroy it. Thus equipped, he returns to the storeroom and sets her free. A paper airplane marked with a lipstick kiss sails in through the storeroom window. It's a note from Ada, suggesting that they escape via the waste disposal ducts. Leon takes her advice, and with an unwilling Ashley in tow, leaps down the disposal shaft. The Ganados catch up to them quickly, starting a running fight that ends when Leon and Ashley commandeer a bulldozer. The Ganados' attempt to destroy the 'dozer with a truck is foiled when Leon puts a .45 slug into the truck's engine block, which forces both the truck and the bulldozer into a fiery crash. Leon and Ashley, luckily, are separated from their pursuers by a wall of rubble. They've crashed into the heart of Saddler's research complex, a blend of the castle's Old World architecture with high-tech defenses. Saddler himself is waiting for them, and with contemptuous ease, demonstrates the control of which the late Ramon Salazar spoke; he halts Leon's attack with a word, and compels Ashley to follow him deeper into the complex. Leon barely has enough presence of mind to attach a bug to Ashley before he passes out. When he comes to, he's alone. Elsewhere in the complex, Krauser toys with a knife and asks Ada how Leon's doing. Ada's response: "He's not making it easy." Krauser continues the conversation by noting that Saddler's wise to their little game, and has the sample. Further, he says, neither he nor Wesker trust Ada. If she tries anything "fancy," he'll kill her. Ada, unimpressed, leaves. Leon continues to brutalize Ganados as he pursues Saddler. As he enters the boiler room, some gut instinct makes him stop and draw his knife. Suddenly, Krauser leaps at him from the ceiling, blade extended, and Leon barely parries in time. Krauser greets Leon, who recognizes him from two years ago, when Krauser supposedly died in a crash. Leon makes an intuitive leap: Krauser must have been the "insider" who kidnapped Ashley. Krauser congratulates him for catching on so fast. As they fight, Krauser lays out his plan. He kidnapped Ashley to buy Saddler's trust, which would let Krauser get close enough to steal the unique Plagas sample. Further, he's done all of this for the sake of Umbrella. Krauser feels very comfortable telling Leon this, as he's winning; Leon's only saved by Ada's intervention. She shoots Krauser's knife out of his hand just as he's about to drive it into Leon's chest. Krauser makes a tactical withdrawal by leaping about thirty feet straight up from a standing start. Shortly thereafter, without admitting to much, Ada leaves as well. Leon picks up Krauser's knife and receives a call from Saddler, who promises to introduce him to... "it." Krauser was guarding Saddler's throne room. Leon evades a series of laser barriers, and uses a lift behind the throne to descend deeper, into another set of caverns that the Illuminados are using for storage. Here, atop a stack of crates, he finds another of Luis's notes on Las Plagas. Luis's studies showed him that Las Plagas were a sort of collective intelligence, regardless of the species of a given Plaga's host. Therefore, they could quickly form communities upon infection. Luis concluded that he let his fascination with Las Plagas blind him to what Saddler had planned, and thus he felt that he shared the responsibility for Saddler's crimes. He knew he had to do something, but he didn't think he could do it alone. Leon pockets the file and keeps going, to a vast chasm bridged by a trio of shipping containers. In a puddle near the shipping crane's control booth, he finds the bug he attached to Ashley. Shortly thereafter, something enormous and vaguely serpentine crashes through the wall behind him; Leon rolls with the impact, and falls into one of the shipping containers. This is "it": a bizarre and resilient cross between a human and a snake. A frantic game of cat-and-mouse ensues. Leon stays out of "its" grasp long enough to hit the emergency release switches on each shipping container. Each time, it falls; each time, "it" leaps to safety at the last moment. Leon hits the last switch and runs for safety, grabbing into the crane's hook as the last container plummets into the chasm, taking "it" with it. "It" can also cling to walls, and comes storming up after Leon. Without having to worry about the emergency system, Leon's free to unload into its face. After a dozen Magnum slugs, "it" falls to the ground and crumbles into nothing. A nearby ladder leads back up and outside, to where the mercenary Ganados have set up camp. Leon uses a mineshaft as a shortcut, and winds up at another ruined city street. This one is mostly built out of sandstone, and provides a handy spot for Krauser to ambush him. Ashley's been taken beyond a gate at the end of the street, which is currently locked with three insignia. Krauser's carrying one of them, and has placed the other two throughout the area. If Leon wants to go further, it'll be over his dead body. The problem is that Krauser is now clearly more than human, moving so fast that he blurs and appearing from nowhere to attack with his knife. When Leon reaches the roof and claims the second insignia, Krauser returns for a final showdown. Triumphantly, he throws his gun away and holds up his left arm, which elongates into a glowing claw. He knocks Leon off the roof. While Leon's hanging off the edge, he sees that Krauser's placed charges around the tower they're standing on top of. Leon has three minutes to beat Krauser before the whole street explodes. Krauser's new claw is bulletproof, and he takes full advantage of that. It does not, however, protect his knees. Leon blasts Krauser's legs out from under him repeatedly, punishing Krauser when he falls. Finally, Leon's assault wears down Krauser's resistance; Krauser's heart explodes out of his chest, and he falls lifelessly to the rooftop. Leon grabs the insignia and escapes. What Krauser failed to mention is that the gate also leads to the Ganados' last lines of defense, a fortified encampment protected by dozens of armed guards. Leon thinks he's in trouble for a second, until a searchlight washes across the area; Hunnigan's second chopper has finally arrived. Leon produces an earpiece from his belt and gets in touch with its pilot, Mike, who's happy to even the odds. He begins by knocking over a nearby water tower, and follows up by raking the assembled Ganados with a hail of bullets. Leon heads through the fortifications on foot, shooting anyone who gets in his way while Mike takes on the Ganados' mounted guns. As they reach the other side of the ruins, Mike takes out the remainder of the Ganados' forces in the area, shredding them with chaingun fire. Leon thanks Mike, just before a surviving Ganado blows Mike out of the sky with a rocket launcher. Leon sees Saddler disappearing into the ruins with the Ganado, and swears that Saddler will pay for Mike's death. Ada catches up to Leon shortly thereafter, just as Luis's drugs start to wear off. For a moment, Saddler's control exerts itself, and Leon grabs Ada by the throat. Leon smiles coldly as he chokes her. Ada draws a slim switchblade from a sheath on her leg and slams it into Leon's thigh, breaking Saddler's control. Leon swallows another of Luis's pills and apologizes. Ada says that they have to get the parasite out of his body, but Leon's not willing to do it until he finds Ashley. Ada, slightly frustrated, agrees to his terms, and suggests that they split up. Without waiting for Leon's answer, she leaves the room. Saddler's main laboratory is built within an old prison that's fallen into disrepair. Leon dispatches the Iron Maidens that prowl its cellblock, then takes on the last few guards. Finally, in the center of the building, Leon finally finds Ashley, sealed within a womblike device of unknown purpose. As he runs into the room, Saddler steps behind Leon and comments on his audacity. Leon prepares for a fight, but before he can react, Saddler moves forward with amazing speed and punches Leon squarely in the chest. Leon's thrown backward, stunned. Saddler prepares for the final blow, but is interrupted by a stream of bullets. Ada, standing on a catwalk above the laboratory, empties a submachinegun into Saddler, who staggers back. This gives Leon the chance he needs to free Ashley, but doesn't actually hurt Saddler; before their eyes, his body rejects the 9mm slugs. They slide through his veins and bloodlessly fall from his fingertips. Leon grabs Ashley and makes a break for the nearest door. Ada covers them by blowing up a nearby stack of fuel drums, preventing Saddler from following Leon and Ashley, but trapping her in the room with Saddler. Their newest escape route leads Leon and Ashley down into a newer laboratory, where Luis's last memo is lying by the side of the path. It turns out that part of his research was to find a way to safely remove Las Plagas, but Saddler was using his work to make Las Plagas nearly incurable. Luis's lab is nearby, complete with a machine he designed to destroy Las Plagas. Without hesitation, Leon straps himself into the device and has Ashley operate on him. The device probes Leon's sternum with powerful, visible beams of radiation. As Leon writhes in pain, the radiation vaporizes the Plaga attached to his spine, without doing any immediately apparent, lasting harm to Leon. Encouraged, Ashley also submits to the operation. Leon says it's time that they went home. They head upstairs, out of Luis's lab, and wind up at the base of a construction platform. Suddenly, the entire island's gone ominously silent. Leon, suspecting a trap, has Ashley stay behind while he boards a personnel elevator. ==================================================== 12ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 4 ==================================================== The lift leads to a construction site. The first thing Leon sees is Ada, unconscious and dangling from a rope. Saddler laughs and chides Leon for being too American to believe he'll lose. Leon throws Krauser's knife, cutting Ada's rope and dropping her to the ground. As she runs for cover, Saddler promises to thrash the cliches out of Leon, and begins to mutate into a new and terrifying form: half spider, half scorpion, all giant multiclawed killing machine. Its only weak points are its eyes, which bulge out from its limbs and from Saddler's grotesquely mutated face. Leon opens up on it with every weapon in his arsenal, stabbing at Saddler's eyes whenever he has the chance, and uses some of the abandoned construction equipment to his advantage. Finally, Ada tosses a rocket launcher to Leon; some things never change. Leon grabs it and fires, wiping Osmund Saddler from the face of the planet. Luis Sera's sample of Las Plagas falls from Saddler's dead hand. Leon picks up the sample, and immediately, he feels the barrel of Ada's pistol against his head. She smiles, and demands the sample. Leon gives it to her. Ada takes it, then dives off the edge of the platform. Naturally, she comes right back up, seated comfortably inside an escape helicopter. She tosses Leon a keychain, then presses a button on a pocket computer. A three-minute countdown starts. Leon runs back to the elevator. At its bottom, he grabs Ashley and runs for the nearest tunnel, which links up to a sea cove with a parked jetski. With ninety seconds to go, Leon revs the motor and heads for daylight. Halfway down the river, a series of explosions levels the island, and the cavern begins to collapse. As rubble rains from the ceiling and a tidal wave chases them down the river, Leon and Ashley barely escape the tunnel before it collapses. As they move away from the crumbling ruin of Saddler's island, Ashley, smiling, offers Leon some "overtime." Leon quietly refuses, and guides his jetski back towards the mainland. All he wants to do, he says, is get her back home. ===================== 12iii. ASSIGNMENT ADA ===================== Known as "Ada the Spy" in the Japanese version, A:A is a short unlockable scenario that's made available when the player completes the main game. It is what happens when Ada Wong stops being subtle. In the coves of the island, Ada Wong receives a radio transmission. The voice on the other end of the line, Wesker, asks if there's a problem; Ada tells him that Saddler "knows." Wesker orders her to complete the mission as planned, and lets her know that an extraction helicopter is on its way. Her mission is to find five samples of Las Plagas, which are scattered throughout the island's research facility. Ada mounts a one-woman assault on the Ganados' island complex, shooting it out with the survivors of Leon's attack. He's left all the doors open and dealt with the more powerful mutations, such as the Regenerators, so all Ada has to do is dispatch the stragglers. A couple of Ganados with chainguns make that difficult, but Ada manages to win through. Four of the five Plagas samples are exactly where Ada's intel said they were. The fifth is missing. As Ada runs across the walkway towards the facility's radio tower, Jack Krauser suddenly appears behind her, already mutated into his powerful combat form. Ada manages to stay one step ahead of him, and much as Leon will, fires underneath and around Krauser's shield. Finally, Krauser's had enough punishment, and drops a flash grenade. When Ada's eyes clear, Krauser's gone, but he's dropped the final Plagas sample. She takes it, rides the lift up to the radio tower, and calls for evac. Seated safely in her helicopter, Ada seals the Plagas samples in a suitcase. A screen unfolds from the ceiling and displays Wesker, who congratulates Ada on her punctuality. He asks about Krauser; Ada says that he's dead. Wesker doesn't seem surprised, as Krauser was "an expendable grunt." Ada, on the other hand, is praised for her service, and for bringing Wesker's plans a bit closer to fruition. She smiles. Wesker says that Umbrella will soon return, and it will change their world. He breaks into maniacal laughter. =================== 12iv. SEPARATE WAYS =================== First introduced as in the PlayStation 2 port of RE4, Separate Ways is a second, shorter campaign. Like A:A, it's unlocked by clearing the main game on Normal difficulty. In RE4's plot, there are no coincidences. Most of the plot all comes back down to one person: Ada. From the moment Leon gets out of the police car outside the village, Ada is working to make sure that his mission succeeds and, despite Krauser and Wesker's plots, that he survives. Each of Separate Ways's five chapters is set during a particular point in RE4's main plot, shown from Ada's point of view. With her grappling hook, the player can access new areas and see the same events from a new perspective. ===================================================== 12v. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter One: Ring the Church Bell ===================================================== The only reason Ada's taken on this mission is to get closer to her main objective. It's not her style to hide in the shadows, though; she notes that she'll have to reveal herself to Leon and offer advice every once in a while. Just before Leon enters the Ganados' village, Ada infiltrates it herself. She knocks out a couple of Ganados who notice her arrival, then accepts a call from Wesker. Wesker is watching the village via satellite from some undisclosed location. He reminds Ada of the specifics of her mission; she's to rendezvous with the scientist they planted among Los Illuminados and acquire a master Plaga sample. He further advises her that if the natives are getting restless, ringing the church bell should quiet them down. Ada hangs up on Wesker just before Leon enters the village and starts a fight with the Ganados. Ada joins the battle on Leon's side, although she never lets him see her. Ada dispatches a few of the Ganados on her own before finding the key to the large metal door. The Ganados continue to hinder Ada as she moves through the underground passage to the churchyard. When she reaches the church itself, Ada must solve the sundial puzzle behind it to claim the strangely-shaped key to the front door, then use a catseye gem to defuse a pressure plate within the sundial. Inside the church itself, Ada takes out a few extra villagers and uses the church's console to ring its bell. At the same time, inadvertently, she closes the portcullises around the room where Ashley is being kept. After she escapes the church, Ada records a report on what little she knows of Las Plagas and Los Illuminados. The cult's somehow resurrected the Plagas, parasitic organisms which seem to communicate via a unique frequency of sound waves, much in the same way that dog whistles work. These hypotheses have been developed after study of a tissue sample Ada's organization retrieved at some point; Ada notes that she's seen several cultists carrying ceremonial rods, and wonders if the rods emit the sounds that control Las Plagas. Ada also notes that the Salazar family is able to control Las Plagas, although she doesn't say how. Ada's organization needs samples of Las Plagas to prove or disprove their theories, and Saddler's "occult activities" were considered worthy of investigation. Ada's also here to prove her loyalty to them. "The opening moves in this chess game have been played. There's no turning back now." ============================================= 12vi. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Two: Rescue Luis ============================================= As Ada's reading a book in Mendez's bedroom, Wesker contacts her via her PDA. He informs her that their double agent, Luis, is being held captive nearby. Ada must stop what she's doing and rescue him. Ada rushes to the burned-out house where Luis is imprisoned, but arrives just in time to watch the Ganados carrying Leon and Luis, both unconscious, out the door. Ada watches them go, and resolves to follow them. She pursues the Ganados back through the village to Mendez's house, where she arrives just in time to prevent Mendez from killing Leon. That comes at a price, though; Ada winds up in a confrontation with a squad of armed Ganados. One of them gets the drop on her with a tranquilizer rifle, and Ada is knocked out. Ada wakes up some time later lying on the bloody altar in the tunnels just outside Salazar's castle. She barely manages to avoid being the Ganados' next sacrifice. After activating the ski lift, Ada rides it up to the castle's gate. Using her grapple gun, she enters the pen where one of the Gigantes is lurking in ambush. Defeating it, Ada reaches the clearing outside the cabin, just as Leon and Luis repulse the Ganados' siege. As Luis leaves, Ada is waiting for him. She rebuffs his attempts to flirt with her and asks Luis where the sample is. He says he's just about to go and get it, then asks where she stands on "all of this." Ada tells Luis that there are some things he's better off not knowing, and who she works for is one of them. Luis shrugs and leaves, saying that he doesn't care who she is, as long as she gets rid of Saddler and his "religious friends." Shortly thereafter, Ada records a report on Luis. She muses that Luis has the least entanglements of any player in the current scenario; he's a "brilliant scientist," and he has an enthusiasm she once shared. Ada likes him. She first became aware of Luis's importance when she intercepted an e-mail that he sent to a friend from college pleading for help; that friend had since died. Luis didn't think he could trust the police, but when Ada revealed herself to him, he begged her to take him into custody. Instead, Ada ordered him to secure a master Plaga sample for her, as evidence. Fortunately, Saddler trusted Luis once... but now Luis's "snooping" has made Saddler suspicious. ======================================================== 12vii. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Three: Retrieve the Sample ======================================================== Ada detonates her sunglasses and uses the distraction to escape from Leon. She easily loses him in the hedge maze, but then she gets another call from Wesker. Wesker informs her that Luis has successfully recovered the Plagas sample. In addition, if Ada encounters Leon, she's to take him out; Wesker reasons that they don't need the distraction. Ada notes that Leon doesn't really know what's going on, and as such, is harmless. Wesker retorts that Leon's a survivor of Raccoon City, and repeats himself: "Take him out." Ada appears genuinely distressed by the order. Despite the sudden arrival of a squad of Illuminados, Ada finds her way back out of the hedge maze and through an ambush in the castle's dining hall. She catches up to Leon at one point as he's dispatching a squad of Illuminados, but to her obvious regret, Ada realizes she can't be seen with him. Ada enters the hall where Ashley's being held, a few steps ahead of Leon... and ahead of Luis. She's hiding nearby when Saddler kills Luis, but her cover's nearly blown when Wesker contacts her. As Leon grieves over Luis's dead body, Ada tells Wesker that Luis has just been killed, she hasn't been able to claim the sample, and that she hasn't yet had the chance to eliminate Leon. Wesker receives the news without visibly reacting, aside from tapping his fingers on his armrest, and says that they might be able to capitalize on the distraction that Leon represents. Ada, who's been doing that all along, makes a mild sound of agreement. Her next report concerns Jack Krauser, who Ada has to admit is one of the best soldiers she's ever met. He is just a soldier, though, and if he presents any serious problems, Ada's confident she can deal with him; she's studied his combat style and knows she can handle "that arm of his." Krauser takes his orders directly from Wesker, but Wesker also sent Ada along; she wonders if it wasn't so she could keep an eye on Krauser. She wouldn't be surprised if he's already fallen prey to the temptations of Las Plagas, but it doesn't matter. Krauser's role in the play is that of a patsy, the one who takes the blame when everything comes crashing down. Ada notes that everything must continue exactly as it has been up until now. ============================================================== 12viii. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Four: Stop Leon's Assassination ============================================================== Krauser and Ada have their meeting atop the radio tower on the island. As Ada leaves the room, she receives another call from Wesker. Wesker informs her that Leon's made "quite a jolly mess," and the Ganados have fallen into a panic. Ada notes that once Leon's found Ashley, his job is over and he'll just leave without a fight; Wesker says calmly that he's already told Krauser to kill Leon, then breaks the transmission. Ada says out loud, even though Wesker can't hear her, that he's forgotten she doesn't always play by Wesker's rules. She breaks into a run. A short time later, Ada's found her way into the shipping lane Leon and Ashley used to escape from the waste disposal facility. It's half-wrecked and burning, but it's still mostly clear, and it's an easy trail to follow. Ada blasts her way through the Ganados in the area, and takes a side passage into a previously-undiscovered underground harbor. Saddler's ambitions apparently extended even further than anyone thought; he's not only acquired a battleship somehow, but he's recommissioned it. Ada finds this out the hard way, when Ganados use the battleship's turrets to open fire on her. She returns fire with the harbor's own mounted defense guns, fighting a running battle throughout the dock and on the deck of the battleship itself. Her final salvo, delivered with the help of an anti-aircraft gun, hits the battleship's magazine. Ada barely manages to make it to a safe place before the ship explodes and sinks to the bottom of the harbor. Ada continues battling through the processing center, past the wrecked trucks that tried to stop Leon and Ashley's bulldozer run, and eventually kicks her way into the area where the bulldozer crashed. She enters the warehouse just in time to shoot Krauser's knife out of his hand. The next report Ada files is about Leon, and his "formidable survival skills." She speaks at length about his good qualities: she says he's "practically a genius," and that he "has smarts and knows how to use them." He's the most important part of Ada's plan, but he wasn't a part of it at all until a couple of months ago. Ashley's kidnapping forced Ada to rapidly adapt to Leon's presence, but she has faith in him. His consistent luck and his ability to survive despite overwhelming odds both have Ada convinced that everything will go exactly as she's planned. ==================================================== 12ix. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Five: Obtain the Sample ==================================================== Ada, occupied with other matters, reaches the dirt road past Krauser's ambush site just as Mike the helicopter pilot arrives. She fields another call from Wesker, who orders her to take on whoever proves to be the victor in the final battle between Leon and Saddler. Ada, almost wistfully, notes that it's not as easy as it sounds, but Wesker is strangely insistent that neither Saddler nor Leon live to see tomorrow. Leon and Mike have nearly obliterated the Ganados' defenses, but Ada still encounters plenty of resistance as she follows Leon. She takes out the last few mercenary Ganados in the area and catches up to Leon just in time to nearly die at his hands. After their brief conversation, Ada runs ahead, giving Leon time to get ahold of himself. She disposes of the token Ganado resistance in the old cellblock, but as Ada reaches the prison yard, a thrown girder nearly takes her head off. She looks up to the watchtower's roof to see a bloodied and burned Jack Krauser, half-dead and still wearing his monstrous form. With a small smile, Ada pulls out her grapple gun and hurls herself onto the tower's roof. As she's just reported Krauser's death, Ada tells him, his suddenly turning up alive would mean she'd have to fill out *far* too much paperwork. While Ada fights Krauser on the rooftops of the prison yard, Leon can be heard dispatching the guards below. Krauser's lost little of his sheer power, and he's chosen the battlefield very well; the narrow confines of the towers' rooftops work in his favor. Ada's come too far to lose now, though, and Krauser's wounds have weakened him. She leaves him in a bloody heap. Ada rappels onto the side of Saddler's laboratory and crawls inside via a ventilation shaft. She winds up on the catwalk above Saddler's lab just as Saddler punches Leon across the room. Ada takes Saddler on with her TMP, giving Leon the crucial moment he needs to escape the laboratory with Ashley. At the same time, though, Ada winds up trapped inside the laboratory with Saddler. If anything, Saddler's far more dangerous as a simple human. He attacks Ada with the tentacles that killed Luis Sera, as well as a devastating chokeslam that takes advantage of his unbelievable speed. He's able to absorb any bullets she fires at him, then eject them from his outstretched hand fast enough to cause injuries. Ada bombards him with grenades and explosive crossbow bolts, occasionally getting close enough to stab Saddler in the eye that emerges from his mouth. At the end of the fight, Saddler falls face-first to the floor, seemingly dead, and Ada finally claims the sample. She doesn't notice Saddler's tentacle moving of its own volition, though, and it knocks her unconscious. When she comes to, Saddler's strung her up on the construction site, and Leon's caught up with them both. Once he frees her, Leon moves to engage Saddler while Ada rappels up onto the catwalks above the construction site. Ada notices a rocket launcher lying on the other side of the building, but she also notices a series of demolition charges that a squad of angry Ganados have planted throughout the construction site. A two-minute timer starts. Ada frantically races for the rocket launcher, reaching it with a few seconds left to go, and tosses it to Leon at the crucial moment. He fires, wiping Osmund Saddler off the planet, and Ada is finally able to accomplish her mission. As Ada flies away in her escape helicopter, she writes her final report. As requested by her organization, she's acquired the sample, but she's given Wesker something else entirely. She was only pretending to work for him all along. To Wesker, Ada notes, Umbrella represented sanctuary; he could hide behind it while he made his own plans. Without it, he's got to open a new one, and he's not alone in that. There are those in power who need something like Umbrella to hide their own deceit. Wesker will stop at nothing to recreate Umbrella, for himself as well as these unnamed others. Wesker's been in contact with another pharmaceutical corporation, which "maintains medical and drug facilities the world over." Ada doesn't doubt that he'll next turn up in conjunction with them. The organization, she thinks, must remain vigilant. ===================================== 12x. Conclusions about the Conclusion ===================================== 1. Leon S. Kennedy, Ashley Graham, and Ada Wong have survived. 2. Leon is no longer carrying a Plaga inside his body. Ashley, however, may be. (See Random Commentary, below.) 3. Luis Sera, Ramon Salazar, Osmund Saddler, Bitores Mendez, Mike the helicopter pilot, and most if not all of the Ganados and Illuminados are all dead. 4. Jack Krauser may or may not be dead. He was killed twice, but the first one looked pretty final and it didn't take. 5. Ada has delivered several samples of Las Plagas to Wesker, but did not give him the special parasite meant for Ashley Graham. 6. Wesker is planning to bring back the Umbrella corporation, and to use it to change the world. Umbrella and those who work for it are involved in some kind of deeply covert war. 7. Wesker does *not* have a sample of a master Plaga. He may think he does, but Ada's given him something else in its place. (This plays into the Plaga mk. 2 and 3 in RE5.) 8. Ada Wong is still human. (In other words, it would appear that she did not, as occasionally theorized, use any viral methods of survival at the end of RE2. Ada exhibits no superhuman abilities at any time during RE4.) 9. Ada Wong is a double agent, working for an undisclosed organization that appears to be opposed to Wesker and his unnamed backers. She was only pretending to work with Wesker, but she may have blown her cover by helping Leon. 10. Leon is currently employed as a member of the U.S. Secret Service. 11. With Wesker in charge, Umbrella's true role in the modern world has nothing to do with pharmeceuticals. Instead, what it "covers" is criminal activity. ======================= 12xi. Random Commentary ======================= 1. When Leon shows the photo of Ashley to the Ganado in the first cabin, he snarls something in Spanish. A rough translation is, "What the f--k are you doing here? Get out of here, a-----e!" 2. Other translations: "Cojelo!" = "Get him!" "Muerete..." = "Die..." "Morir es vivir..." = "To die is to live..." "Ganados" = cattle, livestock "Mátelo!" = "Kill him!" "Cabron!" = a general-purpose vulgar insult 3. Unless Saddler's death finished off the remaining Ganados somehow, you have to figure there are a few survivors of Los Illuminados. Leon couldn't've gotten them all. 4. While RE4's introduction makes Umbrella's demise sound like a quiet, civilized process, RE5 and RE:UC make it clear that it was anything but. To the average man on the street in the RE universe, though, Umbrella was dismantled after a five-year-long court battle. 5. I wonder if Las Plagas infection weakens the human skull. Ganados' heads seem to pop or deflate given the slightest provocation. 6. Many readers have written in to note that in 5-4, Luis's device gives a different readout for Ashley than it does for Leon. Ashley may very well still be hosting a Plaga. However, this may have been an error in the GameCube version; in the PS2 version, Ashley's readout is simply not shown. 7. Cinematic references in RE4: -- that damn laser corridor is all Paul Anderson's fault. -- there's a deer head mounted on a wall in the art gallery, complete with a gem hidden in its eye. This dates back to the original Resident Evil, where it was a shout-out to the creepy deer head mounted on the wall in the 1990 remake of _Night of the Living Dead_. -- the initial village area reminds me of, as I've said before, Lucio Fulci films, with the random grossouts, rural environment, and occasionally shocking gore. -- the Illuminados' design reminds me of an old German movie called _Mephisto_. Then again, it also makes me think that I'm being pursued by albino clones of Maynard James Keenan. -- Duncan Brown notes that the unlockable Mathilda handgun is not only Leon's old custom handgun from RE2, but it's named after Natalie Portman's character in _The Professional_ (who was, of course, a young girl being protected by a man named Leon). -- Another note from Duncan Brown: the Plagas are vaguely reminiscent of the parasites from the X-Files episode "Darkness Falls." -- Franck Grasset writes in to note Salazar may be named after Miguel Salazar from _Day of the Dead_. (Either that, or after that guy on "24.") -- Ada's pose on the title screen of Separate Ways is, as observed on Wikipedia, a homage to the film poster for _La Femme Nikita_. 8. Differences between the GameCube and PS2 versions: -- When Leon and Krauser are speaking during your final fight with him, Krauser's answer to Leon's second response has changed. Before, it was "I see you've honed your skills." Now, it's "Hmph! Umbrella." -- The cage ambush in the dining room has a short intro scene now, featuring the prisoner leaping down into the cage from above you. -- All cutscenes are now cinematics, as opposed to being rendered with the game's engine. Thus, any changes you've made to an area or to Leon won't carry over to the movies; Leon will always be unarmored and in his default costume, and parts of a room that you've just smashed will be whole and intact during a movie. -- As above, the scene where Ashley's Plaga is removed is no longer shown. =================================================================== 13. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK - FILE #2 =================================================================== The original Outbreak sold quite well on the strength of the RE name, but by the time File #2 came out, word of mouth had caught up to it. File #2 was a substantial improvement to the original game, featuring a number of mechanical improvements like new character bonuses, the ability to walk with a weapon readied, and auto-aim, but its sales were so poor that it killed off plans to release a #3 and #4. Like the original game, RE:O2 is five unconnected short scenarios set in and around Raccoon City in the week of the outbreak, starring eight ordinary people caught in the middle. ============================== 13i. Scenario One: Wild Things ============================== The Raccoon Zoo is the site of a massacre, with many of its animals lying dead outside their cages. Zombies feast on the corpses, with several intently devouring a rhinoceros, but some of the animals have caught the virus themselves. One of them in particular, an elephant, strikes out at the zombies in a rage. Near the zoo's back entrance, Cindy Lennox finds a note posted on a bulletin board, left by the Raccoon City police. They've set up an extraction point in the trainyard near the Raccoon Zoo's front gate. If the survivors cut through the zoo, they should make it to the trainyard with time to spare. Cindy says aloud that she has a bad feeling about this, but they really should check it out. The zoo's Elephant Restaurant is nearby, although inhabited by several zombies. The survivors break inside and find a chain cutter in its back room, which is enough to take the padlock off the zoo's back gate. For a moment, the zoo looks almost peaceful, but then the elephant comes out of nowhere and attacks. Its charge destroys the zoo's back gate, and the survivors are forced to escape into the zoo. The elephant continues to pursue them through the concourse, along with infected hyenas, tropical birds, insects, and even some of the plant life. Inside the main office building, the survivors find a key they need. It opens the door to the elephant's old performance stage, where one of the zookeepers has left his diary. The elephant's infection has been progressing for some time, and he's developed a violent reaction to the parade music that accompanied his show. More importantly, however, the survivors also find documentation about the zoo's new security measures. To open the zoo's front gates and escape, they need to find two lion emblems. The survivors turn the zoo's power back on, then lure the elephant onto its stage by playing its hated parade music. When it charges inside, they dash back out and shut the gate behind it, temporarily trapping it. After arming themselves from the zookeepers' stash of firearms, the survivors then proceed through the zoo's attractions, dealing with undead female lions, crocodiles, and a swarm of giant bees as they ransack the area. They find the emblems they need and install them, which unlocks the zoo's front gate just as the zombie elephant escapes its pen. There's a train parked right outside the zoo, and it even works, which should provide a quick run to the extraction point. Before they can get aboard it, however, the zombie elephant crashes through the fence of the Front Gate Plaza. They're forced to deal with it before it can tip over the train, shooting it dead with a couple of rounds from the zookeepers' high-caliber hunting rifle. Exhausted, the survivors climb onto the train and start it up, anxiously awaiting a chance to reach a safe haven. Just as they start to relax, however, the train crashes into something and stops. Outside its window, they see a burning helicopter, surrounded by the bodies of policemen and National Guardsmen. The evacuation point has been wiped out, and their entire ordeal in the Raccoon Zoo was for nothing. ============================== 13ii. Scenario Two: Underbelly ============================== The streets have been overrun. With no other options, the survivors dodge a mob of zombies and run into the only shelter they can find: a subway station, where Jim Chapman used to work. The station has a few zombie inhabitants, but it's otherwise calm. A parked train offers an avenue of escape, but there are several complications. The street above the subway has collapsed, which has blocked the westbound tunnel and crushed all the cars in the train except for one. It's also dropped enough debris on the tracks to trigger the automatic shutdown system. The last intact car would work as an escape route, but to get it going, the survivors must decouple it and reactivate the subway system. They venture into the employees' section of the station, dispatching the undead remnants of its staff, and reactivate the emergency power supply. Using a valve handle found near the generator, the survivors drain the pump room and reactivate the breakers, which also opens the storage closet. Inside that, they find a roll of vinyl tape, which they use to repair the subway's fire suppression system. The survivors return to the subway platform, just in time to see another train crash into the station. The sprinklers immediately go off, drenching the survivors and dousing the resulting flames. As a happy side effect, the survivors are able to find the last piece they need in the wreckage of the new train. They install it, which decouples the last intact subway car from the rest of its train. They get into the car and hit the switch, but a new enemy has entered the picture: T-Virus-infected fleas, which swell into immensity if supplied with enough fresh blood. A larger specimen suddenly smashes through the window of the subway car, abducting one of the survivors. The others go to rescue him. The largest of the fleas is guarded by a swarm of smaller insects, and it's capable of crushing a human underneath its bulk. They bring it down with a combination of conventional weapons and bug spray, salvaged from various areas around the station. With it dead, the tracks are no longer blocked, and they're able to use the train car to escape. Thanks to the fleas, some of the survivors miss their ride. Using a key found where the subway car used to be, they return to the generator room and open a passageway into the subway's ventilation tower. The ladders on its sides lead the survivors, weary but alive, onto the empty streets of Raccoon City. ================================ 13iii. Scenario Three: Flashback ================================ Several of the survivors, including Alyssa Ashcroft, have managed to make it out into the Raccoon Forest, using some of the forest's old hiking trails. They gather in a cabin that belongs to Ed, an old man who lives in the woods by himself. His cabin is covered with notes in his illegible handwriting, and decorated with several photos of him and a woman. The photos are labeled "Ed & Dorothy." Ed volunteers to lead the survivors out of the woods to safety, using an old path that he says leads to the next town over. He sets off at a brisk pace, but cautions them to be careful. "It's not like there's a good hospital around here," he says, and laughs disturbingly. While it's not as monster-infested as the city, there are still a few zombies on the back paths through the forest. These zombies are a bit older than the ones in the city, and many have bizarre, plantlike roots sticking out of their bodies. When injured, they emit a cloud of green, poisonous gas. Just before the survivors reach an old suspension bridge, Ed disappears. Alyssa has a sudden flash of memory; near the suspension bridge, she remembers seeing a wounded man lying on the ground. Crossing over, the survivors find the ruins of an old hospital. If the local plant life is any indication, it's been abandoned for decades, if not longer. At the same time, there's an old newspaper in the corner of the courtyard from September 8th, 1998: earlier this month. The article speaks of a strange masked figure that's been mutilating dogs and crows in the Raccoon Forest, thus causing hysteria among the locals. Alyssa can remember seeing two cops standing in the hospital's open gate, at some point. The survivors warily enter the hospital. The inside is as dilapidated as the outside, but it isn't abandoned. They're barely more than a few steps inside the building when a door opens, and a man wearing a black hood comes after them with an axe. He's shirtless, wearing dress slacks, and the side of his chest is disfigured by what looks like some kind of fungal infection. Gunfire seems to injure him, but it doesn't stop him. The Axeman continues to pursue the survivors throughout the building, as do the strange, poisonous zombies. The hospital is falling apart, only held up by the huge, unnatural vines that've grown throughout the building. Several people have come to investigate this growth, including an ill-fated botanist who's left his notes, and his last words, in the hospital's locker room. In the hospital's examination room, an equally unlucky journalist has written of his intention, to defy the power of money by investigating the hospital. In the hospital's basement, the survivors find a large tank of a noxious, yellow solvent. It's capable of making the vines and growths throughout the hospital wither and die. The survivors fill syringes and bottles with it, using it as a weapon against the plants. This allows them to clear off several doors, and thus further explore the complex. During the survivors' investigation, they hear a massive crash from outside. The rope bridge that let them reach the hospital has suddenly, conveniently collapsed. (Those survivors who're caught on the opposite side of the bridge when it falls are stuck in the forest. The zombies disappear, replaced by gigantic mutant insects that leap upon their prey. After reuniting a wounded survivor with her young daughter, the survivors manage to find a bridge that will, unfortunately, take them back to Raccoon City. They've spent a day in the forest, and accomplished almost nothing.) It doesn't take long for them to find another way out of the hospital; a side door in the first-floor storage room leads back into the forest. When they try to open it, a large tendril ensnares the doorknob, as though guided by some malevolent intelligence. Finally, with the Axeman hot on their heels, the survivors duck into the administrator's office. A patient record in the administrator's files tells two disturbing stories. One is that patients were being admitted to this hospital as recently as this month, September of 1998. This isn't the overgrown ruins of a hospital; the hospital's been ruined by the mutant overgrowth. The other is the list of the symptoms of a sick woman, Dorothy Lester. Her disease, while unidentified, is clearly a slow-acting case of the T-Virus. Ed has left part of his diary in the administration office, and another hospital executive who's tormented by his conscience has hidden a letter of confession inside a secret room. Reading them, the survivors begin to understand what's going on in the hospital. Through a shell corporation, Drugs Incorporated, Umbrella provided the hospital with untested drugs as a way of avoiding costly and potentially unsuccessful clinical trials. Some if not all of these drugs were based on the T-Virus, to judge by the patient records; at least one patient was given a fast-acting cancer "cure" that killed him shortly thereafter. The data the hospital generated was then used to construct bioweapons. A colleague of Alyssa's, Kurt, had come to this hospital to investigate and expose this practice, but he's since disappeared. Ed Lester, the hospital's administrator, knew all of this, but he was motivated to work with Umbrella by his wife's terminal illness. Having been told that medicine could not help her, Ed was willing to turn to anyone or anything that could, including Umbrella. His grief became twisted, and he allowed Dorothy to be transformed into a blood-drinking, plant-based bioweapon. He treats this creature as if it were a reincarnation of his wife, and happily feeds it whatever prey he manages to catch. Judging by the sheer number of zombies in the hospital, this likely includes quite a few refugees. The survivors realize that if they're to escape the hospital alive, "Dorothy" has to go. They've seen her roots already, in the hospital's intensive-care ward, but her body's protected by a near-impenetrable core. Fortunately, the survivors' destruction of several of Dorothy's larger nodules throughout the building has had an effect on her. When they inject solvent into a third nodule, it further injures Dorothy and cracks the core. She's now vulnerable. "Dorothy" is immobile, but she's grown several plants to defend herself with, such as vines that whip out from the floor and blood-drinking tendrils in the ceiling. The survivors fight back with bottles of solvent, an old axe, and a grenade launcher loaded with flame rounds. Finally, the plant dies. As it falls to pieces, its core pops like a cyst, and the withered body of a dead woman slithers out. The hospital lets out an ominous rumble. The mutant vines spread throughout the building were all that was keeping it standing. With "Dorothy" dead, the heavily damaged hospital is ready to collapse. In the ashes of her corpse, one of the survivors finds another fragment of Ed's diary. He's fed whatever he can catch to Dorothy, like dogs and cats, and has "graduated" to hunting humans recently. He's written about luring in a group of three young hikers the same way he tricked the survivors, feeding them one at a time to Dorothy. One of the hikers figured out Ed's plans and attempted to fight him off with a shotgun, but to Ed's surprise, it didn't hurt him at all. Living with Dorothy in the virus-rich ruins of the hospital, Ed's become some kind of mutant himself. As the survivors race back to the storage room, they encounter the axeman again. This time, when they try to drive him off, their attacks actually have a distinct impact; either the axeman's resilence was somehow linked with the plant, or his repeated clashes with the survivors are taking their toll. The axeman drops his weapon and retreats into the intensive care ward. The survivors let him go, and escape via the storage room exit. The axeman peels off his hood; he's Ed, of course. He cradles Dorothy's withered body in his arms, and promises her that he'll never leave her side again. A large chunk of the ceiling promptly crushes them both, as the hospital collapses in on itself. With the hospital destroyed, an ominous and total peace once again descends upon the Raccoon Forest. There are no paths that lead further into the woods, and no one's left to be a guide. The survivors are forced to return to Raccoon City, and the horror that awaits them there. ==================================== 13iv. Scenario Four: Desperate Times ==================================== The RPD has fallen. Their fortifications and traps have failed, the west wing of the RPD has been overtaken by the undead, and only a handful of policemen are still alive. In the RPD's east office, Marvin Branagh has pulled out an old map of the building. He points out an old ventilation shaft to one of the surviving officers, a blonde woman named Rita. If they can figure out how to reopen the shaft, Marvin says, Rita's small enough that she could use it to escape the building and bring them help. Rita agrees to the plan. Some of the survivors are already in the RPD, while others have just arrived. One of them talks with Marvin and Rita in the lobby, who're trying to open their planned escape route. Marvin tells the survivors to help each other out. One of Brian Irons's less brilliant ideas during the siege has been the implementation of an automatic defense system throughout the building, with the exception of the cellblock and the main hall. At regular intervals, the halls will flood with a toxic nerve gas. The gas doesn't disturb the zombies at all, but it aggravates the survivors' T-Virus infection. They can briefly neutralize the gas with special canisters found throughout the building, but that never lasts long. One of the survivors happens across a note, which suggests that the goddess statue in the RPD lobby is a potential escape route. As they search the building, they find a series of five plates, each decorated with a gemstone, which fit into the goddess statue's base in a fleur-de-lis pattern. When the final plate is placed in the statue, it rises slightly, revealing a narrow crawlspace. Rita crawls inside, swearing to Marvin that she'll return with help. Some time later, Rita radios Marvin to tell him that she's about to return. She'll pull a van up outside the RPD's front entrance. All he has to do is gather the survivors together and wait for her. The survivors follow Marvin out into the courtyard, to find him under attack by a zombie. Critically injured, Marvin tells the survivors to gather outside. He goes inside to use the RPD's intercom, while the survivors ransack the RPD for ammunition and supplies. They find that all of the police officers besides Marvin have been killed, either by zombies or by the infected K9 dogs kept in the RPD's kennel. The survivors and Marvin are now the only living people left inside the accessible part of the RPD. With a few minutes to go before Rita returns, the survivors head to the RPD's courtyard. It's at this time that the RPD's front gate, weakened by the zombies' constant assault, gives way, and a small army of the undead spills into the courtyard. The survivors hold off the siege with every weapon at their disposal, slaying dozens of zombies, but there are always more. At the last second, an RPD van backs through the front gate, flattening the last couple of zombies. Rita opens its back door and helps the survivors climb inside, but Marvin's not with them. Instead, he's clutching at his wounds and battling the zombies that've made it into the RPD lobby. He tells Rita to go on without him. Rita isn't listening, and is prepared to leap out of the van to get Marvin. Unfortunately, Harry's driving the van, and he has other ideas. When a zombie gets close to his window, Harry panics and drives away, leaving Marvin behind. In the lobby of the RPD, Marvin Branagh, not dead yet, has managed to dispatch the last of the zombies. Clutching at his wounds, he staggers into the west office. The survivors are left with a sobbing Rita in the back of the van, as it speeds off to some unknown part of the city. They've managed to live for another day, but they're all quite aware of the horrible price that's been paid. =================================== 13v. Scenario Five: End of the Road =================================== In the wreckage of Raccoon City, a woman in an Umbrella uniform is arguing with a man wearing dark gray body armor. Both of them are standing near a parked heavy-lift helicopter, which has a large cargo crate chained to it. The woman needs the pilot to wait for her, while she goes back and gets something "very important." Reluctantly, the pilot agrees, and she runs off. As she leaves, he says what he's thinking; if the choice is between his life or hers, he's going to be the first one out the door. Several blocks away, Umbrella's corporate headquarters in Raccoon City has weathered the outbreak mostly intact until now. Blood sprays across the walls of the lobby as David King beats a zombie to death with an iron pipe. A scared man in an Umbrella uniform watches in horror from the floor nearby. Once he's done, David offers the other man a hand up. The man thanks David, but the front doors suddenly open. David almost brains the woman before the man points out that she's human. She's shocked, but shakes David's hand. Five minutes later, David, his surviving allies, and the Umbrella employees are in a waiting room. The man, Carter, asks the woman, Linda, if she's after "the sample"; apparently, this refers to the small plastic case he's holding in his hand. Linda says she is, and suggests to David that he might want to get moving. She offers to give him and his friends a lift, since she's got a chopper waiting for her. Suddenly, alarms go off, and a steel shutter slides down over one-half of the room. Linda locks herself inside the nearby examination room, while Carter heads into the hallway beyond. The survivors follow him, and instead, they find a Hunter. Umbrella's BOWs are loose in the building, and have already killed several of the remaining scientists. The survivors dispatch the Hunter and search the building. Most of it's locked down tight, and several areas have caught on fire. They find a key to the examination room and return there to find Linda working on a computer terminal. Her plan is to leave the building via the east exit using her key, but Carter had some other plan. She's waiting to see what it was. Near Linda, the survivors find a file that mentions an inhibitor agent for the T-Virus, codenamed AT1521, or simply "AT." An unlocked door leads further into the complex. After fighting several Hunters, the survivors catch up to Carter, who's busy at another terminal. His idea, such as it is, is to fight fire with fire. He'll defrost and activate a Tyrant bioweapon and set it against the Hunters. To do that, he's going to need the survivors to decrypt a MO disk and bring it to him. When they return with it, Carter unleashes the Tyrant: a Mr. X. He claims to have reprogrammed it to take out the Hunters. It sets to work, easily dispatching the first of the three monsters in the room below. Linda arrives in the room and notes that while she wouldn't've chosen the Tyrant for this, it'll get the job done. Carter boasts that the Tyrant will do what he tells it, but in case it doesn't, he's arranged a special surprise. He holds up a detonator, and claims that if the Tyrant does anything he doesn't like, it'll be "ground zombie meat." Watching the Tyrant kill the Hunters, Carter's boasts take on a strangely psychotic quality; where the survivors see a monster, he seems to see an artistic statement. Linda picks up on Carter's instability, and suggests that they escape while they can. Linda uses her keycard to unlock the doors in the east passage, while the Tyrant dispatches the Hunters that get in their way. It fights like a pro wrestler, favoring powerful if clumsy punches and kicks. When the survivors and Linda reach the east elevator, Carter's right behind them with the sample. The building's east exit connects directly to Raccoon's extensive sewer system, providing a handy escape route. The arguably inevitable happens immediately. The Tyrant turns on Carter and Linda, crushing his skull, destroying the sample, and sending both Linda and the detonator flying into the darkness below. The survivors grab Carter's keycard from his corpse and make a run for it. One of the survivors steals a crowbar from the facility's "nursery" and uses it to pry off a chunk of the wall. The hole leads into the lab's sealed special research room, where Carter's keycard opens a second elevator. This elevator takes the survivors down into an underground waterway underneath the city. It's dry, but choked with garbage and refuse. As they walk along the balcony above the drainage area, they catch sight of Linda lying on a pile of garbage down in the waterway. She's unconscious, but alive. Due to the garbage in the waterway, the survivors are forced to take the long way around to get to Linda. En route, the Tyrant punches through the ceiling and drops onto the balcony. It continues its attack, battering the survivors with its fists. The survivors barely manage to stay ahead of the Tyrant as they progress through the waterway, but one of them makes a lucky find. Somehow, Carter's detonator survived the fall. When it's used, it sets off a small, powerful explosive charge in the Tyrant's neck. It crashes lifelessly to the floor. Shortly thereafter, the survivors reach Linda, who's none the worse for wear. When she wakes up, she explains that the capsule the Tyrant smashed was a possible cure for the virus that Umbrella's spread throughout the city. She thinks she can reproduce the sample on her own, but first, they've got to get out of town. Suddenly, the waterway's flooded with rancid water. Linda disappears, carried out of the waterway by the current. The survivors find a valve handle in the debris near where she landed, and use it to lower a pair of escape ladders. When they climb it, they emerge onto what used to be the Raccoon City mall, before they blew it up themselves a week ago in "Outbreak." The Tyrant follows them up. It survived Carter's bomb, but in so doing, it's mutated into something else. Its torso swells and its hands lengthen into vicious claws. This new version of the Tyrant is incredibly lethal, but the survivors have scrounged up new weapons on their trip through the waterway. It takes almost all the ammo they've found, but they're able to put the Tyrant down. At roughly the same time, several blocks away, Linda limps painfully towards the side entrance of the Apple Inn. A distant UBCS sniper takes aim at her and fires, putting a bullet through her leg. Linda screams in pain, and the sniper realizes that she isn't a zombie. He opts not to finish her off. He's promptly accosted by a thin man wearing a business suit, who whines that he--the thin man--is supposed to be in charge of this mission. The sniper is shooting at zombies when he should be trying to find "that capsule." The sniper ignores him for a short time, then receives a radio call. A minefield's been set down around their position, which'll block off any ground-based methods of escape. The thin man continues to whine, right up until the sniper fires a shot over the thin man's shoulder. A zombie drops dead, the thin man cowers, and the sniper, satisfied with his hundredth kill of the operation, walks away. Meanwhile, the survivors have found Rodriguez, who's waiting impatiently inside his helicopter. He tells the survivors that if they've run into Linda, they should bring her to the helicopter. He's not sure how much longer he can wait. A pile of papers inside the helicopter sheds some light on Linda and Rodriguez's situation. The cargo crate next to Rodriguez's helicopter is an unnamed experiment that's supposed to be transported to an undisclosed location. The survivors grab a mine detector off the body of a dead mercenary, and use it to navigate the minefield. Once they see the mines, it's a simple matter to blow them up with small-arms fire. They cut through a burned-out office building to reach the next street over, and as they do, they overhear a conversation between the sniper and the thin man. The sniper is furious; someone has declared the situation a "code double-x" and no one told him. Apparently, the entire city is about to be sterilized with a volley of missiles. The thin man protests that he'd told the sniper to hurry. Disgusted, the sniper drops the thin man and leaves the office. Even if his mission hasn't been accomplished, the sniper doesn't intend to die in the explosion. The survivors race back to the Apple Inn, near where the entire outbreak started for them. They find Linda in the hotel's lobby, but she can barely walk. The survivors help her up and head back to Rodriguez. They're too late. Rodriguez has already left. As he lifts off, the thin man emerges onto the roof of the office building, toting a Stinger missile. Rodriguez sees the thin man just as he fires, and is able to steer out of the missile's way. Doing so snaps the restraints on Rodriguez's cargo, and Rodriguez curses as it crashes to the highway below. A squad of UBCS troops goes to investigate the crate. They seem to recognize it, and are treating it with the utmost caution. Suddenly, something smashes into the crate from the inside, puncturing its metal walls and breaking it open. The mercenaries open fire, but it doesn't do them much good. One by one, in a few seconds, they're impaled or crushed by a writhing mass of pink tentacles, which draws their corpses back into the crate. Down on the street, the survivors try one last bid for escape. Thanks to Raccoon City's typically crowded city design, the office building they passed through earlier is surprisingly close to the highway overpass. If they can reach the office's roof, they may be able to get to the road and simply walk out of town. With Linda in tow, the survivors return to the office and find that the UBCS had the same idea. The office's stairwell has seen a bloody struggle within the last few days, but with the UBCS's withdrawal, the zombies have taken the building. The survivors arm themselves with the UBCS's discarded equipment and fight their way up the stairs. Finally, they emerge onto the roof. The thin man has made his escape, but he's dropped a copy of his orders. His name is Tommy Neilson, and he was in Raccoon City to try and track down Rodriguez. Apparently, Rodriguez was involved in an unnamed conspiracy to steal the experiment he's transporting. Neilson's job is to track down Rodriguez and reclaim the experiment. The survivors pocket the notes. A hole in the overpass's concrete divider will let them reach the street, but they'll have to jump for it. That means they'll have to leave Linda behind. ============================================================ 13vi. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK - FILE #2 ============================================================ For a moment, the overpass looks deserted. No mercenaries are visible, but Rodriguez's shipping crate is lying empty near two large trucks, one of which even has the keys in its ignition. Suddenly, the Tyrant returns, seemingly none the worse for wear after its most recent "death." It leaps from the street to the overpass, intent on another bout with the survivors, and is set upon and devoured by the unknown creature, Rodriguez's stolen lab experiment, that took out the UBCS squad. The Tyrant roars as it's engulfed into the seething mass of the Nyx. This new creature's body is comprised largely of the corpses of the unfortunate UBCS mercenaries, and now, of the Tyrant. Its newfound mass is slowing it down, but it's still very strong and very resistant to damage. The Nyx attempts to kill the survivors by generating and hurling massive chunks of decaying protoplasm or by absorbing victims into its body. The survivors arm themselves with the UBCS's weapons and attack the Nyx, but nothing has a real effect. The only thing that keeps the survivors alive is the fact that the Nyx, with all its new mass, has become slow and predictable. The survivors soon realize that the Nyx's only real weak point--the only part of its body that's legitimately a part of *it*, rather than an absorbed corpse--is the enormous staring eye on its torso. They step up their assault, and finally, the Nyx goes crashing to its knees, briefly stunned by a volley of small-arms fire. In its moment of vulnerability, one of the survivors grabs an abandoned rocket launcher and fires it directly into the Nyx's eye. That proves to be the last straw. The Nyx liquifies and "dies," letting the inert corpses of its victims fall lifelessly onto the overpass. Even the Tyrant seems to have finally been killed. One of the survivors rushes back to the divider, and uses a fallen road sign to create a makeshift bridge for Linda. She limps carefully across the gap and, with the rest of the survivors, piles into the truck. The engine starts with the first turn of the keys. The survivors put the pedal to the floor and take off down the highway as fast as the truck will go. They make it into the tunnel that separates Raccoon City from the outside world with seconds to spare, just as the first missile hits. In a command center somewhere, a severe-faced general watches as his personnel report on the status of the missile strikes. No sooner has the first missile hit than a second, more intense barrage starts, delivered from a distance by fighter planes. At least a dozen explosions register on the general's computer model of the bombardment, with more on the way. The survivors have pulled over sixteen miles outside of Raccoon City, where a number of other refugees have gathered. They all rush to the side of the road to watch Raccoon burst into flames. ======================= 13vii. Multiple Endings ======================= There are four possible endings for "End of the Road," depending on how you escape the city and whether you rescue Linda. If you escape via the helicopter with Linda, which is difficult to do, you get the "Up and Away with Linda" ending. Rodriguez gets out of Raccoon City seconds ahead of the missiles and Neilson never attacks him, so the Nyx is never released from its crate. If you simply return to Rodriguez's helicopter after the countdown starts, you'll get the "Up and Away" ending. The Nyx is never released and you escape the city, but you've left Linda to die in the explosion. If you destroy the Nyx and escape Raccoon City via the UCBS's truck with Linda in tow, you get the Engrishy "Run Like the Linda" ending. In order to get Linda to the truck, you must use a chunk of wreckage near the broken concrete divider to create a makeshift bridge. If you leave Linda to die in Raccoon City and escape in the truck, you get the "Run Like the Wind" ending. In the event that Linda survives, there's an extra scene during the ending. Rodriguez, if present, leans against his helicopter as Linda throws her Umbrella ID badge into the foliage by the side of the road. The only gift that humans really have, she says, is that they can rebuild. Regardless of how you escape Raccoon City, you'll see the missile bombardment, and your character will offer a short soliloquy as Raccoon City explodes. After the game's closing credits, you'll be shown an extra movie as determined by your ending. Getting out with Linda in tow earns you the good ending, whereas if you leave her to die, you'll get the bad. Since Linda mentions being able to reproduce the T-Virus antidote, leaving her to die presumably means your character succumbs to the virus shortly after escaping, much like the Chopper Zombie endings in the original Outbreak. Alyssa: She muses that life isn't worth living without risk. The smart thing to do, Alyssa figures, would be to try to play it safe... but she's never been that kind of person. Shortly thereafter, as she's working out, Alyssa watches a news report about Umbrella. She takes a break and opens a newspaper, which has her photo on the front page. She smiles, and continues her workout. Cindy: She tries to take solace in the fact that surviving the disaster has made her a stronger person, although the events of Raccoon City will haunt her dreams for a long time to come. When she gets back to civilization, she decides to "start something new" by buying a house. David: David reacts to the disaster with his trademark stoicism, saying "...the shit hit the fan and the fan finally broke." We next see him talking on a payphone, then getting aboard a large boat named the Silver Star. He looks over the railing with a faint smile on his face. George: This can't be called just retribution for humanity attempting to play God, George thinks, because he can't think of an action so foul that what happened in Raccoon City would've been the appropriate consequence. Still, he figures, this has taught him that mankind must learn from its mistakes, himself included. We next see him working on a laptop while chatting on a cell phone; he says that he's intending to drop by "the university's research lab." George figures he'll be quite busy. Jim: The Raccoon City disaster seems to Jim to be more than a little like a movie, complete with a nail-biter of an ending. He's half-expecting a narrator to say that their fight is just beginning, but Jim isn't interested in that. He intends to spend the rest of his life having fun, and we next see him doing just that, shopping for a new pair of sneakers while talking to somebody on his cell phone. Kevin: As he watches the explosion, Kevin notes--apparently narrating this at some later point--that he can't quite remember what he felt as he watched Raccoon City vanish in flames. He hasn't forgotten what he went through, but he chooses to focus on the now, rather than what he describes as "ancient history." Kevin goes on to accept a new job in Miami. Mark: Mark muses that Raccoon City taught him things he didn't even learn in Vietnam. His duty, he thinks, is clear: he survived to tell the story of the last days of Raccoon City. The next time we see him, he's at home with his family, kicking back on the porch of an enormous suburban home. His wife and son are setting the table for dinner. Mark's talking on the phone, and tells whoever it is that things are as dull as ever. He leans back with a smile. Yoko: As Raccoon City burns, Yoko's memory suddenly comes back. She realizes she has no time for or right to self-pity; there are things that only she can do. At some later point, Yoko and Linda walk into a courthouse. Yoko takes the witness stand, and says in narration that she finally feels like she's making some progress. The Bad Ending: A narrator notes that in time, people stopped talking about the Raccoon City disaster. As he speaks, we see a scene of night in some other city, as two men unload newspapers from the back of a van; the newspaper's headline is "Worldwide Bloodshed." It may be, as the narrator says, that history will repeat itself, and humanity is helpless to prevent the events of Raccoon City from happening again. ==================================== 13viii. Plot Branches and Side Notes ==================================== Much like Resident Evil 3, many scenarios in Outbreak have branch points or multiple endings. 1. In "Wild Things," the zombie elephant (a.k.a. the Titan) will only break out of the gate on the elephant stage if you linger for too long in that area. If the elephant is still trapped when you open the zoo's front gate, or you somehow manage to kill the Titan on the Concourse (usually best done by abusing George's capsule shooter), you'll fight the Stalker, a mutant lion, instead. On higher difficulties, it's accompanied by a couple of female lions. 2. After you kill the Gigabite in "Underbelly," you've got a surprisingly short window in which you can catch the subway car. If you make it there in time, the scenario's over, and you've gotten the "Railway to Tomorrow" ending. Otherwise, you'll need to grab the Ventilation Tower Key off the subway tracks and use it to unlock the door in the facility's generator room. Climbing the ventilation tower to reach the street earns the "Cold Comfort" ending. 3. There are four endings, all told, for "Flashback." 3i. If you simply kill Dorothy and escape without fighting the Axeman, you'll receive the "Leaving the Mystery Behind" ending. Your character has survived, but feels as though the mystery of the hospital now cannot be solved. (*What* mystery? Al's practically wearing a T-shirt that says "I'm the Axeman. Ask me how!") 3ii. Kill the Axeman and read three files throughout the hospital. One, Kurt's Notebook, is in the crate in the reception area. The two Administrator's Diary files are in the secret passage behind the administrator's office and the crack in the wall in the hall outside the intensive care unit, respectively. The latter file only appears after you've destroyed Dorothy. You'll receive the "A Glimpse of the Truth" ending. 3iii. When playing as Alyssa, you'll have sudden flashbacks in the administrator's office, the hospital courtyard, the far end of the suspension bridge, and Room 202. After having all four flashbacks, kill Dorothy, read all the files listed above, and finally, kill the Axeman on your way out. You'll get the "A Glimpse of the Past" ending, where Alyssa swears that Kurt's death will not have been in vain. 3iv. Stay on the far side of the suspension bridge until it collapses; in an online game, someone must trigger this event by using a syringe to kill the plant node in the basement. This'll repopulate the forest with Scissor Tails and open a couple of new paths in the forest. Take one of them to end the scenario and see the brief "Illusion Ending," which is mostly notable for the (lousy) secret character, Regan, that you can unlock along the way. The "Illusion Ending" is unique to each character, but is not in the game's gallery. 4. Kevin has a special ending for "Desperate Times," where he consoles a despondent Rita. A police car drives by outside during this scenario; ostensibly, it's driven by Leon and Claire. See FAQs. You'll also get a different reaction if you, as Kevin, speak to Marvin or Rita in the RPD lobby. Tony, the K-9 cop who's initially in the reception area, will appear dying in the kennel after Rita leaves the building, and will only talk to Kevin. 5. "End of the Road" unfolds slightly differently depending on whether or not you've killed the Tyrant by the time you reach Linda. If you've killed it, events unfold as listed in the summary above. If you haven't, the waterway will flood, washing all the characters in it into the canals near the Apple Inn. (I opted to use the former scenario for the summary because it seems to have the more logical progression of the two. In it, you can find the Mine Detector *before* you have to deal with the mines.) If you dodge the Tyrant in the waterway and never visit Raccoon City's main street, you never have to fight the Tyrant at all. 6. On Normal difficulty or higher, if Cindy isn't a PC or AIPC during "Wild Things," she'll be killed when the Titan demolishes the zoo's entrance. 7. If Alyssa isn't a PC or AIPC in "Flashback" on Easy or Normal modes, she'll simply stop in a clearing near the suspension bridge and claim to be too tired to continue. On Hard or Very Hard modes, you'll find her dead along the path to the hospital. She'll subsequently animate and come after you as a zombie. 8. If David isn't a PC or AIPC in "End of the Road," he'll leave the waiting room and disappear. If you then use the emergency ladder to escape the waterway, you'll find David, as a zombie, lurking nearby. 9. The guy with the cap in the Raccoon Zoo inner office will carry on a short conversation with Mark if you emote a few times. 10. The cop on the roof of the RPD will talk to Cindy if you emote a few times. 11. Tony, the K9 cop standing in the RPD's waiting room, will have a brief conversation with Kevin if you emote a few times. 12. On Hard and Very Hard difficulties, quest items are often placed in different locations, which usually don't make a lot of narrative sense. For example, the hunting rifle on "Wild Things" is found in the zookeepers' office in a gun cabinet, but on Very Hard, it's often in the alley behind the restaurant. ====================================== 13ix. Conclusions About The Conclusion ====================================== 1. At least one of the original eight survivors made it out of Raccoon City alive, with Linda in tow. The bad ending for Outbreak makes it clear that if they hadn't, the world would've gradually become infected with the T-Virus, and the world's in pretty good shape during Dead Aim and RE4. 2. Rodriguez has survived. ====================== 13x. Random Commentary ====================== 1. In RE2, Raccoon was a small city. In RE3, it got a little bigger, but not unrealistically so, although the cable car system was a bit much. In the Outbreak games, we find out it had a large zoo, its own university, eight miles' worth of subway, and a trainyard. 2. Not only was the explosion that destroyed Raccoon City distinctly non-nuclear--you don't outrun a nuclear explosion in a truck--but the American government pounded Raccoon with at least a dozen missiles. 3. There's a brand-new cast of voice actors in File #2, and they're almost all pretty good. Of particular note are Wendee Lee, who voices Alyssa, and whoever plays David. (He makes David sound almost psychotic, which is kind of cool.) 4. It took nine years and thirteen games, but Capcom finally thought to include an Umbrella employee who *isn't* a completely one-dimensional evil sociopath. Good job, guys. Granted, she's almost certainly a conspirator intending to steal from and/or betray the corporation, but whatever. 5. Between the two Outbreak games, it's now possible for all eight of the original survivors to have escaped Raccoon City. George leads the group to Raccoon University, and David, for whatever reason, is prominently involved in "End of the Road." 6. I'd like to see a few of the characters from Outbreak return in more character-driven, singleplayer REs, either as supporting characters or as protagonists. Alyssa or Yoko would seem to be the most likely candidates, although Mark, Kevin, or David could probably work as well. 7. Unlike the first Outbreak, there are a lot of incidental survivors in File #2. Rita, Harry, Lloyd, Austin, Patrick, Regan, her daughter Lucy, Rodriguez, Arnold, and Linda all live through the scenario they're introduced in. 8. *Two* valve handles this time! What the hell? 9. It's possible to access a brand-new set of characters in File #2, by using a GameShark code on the first game and importing the save data. These characters are ostensibly from File #3; one of them is Hunk, shown both with and without his mask. 10. "Wild Things" bears a superficial resemblance to one of the stupider stories in the old Wildstorm _Resident Evil_ comic book. 11. All of the male characters are shown talking on a phone in their good endings. 12. There's a broken briefcase in the west concourse during "Underbelly" that has the initials "BB" on it. When looked at in conjunction with the Commuter Pass SP Item, it would appear that Ben Bertolucci was in the subway at the start of the outbreak. 13. At this point, Kevin, Mark, and Jim are the only characters who haven't died onscreen in some way. All of the others will be killed or zombified at some point in one stage or another if no player has chosen them. Since Kevin and Jim share a bad ending in the first Outbreak, fan theory has it that Mark will wind up as the "official" survivor of the games. 14. Alyssa's good endings in RE:O2 have been rendered noncanon by Revelations, which states that BOWs were not revealed to the public until 2004. This doesn't necessarily mean that she's dead, although she might not be doing as much writing as she'd like. 15. Rodriguez is the luckiest helicopter pilot in the entire series. He always lives. ================================================================== 14. RESIDENT EVIL: UMBRELLA CHRONICLES ================================================================== Released for the Wii in 2007, Umbrella Chronicles is a multi-chapter rail shooter. The game's stated goal was to fill several plot holes and bring the plots of the original RE games closer to the post-RE4 status quo. The titular Chronicles are a series of audio diaries stored on Wesker's computers. He has put down his version of the events that led up to the final fall of the Umbrella corporation, from the outbreak that destroyed the Arklay laboratories to the destruction of Umbrella's final working facility in 2003. Three of the Chronicles are abbreviated retellings of three of the core games in the series, which differ in both large and small ways from the games themselves. It's my position that since Wesker is telling the story, it can be counted as the work of an unreliable narrator, which means I'm not treating RE:UC as any kind of retcon. This is particularly important for the RE3 scenario, "Raccoon's Destruction," which is dramatically different from the game it's based upon. ===================== 14i. Train Derailment ===================== On the evening of July 23rd, Wesker tells us, the Ecliptic Express was attacked by James Marcus. Umbrella sent a team to investigate, but their communications were abruptly cut off. Unwittingly, Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen are swept up in the resulting fight. This chapter abbreviates RE0. ================ 14ii. Beginnings ================ Marcus's "outburst" has convinced Wesker that Umbrella is a sinking ship. On the night of July 23rd, as he and William Birkin watch the STARS Bravo team on a series of security monitors, Wesker makes his choice: it's time to walk away. To Birkin's chagrin, Wesker says aloud that the T-Virus just needs a little extra combat data before it can be considered complete, and that's what STARS is there for. He doesn't need Umbrella anymore. As Wesker lets himself out of the security station above Birkin's laboratory, a hapless Birkin begins the process of "getting rid of" the training facility. Wesker leaves the security room, intending to take the tram back to Raccoon City's sewer system, but it's lost power. Instead, Wesker uses the turntable to descend into Birkin's lab complex, and reactivates the tram using the power console. This process is complicated by zombies, Eliminators, and some of Marcus's leech zombies, but they just slow Wesker down. Wesker retraces his steps and heads back to the turntable, but on the way up, the mutated Tyrant that Rebecca and Billy fought leaps down the elevator shaft and attacks. Wesker, surprised to see that the Tyrant is still alive, uses the empty turntable's dock for cover and knocks it down. As the turntable arrives back at the station, the Tyrant gets back up and leaps once more to the attack, but its recent battles are taking their toll; Wesker can see that it's become "brittle." He subsequently destroys it. Wesker returns to the training facility and emerges on the second floor, outside the observatory. He takes an unhurried route back through the building, dispatching the bioweapons that have arrived in the time since Rebecca and Billy passed through, and eventually reaches the lobby. From there, he drops through the secret hatch into the underground train station. As Wesker rushes into the room, Sergei Vladimir greets him from atop the wrecked train, toying with his knife. He wants to know where Wesker's going, as Wesker is supposed to be reclaiming the management training facility. If Wesker's leaving, that says to Sergei that Wesker's not taking responsibility for his failure. Wesker says, as calmly as ever, that he intends to detonate the facility to dispose of the escaped T-Virus, but that's not good enough. Sergei, who's managed to cut himself a couple of times with his knife, sends down his bodyguard "Ivan" as a reminder of Sergei's authority. Ivan quite resembles a Mr. X; it wears a pair of red wraparound sunglasses and a large white overcoat, and fights in the same way. It's capable of occasional brief bursts of speed, but it isn't a thinker. The fight ends unexpectedly, as the tunnel shakes and debris rains down from above. Birkin has detonated the training facility, wiping it off the map. As Ivan and Sergei are distracted, Wesker makes a quick escape, and Sergei decides to let him go. They have a mission of their own. Wesker leaves what's left of the facility via the train tracks, and heads back to Raccoon City to meet the STARS Alpha team. The real struggle is about to begin. ======================= 14iii. Mansion Incident ======================= "Mansion Incident" is an accelerated retelling of Chris's scenario in the original RE. The major difference therein is that Wesker never captures Jill, and thus she and Chris are side-by-side throughout the game. Barry Burton never appears at all. =============== 14iv. Nightmare =============== After leaving Billy in the forest, Rebecca has managed to reach the Arklay mansion in one piece. When she arrives, the mansion is unsettlingly quiet and none of her teammates are anywhere nearby. Exhausted from the previous day's events, she falls asleep on a bed in one of the dorms. Rebecca's having a nightmare about being pursued by a giant snake when Richard Aiken wakes her up. They compare notes; Rebecca saw Edward Dewey die, and Richard got split up from the rest of the team. They decide that they have to catch up with Enrico. He'll know what to do. The dorms are no longer quiet as Rebecca and Richard start heading back to the mansion. Crimson Heads have begun waking up throughout the area, and the dorms are infested with giant spiders. Cornered and without options, Rebecca pushes Richard through a hole in the floor, landing in the spiders' underground nest. Rebecca and Richard return to the mansion via the gardens. A few mutants and bioweapons are prowling its halls, but it's otherwise unsettlingly quiet; in Richard's terms, something just doesn't "feel right." Rebecca, still unsettled by her nightmare, can only agree. Richard, trying to make her feel better, reminds her that they're both members of an elite unit; they shouldn't have any trouble as long as they stay calm. They manage to make it to the mansion's front hall, but once there, they find that the front doors are securely locked. Without much of a choice, they turn around and investigate the mansion's second floor instead. As Rebecca walks by a window, she sees someone moving outside. Sergei and Ivan are walking away from the mansion, and Ivan has a heavy blue object slung over one shoulder. Rebecca is curious about who they might be, but is in no position to stop them. As Sergei and Ivan head into the forest, they're confronted by a small pack of Cerberii, which Ivan easily dispatches. The sound of his fist crushing a Cerberus's skull is audible all the way inside the mansion, which startles Rebecca, but Richard prods her to get moving. Shortly thereafter, as Rebecca and Richard are walking along a balcony above the library, a flock of undead crows suddenly bursts through a nearby window. Both of them try to fend them off, but Rebecca loses her balance and falls down a short flight of stairs. Richard fends them off by firing his pistol into the air and helps Rebecca get back on her feet. With a vacant expression on her face, Rebecca says quietly that it's probably "just us now." Richard replies that "help will come," and as long as they can find the captain, everything will turn out okay. In the meantime, he's there to back Rebecca up. Richard Aiken then proceeds to seal his fate by saying out loud, "And with me around, what could go wrong?" The Yawn is happy to provide an example. Rebecca sees the giant snake's shadow a second before it hits, and pushes Richard out of the way just before he would have been crushed. They make a run for it through the mansion's second floor, pursued the whole way by the Yawn, but finally run out of luck in the mansion's research library. Just when they think they've lost it, the Yawn quietly creeps up behind Rebecca and resumes its attack. With no other option, Richard and Rebecca go on the offensive. The Yawn slithers into the shelves on the library's second floor, swinging down suddenly to bite or smash them, but concentrated gunfire manages to keep it at bay. At a crucial moment, Rebecca remembers the nightmare she had in the dormitory, and freezes up. The Yawn strikes at her, but Richard tackles Rebecca out of the way and is bitten instead. The Yawn lifts into the air with its fangs sunk deeply into Richard's chest. The sight of Richard in the Yawn's mouth is enough to shake Rebecca out of her paralysis. She fires at the Yawn's exposed belly, drawing blood and causing pain. It loosens its grip on Richard, whose gun hand is currently wedged inside the Yawn's mouth. He pulls the trigger, and the bullet explodes out the back of the Yawn's head. That's enough to get it to drop him, and it slithers away to lick its wounds. As Richard slides to the floor, a gout of his blood splatters against Rebecca's face and chest. Even as wounded as he is, Richard refuses to give up hope. He assures Rebecca that help is coming for them, and tells her to get the look of despair off of her face. Rebecca decides that if Richard can be that optimistic even with two big holes in his chest, so can she. "I'll prove I have what it takes to survive." ============ 14v. Rebirth ============ "I died once," Wesker says. Dying at the claws of the Tyrant was just part of his plan, although he'll always remember what it felt like. Birkin's virus has done its job, though, and Wesker wakes up minutes after his "death" in the Tyrant's lab. Wesker discards his Umbrella-brand sunglasses and sets to work at a nearby terminal. He intends to grab the facility's research data before escaping, but it's all been automatically transferred onto a remote server, U.M.F.-013, courtesy of Sergei Vladimir. Further, as of midnight, Umbrella's computer system has opted to revoke Wesker's access to its mainframe. The AI governing Umbrella's systems, the Red Queen, introduces itself to a furious Wesker. He puts his fist through the computer's monitor and swears to make the Red Queen regret its decision. With no other choice, Wesker arms himself and sets out to escape. The surviving monsters have been driven into a frenzy, but with the power of his new virus, Wesker has no trouble with them. In fact, he's enjoying himself. As he gets out of the lab, Wesker rounds a corner and nearly runs straight into Lisa Trevor. She advances on him and he knocks her down with a fusillade of shotgun blasts. "Nobody's perfect, Lisa," Wesker sneers, and steps over her body. Predictably, she gets right back up seconds later. Wesker reaches the mansion's lobby with time to spare, but Lisa intercepts him before he can reach the front door. Rather than slug it out with her, Wesker retreats and heads upstairs, with Lisa in slow, dogged pursuit. Dispatching a few remaining Hunters, Wesker runs into the armor room on the second floor. Lisa follows him in, and while he's able to knock her off her feet again, she just won't stay down. Caught between the surviving monsters and Lisa, Wesker heads back downstairs and through the mansion's east hallway. The mansion begins to shake under his feet as the self-destruct sequence counts down to zero. Lisa doubles back and intercepts him at the other end of the hall, smashing through the door to the art room. At this point, Lisa simply absorbs everything Wesker can do to her and comes back for more, trying to position herself to cave Wesker's skull in. After she endures an unthinkable amount of punishment, Lisa retreats. When Wesker returns to the lobby, she's waiting for him in the shadows, like she's trying and failing to set up an ambush. Wesker sees her coming and attacks, but Lisa isn't at all phased by his gunfire; she's either evolved past it or is simply refusing to react. She only stops coming after him when the lobby's heavy brass chandelier comes crashing down, pinning her underneath it. With Lisa indisposed, Wesker runs for the front door. He manages to make it into the forest just before the mansion explodes. Even though he wasn't able to claim any of the data that he died to get, Wesker is jubilant; he has risen above the rest of humanity, and cheated death itself. =========================== 14vi. Raccoon's Destruction =========================== This scenario retells RE3, but changes its details more than any other adaptation in UC. It follows Jill and Carlos from the streets of Raccoon City to the roof of the RPD, where they fight the Nemesis to the death and subsequently escape in a UBCS chopper. =================== 14vii. Death's Door =================== It's been two days since the destruction of William Birkin's laboratory complex. In that time, Ada Wong has managed to bind her wounds, arm herself, and find her way back into Raccoon City's sewer system. She muses to herself that, thanks to Leon, she'd forgotten one of her first rules: always stay calm, no matter the situation. Ada's covered in bandages and is barely able to stand, but she fights her way back up to the street outside the Apple Inn. Ada's barely in time to keep an appointment with one of her contacts, who was supposed to meet her at the hotel. She finds her contact's corpse slumped against a wall in the Apple Inn's back office. Wesker, whose image appears on a nearby computer screen, tells Ada without preamble that her contact chose to kill himself. Further, Wesker says, Ada herself has failed their organization. Ada places a glass case on the table in front of the screen. It contains a tissue sample from the G-Type. Wesker is suddenly much less annoyed. Wesker explains the current situation to Ada. Firstly, the American government is minutes away from destroying Raccoon City. Second, an Umbrella officer is nearby, and escaping the city at the last minute via helicopter. Wesker remotely unseals a locked case by Ada's contact's feet, which reveals a gun that fires a grappling hook, and ends the transmission. Ada picks up the glass case, and a thought strikes her: the city around her is what happens when the T-Virus gets loose. What happens, she thinks, if the G-Virus were to get out? She has no illusions about trusting Wesker, but at least for the moment, she's valuable to him. Ada heads back out into the streets, en route to intercept the Umbrella officer's helicopter. The grappling gun allows Ada to get over a flaming car wreck that's blocked off the street near the Apple Inn. That, in turn, allows her to quickly get into the lobby of an office building, the roof of which allows her access to the freeway. The freeway is littered with military-style vehicles and discarded equipment. Ada begins searching for the helicopter, but a roar from the city below her gets her attention first. A mutated Tyrant, one she hasn't seen before, leaps up and climbs onto the freeway. It's out for blood, but Ada's more than a match for it. Shortly after the Tyrant goes down, Ada notices the helicopter she's looking for, which is carrying a large cargo container. Ada evades a last few zombies, climbs onto the roof of a wrecked truck, and hits the cargo crate with her grappling hook. She takes a running start and leaps after the helicopter, inches ahead of a Hunter. Ada retracts the line, pulling herself up, and climbs unsteadily onto the top of the cargo crate. The Hunter makes a leap for her, but only manages to get one of her shoes. It crashes into a wrecked car as Ada soars away. Inside the helicopter, Sergei Vladimir is toying with his knife, and asks the pilot if he thinks Sergei's being reckless. The pilot admits that yes, he does think that, since Sergei just stole Umbrella's computer core. Sergei accidentally cuts himself with the knife and grimaces at the wound, but laughs. Anyone that history comes to regard as a hero, Sergei says, is never really "stable." With the computer core, though, he now has all of Umbrella's research data. The company will rise from the ashes. ======================= 14viii. Fourth Survivor ======================= HUNK escapes the sewers via the RPD kennel and radios for evac. Listening in on a variety of random transmissions via his headset, HUNK heads to the RPD's roof, despite the dozens of monsters in his way. One of his fellow squad members radios in, claiming to be wounded and trapped, but HUNK ignores her. Survival, he says, is her own responsibility. He boards the evac helicopter alone, as he always does, with a G-Virus sample in hand. The pilot, morbidly entertained by HUNK's survival, takes off and flies out of Raccoon City. ==================== 14ix. Umbrella's End ==================== According to Wesker, in the days following the destruction of Raccoon City, Umbrella's stock prices plummeted. Even then, they had the money and connections necessary to start shifting the blame for Raccoon onto others, such as the American government itself. The UBCS's supervisors had done their job well, and most of the evidence of Umbrella's responsibility in the Raccoon City disaster had been destroyed in the missile strike. By 2003, Umbrella had reestablished a base in Russia and begun work on a new project, with plans to offer their bioweapons on the arms market. Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, currently employed as members of a private anti-bioweapon containment unit, hear rumors of the facility and move in to shut it down. On approach to Umbrella's facility, the unit's helicopter pilots spot a trio of Hunters prowling across the tundra, and shoot them down from the air. Chris promptly takes command and starts issuing orders, and both helicopters drop off two fully-armed strike teams. Zombies, Cerberii, and Hunters infest the facility's surface level. As Chris and Jill enter the facility, the force's commander radios in that they've taken losses and need to fall back. The only other member of the strike teams to make it into the facility, Bronson, is killed by zombies shortly thereafter. Chris and Jill are once again on their own. The research facility contains an encyclopedic list of Umbrella's bioweapons projects, both past and present. Even failed experiments like the Eliminators and accidents like the Lickers are stored in this base, and as Chris and Jill work their way further inside, they're forced to fight them all. At the same time, someone is setting traps for them throughout the complex. At one point, Chris accidentally sets off a tripwire, and both he and Jill barely avoid being crushed by a shipment of heavy fuel canisters. The trap does destroy a catwalk, though, preventing Chris and Jill from reaching the facility's armory and computer core. As they approach the base's final elevator platform, their team radios in. Despite heavy casualties, the base's surface level is secure. At the base of the elevator shaft, Chris and Jill find the facility's nerve center. Someone has hastily abandoned the security console, and has set up a series of explosive charges as he's retreated. Between those, the escaped bioweapons, and the base's security measures, Chris and Jill barely stay alive. Finally, they're forced down a long series of hallways into a large circular room, which Jill identifies as a testing area for BOWs. She thinks they've been herded this way since they reached this level of the base, and has just finished proposing the idea when Sergei Vladimir's voice comes over an intercom system, greeting them as fellow soldiers. He happily introduces them to the latest product in Umbrella's catalogue, codenamed TALOS: a half-mechanical bioweapon directly controlled by the Red Queen. It scampers around the room like a gorilla, wielding its massive fists and an oversized rocket launcher. Chris and Jill are able to evade the first few rockets by taking shelter behind a series of palisades throughout the room, then return fire. The Talos crashes lifelessly to the ground, but seconds later, it begins to mutate. Tentacles sprout from its flesh, and it rapidly expands, bursting out of its armored suit. Sergei, sounding somewhere between proud and apologetic, explains that the Talos has evolved beyond the Red Queen's ability to control it. In its new form, the Talos has a weak spot in its armor, at the point where its main tentacle burst out from its back. It uses that tentacle to suspend itself from the test lab's ceiling, and when that tentacle is damaged, it crashes to the floor. While it's relatively weak, Chris and Jill finish it off with sustained weapons fire. The Talos's death marks the last vestige of armed resistance within the Russian facility. Chris and Jill return to the surface, aware that Umbrella has been struck a final, fatal blow, but also aware that Wesker is still out there somewhere. Wesker, watching their victory from a distance, observes that they probably shouldn't be patting themselves on the back just yet. They wouldn't have pulled this off without his help, and they don't even know it. As the biohazard strike team cleans up the facility, burning BOWs' corpses with flamethrowers, one of the crew examines a terminal set into a wall. All that's on it is two lines of white text against a blue background: U.M.F.-013 NO DATA ================ 14x. Dark Legacy ================ Wesker arrives at Umbrella's Russian facility on foot. He uses a transceiver on his wrist to eavesdrop on Jill and Chris's radio traffic, just in time to hear Jill claim that they can't afford to wait for permission from the Russian government to attack. Wesker smirks, and prepares to enter the facility. His plan is to use one pawn to capture another. Sergei Vladimir watches via closed-circuit camera as Wesker kicks down a door, comparing Wesker to a "little black cockroach." He's promptly distracted by his security system identifying a level 4 biohazardous contamination in the facility. Over 90% of the research staff has been killed. Sergei instructs the Red Queen to begin activating the Talos, in preparation for destroying the facility. It's a waste, he admits, but as long as he has the Red Queen and the Talos, he can start over. The Red Queen complies, but also alerts him to the presence of Chris and Jill's strike teams. Wesker has gained access to a corpse-strewn tram stop near the facility, which is infested with escaped bioweapons. Wesker activates the tram and rides it deeper into the facility, even while Hunters and Chimera are ripping it apart from the outside. The tram's elevated track is currently stopped on a floor well below him, and Wesker barely manages to stop his car before it would have plunged several stories. He disembarks and leaps across the elevator shaft to the opposite landing, using his superhuman strength and agility to descend floor by floor. As he reaches the ground floor, a bullet caroms off the ground by his feet. Wesker points his silenced handgun at Sergei, who greets him as "Comrade Wesker" and brandishes an old WWII pistol. Wesker asks him if he's still intending to "go down with the ship," but Sergei denies that Umbrella's going anywhere. He introduces Wesker to "a few of my old friends": two black-skinned, advanced Mr. X units wearing bullet-resistant overcoats. Sergei makes his escape while Wesker engages them, but the fight doesn't last long. Wesker emerges into the laboratory complex's elevator shaft, only a few steps behind Chris and Jill, and jumps down the shaft under his own power. He fights through a fresh wave of zombies in the base's security office, then jumps across the gap in the catwalk. On his way to the computer room, Wesker's able to loot the facility's armory, which gives him more than enough additional firepower to deal with everything in his way. As Sergei sics the Talos on Chris and Jill, he notices Wesker approaching the Red Queen's computer core on a security monitor, and walks over to talk to him. The Red Queen first became active the night of Wesker's death, Sergei tells Wesker, and Sergei stole her from Umbrella's facilities just before Raccoon City was destroyed. He feels a great deal of empathy for the computer, Sergei says. Both of them always want to know the truth, regardless of how painful it might be. Wesker condescendingly points out that the computer is a tool; what it wants is determined for it by the user. Sergei, amused, says that he's glad Wesker feels he can be honest with him, but now is when their relationship has to end. Sergei suddenly screams in agony, and begins to mutate. Skin tears, muscle deforms, and bones crack, as Sergei rapidly takes on many of the characteristics of the Talos. Wesker, unimpressed, evades Sergei's attacks and returns fire. As they battle, Sergei reveals the reason for his absolute loyalty to Umbrella. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he was a man without a country, but Ozwell Spencer took Sergei in and gave him a cause. Sergei was so dedicated to this purpose that he took the test to determine whether or not he was suitable for transformation into a Tyrant, and was the first to ever pass it. He allowed Umbrella to produce clones of him and transform them into bioweapons. The Tyrants, he says, are his brothers, and they and he will usher in a new era for mankind. Wesker, exasperated, demands to know where Ozwell Spencer is, but it's too late. Sergei's already taken too much damage from Wesker's attacks, and he falls in a bloody heap before answering the question. Without looking back, Wesker walks to the computer core and transfers its data--the entirety of Umbrella's bioweapons research--onto a disc. He pockets it, and notices on a nearby monitor that Chris and Jill have successfully defeated the Talos. Wesker, pleased that everything has unfolded as he predicted, inputs a lengthy password into the Red Queen's terminal. He looks up, into the Red Queen's camera "eye," and mockingly says, "Goodbye, fair lady." Wesker presses return, and the Red Queen announces that a full system reformat is about to take place. All over the base, the power shuts down, replaced by the red glow of emergency lights. Chris, Jill, and the surviving members of their strike team look around in shock, with no idea what's going on or how to stop it. The computer system announces that all data has been erased. Wesker triumphantly walks out of the base, and shoots a cargo hook down from its moorings. As it swings down at breakneck speed, Wesker grabs it and uses it to swing up onto the facility's perimeter fence. Facing the sunrise, Wesker muses that Umbrella had power, but it "lacked the proper vision." It now falls to him to usher in a new future for the planet. As the credits roll, a newscaster issues a special report. The Umbrella Corporation has been found guilty of all charges concerning the Raccoon City incident, owing to new proof found and entered into the case by the prosecution. The defense plans to file an appeal on the grounds that the evidence could be deemed inadmissible in court. Further, due to an anonymous tip, Ozwell Spencer is sought for culpability in the biohazard that contaminated Raccoon City, and is now the subject of an international manhunt. After the credits, Wesker walks into his command center and inserts the Umbrella archive disc into his system. Browsing through the accumulated data, Wesker monologues about Spencer, who has gone from the would-be ruler of the planet to a fugitive. Wesker promises Spencer that "before the conclusion of this drama," Wesker will find Spencer, and tell him all about the world Wesker intends to create. For the first time, Wesker smiles. ====================================== 14xi. Conclusions About the Conclusion ====================================== 1. Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Albert Wesker have survived. Rebecca Chambers is presumably alive, but still missing. 2. Sergei Vladimir, the last die-hard Umbrella employee and the man on whom all Tyrants were based (the Jango Fett of bioweapons, if you will) has died. 3. The Umbrella Corporation has been found legally responsible for the Raccoon City incident, presumably due to information retrieved from the Russian facility. While its legal team has sufficient basis to appeal the decision, Umbrella is effectively finished as a corporate entity. 4. The Red Queen has been erased. 5. Albert Wesker has the only complete archive of Umbrella's data. Other surviving researchers have virus samples or partial files, but Wesker has the entire thing. 6. Not even Wesker knows where Billy Coen is. 7. Wesker's involvement with Raccoon City has been belatedly explained. While he was arguably responsible for Ada's survival, it was indirect at best. There's no proof he was ever actually within the city limits. ======================== 14xii. Random Commentary ======================== 1. "Raccoon's Destruction" and "Death's Door" both make use of environments from the Outbreak games. In fact, Death's Door is a shooter version of the last third of RE:O2's "End of the Road," right down to fighting the same kind of Tyrant. 2. While the revelation that Sergei Vladimir got cloned is more than a little cheesy, it does actually close a plot hole. It's been established for years that humans that can survive being transformed into Tyrants are few and far between, so how was Umbrella able to produce as many as they did? Simple; they just used the same guy over and over again. It also explains why they all have the same face. ================================================================== 15. RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION ================================================================== Set in 2005, one year after the events of Resident Evil 4, Degeneration is an original 90-minute animated feature film created and written by the staff at Capcom. It's effectively Resident Evil 4.5, and bridges the gap between the two games. Specifically, it introduces the new corporation Tricell, and establishes the new post-Umbrella status quo. Degeneration is a bit controversial within the fan community, as it marks the first time Claire had been seen in the series in years, so naturally, she ends up stuck in a control room for the second half of the movie while new character Angela Miller swipes the spotlight. Since Degeneration is a film and not a game, I don't intend to summarize it here. It's easy to find for sale or rental. ===================================== 15i. Conclusions About the Conclusion ===================================== 1. Leon Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Angela Miller, Rani Chawla, Frederic Downing, and Rani's unnamed aunt have survived. 2. Curtis Miller, Greg Glenn, Ron Davis, and a whole lot of innocent people are dead. 3. Frederic Downing has been arrested for what would appear to be all the criminal charges ever. 4. Just about all of Umbrella's old projects are now available on the black market, up to and including the G-Virus. This is apparently courtesy of Umbrella's surviving employees, many of whom are trying to make a fast buck off of whatever they managed to grab on the way out the door. 5. The fallout from Raccoon City and the dissolution of Umbrella took the President of the United States down with it. (In fact, in RE5, Spencer writes in his journals that the U.S. government had more to do with the destruction of Raccoon City than Spencer himself did. Spencer is well-known for being a nutbar, of course, but it's still an interesting point.) 6. While they were unknowingly using Umbrella's own data, Wilpharma successfully produced an effective vaccine for the T-Virus. 7. Wilpharma has been bought out by Tricell. ======================= 15ii. Random Commentary ======================= 1. I can't really recommend Degeneration, and mostly it's because of Leon. For whatever reason, he has the personality of a cardboard box in Degeneration, and also commands the most screen time of any of the characters. Angela's not much more interesting. 2. It's funny how easily the T-Virus outbreak in Harvardville is contained, compared to the others we've seen in the series so far. Granted, the established background indicates that people have had a lot of practice. This may be enough to explain why the T-Virus hasn't spread across the face of the planet, along with the existence of a vaccine. 3. While the movie itself isn't great, I'm honestly impressed with the direction they chose to take the series. It would have been easy, as evidenced by a few thousand fanfics and one major motion picture, to send the world of RE sliding towards apocalypse. They could still go that way, granted, but now the series is a strange blend between international military-themed adventure and survival horror. It really blows the lid off of the setting. 4. As far as I can tell from the movie, Wilpharma is the first example in the series of a major corporation that isn't secretly seething with evil; TerraSave is only protesting against them due to misinterpreted pictures from an Indian terrorist attack. Their only mistake is hiring Downing, who proceeds to backstab them in the classic Umbrella style. ================================================================== 16. RESIDENT EVIL 5 ================================================================== The first Resident Evil game to appear on the Xbox 360 is also the first RE game to ship after Shinji Mikami left Capcom. The result is a game that, independently of its design as a co-op shooter, has a very different feel from everything that's come before it. Set in 2009, RE5 is intended as the final chapter of the Umbrella series, and closes the book on a lot of ongoing plots. =================================================== 16i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 5 =================================================== In a basement somewhere, a man is writhing on the floor, while a woman in a robe and birdlike mask looks on without comment. The man's eyeballs slowly turn a reflective black, while tentacles writhe across his body from just underneath his skin. His face takes on a deathlike pallor and he slumps over, lost beneath the mass of tentacles. The woman exits the room, leaving him there. At the same time, Chris Redfield is driving a jeep across the African savannah. He is now an agent of the Bio-Security Assessment Alliance, or BSAA, a privately-funded, internationally-recognized organization that infiltrates terrorist hotspots throughout the world. He's in Africa with a job to do, and despite his current misgivings about whether or not "it's all worth fighting for," he intends to see it through. Chris parks in a ramshackle village in the Kijuju Autonomous Zone, and is greeted by his new partner, Sheva Alomar, of the BSAA's West African branch. Chris introduces himself, but her use of the word "partner" gives him pause for a moment. He has a brief flash of memory, of a tombstone with "Jill Valentine" written on it, but gets back to business. The village is quietly baking in the sun. Many locals are sitting around doing nothing, giving Chris dirty looks. Several more are busying themselves by beating something wrapped in a burlap sack, which is about the right size to be human. In a side alley, one terrified man is trying and failing to escape two others, who drag him into the shadows. Chris makes radio contact with his advisor at the BSAA, Kirk Mathison, who tells him to head to the butcher shop to meet his local contact. Their mission is to back up BSAA's "Alpha team," as they both work to find and arrest their target, Ricardo Irving, who's in town for a black market arms deal. As Chris and Sheva head through town to meet their contact, the village suddenly goes still and silent behind them. Every man in the village has quietly disappeared. Their contact is waiting for them. He provides them with pistols, knives, and information. Apparently, a new bioweapon project called Uroboros, which Chris had only heard rumors of, is real. Their only lead on the subject is a man named Irving, who's somewhere in Kijuju. Chris and Sheva's mission is to find him. The contact, his job done, steps out and leaves them to it. Chris and Sheva, now armed, head deeper into the settlement. They find only the bodies of recently slain animals, hacked to death, and a shelf lined with candles and old human skulls. A note on a dusty desk, in erratic handwriting, calls for the deaths of outsiders. A scream from a nearby building draws Sheva's attention, and she runs to investigate. Inside, two men are forcing a bizarre object down the throat of a third. When they notice Chris and Sheva, the first two run away, while the third rolls over and tries without success to cough up the object. In surprisingly short order, the man's coughs stop, and he takes on a pallid, deathlike complexion. He attacks Chris and Sheva, who have no choice but to shoot him dead. The only way out of the building is to jump out a second-floor window, and shortly afterward, a lynch mob finds Chris and Sheva. Lightly armed and dramatically outnumbered, their only option is to run into a shack nearby and bar the door. Chris radios Kirk and gives him a status update, but Kirk is unmoved; their mission objectives have not changed. Sheva is unnerved by Kirk's lack of a reaction, but Chris cynically accepts it as the standard. Chris and Sheva escape via a tunnel into a nearby building, just in time to watch an angry mob drag their contact up onto a gallows. A massive hooded man swings a homemade axe down on their contact's head, to the delight of a watching mob. One of them sees Chris and Sheva, who are suddenly fighting for their lives. Chris radios Kirk, who promises that he's on his way, but that leaves Chris and Sheva to play a desperate game of hide-and-seek amongst the various shacks, houses, and broken-down vehicles throughout the village. The villagers are only armed with axes, pitchforks, and the occasional crossbow, but there are a lot of them, and they're backed up by the executioner, who appears to be bulletproof. They're down to fists and knives when Kirk arrives in his helicopter. He fires a missile and knocks down a barred door, which has the happy side effect of routing what's left of the mob. Kirk gives Chris a status update via the radio; the BSAA's Alpha Team is about to deploy into the area, so Chris and Sheva need to head to the rendezvous point. Chris agrees, and Kirk's helicopter flies away. As Chris and Sheva make their way towards their destination, Captain DeChant from the Alpha Team radios in; his team's path is blocked. Kirk does not reply. As Chris and Sheva fight towards the rendezvous point, dispatching several infected villagers, DeChant reports over the radio that he and his team are under attack. His next broadcast is cut off abruptly, as DeChant cries out in pain. A woman's scream from a nearby building gets Chris's attention. He and Sheva rush towards it just in time to see a white woman in a red dress get pulled inside a nearby building by one of the infected villagers. By the time Chris manages to reach her, she's been infested with a parasite of her own, which explodes out of her head into a giant fanged maw: a Plaga. Chris and Sheva barely manage to kill her before she kills them. Shortly thereafter, in an underground disposal plant, Chris and Sheva start running across what's left of Alpha team. The only survivor is Captain DuChant, who's barely alive. He tells Chris that it was a setup; Irving got away and his team's been wiped out. He was able to download details on the arms deal into a portable hard drive, which he gives to Chris before expiring. Chris decides to head towards the BSAA's vehicle depot, where he can find something to transmit the data to headquarters. Sheva notices someone watching them from nearby, but whoever it is escapes before Sheva can catch them. Moving further into the plant's corridors, Chris and Sheva abruptly run across the creature that killed Alpha team: a gigantic tentacular mass surrounding a vaguely humanoid core. It attacks them by swinging its arms in powerful hammer blows, shedding short-lived wormlike creatures with every step it takes. Their firearms don't do much to it at all, but when Chris thinks to shoot a large propane tank nearby, the explosion knocks the creature down. They realize that it's vulnerable to intense heat, so Chris lures it into the plant's incinerator and stuns it with an incendiary grenade. Sheva then throws the switch on the incinerator, and the gas jets do the rest. A short distance outside the waste disposal plant, Chris finds Alpha team's vehicles and equipment, the former of which has been disabled. As Chris uses a laptop to upload DuChant's data to the BSAA's servers, a man in a bad suit - Irving - gets into a nearby car, driven by the masked woman. They drive away. Chris radios in to BSAA headquarters. With the Alpha team wiped out, Irving in the wind, and the villagers all turned into what Chris recognizes from the "Kennedy Report" as Ganados, they request a mission update. Nothing has changed, however; they're still tasked with finding and arresting Irving. The BSAA Delta team has been dispatched to their location for backup, but until then, Chris and Sheva are ordered to pursue Irving by themselves. Chris bitterly says to Sheva that they're apparently expendable. The Alpha team's vehicles have been sabotaged. With no other choice, Chris and Sheva head out of the city via the waterfront, fighting off infected villagers and dogs in a maze of shipping containers. A new breed of infected Plaga makes an appearance here as well, birthing out of human corpses and taking to the air on insectoid wings. Kirk Mathison shows up in his helicopter as they approach the next station, providing air support. Those same flying BOWs soon bring Kirk's helicopter down, with Chris and Sheva helpless to do anything but watch. New orders from BSAA HQ send them towards the crash site, with the villagers putting up increasingly heavy resistance. At one point, they're forced to contend with a chainsaw-wielding man with a bag over his head, who soaks up bullets and nearly kills them both. The helicopter is a flaming wreck by the time Chris and Sheva reach it, with no survivors. Before they can do anything else, a revving motor announces the arrival of a villager driving a motorcycle, dragging a heavy length of chain behind him. He goes for Sheva, but Chris shoves her out of the way and gets entangled himself. As he's dragged away, Sheva draws a careful bead on the chain and fires, severing it and dumping Chris into the dust. More bikers appear, and Chris and Sheva go back to back. Thankfully, they don't have to fight the bikers themselves, as BSAA's Delta team has finally arrived. Their snipers take out the men on the motorcycles, and a few riflemen on the ground mop up what's left. Their captain introduces himself to Chris as Josh Stone. He also turns out to have been Sheva's trainer at the BSAA. Josh hands Chris a data chip and says their orders are to pursue Irving; the data from the hard drive Chris recovered seems to indicate that Irving's moved on into the nearby mining area. Chris plugs the data chip into his phone, and calls up its contents on the screen. One of them is a photograph of a blonde woman who looks much like Jill Valentine, taking Chris aback. When Sheva asks what's wrong, he shrugs it off and says it's nothing. The Delta team moves on, leaving Chris and Sheva alone in a meeting room. Josh has left behind some captured intelligence about the "Type 2" Plagas that have infected the villagers. After laboratory improvements on the original model, Type 2 Plagas now only take ten seconds to take over a host's brain. They have been deployed in Kijuju half as a research project, and half as a deliberate attack against the BSAA. Chris and Sheva get back on Irving's trail. After fighting past a truckyard full of infected dogs and through a series of mine tunnels, they emerge outside the mine's offices, where they corner Irving. Just before they arrest him, a tear gas grenade is thrown into the room. The masked woman suddenly swings through a nearby window, grabs Irving, and pulls him outside. Irving laughs at Chris and Sheva as he's pulled to safety. As the gas clears, Chris decides that there must have been something in the room that Irving didn't want them to see. He digs through the papers, and soon finds a map of Kijuju with a large area circled and labeled "Test Zone 01." Sheva identifies it as the oil fields, located in the marshlands. Chris radios the Delta team to tell them that Irving's escaped. Josh says he'll put a team on Irving's trail, but for now, he needs Chris and Sheva back with him. Chris agrees. Unfortunately, the road outside the mines has been heavily reinforced by Plaga-infested villagers, several of whom still remember how to operate a mounted machine gun. Chris finds an old Dragunov sniper rifle inside a locker in the office, and uses it to take out the villagers from a safe distance. As they break through the last barricade, a villager drives down the road in a large cargo truck. As he crashes to a stop, a massive insectoid bioweapon, similar to the U3 Leon Kennedy fought four years ago, explodes out of the back of the truck. Its exoskeleton proves to be quite bulletproof, but its soft underbelly isn't. Using explosives and teamwork, Chris and Sheva manage to inflict enough damage to the creature that it takes off into the air. As it dives headlong towards Chris, he fires off a couple of well-aimed shots, forcing the creature to crash into the wrecked truck. Both go over the edge of a nearby cliff, and it is unable to pull out of its dive. The truck explodes, and the creature splatters against the ground. As Chris and Sheva catch their breath, one of the Delta team members approaches driving a jeep. Their ride has arrived. Sheva radios in to headquarters to give them a status update. Josh replies soon afterward, as Chris and Sheva are fighting off another biker gang with the jeep's mounted guns, to inform them that just about all of the villagers have become infected with type 2 Plagas. In the data from the hard drive, they're referred to as "Majini." The trip gets rougher, as Majini in trucks and motorcycles find and pursue Chris and Sheva's jeep. They return fire with the jeep's mounted guns, waging a running battle across the savannah. As Chris and Sheva approach Delta team's current location, Josh radios them that his team has come under attack, and cannot hold out for long. By the time Chris and Sheva manage to shake their pursuers, night has fallen. They arrive at the site of a massacre. The Delta team has been wiped out. As they survey the destruction, their driver is suddenly crushed under the foot of what Leon could identify as a Gigante. Chris and Sheva barely manage to make it back to the jeep they arrived in, and use its heavy machine guns to fight off the Gigante. Like the ones Leon fought, the Gigante itself is only inconvenienced by machine gun fire. When enraged or in sufficient pain, though, the massive parasites that drive it emerge into the open. Chris and Sheva concentrate fire to drive the Gigante back, then obliterate the parasites as they appear. When they're destroyed, the Gigante crashes to the ground, crushing their jeep in the process. Sheva searches the bodies, and discovers that Josh isn't among the dead. As she wonders out loud where he's gone, Chris tells her that she can still back out from this, even though they're the only two BSAA agents left. Sheva reacts incredulously; if anything, she says, they should *both* be talking about running away. Chris denies this, and says he now has a personal stake in this mission. A while ago, Chris says, he received intel that his old partner, Jill Valentine, might still be alive. The data that DeChant recovered from Irving seems to confirm this. If Jill is alive, Irving knows where she is, and Chris intends to find her. Sheva makes a half-hearted attempt to talk him out of it, but Chris can't be swayed. He goes to find a boat he can use to cross the marshland, and by the time he's done so, Sheva has decided to come with him. "Partners," she says, "until the end." By daybreak, they're piloting a fanboat across the marsh. Sheva finally asks what happened to Chris's partner. Two years ago, Chris says, he and Jill had gotten a tip concerning the whereabouts of Umbrella's last living founder, Ozwell Spencer, and were going to investigate. He was reportedly holed up inside a castle somewhere in Europe. When Chris and Jill found Spencer, he was dead on the floor and Albert Wesker was standing over his corpse. They immediately attacked, but if anything, Wesker had just gotten faster and stronger since Chris's previous encounter with him on Rockfort Island. Neither Chris or Jill could so much as touch him. Finally, Wesker sent Chris flying across the room, and he rolled to a stop at the base of a window. Before Wesker could throw Chris to his death, Jill tackled him, sending both Wesker and herself plummeting out the window and into a darkened canyon. She held onto him all the way down, and Chris watched them fall. Neither of their bodies were never found. Chris tells Sheva that, one way or another, he has to know if Jill is still alive. They were partners for a long time. Then he changes the subject, and asks Sheva why she's a member of the BSAA. She says that both of her parents died in an outbreak caused by Umbrella, created to cover up the manufacture and shipment of biological weapons. She joined the BSAA because "somebody has to pay for that." Chris and Sheva pursue Irving to a village in the marshland. At the first dock they stop at, a dead BSAA agent is lying in a small clearing. His PDA has an open mission log; his squad was sent to reinforce the fallen Delta team, but they were too late. One of the members of Delta team was still broadcasting a distress signal, though, so the dead agent's team came out into the marsh to investigate. His PDA indicates a massive locked gate nearby, next to which is a labeled map. Chris and Sheva search the various small settlements within the marsh. While the area is wired for electricity, the local population appear to have once been subsistence farmers, raising chickens and catching fish. Their village has several outposts in the deep water, raised on sticks to defend against crocodiles, although most of their fishing boats have been run aground. The local Majini wear grass skirts and little else. Some use vicious homemade spears or crossbows, but most are content to leap at Sheva or Chris with their bare hands. Some have relearned the usage of explosives, and have mined the swamp and juryrigged their arrows. Just the same, Chris and Sheva manage to recover the four pieces of the emblem that unlocks the gate. The gate was sealing off the main village, where most of the local population is waiting in ambush, including a pair of massive, nearly invulnerable natives, swinging huge barbed clubs. Finally, Chris runs into an enclosure and finds a dead BSAA agent there, still holding a loaded high-caliber revolver. Chris uses it to take out the Majinis with the clubs, and with them dead, the rest are easily defeated. Deeper into the village, across a nearby bridge, Chris is scrounging for supplies when he finds the diary of one of the younger villagers. A generation ago, the owners of the nearby oil refinery had swindled the villagers out of the land that the refinery now sits on. In the modern day, the owners of the refinery have frequently assisted the villagers out of what the writer assumes is guilt, giving them exotic alcohol and building them a gondola to help them across the swamp. On April 5th, one of the refinery's supervisors came to the village in order to offer the locals some inoculations against an unspecified disease. The writer didn't initially accept the offer, due to his immediate distaste for the supervisor. Two days later, despite the villagers' best efforts, the village's children had died. When the village leader went to the refinery to demand answers, the supervisor claimed it was because of the illness he'd initially hoped to prevent. This time, the writer of the diary went with the others to get the injection. A few days later, the women of the village had grown listless and vacant, while the men were adorning themselves with traditional war paint and garb and fighting one another. By the time the writer of the diary succumbed to the same violent impulses as the other men in his village, most of the women were dead. Chris and Sheva take the villagers' gondola across the swamp to another part of the village, where several of the Majini have strung up another dead BSAA agent for the crocodiles. After dispatching them, Chris and Sheva raise a bridge and exit the area. A pair of abandoned tents just past the village bear the logo of the Tricell corporation, which Chris identifies as one of the companies that funds the BSAA. A clipboard in one of the tents discusses a clinical trial of "Type 3" Plagas, which are a hybrid of Type 2 and the baseline Plaga. While Type 3 Plagas dramatically increase a host's physical capabilities, and occasionally cause a dramatic mutation where a host may grow to nine feet tall, they have a zero percent adherence rate in women and children. A woman or child hosting a Type 3 Plaga simply dies. The tents are set up outside the entrance to the oil field. Inside, Sheva spots Irving as he enters the building, which is guarded by a squad of armed type-2 Majini. Chris and Sheva dispatch the Majini and disable a series of gas valves, allowing them to pursue Irving. As they enter the building, a gunman approaches them from behind. Fortunately, it's Josh Stone, who's now the lone survivor of his team. He demands to know why they didn't simply retreat in the face of such a widespread infestation, and Sheva tells him a very abbreviated version of events thus far. Chris doesn't intend to leave until he's caught Irving and found out what's going on. At that point, a horde of Majini burst into the room. Sheva and Chris cover Josh as he unlocks the refinery's elevator, and the three of them make an escape into an easily-barricaded room on the second floor. Josh tells Chris and Sheva to pursue Irving, who's decided to blow up the oil refinery to cover his escape, while he secures a way out. As he runs off, Sheva tells Josh to be careful. He nods. Chris and Sheva burst out of the refinery and onto the docks, but they're too late to prevent Irving's escape. The masked woman drives away in a small motorboat, while Irving rides off in a heavily-armed riverboat. A small army of Majini, backed up by infested dogs, arrives at the docks. Josh radios in to tell Chris and Sheva to hurry to his location, where he's gotten a boat started, but the Majini make that as difficult as possible. The three of them get aboard their boat and away just before the refinery explodes. Several squads of Majini attempt to slow them down, both in boats and by springing ambushes along the tributary, but they're unsuccessful. Josh is piloting the boat along a quiet stretch of the river when Irving's boat suddenly sideswipes them. One of the Majini immediately opens up from Irving's boat with a machine gun turret, forcing Chris and Sheva to take cover behind their own boat's engine block. Chris takes out the Majini with two precise gunshots, and they board Irving's vessel. Irving, standing alone aboard his boat watching Chris and Sheva mow down his guards, is holding a large autosyringe filled with red liquid. The masked woman gave it to him, claiming that Irving now had to clean up his own mess. Despite Chris and Sheva's threats, Irving jams the syringe into his neck, and immediately begins to convulse and scream. Tentacles sprout from his back, which he uses to fend off Chris and Sheva as he drops into the water. A massive sea monster surfaces very shortly thereafter, with part of Irving's body serving as a sort of nerve center. He laughs crazily, calling his transformation an "extreme makeover," and tries to crush Chris and Sheva against the deck with a massive set of tentacles. If Irving hadn't been using such a well-armed ship, he might have won the fight. Chris and Sheva use his own turrets against him, severing his tentacles and blasting holes in what's left of Irving's old body, which dangles like a tongue in the monster's gaping maw. The fight ends when a burst of machine-gun fire cuts the tissue connecting what's left of Irving's body to the rest of the monster. His torso and head land heavily on the ship's deck. He curses, although he's in surprisingly good humor for a dying man. Apparently, he says, Excella didn't think he rated the "good stuff." Chris tries to get answers out of him, about both the picture of Jill and the rumored Uroboros Project, but Irving is only willing to give him any answers at all once Sheva refers to Chris by name. Once he knows who he's talking to, Irving is delighted to tell Chris that any answers he's looking for can be found inside the nearby system of caves... if he's able to stay alive for long enough to get them. Irving dies, still laughing, in a spreading pool of blood. The caves that Irving spoke of aren't hard to find. As they pull alongside a nearby dock, they find a boat already tied to it. Sheva recognizes it as what the masked woman used to make her escape. When Josh realizes he can't talk Chris or Sheva out of this, he says he'll radio into headquarters. With luck, he'll be able to get the withdrawal order rescinded, and get Chris some backup. Josh salutes and drives away. The caverns are infested with a bizarre breed of spider which seems at least partially derived from Plagas. They share Plagas' photosensitivity, and Chris soon finds that a flash grenade will take them out. A few Majini also prowl the caverns, and as Chris and Sheva pass through an ornately carved doorway, they discover why. They suddenly find themselves exploring a series of majestic ruins of unknown origin, patrolled by hostile Majini and strewn with both new and old traps. Sheva had had no idea that anything like this was in Kijuju. Using an ancient system of pulleys, Chris and Sheva manipulate a series of sliding staircases to allow them access to the deeper parts of the ruin. As the last piece slides into place, another variation on the U3 bioweapon appears from above. This time, though, Chris and Sheva have found better weapons, and they leave it in a bleeding heap. Elsewhere, a woman wearing half a dress gives a man an injection. She'd had her doubts about him when he first arrived, she says, but now the Uroboros is complete. "Your position at Tricell is secure," Wesker tells her, but she shrugs it off and caresses him. She has her eyes on something much bigger (...ahem), like a place in his "new world." She's proven she's worthy, or at least so she thinks. Wesker forcibly removes her hand. "Perhaps you have," he says in a neutral tone. The masked woman enters the room and tells them that the BSAA has arrived. Apparently, Wesker's old friend Chris has come to pay them a visit. Wesker tells them that he won't tolerate delays, and both women leave. He looks out the window into a missile storage facility, several of which have UROBOROS written on the sides. "I should thank you, Spencer," Wesker says idly. He thinks of the encounter in the castle three years ago, shortly before Chris and Jill arrived. Wesker remembers Spencer's conversation in fragments: the Progenitor virus, Spencer's dreams of godhood. Wesker had finally driven his hand through the old man's chest, to Spencer's surprise, and whispered a denial into the old man's ear. If anyone was to become a god, Wesker says, in the present to himself and in the past to Spencer, it would be him. Meanwhile, Chris and Sheva are still negotiating traps within the ruins. After dealing with a series of obstacles involving focused beams of sunlight, they descend three floors into a large ritual chamber, with a small field of flowers at the center of the room. The flowers are somehow surviving in the absence of direct sunlight. The area is littered with abandoned equipment, some of which is much older than the rest. Chris wipes the grime off of one of the crates to find a faded Umbrella logo. Some of the other, newer equipment bears Tricell's name. A nearby journal, written in 1966 by a man named Brandon Bailey, is lying open on top of one of the tarp-covered crates, as though someone found it, opened it, and forgot about it. Bailey's journal talks about his research, conducted alongside Marcus and Spencer. The flowers in the ritual chamber were prized by a tribe called the Ndipaya, which called them the Stairway to the Sun. In their natural habitat, the flowers were the host to a virus that they code-named "Progenitor." If their research team tried to grow the flowers anywhere else on Earth, the virus was gone. Brandon was sent to Africa by himself in 1968 to acquire more samples of the virus. Spencer quietly acquired the land where the flower had been originally discovered, in an attempt to keep the researchers from being constantly attacked by the Ndipaya. The conditions remained harsh, with the constant risk of raids compounded by the sounds of construction and the facilities housed inside a bunch of tents, but it all paid off in 1969. Umbrella's African research facility was complete, although it wasn't anywhere near big enough to support Bailey's work. Further into the lab, Chris finds that Tricell has set up shop in Umbrella's old lab building. He turns on a computer and finds the research journal of a Tricell scientist named Miguel. The center had been completely cleaned out when Tricell arrived, but they needed samples of the Progenitor virus and there was nowhere else to get it. While they were here, they also began experiments on the BOWs known as "Lickers." Administering the Progenitor virus to them didn't change much, aside from giving them the ability to reproduce, and Miguel doubts they'll ever be financially viable bioweapons. Just outside the computer room, Chris and Sheva find a hallway that's splattered with blood, with large claw marks scored into the wall. The hallway has been blockaded with crates and containers. The Lickers attack Chris and Sheva shortly thereafter. They fight much like the Raccoon City version did. They're also completely blind, and easy to sneak past. When Chris is forced to break down a door to reach the facility's elevator, it's noisy enough that the rest of the Licker population breaks free of their cages and comes after them, forcing Chris and Sheva to fight them all while they wait for the elevator to arrive. Using the exit corridor as a choke point, they bombard the oncoming horde with grenades and bullets. They barely escape, and the elevator takes them to a truly massive room lined with cryogenic storage capsules. This is where Umbrella once kept human test subjects from all over the world. There is space for hundreds of people along the walls, and as Sheva watches, one of them opens and drops a withered corpse into the darkness below. Chris uses the storage facility's computer to search for Jill's name. Sure enough, a photo of a sleeping Jill is on file; she was at least kept here at one point. A note appended to her records indicates that for some reason, while she was in cryogenic storage, her pigmentation changed. She's now blonde. The computer automatically engages its lift system, taking Chris and Sheva towards the area where Jill's capsule is, but it's forced to stop by the arrival of a bioweapon sentry: some kind of massive spider. It lashes out at Chris and Sheva with its massive claws, but a couple of shotgun blasts to its arms force it to collapse onto the lift platform. While it's stunned, Chris shoves a couple of hand grenades into its open mouth, bypassing its bulletproof exoskeleton. The creature screams in pain and loses its grip on the walls of the storage facility, plummeting into the darkness. As Chris and Sheva watch it fall, a video chat window appears on the computer screen, overlaying the file photo of Jill. It shows a woman, who's wondering aloud why Chris and Sheva didn't retreat when they were told to. Sheva identifies the woman as Excella Gionne, a Tricell executive and a member of the Global Pharmeceutical Consortium. Excella contemptously says Sheva has done her homework, then denies knowing anything about Jill. She implores Chris and Sheva, when they're done with their "vigilante mission," to leave; there's nothing in this old Umbrella base worth dying over. Convinced that Excella knows more than she's telling, Chris and Sheva set out to find her. Taking an elevator down to the lower levels of the facility, they discover that while they've been in the base, someone has upgraded the Majini's equipment. Before, they were attacking with shovels, axes, and glass bottles. Now, they're wearing body armor, and wielding assault rifles, stun batons, and flash grenades. The lower levels of the facility are dedicated to both shipping and waste disposal. Chris and Sheva use the conveyor belts to navigate through the area, and sneak past the infestations of Lickers that have gathered in the quieter areas. A sheaf of abandoned memos indicates that the Uroboros virus was shipped out of this facility at some point, but a fire broke out. Soon thereafter, a new breed of mutant took up residence within the darkened parts of the facility, killing anyone sent after it. The unnamed author of the memo decides to name them "Reapers" for the time being. While reactivating power to a conveyor belt, Chris and Sheva meet a Reaper firsthand. Its powerful limbs allow it to tear a human apart in seconds, and it reacts to attack by ejecting clouds of corrosive gas. Like the Uroboros-infected humans, though, the Reaper has enormous tumorlike growths that protrude from beneath its exoskeleton, and destroying them kills it. Eventually, Chris and Sheva find their way to a laboratory deep within the facility, where a bald man is sitting motionless in a chair. Excella greets them from an observation room, with the masked woman by her side, and Chris demands to know where Jill is. Excella mocks him for being just as single-minded as "he" - Wesker - said Chris was. Excella tells them more about Uroboros. It's the unification of Wesker's ideas and her own. Rather then being intended for the international black market, Uroboros was made for the purpose of evolution. Only the worthy will be able to control its power, and as the bald man lurches up out of his chair, it becomes obvious that he isn't and he can't. Tentacles writhe beneath the man's skin for a few seconds before he slumps to the ground. Soon, he's covered in the same mass of black eel-like fronds as the man Chris and Sheva fought back in the village. Excella's plan to kill Chris and Sheva hits one major snag. Tricell's laboratory has an automated anti-biohazard protocol that activates whenever an outbreak is detected within the lab. As part of their standard operating procedure, this requires a clean-up crew to incinerate anything within the lab with a flamethrower, one of which is helpfully stored in a unit on the wall. Chris seizes it and uses it against the Uroboros, inflicting enough raw damage to paralyze it briefly and expose the pulsating white nacelles on its body. Sheva capitalizes on that with explosives and precise gunfire. The creature absorbs a huge amount of punishment, but they eventually kill it, reducing the Uroboros to a rapidly dissolving slurry on the floor. By the time Chris and Sheva find their way up to the lab's observation room, Excella has cleared out. She's left behind a short manual on the usage and behavior of the Uroboros virus, which attempts to adapt itself to a host's DNA. If it's unsuccessful, as it's been in every case that Chris and Sheva have seen so far, the virus completely overcomes its host and turns it into the mass of black pustules they've seen twice now. At this point, it begins looking for more organic matter that it can use to fuel its growth. Chris and Sheva pursue Excella deeper into the facility, and along the way, their radio headsets pick up a weak signal from elsewhere in the base. Excella's transmission cuts in and out, but they hear her speaking of a man named "Albert." Chris realizes that Wesker must still be alive, although he'd hoped otherwise. A memorandum in an employee lounge just ahead indicates that Wesker is dealing with his research staff in his accustomed manner; all of the surviving Tricell researchers were put on a bus, knocked out with gas, killed, and incinerated in the furnaces on the facility's lowest floor. They pursue Excella back up several floors in the facility, using the storage area's lift to return to the ancient ruins. Here, Tricell and/or Umbrella have constructed a drawbridge that links back up to the local cavern system. The Lickers have also made this area into one of their local habitats. Crossing the drawbridge, Chris and Sheva finally catch up to Excella, who's waiting for them inside the atrium of an ancient tomb. She seems amused by their continued pursuit, especially when the masked woman suddenly attacks. With unearthly speed, she manages to quickly humiliate both Chris and Sheva, dodging bullets and retaliating with devastating, superhuman kicks. Chris knocks off her mask with a lucky gunshot. Wesker enters the room and, smug as ever, calls the situation a "family reunion." Chris demands to know what he did with Jill, and Wesker's reaction is to pull off the masked woman's cowl. Her face is twisted with either hatred or rage, but it's unmistakably Jill Valentine. Excella makes herself scarce as a remarkably one-sided fight breaks out. Neither Chris or Sheva can match Wesker's raw speed and power or Jill's agility. After realizing that, Chris changes their tactics. Chris manages to get Wesker to kick him through the sealed door to the catacombs surrounding them, and he leads Wesker on a wild goose chase through the tombs of the Ndipaya. At the same time, Sheva engages Jill in the atrium, in what's not so much a fight as it's a game of tag. Seven minutes later, both Chris and Sheva have managed to stay alive, if only barely, and Wesker can no longer spare the time to stick around and deal with them. He leaps up to the elevator he entered through and takes a phone call on his PDA, leaving Jill to finish Chris and Sheva off. Jill gets Chris in a nearly inescapable armlock and starts to twist. With no other option, Chris pleads with her to remember who he is, and suddenly Jill breaks the hold. She staggers backward, and an impressed Wesker notes that she's still resisting "even at such an advanced stage." He points his PDA at Jill and pushes a button, and she suddenly convulses, screaming. Jill rips open the collar of her jumpsuit to reveal a bizarre red object attached to her chest, just below her collarbone. Wesker leaves via the elevator. Even alone, Jill is more than capable of killing both Chris and Sheva, but they quickly identify the object on her chest as the problem. It's bulletproof, but Chris has enough of a weight advantage on her that he can restrain her for brief periods. While he does that, Sheva tries to yank the object off of Jill's chest. This isn't easy; when the object starts to give way, it's obvious that it's surgically attached. Finally, Sheva claps both legs around Jill's neck and slams her headfirst into the floor. While she's stunned, Chris rips the object out, and Jill screams. Jill loses consciousness briefly, but when she wakes up, she recognizes Chris. She was aware of who he was and what she was doing, but helpless to keep herself from doing any of it. Chris tells her it's okay, and Jill implores him to pursue and stop Wesker. Jill is barely able to stand, which forces Chris to leave her behind. Sheva and a distracted Chris take Wesker's elevator up to find a large harbor, with an enormous cargo ship docked there. From where they're standing, they can see Wesker and Excella walking on board the ship, and Excella has a suitcase with her. A few hours later, night has fallen, and Chris and Sheva have managed to sneak aboard the ship. Chris figures it's too big for Wesker to want to use it to spread Uroboros; it'd be too easy to find and destroy the ship. Chris and Sheva dispatch dozens of well-armed Majini on their way across the ship's deck, down into the hold, where they find Excella frantically typing away on a computer in a small lab. Excella runs away, and both Chris and Sheva open fire. They don't hit her, but a bullet breaks open one of the two attache cases she's carrying, and Excella abandons it. She seals the bulkhead door behind herself, and Sheva inspects the broken case. It turns out to hold several vials of an unidentified serum, and Sheva pockets one for later study. Another entry in the researcher Miguel's journal is available on one of the computers. Miguel's project involves development on a new virus, one to surpass the potential of both the G-Virus and T-Veronica. The big problems are eliminating the virus's ability to cause extreme mutations and mental atrophy while improving its stability. Miguel believes he's got the first two handled, and is working on methods to enhance the third. Unable to follow Excella, Chris and Sheva take a detour through the ship's cargo hold, where Majini confront them with rocket launchers, assault rifles, and even a hand-held gatling gun. It isn't easy, but they get through them and reach the ship's bridge. Wesker watches their progress via security camera, but he's not really paying attention. His mind's on his last encounter with Spencer three years ago, just before Jill and Chris found him. According to Spencer, Wesker is the last survivor of a "new superior breed of humanity," created by Spencer with the Progenitor virus. Spencer's goal was to become a god, creating a new world with a new, better breed of humans. With the destruction of Raccoon City, Spencer was forced into hiding, and his plans never reached fruition. When Wesker found Spencer, the latter was an old man in failing health, and Spencer was bitterly amused to be facing his own mortality. After all, he told Wesker, he had the right to be a god. Wesker, suddenly enraged, took one step forward and drove his hand through Spencer's chest. Spencer, with a look of shock on his face, collapsed against Wesker. Wesker had whispered into his ear, "That right is now mine." Spencer was arrogant to the end, Wesker muses. Only someone who's actually capable of becoming a god deserves the right to do so. In the present day, Wesker says to himself that Uroboros gives him that right. The elevator takes Chris and Sheva back up to the deck, where a horrifying sight awaits them. A massive pile of fresh corpses, most of which appear to have been the villagers from Kijuju, has been heaped upon the ship's deck. Excella Gionne, in agony, staggers towards them, unable to believe that she's been betrayed; Wesker has administered the Uroboros virus to her, but like everyone else, she can't handle it. Chris isn't surprised at all. As he tells Sheva, Wesker doesn't give a damn about anyone other than himself. Crying Wesker's name, Excella explodes into a flurry of tendrils, engulfing the nearby corpses and growing faster than any Uroboros host before her. The new Uroboros reaches out to try to crush and ensnare Chris and Sheva, who stay one step ahead of it and take shelter back inside the ship. They're back in the hallways outside the bridge, and the Uroboros instantly pours in after them. It lashes out through windows and ventilation ducts, feeling around blindly inside the ship for anything else it can consume. Wesker has engaged automatic systems and locked the ship's controls. At the ship's radar station, Chris finds an old memo from Spencer himself inside an open briefcase, presumably Excella's. Written around the time of Raccoon City's destruction, the memo details Spencer's plans for ensuring Umbrella would survive the political fallout from the disaster. Oddly, Spencer himself believed that Umbrella wasn't directly responsible. One of his first steps is to ensure that the African facility, which is already a closely guarded secret, remains off the books. To do so, he killed everyone in Umbrella who had the security clearance required to know that the African facility ever existed, including the luckless Brandon Bailey. Even if Umbrella itself is forced to close down, it was always just a tool in Spencer's eyes. It's all about the research, and that will survive. A second nearby memo labels Wesker himself as No. 13 in the "W Project," and dates back to directly after the Arklay mansion incident. The author of the memo is an "Alex W." from Umbrella's security department. He labels "Albert" as the reason why the Arklay mansion was destroyed, and notes that his death brings the success rate of the "W Project" down to 18 percent. On the bridge, Chris finds a memo attached to a bulletin board that instructs the reader how to use "Shango," a satellite-mounted laser that can strike within centimeters of the designated target. Shango is in geosynchronous orbit above the ship, and the targeting device is locked down outside. Chris has already found the keycard to open its storage locker. This gives them a chance. Chris and Sheva run outside to battle the Uroboros. Like the smaller versions of it that they've fought before, Excella's Uroboros is still highly vulnerable to flame, but by now, it's easily several stories tall. Chris unlocks the targeting device for Shango, while Sheva targets the softer parts of the Uroboros's body. Landing a solid hit on any of the large red nacelles all over the Uroboros gets an immediate and dramatic reaction, and while it's stunned, Chris targets it with Shango and fires. Fortunately, there's so much raw mass to the Uroboros that even an orbital laser strike can't burn through it and sink the ship. It takes multiple hits from the Shango to kill the Uroboros, but it does eventually do the job. After an intense fight, the orbital laser reduces the Uroboros to a massive smoking heap. Chris and Sheva go back into the ship's bridge and take a look around using the security monitors. They show a bomber docked below decks, which must be what Wesker plans to use to spread the Uroboros. A nearby document confirms this; Wesker will fire the missiles loaded with Uroboros into the planet's troposphere, spreading the virus worldwide. Chris starts to head downstairs to intercept Wesker, but gets a call on his PDA. It's Jill, who's calling to tell him about something she noticed while working for Wesker. The virus he used to gain his powers is unstable, and he requires an injection of a specialized serum every day. While he's already gotten his dose today, the amount he requires is very precise. If he were to get more than he needed, it would actually poison him, which might give Chris a chance at beating him. Excella always carried the serum with her in an attache case, and Jill reels off the serum's serial number before Chris loses her signal. Sheva looks down at the vial she took from Excella. Conveniently, it's a dose of Wesker's serum. Chris agrees that it's at least worth a try. They take the elevator to the ship's hold. The last of the Majini are defending the hangar with their lives, the ship's Uroboros payload has mutated some of the local insect population into Reapers, the ship has both sprung several leaks and caught on fire after the fight on the top deck, and there are two separate Majini with gatling guns guarding the way. All the same, they manage to catch up to Wesker before he gets into the plane. Contemptuously, Wesker asks them if they ever get tired of failure, just before he takes off his sunglasses and flicks them at Chris. By the time Chris catches the sunglasses, Wesker is already punching him in the face. He avoids their gunfire like it's not there and retaliates at will, culminating with a double judo throw that sends both of them at once over a railing and crashing to the hangar floor. As Chris lands, the vial of serum falls out of Sheva's pocket, and they realize it's their only chance. Chris shuts down the lights in the hangar, which gives them a slight edge. Wesker can only dodge their attacks if he can see them coming. They play a game of cat and mouse with Wesker, who takes the opportunity to explain his motivations. The world is overpopulated, he tells Chris, and most of the people in it are worthless. With Uroboros, only the worthy will survive, and Wesker will rule over them as a god. Wesker is so busy with his villainous monologue that Chris actually gets the drop on him. While Chris has Wesker's attention, Sheva grabs a rocket launcher from a weapons locker, and as soon as Chris is clear, she fires. Wesker reaches up and catches the rocket in mid-air, although it takes all his strength to keep it away from his face. Chris forces the issue by shooting the rocket, blowing it up and sending Wesker flying. This is their chance. Chris grabs Wesker in a headlock, holding him long enough for Sheva to jam Excella's needle into Wesker's chest. It has an immediate reaction. Wesker staggers to his feet; his vision is blurring and he's obviously off-balance. At this point, realizing he no longer has the advantage, Wesker covers the entirety of the hangar in two massive leaps and runs into the bomber. As Wesker takes off, Chris barely manages to make it on board via the cargo hatch, and grabs Sheva's hand. Inside, in the bomber's cargo bay, Wesker is catching his breath. He's not dead yet, though. Wesker attacks Chris and Sheva once more, but he's not as formidable as he used to be. He's still strong, and fast enough to dodge bullets, but he's moving like he's drunk and taking hits he never would have before, including a vicious knife strike from Sheva that drives deep into Wesker's left forearm. Finally, Chris wrestles Wesker to the ground and stabs him in the neck with Excella's needle. An automated voice aboard the bomber reminds Wesker that he's got seven minutes until he's at the ideal deployment altitude for the virus. Sheva covers Chris as he heads for the plane's override switch, firing at Wesker as Wesker leaps across the bay. Chris pulls the switch seconds before Wesker reaches him, and the bay doors open. Chris has a good handhold, but neither Sheva or Wesker are as lucky. Sheva grabs onto a support strut for dear life, and Wesker only manages to survive by holding onto one of her legs. She makes eye contact with Chris, and her expression changes from fear to acceptance to determination; she's ready to sacrifice herself if it means Wesker dies too. Watching her, Chris has a flashback to when he thought Jill died in Spencer's mansion. With a scream of "No!" he leaps forward, grabbing Sheva's arm just as she loses her grip on the support strut. Wesker swears that he's going to take Chris and Sheva with him, and Sheva draws her pistol and fires one shot into Wesker's face. That breaks his hold, and Wesker goes flying out of the cargo door. ==================================================== 16ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 5 ==================================================== Wesker's bomber crash-lands inside the caldera of an active volcano. Chris and Sheva both survive the landing, although the bomber's viral payload and half the plane are spread across the rocks. Suddenly, Wesker reappears. He's lost his shirt and coat in the crash, and tells Chris that Wesker should've killed him years ago. As a final act of revenge, Wesker punches his fist through one of the missiles' payload compartments, which explodes into the trademark tendrils of the Uroboros. It immediately bonds with him, and unlike everyone else who's been infected so far, Wesker seems more than able to handle it. The virus causes massive tentacular masses to emerge from both of Wesker's arms, serving as both additional limbs and body armor. He uses the writhing bulk that used to be his right arm to grab a large, sharp chunk of the wreckage from the plane, which turns him into something vaguely like a bipedal helicopter rotor. Chris and Sheva backpedal, trying to get some space before Wesker knocks them into the lava, and a chunk of rock crumbles under Chris's feet. He falls to a lower rock formation, and Wesker opts to pursue him rather than Sheva. Chris runs to higher ground with Wesker in pursuit. Wesker has abandoned whatever faint pretense of sanity he started out with. He lashes out at Chris with his Uroboros-spawned tentacles, ranting that humanity is a disease, spreading war and pestilence wherever it goes. Chris is barely able to stay ahead of him, but while he's dodging Wesker's attacks, he sees a possible weakness: like all the other Uroboros-spawned monsters they've fought today, Wesker has acquired a glowing red nacelle on his chest. Chris shoots the nacelle, and Wesker roars in pain. His other arm, previously almost untouched by the virus, is engulfed by pustules. He uses it to propel himself across the volcano, towards Sheva. With their roles reversed, Sheva runs away from Wesker while Chris covers her from below. His gunfire does little more than annoy Wesker, but it slows him down long enough for Sheva to escape. As she pulls herself up onto the next cliff, Chris looks to the side and sees a boulder he can knock over. He does so, which creates a short-lived bridge for Sheva. Wesker pursues the two of them and corners them atop a large, stable chunk of rock in the middle of the volcano's caldera. There's barely enough room for all three of them, and Chris and Sheva are forced to go on the defensive. It takes all they've got just to keep Wesker from throwing them into the lava below. Finally, Chris sees an opening and puts a high-caliber round into the nacelle on Wesker's chest. Wesker staggers, and Chris leaps on Wesker's back, grabbing the Uroboros-spawned pustules and physically ripping them away from the nacelle. He screams for Sheva to shoot it, even if that means shooting Chris as well. Instead, Sheva draws her knife and comes in swinging. Both she and Chris are drenched in yellowish blood as Sheva stabs Wesker repeatedly, with Wesker struggling against Chris's grip. Wesker finally manages to knock her away, but Chris simply draws his knife and stabs Wesker one final time. Wesker staggers backward, but it's his turn to lose his footing. The rock crumbles underneath his feet, and Wesker is suddenly up to his waist in lava. He screams in agony. Suddenly, a helicopter arrives, piloted by Josh Stone. Jill is in the back, and pushes a rope ladder down for Sheva and Chris. Sheva grabs it immediately, but Chris, watching Wesker sink into the lava, almost doesn't get to it in time. He leaps and grabs the last rung on the ladder just as the rock he was standing on disappears into the lava flow. Sheva and Chris haul themselves into the helicopter. No one says anything... except Wesker. With his one surviving arm, he lashes out; the tentacles extend to an enormous extent and latch onto one of the helicopter's landing struts. Jill quickly points to a pair of RPGs that are stored in the helicopter's passenger cabin, and hands them to Sheva and Chris. They sight in on Wesker's face, and simultaneously fire. The rockets hit Wesker squarely, exploding and sending a geyser of lava flying into the air. His grip on the helicopter is severed, and Wesker disappears underneath the surface of the molten rock. Josh gets some altitude and heads for home base. Chris slumps over in the back of the helicopter, and looks from Sheva to Jill. When he started this trip, Chris thinks, he was wondering if it was all worth fighting for anymore. Now, as Josh flies the helicopter into the rising sun, Chris decides that it is. ========================= 16iii. LOST IN NIGHTMARES ========================= Three years ago, Jill picks the lock on the entrance to one of Ozwell Spencer's palatial estates in continental Europe. A tip has come through from an informant that Spencer is holed up here, and it's Chris's hope that Spencer can lead them to Wesker. The BSAA has scanned the region by satellite, but there's no sign of unusual activity. The lobby of the mansion is disturbingly similar to the one in the Raccoon forest, and there's drying blood smeared across the floor. As Chris climbs the stairs, a recently dead man in a gray suit falls from the balcony above him. There are several more dead men strewn across the second floor, as if they'd fallen guarding a certain door; they all died from broken necks or blunt trauma. The door in question is tightly shut, and its electronic lock has shorted out. Throwing a lever on the back of the main stairs unlocks security gates on the second floor. One leads to the balcony above the estate's dining room, where Chris finds the first volume of a memoir written by Spencer's butler. The butler's family has been in service to Spencer's family for generations, and he's in awe of Spencer's influence and family fortune, but Spencer is now an old man in rapidly failing health and there are no heirs. Chris takes a slip of paper out of the book, on which a password is written. Upstairs from the dining room, Jill plays a classical piece on a grand piano, which opens one of Spencer's trademark secret doors. Behind it, Chris finds an emblem with an engraving of a centaur. Another volume of the butler's memoirs is on a shelf near the piano, where the butler talks about experiments that he's helped Spencer perform in recent days. While he has serious moral misgivings, the butler has administered an unspecified virus to several of the prisoners kept in the basement. On the east side of the first floor, the centaur emblem opens a previously locked door. This again leads to an oddly familiar hallway. It's eerily quiet as Chris and Jill walk towards the east wing. Here, they find Spencer's study, which Spencer himself abandoned a long time ago. His own memoirs are among the countless books kept on the shelves. Spencer writes bitterly that his long-held plan, of being the new god-emperor of mankind, is being foiled by simple old age. He's kept alive only by the machines that are hooked up to his body, and his legs no longer work. His only hope of ever achieving his dreams now rests with "Alex," a brilliant child that Spencer has set up with a research facility on an island in the South Seas. It's Spencer's hope that Alex can somehow derive a chemical means of immortality from the T-Virus, and he's given Alex absolutely everything he could have asked for in order to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, Spencer learned nothing from his patronage of Albert Wesker. After submitting a single progress report over the course of a month, followed by a request for more test subjects, Alex vanished off the face of the planet along with his data and his research staff. Spencer is dying, and there's not a damned thing he can do about it anymore. He's forced to act through his butler Patrick, carrying on his own limited experiments. Down the hall from the study, Chris and Jill find an old storage room. When they singe a piece of heat-sensitive paper in the dining room's fireplace, it turns out to reveal the last part of a password. That password, when used on the computer in Spencer's study, opens a secret door. It also reveals the final volume of Patrick's memoir. Spencer had initially retreated to this estate, using Patrick to cover up any and all evidence that he was there, for reasons that he never shared with Patrick. Unexpectedly, he employed Patrick to leak news of Spencer's location to Wesker, which Patrick did by paying off a man who sounds a lot like Ricardo Irving. Spencer then dismissed Patrick from his service, and with a heavy heart, Patrick left the estate behind forever. Additionally, Chris finds an odd list of thirteen names on the computer. The twelfth is Alex; the thirteenth is Albert. Entering the secret room triggers a typically Spencer-esque trap, and Jill is stuck inside a locked room with a spiked ceiling. As it slowly descends, Chris searches the mansion for a way to shut the trap off. Jill manages to shoot through a window and knock the lock off a previously-barred door, and Chris finds the trap's controls just behind it. All of this was apparently to prevent them from opening a safe, which contains a crank, suitable for opening a gated door on the first floor of the mansion. Using it, Chris and Jill are able to reach the mansion's basement. The mansion was well-maintained and modern, but the basement is like a medieval dungeon, littered with decomposing corpses. It's not long before Chris and Jill start running across Spencer's test subjects. Some are barely distinguishable from simple zombies, and are able to do little more than lie on the floor and twitch. Others have become monstrous, wielding an enormous maul and leaking toxins from massive tumorlike growths on their backs. After scrounging up two halves of a crest to open a gate in the basement, Chris and Jill jog through it and promptly fall through a splintered wooden bridge. They come to in separate parts of a watery catacomb, haunted by more of Spencer's monsters, and both of them have lost their weapons in the fall. They're forced to improvise. Several ancient deadfall traps are strewn throughout the area, but the necessary parts to activate them are kept in chests nearby. Jill primes each trap in turn while Chris lures Spencer's monsters into them, crushing them underneath tons of concrete. Each is carrying an object which they need to open the way out. When they escape, Chris and Jill are on a narrow staircase that leads up onto the second floor of the mansion. Several members of Spencer's staff lie dead on the floor at the top of the stairs, and two of them are carrying handguns that they never had the chance to fire. Chris and Jill arm themselves, then silently approach the double doors at the end of the hall. Inside, they find Wesker, who's standing over Spencer's dead body. A short-lived, one-sided fight ensues, which ends when Jill tackles Wesker out the window. ====================== 16iv. DESPERATE ESCAPE ====================== Jill sends Chris and Sheva after Wesker, then takes two steps away from the elevator and passes out. The next thing she knows, she's being shaken awake by a man that she doesn't recognize. He introduces himself as Captain Josh Stone from the BSAA, and belatedly recognizes her. He offers Jill the chance to escape with him, aboard the helicopter that's coming to pick him up, and she gratefully accepts. The nearest helipad is on the other side of Tricell's manufacturing facility, which is well-fortified by Majini. Jill and Josh scrounge up a few extra weapons and blast through the opposition. Without her implant, Jill has lost much of her superhuman strength and agility, but retains her training. Along the way, Josh contacts Doug, the man piloting his helicopter, to inform him of the change of plans. Doug starts heading their way, pausing occasionally to flirt with Jill over the radio. Jill changes her mind about halfway through the facility. She realizes she has to get to the communications tower and get in touch with Chris. Fortunately, the helipad is just beyond the comms tower, so she and Josh are still heading the same way. With Josh's help, Jill reaches the comms tower and contacts Chris via his PDA, telling him about Wesker's serum. The signal is weak, but she manages to get the important information to him before getting disconnected. Shortly thereafter, Jill and Josh reach the helipad. As they come out of the elevator, it locks behind them and a small army of Majini surrounds them. Jill and Josh fight a desperate holding action, killing dozens of Majini, but more are never far behind. Doug finally arrives, a bit later than he'd intended, and lands his helicopter. As she's heading towards it, a near-miss from an anti-tank weapon knocks Jill sprawling. Josh picks her up and drags her towards the helicopter. Doug jumps out of the pilot's seat, grabs a rifle, and covers their retreat, mowing down the Majini with precise headshots. Unseen by any of them, a distant Majini sights in on Doug with a laser-guided anti-tank missile. As Josh drops Jill off in the helicopter, he shouts out for Doug to break off contact, but it's too late. Josh turns around just in time to see the rocket fire, which hits Doug and explodes. Doug's empty helmet rolls to a stop by the helicopter. Josh punches the side of the helicopter and curses bitterly, then jumps into the pilot's seat himself. Jill has gotten back on her feet in the meantime, and at his suggestion, grabs a spare rifle from the arsenal in the back. As the distant Majini sights in on the helicopter, Jill carefully aims and puts a bullet directly into his forehead. The Stinger still fires, but Josh is able to dodge the rocket. As they fly towards their meeting with Chris and Sheva, Jill compliments Josh on his flying. Josh says sadly that Doug could have done it better, and that he was his friend. That said, if Josh and Jill don't meet up with Chris and Sheva, Doug's sacrifice - and the sacrifice of all the fallen members of the BSAA - will have been for nothing. ====================================== 16v. Conclusions About the Conclusion ====================================== 1. Chris Redfield, Sheva Alomar, Jill Valentine, and Josh Stone have survived. 2. Ricardo Irving, Excella Gionne, Don DeChant, Ozwell Spencer, Kirk Morrison, almost two full squads of BSAA operatives, Doug the pilot, and most of the inhabitants of the Kijuju Autonomous Zone have died. (The only survivor we know of is Adam, a miner in Kijuju on a work visa, and even he's part of the game's viral marketing campaign. As far as the game's concerned, the KAZ may have been wiped out.) 3. Helicopter pilots remain the unluckiest people in the world. 4. Albert Wesker appears to be dead. He is, however, Wesker. Current word from the top is that Wesker is in fact really dead, but I have some lingering doubts, particularly considering his popularity and starring role in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. 5. While most of the survivors of Spencer's "Wesker Project" have died, several are still unaccounted for, and they would have been forced to make contact with Spencer at some point in their lives. At least one, Alec, was being funded directly by Spencer at one point, and there are at least eleven others whose current statuses are unknown. 6. The Bio-Security Assessment Alliance remains intact, although it's lost quite a number of personnel from its West African branch. 7. Umbrella is still gone. Tricell, on the other hand, is still kicking, and it has access to a great deal of Umbrella's research on the T-Virus. On the other hand, it's taken heavy losses and now has the BSAA's attention. 8. Jill Valentine is flat-out immune to the T-Virus, and the resulting antibodies give her a substantial resistance against other related bioweapons. She's also heavily resistant to the Uroboros. ======================= 16vi. Random Commentary ======================= 1. If RE5 had come out before RE4, it'd look better. RE5's biggest problem as a game is that it doesn't have Mikami's utter lunacy behind it, so it eventually devolves into a bunch of shootouts. The inventory system's also a step backward. It's entertaining enough on its own merits, but it really suffers in comparison to its predecessor. 2. Ricardo Irving is noteworthy for being the single largest mutated human in the series up to this point, although Javier Hidalgo trumps him in DSC, and for achieving that enormous size in less time than anyone else. There must have been a pod of crocodiles or a mass grave or something in the river. 3. The butler's memoirs in "Lost in Nightmares" mention an "Asian spy" that he got in touch with in order to leak Spencer's location to Wesker. It's safe to assume that this is Ada Wong. Chris then says in the main game that a "confidential informant" told the BSAA where they could find Spencer. Presumably, Ada, playing both sides against the middle again, is that informant; one wonders if she's trying to get Wesker killed or captured before Wesker kills or captures her. 4. We're told in the main-menu files that "most" of the hundreds of Wesker children died after being administered the virus. In "Lost in Nightmares," we find a list of thirteen names, presumably those of the surviving Weskers. Spencer's record as a complete monster remains completely unblemished. 5. There are two conspicuous survivors of Spencer's purge of the high-level Umbrella employees. One, Henning P., is listed as "imprisoned." The other, Jenny K., could not be located. Since the list Chris finds in the ship's bridge lists Spencer himself as deceased, the list is clearly maintained by Excella or Wesker, which means at least two high-ranked Umbrella employees are still in play. 6. If you wait around in the village at the start of the game for a couple of minutes, there's an interesting conversation between Chris and Sheva that highlights his newfound cynicism. 7. The primary cinematic influence of RE5 is _Black Hawk Down_, as the directors have mentioned in interviews. -- Wesker throwing his sunglasses at Chris is taken almost directly from the 1998 Mark Dacascos film _Drive_. -- The unlockable Hydra triple-barreled shotgun is very similar to Reggie's homemade sawed-off from the _Phantasm_ movies. ================================================================== 17. RESIDENT EVIL: DARKSIDE CHRONICLES ================================================================== Darkside Chronicles, like Umbrella Chronicles, is a light-gun shooter for the Nintendo Wii. Released in 2009, it consists of three separate scenarios. Two are adaptations of past RE games, while the third is an original story featuring Leon Kennedy and Jack Krauser, undertaking a mission in 2002 South America. The adaptations of RE2 and RE:CV take the form of a story told to Krauser by Leon. Because of that, and because they differ markedly from the past games, it can be safely assumed that if a given event differs markedly from the way it's told in a past game, it's because Leon's an unreliable narrator. Unlike RE:UC, DSC focuses as much on horror and atmosphere as action. It often does so through shifting perspectives, and over the course of the game, characters are often knocked over, dazed, or running around in a panic. =============================== 17i. Operation Javier, Part One =============================== In 2002, Leon Kennedy and Jack Krauser are new acquaintances on their first mission together. Krauser has distinguished himself as a SOCOM operative, while Leon's a 24-year-old rookie. Leon has the edge on fighting BOWs, however, which Krauser has never encountered and doesn't really believe in. Together, they hike through the jungle towards the village of Mixcoatl. Their mission is to find a local crimelord named Javier Hidalgo, the head of a crime cartel called the Sacred Snakes. Hidalgo has recently disappeared, but beforehand, they have learned that he'd attempted to approach Umbrella. Leon and Krauser have a guide waiting for them in Mixcoatl who can show them to Hidalgo's hideout in Amparo, but the moment they set foot in the village, they know something's wrong. It appears to be deserted, and a nearby radio plays a newscast concerning over fifty abductions of young girls in the region. The nearest fence is covered in missing-persons posters, and Krauser says aloud that the village smells like death. He's right, as zombies soon come out of the alleyways at them. Most are villagers, but a few are wearing fatigues. Krauser spots tattoos on the latter which identify them as members of the Sacred Snakes. He and Leon scramble through the village in a search for their guide, fighting when they have to and avoiding what they can. Along the way, they fight off a pair of giant spiders, which represent Krauser's first encounter with a BOW. The village is built on the water, and as they get out into a narrow lane through a selection of huts, they notice the water level's rising. Someone, probably Javier, has opened the gates on the dam located upstream, which has taken out the bridge. Worse, they notice a couple of bodies in the water being devoured by a school of infected piranha, which jump out of the water at them. Leon and Krauser take a detour through one of the nearest huts. By the time they reach their guide, it's already too late. He's heavily injured, and tells them about a girl who "brought devils to this village." She escaped from Javier's mansion with the guide's help, but he dies before he can tell Leon and Krauser what happened next. Krauser theorizes that this may have something to do with the Sacred Snakes' involvement in black-market organ trafficking. They decide that they're going to have to find the girl. With no better options, Leon suggests that they head to the nearby church, where they ought to be able to find a boat. They walk a few steps away, and the guide's body is suddenly sucked into the water by something with tentacles. Worse, as they're staring at where the body used to be, a Gamma Hunter drops to the floor and attacks. More Hunters, zombies, and undead piranha attack as Leon and Krauser head towards the church, but worse, something massive jumps out over the dock and nearly takes them both into the water with it. It looks like it may be the creature that took the guide's body, but for now, it only makes one attempt at them. As Leon and Krauser enter the church, they hear singing. It's coming from a young woman, who's clearly local. She's wearing a torn and bloodstained white dress, its skirt burned off to well above her knees, and her right arm is wrapped in bandages almost to the shoulder. When she notices they're there, she turns her head and passes out without another word. A second later, the creature from the water emerges inside the church for another attempt. Seen in full, it's bigger than either of them, waving a mass of thin tentacles and standing on two massive legs, like a cross between a frog, a cricket, and a small truck. Its body is soft enough that their gunfire seems to both do damage and enrage it, but it's big enough that they eventually have to retreat outside. This works to its advantage, since it can swim through the water around the church a lot faster than it can walk or run, but Leon's able to drive it off by shooting at the weakened roof on the church. Its spire breaks off and falls on the monster, which retreats into the water. With it gone, Krauser and Leon take shelter in the church, near the unconscious girl, and Krauser demands answers. Leon has fought BOWs before, Krauser says, so it's time Leon tells him everything. ============================= 17ii. Memories of a Lost City ============================= At Krauser's request, Leon tells him about his one and only day as a police officer. He drove into Raccoon City only to find it was overrun by zombies, and met Claire Redfield shortly thereafter. Like "Mansion Incident" in RE:UC, "Memories of a Lost City" is an accelerated retelling of RE2. Leon and Claire remain side by side, meeting the same characters, and take a path that blends the A and B scenarios together. They chase Sherry, meet Ada and Annette, watch Chief Irons die, and fight both Mr. X and William Birkin. He goes on to tell Krauser that Claire set out on her own to find Chris, and that he and Sherry were "rescued" by government agents. The scene shifts to Leon, held inside a cell in a detention camp somewhere. An interrogator has a camera pointed at him, and tells Leon over a PA system that they have the authority to do whatever they want to him and Sherry. Leon says that she's innocent, but the agent retorts that she's an innocent who carries antibodies to the G-Virus. They're taking very good care of her. The bottom line, the interrogator says, is that Leon's gained the experience they're looking for. If he wants this to end peacefully for him, Leon has one choice: come to work for the US government. He accepts their offer. ================================= 17iii. Operation Javier, Part Two ================================= Krauser takes in Leon's story without comment. Leon says he knows there are significant differences between Raccoon City and the current outbreak. Some of the BOWs that they've fought so far are the kind of that are deliberately controlled, like the Hunters, which means this wasn't any kind of accident. They take the boat from the church and head upstream. As they travel, the girl wakes up suddenly. Leon assures her that she doesn't have to worry, but she remains quiet and skittish. In accented English, she asks what happened to the people in the village. Without turning around, Krauser says, "They're all dead." The girl is disturbed by the news, but Leon keeps talking. He tells her they're Americans on a mission, looking for another American who'd contacted Javier, and asks if the girl can take them to Amparo. She nods. She leads them to a massive aqueduct built across the river, where she claims to have escaped from, and a water channel that should lead them straight to where they want to go. They get out of the boat and Leon asks for her name. She says it's Manuela. The channel's discharge tunnel is infested with piranha and a few stray zombies. A new, skeletal BOW attacks simultaneously; this one can climb and jump with surprising speed. Its codename, they'll learn later, is the Anubis, a new model meant to replace the Hunter, and it's created through surgically modifying a large breed of bat. They escape from a fresh wave of zombies through a side tunnel, and Manuela claims that when she passed through the area earlier, she didn't see any of the monsters. She also asks why they want to find Javier. Krauser replies that after seeing the traps he set, she should know that someone like that shouldn't be allowed to walk free. Manuela leads them through the hallways and up a staircase, with Leon and Krauser dealing with fresh waves of zombies, Anubises, Gamma Hunters, and giant spiders as they go. Manuela continues to express mild interest in why they want to find Javier, but is evasive about why, and leads them to an elevator. It takes them back to the drainage tunnels, where an attack by piranha knocks Manuela into the water. The current sweeps her downstream, and Leon and Krauser give chase. They're able to catch her, but a sudden zombie attack separates them as they reach one of the dam's machine rooms. As they polish off the zombies, Manuela comes staggering out from behind a set of moving gears, singing and clutching her bandaged arm. Krauser asks what she's thinking, and she says it's something her mother used to do when she was scared. Javier's voice comes from over the dam facility's PA system, calling Manuela's name. He asks her to come home. Manuela says "Father!" and runs away from Leon and Krauser, who give chase. They find her a short distance away, standing in another drainage tunnel and staring at Javier Hidalgo. He's there in person, standing on the other side of the flow, and claims that he's done "all of this" for Manuela. She needs only to follow his directions for the next fifteen years, and that will "prevent the transformation." The man who gave them the Veronica virus said that this would work. His mention of the virus distracts Leon for a few crucial seconds, and when he turns around, Manuela is being held back by one of Javier's men. He brandishes a pistol at Leon and Krauser, and Javier continues his speech. The Americans, he says to Manuela, cannot save her. Only he can. A nearby water gate opens, and both Leon and Krauser are swept away by the deluge. Manuela suddenly breaks free from the man holding her and dives into the current after them, shouting Leon's name. Javier cries her name in shock. ======================= 17iii. Game of Oblivion ======================= The game then shifts into a retelling of Code Veronica, beginning with the moment where Claire meets Steve. In Leon's version of events, Claire is much more sarcastic and aggressive, at least at first, and Steve is nervous, constantly cracking lame jokes, and gradually becomes almost suicidally overconfident as they make progress. Alfred also receives an upgrade, becoming genuinely threatening as opposed to incompetent; Wesker's presence in the game is much more subtle; and Alexia goes full-tilt lunatic. ================================== 17iv. Operation Javier, Part Three ================================== If Manuela's infected with the T-Veronica virus, Leon thinks, it could spread throughout the region. The question is then how she's managed to control it without transforming into a monster like Steve Burnside did. While he's been telling this story, he and Krauser have been catching their breath in one of the dam's drainage cisterns. About forty seconds later, they're jumped by piranha, zombies, and Hunters, and the running gunfight starts all over again. In a darkened side tunnel, Krauser and Leon discuss Manuela. Their briefing had no indication that Javier had children, and Krauser reminds Leon that they're there for him, not Manuela. Leon agrees, and they continue shooting their way through the dam. After wandering through the interior for a while, they realize that the water level's rising, and bringing more piranha with it. Javier's trying to either flush them out or kill them. They end up back at the machine room they passed through before, but the room beyond it is flooded. They're going to have to drain it somehow. Manuela suddenly catches back up to them, ecstatic that Leon's still alive. Leon's surprised that she's not still with her father, and she says that she ran away. Leon tries to tactfully ask what it is that Javier's done to her, but right then, the door to the next room begins to give way under the water pressure. Manuela ducks underneath a nearby set of pipes to reach the drainage system while Leon and Krauser cover her. She's turning the last valve when Javier's voice comes back over the PA system. He's spotted her, and orders his men to bring her back; "otherwise, it will be too late." The door to the drainage ditch gets pounded in a few seconds later, right as the water's drained from the next room. Leon, Krauser, and Manuela escape into the aqueduct next door just in time. They climb a ladder and get to an elevator, spotting a new monster on their way up. This one is vaguely bipedal and insectoid, with four arms that all end in a mantis-like claw; it's an experimental BOW produced by one of Umbrella's competitors, codenamed the Jabberwock. It isn't able to catch up to them before they make it into the elevator. It takes them up to an exterior staircase on the dam, where several Ivies try and fail to block their passage. The stairs bring them up to the top of the dam, where the Jabberwock they saw before suddenly jumps them. It's smart enough to guard its face from their gunfire, and marches towards them with slow, deliberate steps. They mow it down with focused fire, but as it turns out, it's just the forerunner, and two more jump in immediately. Once the coast is clear, Leon turns to Manuela and asks her why she's running away from Javier. She hesitates, and he presses onward; why did Javier infect her with T-Veronica, and what does he mean by "too late"? Manuela looks out over the river and says she shouldn't even be standing there, "given the circumstances." She unwraps the bandages around her right arm and reveals that it's badly infected, to the point where it looks almost gangrenous from just below her shoulder to above her wrist. As part of her "treatment," she was injected with the T-Veronica virus. When she was fifteen, Manuela was diagnosed with a fatal disease, which had also killed her mother. (In-game, Manuela just calls this an "illness." The Javier's Memorandum file indicates that her mother had cancer.) Her doctor claimed it was incurable, and that it only appeared in the region in which they lived. As a form of treatment, Hidalgo contacted Umbrella and used the T-Veronica virus as a form of treatment. It allowed Manuela to recover, but as Leon notes, the T-Veronica virus has a number of side effects that even the Ashfords hadn't been able to eliminate. Whatever Javier's doctors were doing to Manuela, it's allowed her to keep her basic humanity, which is unprecedented. They move deeper into the jungle, and as Leon's scouting out the area ahead of them, Krauser approaches him. He's of the opinion that they should kill Manuela now before she becomes a larger threat. Leon disagrees; he'd like to know what Javier's done to keep Manuela from transforming, and that's going to require Manuela's presence. Leon produces a PDA from his pocket and hands it to Krauser. It displays a document, and Krauser recognizes the attached protocol. Leon's on a special assignment under Presidential authority, and as he explains to Krauser, his mission is to eradicate the T-Veronica virus once and for all. For that, he'll need Krauser's help. Krauser decides that he's on Leon's side, and they shake hands. Together, they enter an isolated compound. Javier's voice blares from its PA system, expressing his gratitude that the two "güeros" (Spanish; a person with fair complexion) have returned his daughter to him. He then gives the order for his men to attack. Javier's first wave consists of the zombified corpses of his Sacred Snakes, many of which are wearing helmets or strapped with grenades. He releases them against Leon and Krauser from inside large shipping containers scattered around the camp, along with a few Gamma Hunters. Badly outnumbered, they make a good showing for themselves, but have to duck into an underground area. It turns out to be a cellblock, where every cell is occupied by zombies. After killing them all, they search for a way out, and Manuela finds a secret passage in the wall. The dark area beyond it is lined floor to ceiling with bones, an ossuary for Javier's victims. The exit leads them into a second cellblock, with similar inhabitants. Javier tries to shut the gates and trap them inside, but they're able to duck underneath the closest one before it closes. After climbing a ladder, they come up in the atrium of a luxurious Spanish estate. It's currently littered with corpses, who Manuela recognizes instantly as the team of doctors that was treating her. She made them tell her how they were treating her illness, which drove Javier into a rage. The estate's now only occupied by BOWs and zombies. Krauser wonders out loud where Javier could be, and Manuela hesitantly suggests the one room in the house where she was never allowed to go. Leon asks her to take them there. She opens the door into the estate's botanical garden, where the plants have been heavily mutated by exposure to the T-Veronica virus. After a fight with another Jabberwock, Krauser glances down to see a dead man on the floor. It's the Umbrella researcher that he'd wanted to question. The centerpiece of the garden is a massive mutated bulb plant. After a tense trip along an observation catwalk that takes them straight past the bulb, they get to the other side of the garden and its elevator. They disembark and end up in a maintenance corridor, which leads to a large storeroom. It soon becomes obvious that it's where Javier keeps the Sacred Snakes' stock of BOWs, many of which have either escaped or been released. After an intense fight, they notice they're standing next to a section of the storeroom that's been walled off with hung sheets of plastic, and Leon decides to investigate. The interior is a makeshift operating theater. The walls are lined with shelves, which hold large jars full of what Krauser recognizes as human organs. Leon pushes through some plastic strips to find a row of dead women, hung like sides of meat in a large packing freezer. He instantly recognizes the one closest to the door from one of the posters back in Mixcoatl. They've found all those missing girls. Manuela hits the floor, retching and clutching at her arm. Leon rushes to her side, and from nearby, Javier says calmly that her organs must be transplanted regularly. He steps through the plastic sheeting and, as if it's not that big of a deal, explains that the frequent transplants help her cope with the pain from her infection. He was told by the late Umbrella employee, however, that it's "only" for the first fifteen years. "If you had just let me die," Manuela tells him, "none of this would have ever happened." Javier is dismayed; he couldn't do that. This has made her a predator, and as he sees it, a successful predator can only grow stronger and thrive. This infuriates Leon. As a favor, Javier says, he'll let Leon and Krauser's death have some meaning. He takes a few big steps back, and above them, they can hear a metal gate open. The creature from the village crashes down into the middle of the storeroom. After exchanging a few blows, it retreats to one of the higher floors of the storeroom and fires jets of acid and needle-like spikes at Leon and Krauser. Since their previous encounter, the creature's mutated further, and large parts of its outer shell are now nearly impenetrable. Grenades and explosives are nearly useless. They're forced to stick to small arms, firing when the creature opens its mouth or exposes the large opening on the back of its head. The fight continues, neither side able to get the upper hand, when the creature suddenly turns away from them. Manuela has emerged from the operating theater and is singing, just as she did in the village. The creature stops in its tracks and stares at her, right up until Manuela clutches her arm and drops to her knees. She explains that she learned in the village that, as long as she's singing, the creature won't attack her. That was why she was singing when Leon and Krauser found her in the church. She's barely finished the explanation when the creature realizes she isn't singing any longer, and instantly goes back on the offensive. Leon and Krauser duck for cover, climbing awkwardly up into the storeroom's rafters. The creature can still hit them with its gouts of acid, but this gives them a clear shot at the opening on its back, and they soon manage to bring it down. They drop back down to the floor and look for Javier, who's taken the opportunity to escape. As they run for the door after him, a flying spike hits the floor by Krauser's feet. The creature isn't as dead as it looked, and as Krauser turns to fire, it launches a second spike that hits him squarely in his left arm, above the elbow. Leon shouts his name, and together, he and Krauser empty their clips into the softer parts of the monster's body. The creature isn't quite dead yet, but instead of attacking, one of its tentacles gently brushes against Manuela's outstretched hand. She meets its eyes and says, "Mother?" The light in its eyes goes out, and it sheds a single tear. The creature was once her mother Hilda, mutated into a monster by the same T-Veronica "therapy" that Javier used on Manuela, and like Steve Burnside, she's able to regain some of her humanity as she dies. Upstairs, Javier's destination is the botanical garden. He looks at a nearby statue of a woman holding a baby and says aloud that he should've done this sooner. He drops his gun and steps in front of the mutated bulb, his arms spread wide. It opens slowly and leans down to swallow him whole. Back in the storeroom, the wound on Krauser's arm has already turned an angry black, with the infection visibly moving along his veins. They've lost track of Hidalgo, and Leon concludes they need some air support. As they head for the door, the ground shakes suddenly, and with a quake and a shower of pulverized concrete, a massive mutated plant punches through the ceiling, dropping to the floor behind them. It showers them with corrosive ichor and tries to crush them into the ground with its sheer bulk, but before long the plant withdraws, leaving a chunk of itself dead on the floor. Krauser suggests that they fall back and regroup, and Leon agrees. Manuela notices the creature's entrance has torn open a steel shutter near where it entered the basement. Whatever's going on upstairs, it feels like it's causing a major earthquake. The shutter leads them into an old mine tunnel, which connects to one of the cellblocks they passed through before. A massive tendril chases them back outside, to the fortified area outside Javier's estate. The creature that rises up out of the ruins of the botanical garden looks like a particularly plantlike breed of spider, and is one of the single largest BOWs Leon has ever seen. It roars in Javier's voice, and Leon realizes that's where he went: to voluntarily give himself to the mutated plant he's been cultivating in his garden. The resulting creature, the V-Complex, invites Manuela to join with it, so it can take away all her pain. The fight begins simply, with the V-Complex swatting at Leon and Krauser with its massive limbs. One ends in a massive pulsating organ, which the V-Complex seems content to use as a mace, and which is roughly the size of a four-door sedan. It's slow and predictable, but it's also really big, and their combined gunfire can't do much against the V-Complex's sheer bulk. It can't kill them; they can't kill it. Nearby, Manuela comes to a realization. The pain from her infected arm is how she knows she's still human. If she were to join with the V-Complex, the pain would go away. Manuela decides that she'd rather die as a human than live as a monster, and breaks into a run towards the V-Complex. Leon, caught while he's reloading, realizes what Manuela's trying to do and runs after her. As its limb comes down to crush her, Leon grabs Manuela's hand and pulls her away in the nick of time. They go rolling to a stop, Leon on top of Manuela, and the V-Complex readies one of its sharper limbs to impale them both. Manuela sits up suddenly and yanks the bandage off her arm. It flares with sudden light as her blood catches fire, and she holds it up, using the power of the T-Veronica virus to manifest a sustained, white-hot blast of flame. The V-Complex's limb is instantly incinerated, leaving her and Leon covered in ashes, but alive. She stands up and shakes her arm, putting out the fire. Manuela turns to Leon and says wonderingly, "I'm still here." She was able to use the virus's power without losing herself in the process. The fight begins again. Manuela uses her blood to throw massive gouts of fire at the V-Complex, incinerating its joints and limiting its movement. The V-Complex reacts by stepping up its game, sending shoots into the ground to emerge from behind Leon and Krauser and generating shells from its underbelly that are filled with an explosive gas. After they manage to break both its legs, Javier calls them fools. The creature's skull ruptures, revealing a central core that still slightly resembles Javier's face, and he breaks into insane laughter. Everything the V-Complex devours increases its power, and when it's injured, it'll just regenerate and be all the stronger for it. In making that boast, however, Javier has officially stopped trying to fight the T-Veronica virus's influence, and like every other infectee, he goes berserk. The V-Complex begins to lash out wildly with its surviving limbs, and spews gouts of toxic slime from its mouth. Manuela continues to attack the V-Complex with blasts of flame, while Leon and Krauser dodge its tentacles and counterattack. In the end, Javier's last act is to beg them to kill him, and Leon obliges with a long burst of gunfire to the V-Complex's central core. The V-Complex finally goes down, its body shuddering and red blood spurting from Javier's corpse. A moment after it stops moving, it quietly bursts into flames, burning until its entire mass is consumed. ======================================= 17v. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: DARKSIDE CHRONICLES ======================================= As they're evacuated from South America by helicopter, Manuela sits in the open door next to Leon. She thinks she should've died right alongside her father, but Leon talks her out of it. She's got a responsibility to all those girls who died so she could live. Leon wonders to himself why Manuela never lost her conscience. It could've been genetic, he thinks, or maybe something to do with the environment she was in. When they return to the United States, Manuela is put in government custody for observation, but she does not mutate any further. Krauser is quiet, clutching his injury. He's thinking about this "Wesker" that Leon's mentioned, and wondering if he could help Krauser regain the use of his arm. He doesn't know that Wesker's not that far away, and has been watching them through binoculars. To Krauser, Leon's inspirational speech to Manuela just seems cruel. Instead of encouraging her to look towards the future, and the whole new life she's got ahead of her, he's telling Manuela about her duties and obligations. He and Leon make eye contact, and Krauser thinks that he and Leon are simply different sides of the same coin. ======================= 17vi. Different Endings ======================= If you take more than ten minutes to defeat the V-Complex, Manuela loses too much blood during the fight and dies in the helicopter. She thanks Leon, her body begins to glow brightly, and she turns to a cloud of glowing ash. If you manage to kill the V-Complex within ten minutes, Manuela doesn't have to expend blood on fighting it and she survives. Leon narrates that after they got back from their mission, Krauser's arm never healed and he was discharged from the service. He disappeared shortly thereafter, and no one knows where he went. Getting the "good ending" also unlocks the Krauser Side Missions, which are technically chapters 6 and 7 of "Operation Javier." These are much harder versions of levels 4 and 5 with additional dialogue from Krauser. If you can clear chapters 6 and 7, you also unlock a different version of the good ending, where you get a soliloquy from Krauser instead of Leon's musing on viruses and the human soul. This is what's listed in the plot summary, as Leon is embarrassing when he tries to be profound. ======================================= 17vii. Conclusions About the Conclusion ======================================= 1. Leon Kennedy and Jack Krauser have survived. 2. Manuela Hidalgo may have survived, depending on which ending is canon. It's probably safe to assume that the "Wesker Ending" is the right one, but it's hard to say for sure. If she's alive, then as Leon tells it, she's in the custody of the U.S. government and is in good health. 3. Hilda Hidalgo, the population of Mixcoatl Village, and most if not all the members of the Sacred Snakes cartel are dead. Javier Hidalgo is extremely dead. 4. Leon's recruitment to government service took the form of an offer he couldn't refuse, although he seems to have made his peace with it. 5. Sherry Birkin was taken into government custody following RE2, due to her containing antibodies to the G-Virus. This invalidates the last remaining bit of the original Wesker's Report. 6. There's been a major T-Veronica outbreak in the South American jungle. Combined with the sinking of the Spencer Rain and the Raccoon City outbreak, the T-Virus has been introduced into most of the planetary biosphere. 7. The T-Veronica still requires a substantial period of adjustment after infection, or it drives its hosts crazy and turns them into monsters. Alexia's plan was to stay in cryogenic storage for fifteen years, but Javier has come up with an alternate plan that actually does seem to work. Just kidnap several dozen people of roughly the same age, gender, and body type as the carrier, harvest their organs, then install them in the virus host as needed. ...it's possible that the "cryogenic storage" plan may remain the more popular of the two. ========================= 17viii. Random Commentary ========================= 1. Like RE:UC, RE:DSC's narration is that of somebody telling a story. In this case, it's Leon telling Krauser about the events of RE2 and RE:CV. As noted above, and as with the RE0, RE, and RE3 scenarios in RE:UC, the many differences therein can be chalked up to Leon being an unreliable narrator. At this point, I'm not considering either of the Chronicles games as any kind of retcon. 2. The circumstances of Leon's recruitment add a weird dimension to his character that wasn't there before. His RE3 epilogue made it look like he was cajoled into it; in DSC, he's recruited with an implicit threat. 3. I can't really recommend DSC and it's mostly because of the near-constant $&%@ing shakycam. Good lord, it's annoying. It's kind of a shame, because "Game of Oblivion" is the only retelling in the Chronicles series that's actually better than its source material. It manages to retell CV in a way that's both more straightforward and considerably creepier without jettisoning a major plot element to do it. About all it's lacking is Rodrigo, and I like the character, but he's a footnote. 4. I think my favorite thing about this game is emptying the bowgun into bosses. Stage 1 Alexia's particularly awesome, because then she's sitting there trying to act all smug when she has about sixty arrows sticking out of her face. 5. Leon's hidden superpower is the ability to make female supporting characters instantly fall in love with him. By the time you get past "Game of Oblivion," Manuela is doing the best she can to pretend Krauser doesn't exist. Helena Harper might be in trouble. 6. It may be a complete coincidence, but the abduction of the women of Mixcoatl is reminiscent of the "feminicidio," an infamous series of hundreds of murders in and around the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. Look it up if you want, but I'll warn you now that the feminicidio is scarier than anything in these games, and all the moreso because it's real. RE:DSC would be one of several works of fiction in the 2000s that dealt with it. ============================== 18. RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS ============================== Revelations is one of two RE games to appear on Nintendo's 3DS handheld system, alongside the plotless Mercenaries 3D. It represents a shift back to survival horror after RE4 and RE5, using the same MT Framework engine but focusing once again on atmosphere and difficulty. In 2005, the BSAA is two years old and is strictly intended as an advisory organization. Revelations is the story of how and why it became an international paramilitary force. It features one of the most convoluted plots in the entire series, as well as some of the tougher bosses. The Tokyo Game Show 2011 trailer for Revelations is a three-minute cutscene that sets the stage for the start of the game. I've included a summary of its events where appropriate. ============= 18i. Prologue ============= Two dead men lie on the floor of a ship's bridge. One is still twitching, and both are surrounded by dropped glass tubes of the sort used to hold virus samples. A third man stands nearby, holding a pistol and wearing a gas mask, and it seems likely that he's just killed at least one of them. He picks up one of the vials, twists off its end, and injects its contents into the dead men. They soon start to get back up. Below decks, a blonde woman wearing a wetsuit unzipped to the waist is undertaking her part of an unnamed mission. She's anxious to get off "this godforsaken ship," but notices something strange nearby. A ventilation shaft is hanging open and dripping with blue-green slime. The woman is suddenly jumped by a new brand of bioweapon: humanoid creatures the same color as the slime, which shrug off bullets and can move quickly through vents and small spaces. They seem like they're mostly liquid, except for the spikes growing from their forearms or the lamprey-like tentacle that emerges from their heads. Once she's out of ammunition, the woman panics and runs for her life, but the monsters are everywhere. 6:08 PM: It's been ninety-four minutes since Chris Redfield dropped off the BSAA's radar. His last known coordinates place him in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Jill Valentine and her new partner, Parker Luciani, take a tugboat out to investigate. They're both surprised to find a massive ocean liner named the Queen Zenobia. At Jill's suggestion, Parker circles the Zenobia until they find a boarding point, then get onto the Zenobia's deck with ziplines. The only door into the ship has been chained shut. Jill shoots off the padlock and opens it to find an old storeroom, full of rust and mold. The ship's interior looks like it's been abandoned for some time, but there's a relatively fresh corpse in the storeroom, dead by evisceration. Something moves just out of sight as Jill opens the next door, disappearing into an open ventilation shaft before either of them get a good look at it. It leaves behind a trail of slime on the edges of the vent, and Jill realizes that she and Parker aren't alone. As they descend belowdecks, the duct overhead shakes and dents, as if something is scrambling through it ahead of them. At the base of the stairs, Jill finds an elevator without power and, shortly thereafter, a relatively fresh human corpse hanging out of the overhead ducts. The dead man wears a bright orange safety vest; one arm has been gnawed to the bone, and the other has begun to swell up grotesquely. The creature in the ducts continues to run away from them. As they give chase, Jill and Parker find fresh blood on the floor and hastily erected barricades across several of the rooms along the hall. The Zenobia may be abandoned, but something happened here very recently. The only usable door in the hall leads to an employee break room. The power's still on, but the only light comes from the display on a vending machine. Most of the furniture's been piled up against the doors, and when Jill approaches the nearby fusebox, a few rats jump out at her. They've been nibbling on the wiring, and it's shorted out. A door on the far wall leads to a kitchen, where another corpse is sprawled across the closest table with its face smashed in. Jill notices something gleaming underneath a drain in the floor, and as Parker lifts the grate for her, she scans the object with a handheld device. Carefully, she lifts the object out of the muck, bringing a foul stench up with it. It's a pistol, with its former owner's hand still attached, but it's not Chris's. As Jill stands up, the creature in the ductwork drops to the floor behind her. It's another of the blue-green monsters that attacked the blonde woman. It attacks her and Parker, and they shoot it dead. As it falls to the floor, Parker notes that this explains where the Zenobia's crew has gone. ================================== 18ii. Episode 1: Into the Depths ================================== A newscaster, standing on a sunny beach on the shores of the Mediterreanean Sea, introduces a segment about Terragrigia, a sustainable "aquapolis" built on a man-made island. The city was entirely solar-powered with the help of an orbiting satellite, and was built with the latest green technologies. A terrorist organization called Veltro opposed the development of Terragrigia, and in 2004, they released both a virus and a number of bioweapons into the city. (The newscaster says "several." What she means is "hundreds.") Footage is shown of people on the streets of Terragrigia fleeing from Hunters. The American-based Federal Bioterror Commission, or FBC, stepped in at this point. Its commissioner, Morgan Lansdale, organized the effort to contain the attack. The BSAA also sent its commander, Clive O'Brian, in an advisory role. In the end, the outbreak was contained by Terragrigia's destruction, as Lansdale used its solar collectors to fry the city with concentrated sunlight. The event has, in the year since it occurred, come to be known as the "Terragrigia Panic," and is one of the most destructive terrorist attacks in human history. In the days after the Panic, the FBC announced that they had successfully disbanded Veltro. Terragrigia itself is still off-limits to the public, sealed away behind fences put up by the FBC. 3:50 PM: Clive O'Brian stands on the same shore as the newscaster, although the weather's worse and the view isn't as nice. The ruins of Terragrigia are visible on the horizon. As he and Jill arrive on the beach, Parker calls out a greeting to O'Brian, surprised that he's "[joining] the fray." O'Brian laughs it off, claiming that he was told he needed more exercise, and tells Parker and Jill that the FBC has cordoned off the entire area. A number of strange carcasses have washed up on the shore, and O'Brian wants the BSAA to investigate. The carcasses in question are massive pink chunks of organic matter, like sponges. Both Jill and Parker have come equipped with a new kind of scanner, called the Genesis, and use it to collect data on the corpses for O'Brian. One of them turns out to have a metallic object stuck underneath it, which turns out to be a small red vial of the sort used to store viruses. Jill digs it out and hands it to O'Brian for further analysis. A couple of the corpses aren't as dead as they look. They shuffle along the beach at her and Parker, rearing up to attack with the giant fanged maws on their stomachs, and Jill reacts by firing her pistol into their mouths until they drop over dead. This amuses Parker, who says this kind of thing must be easy for her after Raccoon City; Jill brushes it off and asks him why he's left the FBC for the BSAA. Parker claims it's because he wanted to fight. Jill collects data from the corpses and brings it back to O'Brian. It's obvious by then that the creatures were mutated through exposure to some virus or another, and that they somehow managed to wash up on the shore despite the FBC's blockade around Terragrigia. O'Brian gets a phone call, and claims it's the BSAA's emergency line. He takes it, hears something that surprises him, and tells the caller that they'll "have to speed things up." After hanging up, he tells Jill and Parker that the BSAA has lost contact with Chris and Jessica. Jill pulls out her PDA. Chris and Jessica's last known location is labeled on a satellite map, and she's surprised to see where; the last she knew, Chris and Jessica were in Finland looking for leads on Veltro, but the data puts them out at sea. O'Brian says he'll return to the BSAA's headquarters to handle the search and rescue, and orders Jill and Parker to head out after Chris. As they run off, O'Brian turns back to the ocean, where a storm is brewing. 6:20 PM: As they examine the dead "Ooze" in the Zenobia's kitchen, Parker wonders aloud if it's already gotten to Chris and Jessica. He then hurriedly points out that he's not saying that Chris is dead. Jill, exasperated, says that they'd better just find him. Nearby, they hear a heavy clang, like that of a deadbolt being thrown, and Jill volunteers to check it out. The nearest door leads down another set of stairs, and at the first landing, she finds a heavy steel door with an observation slot. Inside, she sees a shirtless, muscular man handcuffed to a chair with his back to the door, and it looks a lot like Chris. Jill calls his name, but he doesn't respond and the door is locked. Worse, it's a tough enough lock that she'll need the actual key to open it. The closest door leads to one of the Zenobia's stairwells. Part of the lower landing has collapsed, preventing her from descending deeper into the ship, but she can go up a floor to the hallway outside the ship's barracks. The area's barricaded, just as it is below, and the only things around are more Oozes, which can hide almost anywhere. She finds two more doors, both locked, before going deeper into the ship. As Jill goes downstairs, she hears a woman's scream from somewhere ahead of her and rushes to investigate. On the other side of a pane of safety glass, two of the Oozes have cornered the blonde woman. One of them holds her up by her neck and throws her into the window, spraying blood across it. She crumples to the ground. Jill bursts into the room a few seconds later and kills both the Oozes as they feed on the woman's corpse. She reports in to Parker and searches the woman's body. There's nothing to tell Jill who the dead woman was, but she's holding a key. Jill takes it and goes back upstairs to meet with Parker. The dead woman's key unlocks the door to the room where she spotted Chris, but when they enter, it turns out that "Chris" is a mannequin. Parker looks to the side and sees the far side of the room is covered with a flag bearing the logo of Veltro. A moment later, the door locks and gas floods the room. The last thing Jill sees before she falls unconscious is a man in black fatigues and a gas mask, who tells her that it's "time [she] learned the truth." ================================ 18iii. Episode 2: Double Mystery ================================ 6:42 PM: Chris Redfield and Jessica Sherawat hike through the mountains of Finland, Jessica complaining as she goes. Her feet hurt, Chris is going too fast, and they're so deep in the mountains that she can't report to HQ. Chris brushes it off; they've got a source that says there's a Veltro camp in these mountains, and it's close by. A cargo plane flies overhead a few minutes later, its engines on fire, and crashes on the other side of the next hill. There aren't any aerial shipping lanes in the area, which Chris takes as an indication that their source was accurate. They run to investigate the crash site. At first glance, there are no survivors, and the entire plane is strewn across the face of the mountain. The only corpse they find is a man in combat gear, who falls out of the cockpit when Chris opens the door. There's a flight plan on his body that indicates the plane's eventual destination, Valkoinen Mökki Airport (Finnish for "white cabin"), which Chris figures they can reach by going through a nearby mine tunnel. The mine has some scattered furniture and supplies set up, suggesting it's been used as shelter recently. It's also now home to a large pack of bioweaponized timber wolves, escapees from the plane crash. Chris and Jessica take them out and keep going, Jessica asking Chris pointed questions about Jill Valentine as they go. Chris, confused why she'd bring Jill up now, tells her to stay focused; he takes her questions as insecurity, with Jessica comparing herself to his previous partner. He claims that he trusts Jessica just as much as he trusts Jill, but doesn't notice the edge of jealousy that's crept into Jessica's voice. The mine tunnel eventually leads them to a high cliff that overlooks Valkoinen Mökki Airport. As Jessica views the area through binoculars, BSAA HQ contacts Chris via radio. The interference has suddenly cleared up. Chris reports his location, and Clive O'Brian, back at BSAA headquarters, curses, saying "It's all a setup." O'Brian's intel was faulty, and he's sent Jill and Parker to the wrong place entirely. Before he can explain to Chris, Jessica speaks up. She's spotted a Veltro flag on one of the towers at the airport, which means the rumors are true: Veltro is on its way back. Chris doesn't care about that, though. He tells O'Brian that he and Jessica will go after Jill and Parker. 8:32 PM: Jill wakes up. Her weapons are gone and she's locked inside one of the Zenobia's guest cabins, which would be luxurious if they weren't trashed. She still has her radio, and Parker contacts her; he's in a similar state, and neither of them are able to reach BSAA HQ. Jill scrounges up a screwdriver from her suite's bathroom and uses it to break out. When she gets outside, Jill heads towards the Zenobia's main dining room. The halls are crawling with Oozes, but without weapons, all she can do is dodge and run. Fortunately, when she finds Parker, he's found the storeroom where their captor locked up their gear, and together, they're able to break down the door. Now that they're armed, Jill decides their next move should be reporting in to headquarters. Parker suggests they head to the bridge and give it a try from there, so they set out in that direction. Almost all of the doors that would get them off this deck of the ship are locked, but one near Jill's cabin is simply chained shut. They return there and shoot off the lock. Beyond it, they find an elevator that takes them straight where they want to go. The hallway outside the bridge is messy and abandoned, like it was evacuated in a hurry, and the bridge itself has been sabotaged very recently. The wiring is still smoldering. They can't contact HQ with the ship's radio and they can't steer the ship. The Zenobia's adrift. An explosion from outside catches their attention. They get to the window right in time to watch their boat explode and sink. They start to rush out of the room, but someone comes in from behind Jill and tries to catch her in a chokehold. Jill kicks him in the face and gets away, while Parker holds the man at gunpoint. Instead of surrendering, the man pulls out a pistol of his own, and Parker fires. ================================= 18iv. Episode 3: Ghosts of Veltro ================================= The game flashes back to 2004, near the end of the Terragrigia Panic. At this point, Parker and Jessica are agents of the FBC, waiting in the FBC's Terragrigia command center for orders from Morgan Lansdale. The only other operative in the room is a red-haired cadet, the same person from the Queen Zenobia's bridge, with a painful wound on his left thigh that he's trying to pretend doesn't bother him. Parker, wearing tactical gear and holding a bullpup assault rifle, does his best to stay optimistic, but Jessica's just about had it. As far as she can tell, she says, this is over and the city's finished. Lansdale's on the phone, and tells whoever's on the other end that "this is a wake-up call that was long overdue. Good work." He hangs up and turns to Parker and Jessica. Their facility has been breached, Lansdale says, and it's time to evacuate. Parker and Jessica are ordered to hold the line, keeping the BOWs back until everyone else can reach the building's helipad. Parker tells the cadet to stay with Lansdale and cover the other survivors' retreat, and the cadet, through gritted teeth, agrees. With that settled, Parker and Jessica enter the building's lobby. They fight a desperate holding action against an obscene number of Hunters, which pile into the building in packs of two or three. They aren't quite as vicious or durable as the original Umbrella model, but they're still Hunters and there are a lot of them. Parker and Jessica hold the line against them, and eventually, it's their turn to evacuate. The Hunters give chase, climbing up the exterior of the building. They make small talk as the elevator goes up; Jessica seems to be in better spirits now that they're fighting instead of waiting, and tells Parker that he now owes her dinner. She's interrupted when something above them explodes and the elevator stops, forcing them to find another route up. They're now on the third floor of the building, in what was once an office space, and which bears signs of an unsuccessful attempt to hold the Hunters back. There's a lot of blood, but no bodies. During a lull in the fighting, Parker asks Jessica's opinion of Clive O'Brian. They agree that O'Brian's probably on the right side of things, and shouldn't be deferring to Lansdale as much as he is. "...being in the FBC," Parker says, "distorts your moral compass." They manage to reach the building's stairwell and take them up to the sixth floor, emerging in a cubicle farm. Parker pries open an emergency shutter, and they duck underneath it right as a fresh wave of Hunters surges through the hall. When they reach the last elevator, they have to turn and fight once again as they wait for the car to come back down from the roof. Parker and Jessica make it through and ride the elevator up to the helipad. As they catch their breath, they discuss Morgan's decision; by the next morning, Terragrigia will be wiped off the face of the earth just as Raccoon City was, nothing more than a name in a history book. For a moment, Jessica's bravado gives out, and she asks Parker, "We did do everything we could, right?" His answer is that he hopes so. In the end, Parker and Jessica make it onto the second-to-last helicopter to leave Terragrigia. They watch from the air as the retasked satellite focuses an intense beam of light on the city. Banks of solar panels begin to crack and explode; the sudden heat shatters windows and buckles the highways; Hunters in the street are vaporized, like paper in fire. The skyscrapers collapse, falling against each other, and Terragrigia sinks into the sea. Parker and Jessica watch it go. Both of them had come to the city to help, and in the end, Jessica says, they did nothing. The game returns to the present day. Parker's gunshot has missed by a couple of inches, and Parker lowers his gun. He recognizes the man who tried to grab Jill as Raymond Vester, the cadet he met during the Panic, who's now a full agent in the FBC. They point their guns at each other and Parker demands answers, but Raymond dismisses him; the BSAA has no authority, he says, and Parker doesn't know why he's on the ship or who he's fighting. Contemptuously, Raymond lowers his gun and walks away. When he's gone, Jill and Parker decide that the only way they're going to get any answers at this point is to keep searching the ship. Their first stop is the captain's quarters and briefing room underneath the bridge, where they find another unpowered elevator, a key with an insignia that matches several locked doors they've seen elsewhere in the ship, a map of the ship's interior, and the captain himself, who seems to have been killed by or during the process of mutating into an Ooze. Jill also finds a dossier on the history of the Queen Zenobia, which was repurposed as a luxury liner in the late '80s. Unsurprisingly, given the layout of the guest cabins and the system of labeled keys the ship uses for security, she discovers the Zenobia was constructed based upon a set of blueprints that George Trevor left behind before his disappearance in the 1960s. The ship's interior's faint resemblance to the Spencer mansion is not a coincidence. The map seems to indicate that, with their new key, Jill and Parker can backtrack through the cabins to reach the ship's emergency communications room. Parker also says he wants to find Raymond, and when Jill asks how they know each other, Parker simply says that they used to work together. As they move back through the ship, notes and documents left behind by the crew begin to paint a picture of what happened. The exterior and top decks of the ship make it look like it's been abandoned for a while, but the deeper into it they go, the better maintained it is. The Zenobia appears to have been fully crewed within very recent memory. By the time Jill and Parker return to the dining room on the cabin level, the Oozes have begun to change things up. In addition to the standard model, some have mutated a rapidly-regenerating spiked protrusion that they can fire at a distance. Others attack with a pair of massive spiked claws. Their new key allows them to raise a security shutter in the dining room, which lets them open an elaborate airlock. It turns out to lead to a massive ballroom, which is almost untouched. When they reach the emergency communications room, it's locked down with another security shutter. There's a handwritten note on the wall next to it, from the Zenobia's communications officer. He informs the reader that he's got the key, and he's going to go hole up on the promenade deck. The entrance to that deck is on the lowest level of the ballroom. The moment Jill and Parker set foot through it, though, they can hear the communications officer's voice. In a phlegmatic wheeze, he continually repeats the beginning of the same distress call, as if he remembers he's supposed to do it but not exactly how. The promenade has been barricaded and there are signs of a struggle. Jill and Parker lift up a partially-ajar emergency shutter and go to find the room where the voice is coming from: a padlocked closet at the back of a storeroom, with something inside struggling to break out. With no real choice, Jill shoots the lock off the door. The communications officer is inside, and he's caught a much stronger dose of whatever's mutated the rest of the crew. He's both slower and stronger than the Oozes, and where they have clubs or claws, one of his arms has evolved into something like a four-foot-wide rotary bandsaw. Worse, his appearance is a wakeup call for the Oozes in the area, and they come running out of the open vents. The officer has left extensive barricades in place, complete with ammunition caches and a couple of strategically placed gas canisters. It takes most of the ammunition that Jill and Parker have found on their way through the ship, but they finally manage to kill the officer. With a final "Mayday," he collapses into a bloody pool on the floor, and Jill is able to fish the key they need out of the muck. That key also opens a locked door on the west side of the promenade, behind which is another elevator. Jill bypasses its security lock, and they're able to take it back up to the bridge. Once again, they go back through the luxury cabins, and open the shutter with the communications officer's key. When they open the door, Raymond Vester is already there. He turns to face them, and says that they're both too late. The emergency radio has been sabotaged, just as the one on the bridge was. One of the monitors lights up shortly thereafter, showing the man in the gas mask that Jill saw earlier. He faces the camera and, for no obvious reason, recites from Canto XXXIII of Dante's "Inferno." At BSAA headquarters, Clive O'Brian and his team are watching the same video. The poetry recital abruptly ceases, and the masked man pulls out a vial. It is the T-Abyss virus, he says, and Veltro is poised to use it to infect one-fifth of the world's oceans. He empties the vial into a large aquarium full of docile fish. The moment the red tint from the virus hits them, the fish shake and begin to dash around the aquarium. Seconds later, they may as well be another species. The man peels off his mask to reveal his face: a square-jawed white guy with glasses. "We are Veltro," he claims, "vengeful messengers from the depths of the Inferno." Chris and Jessica are also watching his broadcast, on a laptop from their helicopter in the Mediterranean. Chris radios O'Brian and tells him to send a team to the Valkoinen Mökki Airport, in hopes that there's information about the ship there. O'Brian agrees and turns to two of the BSAA agents in the command center with him: Keith Lumley and Quint Cetcham. Despite their complaints, he orders them to suit up and depart for Finland. Meanwhile, Chris and Jessica search the Mediterranean for the Zenobia. ===================================== 18v. Episode 4: A Nightmare Revisited ===================================== 9:28 PM: Parker and Raymond watch the Veltro broadcast angrily. Raymond mutters to himself that they "killed these bastards already." Dryly, Jill retorts that it looks like they missed a few, "and they're on this ship." Raymond says cryptically that Veltro are after the "truth about Terragrigia... and vengeance," right before he leaves the room. After he's gone, Parker looks over the communication console and points out that the ship's systems are currently running on emergency power. If they can get the main power system working again, it may let them get the ship's communications back online. When they walk out into the ballroom, Raymond is waiting for them. He gives Jill a key to the casino, which should let them reach the ship's engine room through the bilges. Raymond also asks if they've seen anyone else from the FBC, as he doesn't seem to be able to reach his partner Rachael. The last time he saw her, she was heading to the bilges herself. The casino's dark when they get there, but it's easy enough to find the circuit breaker. The VIP lounge is locked down by means of an elaborate game, but a staffer has left a note nearby that mentions the game has a "cheat code"; if a certain amount of weight is placed on the game's scale, the door always opens. Jill scrounges up some coins and does so. An open hatch in the floor of the VIP lounge leads them down through the bowels of the ship, where they find a freight elevator that should take them to the engine room. Once they're there, they find that the elevator requires a key, and it's missing. Parker stays behind to search the area, while Jill goes off on her own. Another security bypass lets Jill reactivate an elevator, which carries her back up to the crew level. As she leaves the elevator, she radios Parker: she hopes she's wrong, but she figures Rachael is the dead woman she saw earlier. Jill heads that way. As she passes by the room where the fake "Chris" was being kept, Jill checks it out again. After dispatching a particularly dramatic Ooze, she scrounges up some ammunition, but also finds an unsigned set of instructions on a crate in the corner. It's a plan of attack for capturing and ultimately misleading "our two targets," without engaging or firing upon them. It also mentions "spy props," meant to be used to "sow confusion." Jill passes back through the crew quarters, dealing with a few more Oozes. Suddenly, a woman's voice whispers from somewhere close by: "Found you." The woman's body is gone when Jill returns. All that's left is a leather-bound notebook in a pool of dried blood. It's unsigned, but it's been used to leave a final journal entry. The author claims she was forced to go on a mission aboard the Zenobia, which was used as the base of operations for Veltro a year ago, during the Terragrigia Panic. She's even found the UAV that Veltro used to drop the virus into the city. After completing the first step of her mission, however, the agent was attacked by a monster and lost an eye. Worse, she was infected; she feels terrible and her arms are changing before her eyes. Her last legible entry is simple: "need doctor bad". The rest of the book is ruined by bloodstains. When Jill looks up from the notebook, Rachael is standing on the other side of the window. Her right arm and leg are both heavily infected, her right hand's little more than a bone claw, and she's covered in her own blood. "Found you," she says again, and limps back toward the stairs. After giving Parker a status update, Jill chases after Rachael. She immediately finds out that Rachael's actually the one chasing her, as she pours herself out of one of the open ducts and staggers towards Jill. She seems to be almost immune to gunfire, but after she's shot a couple of dozen times, Rachael whimpers and limps away, diving back into the relative safety of the ducts. Jill runs after her, playing cat and mouse with Rachael throughout most of the crew level. Like the other Oozes, Rachael can come out of nowhere, slithering through the ship's ducts and ventilation, and she's fond of ambushes. It takes a great deal, but Jill manages to finally knock Rachael down and takes the lift key off her body. Unfortunately, Rachael's body doesn't dissolve the way the other Oozes do, and as Jill takes the lift back down to the freight elevator, she can hear Rachael's voice hissing at her from overhead. ================================== 18vi. Episode 5: Secrets Uncovered ================================== Quint and Keith arrive at Valkoinen Mökki Airport, both complaining about the cold. They report in to O'Brian, and then to one of the BSAA agents guarding the area. The latter tells Keith that they haven't found a thing yet, but they're getting ready to bust into an underground chamber inside the airport. Quint immediately volunteers for the job, ignoring the guard's protests that they haven't gotten authorization yet, and Keith follows him inside. The underground chamber's almost as cold as it is outside, and utterly vacant. There are large sprays of fresh blood across parts of the walls and floor, and the last two doors on the level are locked down tight. Keith borrows Quint's screwdriver and uses it to bypass one of the doors' locks, which turns out to lead to the airport's security station. While he's releasing the lock on the next door, Keith and Quint also gain access to the station's security feeds. They quickly find a recording of a plane taking off from the airport, which Quint recognizes from the timestamp as the plane that Chris and Jessica saw crash in the nearby mountains. As it's taxing down the runway, several Hunters suddenly appear, attacking nearby armed guards and leaping onto the plane. One jumps on the wing, and damages the nearest engine to the point where it catches fire. Quint says soberly that the people aboard the plane never had a chance. Another piece of footage is taken from the base they're in at the moment, as something the camera can't see knocks over several objects in the exterior hallway. A few minutes later, in a large meeting room they haven't seen yet, a single Veltro operative comes out of an elevator and visibly catches his breath. He hears something and brings his rifle up, but the same invisible creature from the hallway grabs him by the leg. To Quint and Keith, it's as if the man's throat tears itself out, and his corpse throws itself at the security camera. As the body falls to the ground, something falls out of its pocket. The door they just unlocked leads to the same meeting room from the security feed. The dead man is still lying on the floor, his corpse covered in terrible wounds. Keith pulls out his own Genesis scanner, and uses it to sort through the wreckage until he finds what the dead man dropped: a USB security token. Keith hands it to Quint, who says he can use it to get some data out of the downed plane's onboard systems. 10:25 PM: Jill and Parker ride the freight elevator all the way down into the Zenobia's engine room. They immediately discover a new problem: the ship is leaking, and most of the engine room is waist-deep in water. Jill finds a local control room, where the automatic systems inform her that the bilge is leaking; however, the bulkheads cannot be lowered to stop the leak until the ship's main power system is restored. Just to cap it all off, they also find that the engine room is inhabited by a new species of aquatic mutant, which likes to hide just below the water level before leaping out at them. They're joined by the occasional Ooze as well as a few of the T-Abyss-mutated fish, which makes going anywhere in the water a hazardous proposition. One bit of luck comes when Jill finds a few stashes of specialized grenades, which emit a powerful electric shock upon detonation. They're more than enough to instantly kill any of the mutated fish. Turning the power back on gets a little complicated, mostly due to some inconvenient steam jets and the late members of the ship's crew finding a cute hiding place for the restart key, but Jill figures it out. Once she and Parker reactivate the main power, however, both the exit doors to the engine room promptly bolt themselves shut. An alarm klaxon goes off, and overhead pipes open, filling the room with a deluge of seawater. Back at BSAA headquarters, Clive O'Brian is on the phone with Quint and Keith, who are reporting in from the crash site. After telling them that neither Jill or Parker have contacted HQ yet, he orders them to find a computer terminal at the crash site so they can use the security token. Quint runs on ahead of Keith, leaving him to deal with another pack of Veltro's brand of undead dogs. As Keith catches up, he's right in time to see Quint go sprawling into the snow, knocked over by what he claims is the "invisible man." It is actually the first of a pack of a new breed of Hunters, capable of nearly perfect invisibility. Keith flushes them out with grenades and bursts of rifle fire. When it seems like it's safe, Keith guards Quint as they move forward to investigate the crash site. They pry a chunk of wreckage away from the fuselage, and find a surviving computer terminal in what looks like the passenger section of the plane. Quint sets to work. He finds a set of coordinates immediately, which he thinks may be those of the Zenobia, and calls them in. It was a little too easy, though. As Quint explains to Keith, it's as if Veltro is now searching for their own ship; he didn't have to do much of anything, because there's a routine running on the terminal that's specifically looking for the Zenobia. They have no idea who they're actually up against, Quint says, but he now knows that it's not Veltro. =============================== 18vii. Episode 6: Cat and Mouse =============================== After receiving the coordinates from Quint, Chris and Jessica's helicopter drops them off on the ship's helipad. This puts them on the top deck, and Chris begins his search by taking the elevator down to the promenade level. It's completely infested with a nearly endless number of Oozes, and in the end, he and Jessica just have to make a run for it, smashing through the Oozes' line and heading to the ship's ballroom. As they enter, Quint checks in with them via radio; while he's temporarily flustered when he realizes he's talking to Jessica, he suggests that they check the ship's engine room. Chris agrees, and he and Jessica head towards the casino. When they get inside, the door to the VIP lounge is jammed, and there's a dangerous rattling coming from the office. Jessica points it out, right before the door comes off its hinges. The communications officer on the Zenobia was not unique, and two more of his breed of Ooze, Scagdeads, come into the casino. One of them is holding the last of the four keys needed to navigate the ship. Chris takes it off the Scagdead's corpse and uses it to open a door in the casino's office, which leads them along an alternate route towards the freight elevator. This takes them through a couple of heavily infested storerooms, where they encounter a new kind of T-Abyss mutant, one that's not much more than a big pocket of explosive gas on awkward legs. Low on ammunition, Chris and Jessica manage to punch through them and get to the freight elevator. As they ride it down, the water level in the bilges is close to the ceiling. Parker is yelling for help, to anyone who could possibly hear him. Jill clings to a nearby rail, telling him not to give up. The bilges are full of multiple kinds of Oozes from the moment Chris and Jessica burst in. They mow them down and finally reach the engine room, Quint yelling at them to hurry. Chris pushes open the door... and it's empty. No Jill, no Parker, no water. As he and Jessica wander around the room, Chris wonders aloud where Jill went. He doesn't see an illuminated map on the wall above him, indicating he's in the engine room of the Queen Samiramis. They're in the wrong ship. 11:43 PM: At this point, the bilges of the Queen Zenobia have flooded completely. There's an air pocket near the ceiling, which is enough to keep Parker and Jill alive, but that's all. Jill dives below the surface, looking for a way out. A couple of pipes have detached from the walls, lying on the floor of the engine room, and she grabs them. Near the top of the bilge, there's a grate that leads to a ventilation shaft along the engine room's ceiling, and Jill's able to use the pipes to pry it open. She and Parker swim up through it to safety. They take a minute to catch their breath, then drop down through the vent. They land in the passageway outside the engine room, right near the control center. The power's back, and they're able to use it to close the bulkheads and keep the ship from taking on any more water. When Jill looks, though, the real problem with the ship's communications seems to be that the antenna on the observation deck is out. All they can do is head up to it and see if it can be repaired. As Jill and Parker ride the freight elevator back up, Chris is on the Semiramis's helipad. His chopper's landed nearby and he's reported in to HQ; he and Jessica have just figured out what went wrong. O'Brian relays word from Quint that Chris is currently on the Zenobia's sister ship, and that it's likely the two ships were traveling together up until a few hours ago. From the freight elevator, Jill and Parker go back through the casino. Reactivating the power has also turned the glass-walled elevators in the ballroom back on, and they get into one. Very shortly thereafter, the car jolts, the glass shatters, and they realize something's landed on the roof. They can only see part of it at any given time. It reaches down from the roof of the elevator car to swat at them with something like a turtle shell at the end of a limb, or occasionally peeks at them with what might be its face. There's a shock of black hair on it that suggests that it might have once been human, but mostly, it looks like it was assembled by committee from mollusks. While it's perched on the roof, the elevator refuses to move. Jill blasts the monster with her shotgun until it withdraws. The elevator takes them the rest of the way to the observation deck, where several old popcorn stands sit in a semicircle in the center of the room. The creature drops through the ceiling almost immediately. Seen in full, it has a lot in common with a turtle, and is half-covered in dense, bulletproof shells. Its favored method of attack, however, is a full-on charge, dragging its limbs behind it. It's not quite strong enough to burst through the windows, and after a charge, it takes time to recover. When it stops, Jill and Parker bombard its softer parts with gunfire, whittling it down, and let it run headlong into the old gas canisters that the popcorn stands used as fuel. It eventually collapses, and when it hits the ground, does so with such an earth-shaking thud that it opens the access hatch to the observation deck's roof. Jill and Parker climb through the hatch. Inside, they find a keycard marked with the Veltro symbol and an open journal. It's written by Bernard Corti, a member of Veltro, with the last entry dated twelve hours before the start of the Terragrigia Panic. Corti's a true believer in Veltro's aims, to "bring hell to the people" and force them to reject the decadent society they've built. He speaks highly of their leader, Jack Norman, and of the "grizzled financier" who arranged it so they could use the Queen Zenobia as a floating base of operations. What's more interesting, though, is his casual mention of a secret lab in the Zenobia's bilge. The keycard opens a door that leads out onto the observation deck's exterior walkway. Jill follows it around to the comms antenna, and uses her screwdriver to pry off its access panel. After some rewiring, she manages to get the antenna working again, and they're finally able to raise O'Brian on the radio. O'Brian tells them that the whole thing was a setup, and he fell for it. This leads Jill to the natural follow-up question: "How do you know?" He doesn't answer. In O'Brian's office at BSAA headquarters, as Parker demands that O'Brian answer the question, a call comes in from a BSAA staffer via O'Brian's terminal. The European Security Force is calling to inform him that the satellite that sank Terragrigia has been reactivated. Apparently, O'Brian says out loud, somebody's found the Zenobia. He looks down at his desk, to a hardcover copy of Dante's Divine Comedy and a framed photograph of himself with Morgan Lansdale. "You haven't changed a bit," O'Brian says. He gets back in touch with Parker and Jill to tell them that all hell's about to break loose. The Queen Zenobia is about to be destroyed via satellite. Jill wonders aloud how they can just ignore the ultimatum that Veltro gave them, but Parker's more direct and demands an evac. "Sorry," O'Brian says, "but I can't authorize that." ================================== 18viii. Episode 7: The Regia Solis ================================== O'Brian expounds: there isn't enough time for a successful rescue operation, even though Chris is on his way. He'll do what he can to stop the attack, O'Brian says, and signs off. Parker curses, as this may have become the worst day of his life. They get a call from Quint shortly thereafter, who suggests that they may be able to confuse the satellite's targeting system. He sets to work on a way to do that while Jill and Parker get back inside the ship. Jill calls the elevator from the observation deck and they ride it back down to the ballroom. By the time they get out, Quint has a plan. As Rachael's diary said, Veltro's old UAV from the Panic is still aboard the Zenobia, parked on the foredeck. If they launch the UAV and deploy its chaff, it may force the satellite strike to miss the ship. The keycard they found on the observation deck can open a number of doors they've seen throughout the ship, including a couple on the deck above the bridge. Jill and Parker go back through the luxury cabins one more time towards the elevator, fighting off another wave of Oozes and, more disturbingly, a second appearance from Rachael. She jumps them in the ship's library, pursuing them right up until the elevator doors close. Once they reach the foredeck, it's being patrolled by a large pack of Hunters. Jill and Parker eliminate them and find the UAV in a metal shipping container on the Zenobia's helipad. 1:07 AM: Morgan Lansdale's at FBC headquarters when Clive O'Brian calls him on his private line. O'Brian tries to be chatty, saying that they haven't spoken in at least a year, but Lansdale cuts him off: "...you're too late." 1:08 AM: Jill finishes setting up the UAV. Quint calls again to tell them that the drone's controls are in the ship's hold. Back at FBC headquarters, O'Brian asks Lansdale why he's deploying the Regia Solis. "What's got you spooked?" Lansdale doesn't answer. He uses a handprint scanner, which grants him access to the targeting system for the Terragrigia satellite. "The time has come, O'Brian," Lansdale says, and quotes the inscription above the door to Hell in the Divine Comedy: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." He pushes a button, and a countdown begins. Quint radios Jill and Parker; they've got a few minutes, if that, before the Solis finishes charging. As they fight their way across the exterior of the ship, they can already feel a distinct increase in the ambient temperature, as the Solis begins to focus energy on the Zenobia. The ship's hold is a killing floor. A bunch of mismatched shipping crates have turned it into a maze, riddled with traps planted by a Scagdead and guarded by a number of missile-firing Oozes. Worse, Rachael makes a return appearance. Jill ducks and weaves through them, and reaches the control room for the UAV with seconds left on Quint's estimate. The UAV launches away from the Zenobia, leaving a glittering trail of chaff as it goes. Jill, Parker, and Morgan Lansdale all watch their respective terminals as the Solis fires, and the trail of chaff ignites briefly before the UAV itself is destroyed by the Solis's beam. The satellite strike ends up missing the Zenobia itself by maybe as little as half a mile. In so doing, it instantly flash-boils a massive amount of water. The effect is to create a massive tidal wave, taller than the Queen Zenobia itself, which rolls completely over the ship. ================================ 18ix. Episode 8: All on the Line ================================ 1:17 AM: Lansdale is still on the phone with O'Brian, who's taken his call using his computer terminal in his office. Lansdale stresses that "immediate containment is imperative," accusing O'Brian of being blinded, "a humanist with no cause." All loose ends can do is make the situation worse. O'Brian invites Lansdale to cut the bullshit, and their conversation ends. In the hold of the Zenobia, the ship tilts dangerously and an alarm klaxon goes off. Jill realizes what's happened seconds before water surges through the door and floods the room to the ceiling. The cargo hold isn't much better, but it's not completely submerged. Jill goes underwater again, moving underneath some of the floating cargo containers, and swims to a ladder to the catwalk. The elevator that brought them down here in the first place has gone offline, but the flooding lets them drop back down to the floor of the hold to a door they couldn't reach before. It leads to a flooded stairwell that takes them all the way back down to the engine room, all of which is now completely underwater. Chris contacts them, telling them that the ship is sinking, but he and Jessica know where they are and are on the way. The same grate that let them escape the engine room before now lets them get back to the overhead duct. The bulkhead they spent so much time trying to close is now keeping them out of the control room, but luckily, the sudden flooding's knocked off a nearby vent cover and blown out the control room's observation window. From there, they can reach the freight elevator shaft, which is rapidly filling with water but not yet full. Jill and Parker use the ventilation shafts to get back up through the ship, and reemerge into the VIP lounge. As they reenter the casino, the man in the gas mask finally reappears, giving them a round of applause from a balcony above the floor. A few minutes earlier, Chris and Jessica are on approach to the Queen Zenobia. They were close enough to the satellite's laser pulse that their helicopter's electronics were all fried, so now they're heading in on a hovercraft. Chris spots something moving in the water nearby, and he and Jessica jump onto the hovercraft's gun turrets. They defend their boat against a few large eel-like creatures in the water, which bite at the ship with massive jaws, or hang back and throw spiny missiles. Sustained gunfire drives them off, and Chris circles the Zenobia to find a boarding point. He tells Jessica that they have a promise to keep. Back in the casino, the masked man calls Jill and Parker "friendly BSAA patrons," congratulating them on stopping the Regia Solis from destroying the ship. Now, he says, he'll reveal the secrets he's been keeping, like how it took the authorities this long to find the Queen Zenobia in the first place, why Veltro completely faded out of existence immediately after the Terragrigia Panic, or why the Regia Solis was deployed at all. The masked man is really having fun with his monologue, but his exposition is interrupted by a sudden gunshot. He's hit in the chest and falls over the railing of the balcony. The shooter is Jessica, standing at the top of the casino escalator with a smoking pistol in her hand. Chris runs in behind her, pushing her gun down and demanding to know why she fired; Jessica claims it was to "protect our people." Parker gets to the masked man's side and finds that it's Raymond. When Parker asks him why he's playing the part of a Veltro agent, Raymond whispers something inaudible into his ear. More loudly, he says to "find the truth about Terragrigia," then goes limp. 2:14 AM: All four BSAA agents are gathered around Raymond. The ship suddenly takes another hit, and parts of the ceiling visibly buckle. Jessica overreacts to the impact and throws herself into Chris's arms. Chris pries her off of him and says that, after he and Jessica's search of the Semiramis, he has an idea where the Zenobia's lab is. They can't let its supply of the T-Abyss go down with the ship, or else it'll contaminate the ocean. He takes Jill with him as they set out towards the lab, while Parker and Jessica are left to find a way to keep the Zenobia from sinking for a little while longer. They split up, and as they go, Jessica frets aloud that Chris "never got the hint." Parker, clearly amused, suggests that maybe Chris is already taken. Chris hands Jill a few pulse grenades, which they use to fend off the sea life in the flooded parts of the ship. They turn around and head right back through the VIP lounge to the freight elevator shaft, where Jill's Veltro keycard lets them through a previously-locked door. From there, they head back through the flooded cargo hold to a locked door. The key Chris found on the Semiramis unlocks it. It opens up into a lab complex that's wildly unlike the rest of the ship, all polished steel and state-of-the-art equipment. It's been locked down tightly, with further entrance barred by a fingerprint scanner, but the recent damage to the ship has shattered the window to a nearby server room. Jill goes in through the window to find a working computer and a sheaf of notes on the desk nearby that concern the creation of the T-Abyss. A recent exploration of the Kermadec Trench, a deep-sea fissure on the ocean floor near New Zealand, had resulted in the discovery of a new breed of predatory fish, living at 9,000 meters below the surface. To the surprise of the biologists studying the fish, its uncommon ferocity and mobility weren't natural to it, but were instead the result of an virus it had. The virus, which its discoverers named the "Abyss," converted the fish's fat and water reserves into high-density bone and muscle, completely out of sync with the usual demands of its habitat. The Abyss was also almost 100% infectious via blood-to-blood contact, and slightly less so if taken orally. The author of the note's excited about the possibility of using the Abyss to develop a new bio-organic weapon, which could advance studies in the field. Jill uses the computer to register her own fingerprint on the lab's database, so she can unlock the door. Further entry also requires that they both submit to a sterilization procedure, which is almost immediately aborted when a new BOW cuts its way in through the chamber wall. It's covered in natural armor, much like a crab, and defends its softer parts with a thick plate on its arm that it uses like a shield. Chris breaks out of his half of the room to back Jill up, and together, they manage to kill the creature. The Zenobia's lab is full of signs of recent violence. Jill and Chris descend to a lower deck, go through a long airlock, and open an enormous door that looks more like it should be on a bank vault, revealing a massive laboratory with an equally massive tank of the T-Abyss. ======================= 18x. Episode 9: No Exit ======================= 2:50 AM: Quint continues to pull information off of the terminal in the downed Veltro plane in Finland, while Keith shivers in a seat behind him. Quint's in the middle of a download when the screen goes black, and after a few minutes, they conclude that the battery's finally gone dead. Quint pours himself a cup of coffee from a thermos, and suddenly realizes something. They need to get back to Valkoinen Mökki Airport, and quickly. He thinks he's figured out something important about Veltro and the conspiracy thereof, but doesn't want to jump to any conclusions. By this point, even the BSAA has packed it up and headed home, but Quint left himself a back door in their security. They let themselves back into the underground chamber, Quint excitedly babbling pieces of his theory. Not even a sudden attack by a pair of Hunters is enough to get him to stop. They haven't yet investigated what's on the other side of the elevator in the meeting room, and do so now. It leads to an area full of metal shipping crates, weapons, and ammunition. The first thing Quint spots is an MB-28 supercomputer, which is powered by means of two large diesel generators on opposite sides of the room. Quint stays behind to play with the computer while Keith gathers ammo and reactivates the generators. The MB-28 is a powerful machine, but even it's going to take time to crack the encryption Quint's working on. Keith, who isn't much of a computer guy, takes him at his word and watches Quint's back. Unfortunately, an alarm goes off in the facility, and Quint casually mentions that he thinks he's just annoyed the FBC. The encryption he mentioned is because he's using the MB-28 to hack into the FBC's secret servers. He attributes the appearance of a wave of angry BOWs--infected wolves and both kinds of Hunters they've seen so far--to FBC countermeasures. When the fighting's over, Quint sits down to have a look at the data he's dug up. It seems to answer some questions, but as he tells Keith, the only way to be sure is to go ahead and ask. Casually, Quint gets O'Brian on the radio, and Keith flips out; O'Brian's behind Veltro? Quint tells O'Brian what he's learned. Veltro was never back in action. The entire production was smoke and mirrors on O'Brian's part, designed so he could "get into the head" of Morgan Lansdale, the head of the FBC. O'Brian doesn't deny it, and says that Quint's worth his paycheck. While he's connected to the FBC's servers, Quint tells O'Brian that he's found something in Lansdale's personal logs that O'Brian's going to want to see. Before he can send it, he gets a connection error; Quint's been detected and they're locking him out of the system. In a weird way this excites Quint; he and Keith are solving a mystery together. Keith notices the roof is shaking. He grabs Quint by the arm and tries to pull him away from the computer, but Quint won't go until he reconnects to the FBC's system. A progress bar on the screen hits 100%, data is sent elsewhere, and something abruptly explodes nearby. Outside, a pair of planes go on a bombing run, turning the airport into a crater. In O'Brian's office, he has a remote download that's stuck at 20%, and he can't raise either Quint or Keith on the radio. Aboard the Queen Zenobia, Jill and Chris conclude that they have to figure out a way to neutralize its supply of T-Abyss. There's enough of it in the lab's central storage tank to contaminate a big part of the world. Jill uses the fingerprint scanner to get into another part of the lab. Another scientist has left notes on a table about the T-Abyss, which was originally created as part of study and research on "weaponized marine viruses." By itself, it's not particularly dangerous, but the scientist has concluded that, in a concentrated liquid form, the T-Abyss would be dangerous enough to radically alter the entire world's oceanic ecosystem, from bacteria on up. The work the scientist is doing on the Zenobia is ostensibly to help prevent bioterrorism, but he's starting to wonder if his research will end up causing it. Another nearby document mentions the development of a new BOW codenamed "Malacoda," after the leader of the Malebranche demons in Dante's Inferno. As the researchers exposed several kinds of fish to T-Abyss, one of the fish happened to be infected with salmon fluke. To their surprise, the T-Abyss mutated both the fish and the parasite, creating two separate new species. The Malacoda is thus a sort of delivery system for the T-Abyss, infecting a host and maturing rapidly. Its maximum growth only seems limited by the size of its host. Finally, a nearby open book contains the last journal entry of Bernard Corti. Two days after the start of the Terragrigia Panic, he's jubilant; the FBC was powerless and the city's become a hell on earth. Three days after that, however, a viral spill aboard both the Zenobia and Semiramis has infected the surviving members of Veltro. Corti feels betrayed, as the hell they've unleashed has come right back around to them. The only person who could've done this, he thinks, is their mysterious financier, who conveniently enough isn't aboard the ship. The lab leads them right to the control system for the T-Abyss's storage tank. Chris asks for some time to figure out the controls, but can already tell there's a failsafe in place. They can release a neutralizing agent into the tank that'll render the T-Abyss harmless, but doing so requires a passcode. Jill volunteers to sweep the lab and see what she can find. Chris cracks the code and opens a nearby elevator. Jill takes it down a floor to find a bizarre maze, where the "walls" are a kind of laser array. There's a dead scientist on the floor, but through the Genesis, she can tell that he manipulated the lasers so he can't be touched. She uses her scanner to pick her way through the maze and into the next room. At this point, Jill can see outside the lab to an underwater storage tank, tinted red with the T-Abyss. As she leaves the maze, something slams into the nearest window hard enough to crack the glass, then swims away. It looks like the tentacles Chris fought outside, and may be the aforementioned Malacoda. After disposing of a couple more Oozes with shields, Jill uses another fingerprint scanner to reach a secure experiment station. Inside, she finds a map of the laboratory, a device that administers inoculations, and a console that lets her turn off part of the laser array outside. The Malacoda takes another swing at her as she leaves, but she's able to reach the dead researcher. He's holding a sample of an experimental vaccine, still secure inside a glass container, and an open paperback journal. His name is Ryan, a researcher aboard the Zenobia, and he's left two relevant entries. The first is from 2004, in the days after the Terragrigia Panic. He and his team seized the ship after the Veltro members aboard it had all succumbed to the T-Abyss virus. This made it a dangerous but very useful place to study the virus's effects. By 2005, their research had reached its goal with the development of a proper vaccine for the T-Abyss virus. Since they didn't need the Zenobia any longer, they elected to abandon it. When they reported their success to Lansdale, it made him uncharacteristically happy. However, the moment they sent Lansdale their research data, the facility was shut tight and all the cryogenically stored BOWs woke up at once. Ryan almost admires the skill with which Lansdale pulled off the double-cross. Jill radios the information back to Chris. It's only circumstantial evidence of Lansdale's involvement, but it's still huge, and it goes a long way towards explaining what Raymond meant back in the casino. Jill picks up the vaccine sample and returns to the lab. Ryan's employee number gets Jill into the system, and she downloads the passcode she needs onto an authentication dongle. While she's at it, on a hunch, she injects herself with Ryan's vaccine. This turns out to be a very good call, because moments later, the Malacoda manages to successfully bust out the windows on this level of the lab. Red-tinted water, seething with the T-Abyss, floods into the room, punching the doors to the lab off their hinges. Jill swims out through the airlock. Most of the windows are covered by automatic shutters, but one isn't. She uses it to get back up to the top level, surfacing in the tainted pool below Chris's platform. She uses a ladder to get back up to him. The passcode works, and the lab's systems automatically begin the neutralization program. As they do, a set of flatscreen monitors above the T-Abyss tank flip on, revealing Morgan Lansdale, sitting at his desk. He congratulates the BSAA on their activities; while he knew that O'Brian and "his dog" Raymond Vester were looking into his business, Lansdale didn't account for Jill's presence aboard the ship. As punishment for being stowaways, Lansdale remotely releases a small army of powerful Oozes onto the platform with Jill and Chris, hoping to watch them die. It doesn't quite work out that way, of course. By the time the virus neutralization process is complete, Chris and Jill have mowed down the Oozes. Lansdale sighs; he should've expected as much from the "duo who brought down Umbrella." Lansdale goes on to explain that he has a character flaw: he's a perfectionist. He's got to clean up every last detail before he considers a job done, and right now, that includes the BSAA, Clive O'Brian, Chris, Jill, and the Zenobia. The only reason he's even talking to them right now is because, as he displays on the monitor, he has the Zenobia targeted from overhead. ============================== 18xi. Episode 10: Tangled Webs ============================== 2:14 AM: As Chris and Jill leave the casino via the VIP lounge, Parker and Jessica head back into the ballroom. They've been through hell once before, Parker says with a look at Raymond, so this should be nothing new. In the ballroom, Parker mentions his plan. The power's back on, so he should be able to remotely close off the bulkheads with the maintenance system, delaying the ship's flooding for at least a while. Jessica agrees, but says she has to "check on something," and goes off on her own. They decide to meet back up on the bridge. Parker heads back through the promenade, where he receives a radio call from O'Brian. When O'Brian asks, Parker says that Raymond told him everything. That means, O'Brian says, that Parker knows what he has to do. This does not make Parker happy. The promenade has filled back up with a new type of Hunter, slightly tougher than the ones from the helipad. Parker kills a few and evades the rest, taking the elevator on the west end of the promenade up to the bridge. On his way up, Jessica radios him, saying she's already there and is working to lower the bulkheads. This means, she continues, that he owes her dinner again. When Parker reaches the bridge, however, he points his gun at Jessica from behind. What Raymond whispered to him in the casino was that Morgan Lansdale has a mole in the BSAA, and it may be Jessica. She tries to talk him out of it, slowly reaching for a large red emergency switch on the nearest console, but a sudden gunshot makes her snatch her hand back. Raymond steps up next to Parker, leveling a pistol at Jessica. He was wearing body armor, and accuses Jessica of wanting to set off the Zenobia's self-destruct mechanism. It'll take the ship down and all the evidence against Lansdale with it. Jessica, laughing awkwardly, asks if they're kidding her. She appeals to Parker, and slowly, Parker lowers his gun. She's right; he can't trust Raymond completely. He asks Raymond to lower his gun, and when he doesn't, Parker puts his hand on Raymond's arm. Raymond accuses Parker of being too soft. In that moment of distraction, Jessica grabs her own gun from the console, levels it at Raymond, and fires. Parker throws himself in front of Raymond and takes the bullet, collapsing heavily on top of Raymond. Jessica, muttering about "stupid men," reaches out and pushes the self-destruct button. An emergency klaxon goes off, red lights begin to flash, and Jessica, laughing at Raymond and Parker, lets herself out of the bridge. She'd figured that O'Brian had a "lapdog," she says, and she'll tell "Morgan" that it was Raymond. Parker angrily shoves Raymond away, telling him to get after Jessica. He's in pain, and pulls himself into a sitting position, slumped against the bridge controls. Outside, the nearby Queen Semiramis is rocked by several explosions on its upper deck. 3:50 AM: In the Zenobia's lab, Lansdale watches the Semiramis sink via satellite, broadcasting the image so Chris and Jill can see it too. An automated voice announces that the Zenobia's self-destruct sequence has been armed, and Lansdale says with relish that his "bright young assistant" has made the last move. This is checkmate. Chris tells him to "start counting." All Morgan's done is given him and Jill a target. This amuses Lansdale, who wishes them luck and breaks the connection. Their first job is to escape the ship. As they backtrack to the lab's exit, Kirk Mathison calls via the radio. He's en route to the Zenobia and will be waiting on the foredeck to evacuate them. Chris leads Jill deeper into the ship, to its boiler room. The Zenobia has begun a process of multiple small detonations, and is shaking apart around them. An explosion brings down a wall between Chris and Jill, forcing her to find another route around. That's where she finds Parker, staggering in short bursts down a maintenance hallway. As Jill puts him up on her shoulder, he explains that Jessica shot him, and she's working for Morgan. Together, and with Chris once he catches up to them, they fight through the boiler room's rapidly flooding corridors. They aren't making good time with Parker in tow. They may not make it and they all know it, but Chris refuses to leave a man behind. In the end, Parker makes that decision for them. When a catwalk suddenly gives way, Parker deliberately loses his grip, falling into the flames below with a smile on his face. Chris and Jill pull themselves together for their last run through the Zenobia. As they bust out onto the exterior deck, the ship's begun to sink, and the last leg of the trip is done "uphill," dodging falling lifeboats and other debris. Chris and Jill emerge onto the foredeck just as one of the helicopters leaves. A second helicopter waits on the helipad for them, but one of the smaller explosions goes off and knocks both Chris and Jill sprawling. As they get to their feet, a tentacle suddenly lashes up out of the water and directly onto the helicopter, smashing it to the surface of the helipad. As it explodes, the tentacle's owner emerges out of the water: a whale infected with the Malacoda parasite. ============================== 18xii. Episode 11: Revelations ============================== 4:28 AM: Kirk pilots his helicopter well above the wreckage of the Queen Zenobia. Somewhat unnecessarily, he reports that extraction is not possible, as the Malacoda is sitting on the end of the ship. The infected whale doesn't move that much on its own, but up to four massive parasites at a time emerge from its sides, stabbing the deck with enormous pincers or thrown spikes. They're all made of very soft tissue, but Jill's low on ammunition and only has small arms. Kirk takes a hand shortly thereafter, dropping four crates onto the deck near Chris and Jill. Each contains a single anti-tank rocket, which Jill uses to sever the parasites from the Malacoda's shell. They drop lifelessly into the water, leaving the Malacoda's body leaning motionless above the Zenobia, and Kirk takes the chance to drop them a rope ladder. Suddenly, a fresh batch of parasites spawn from the Malacoda. It lashes at the ship again, catching the end of the rope ladder and nearly whipping Chris off and into the water. He barely manages to hold on, and Jill pulls him aboard. Chris shoots off the latch that keeps the rope ladder attached to the helicopter, and they're able to fly free. Kirk nearly takes off, but Chris stops him; they can't let the Malacoda just roam free. Using the helicopter's mounted guns, they systematically blow every parasite apart, shooting the Malacoda's projectiles out of the air and letting Kirk handle the evasion. After the destruction of a few dozen of the parasites from the sides of the Malacoda, it slowly opens its mouth. Jill spots what seems to a major organ in its throat, nearly hidden behind a couple of last parasites. Kirk leans back long enough to give her a "present": a powerful laser-guided missile launcher. Jill uses it to lock onto the Malacoda's throat and fires, causing a detonation that blows out the back of its head, straight through its protective shell. 5:02 AM: Dawn finds Chris and Jill aboard the helicopter, watching the Zenobia sink below the surface. The Malacoda's body has buckled forward onto its deck, and is slowly going down along with it. O'Brian calls them over the radio and requests an update. Jill reports Parker's death; Chris tells O'Brian of Jessica's betrayal and Lansdale's confession. This doesn't surprise O'Brian as much as it should, and Chris tells him it's time to come clean. Terragrigia, 2004: Parker and Jessica barely escape into the basement of the FBC's headquarters. Both are low on ammunition and out of breath, and Parker asks without irony if they're both in hell. Jessica confirms it, but says it's actually called Terragrigia. Parker uses the last of his ammo to bring down a Hunter who's found its way into the basement with them, and they jump into a nearby elevator. On their way up, Jessica says that Lansdale was right; he's been pushing for an expansion of the FBC's purview, and it looks like thanks to the Terragrigia Panic, he's about to get one. Hopefully, Parker says, the Panic will at least get Lansdale's message across to the international community: bioterrorism is a serious threat. They hear gunfire as they come out of the elevator. Raymond Vester is on the ground in the next hallway, fending off Hunters with a handgun. The floor and wall near him are covered with blood, and he can't stand. After they dispose of the Hunters, Parker lends Raymond a shoulder and helps him up. Raymond had been ordered to leave, but he stayed behind anyway. There are still civilians in Terragrigia who need help, he says; even though he's too badly injured to stand, he's still trying to figure out ways he can contribute. When the Hunters reappear shortly thereafter, Raymond instantly offers to stay behind and buy Parker and Jessica some time, which Parker immediately rejects. As he tells Jessica a little later, he's of the opinion that cadets need a little "towel-snapping" in order to grow up, which in his case means brutal honesty. Raymond's "too young to play hero." They drop Raymond off in what looks like a safe area on the third floor. Parker and Jessica go back to the stairwell in hopes they can find a tourniquet for Raymond on the fourth floor, scrounging up more ammunition as they go. The medical station is trashed and occupied by yet more Hunters, but they're able to find what they need. By the time they get back to Raymond, the Hunters have found him again. Parker and Jessica fight off what he's left alive, then bandage him up. Parker makes fun of Raymond's desire for "heroics" as he works to patch up Raymond's leg, telling him that in the real world, such a thing is only going to get his entire unit killed. With the bandages in place, Raymond's leg can support his weight again. He's able to limp after them as they proceed to the command station, but as they ride the elevator there, Raymond speaks again. There's something off, he says; the whole attack seems to him to have been too professional, and he has no idea how they managed to hit Terragrigia without the FBC's intelligence network picking up word of it. Parker cuts him off abruptly, saying that their job isn't to investigate the Panic, but to resolve it. Raymond protests that his logic is sound, but Parker isn't listening. Parker and Jessica cover Raymond long enough for him to get into the relative safety of the command room, then follow him inside. Morgan Lansdale is in the middle of a phone call with Jack Norman, the head of Veltro. He tells Norman to "enjoy the celebration" aboard the Queen Dido, where the T-Abyss virus has just broken out. Norman says with grim humor that Veltro's "certainly been had"; they were Lansdale's pawns, and now he's eliminating them. That means Norman and his men can serve one more purpose for Lansdale, as test subjects for the T-Abyss virus in a controlled environment. Raymond Vester abruptly comes through the nearest door behind Lansdale, his leg nearly buckling underneath him. Lansdale notes he's there, but continues the conversation. Norman reveals that he always figured Lansdale would stab him in the back, so he's kept video records of all their interactions. Lansdale retorts that the use of the satellite has been approved, which infuriates Norman. Lansdale follows up by quoting the "Divine Comedy" yet again: "Full soon shalt thou be where Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this, seeing the cause which raineth down the blast." In other words: "I'm about to zap you from orbit and there's nothing you can do about it, Norman." Back on the Zenobia, Parker has survived his fall from the catwalk, and now he's got an injured leg on top of his bullet wound. He's limping slowly along when Raymond finds him, and for a second, Parker thinks Raymond's about to finish him off. Instead, Raymond says that Jessica's escaped, holsters his pistol, and picks Parker up. Parker apologizes to him, saying that Raymond was right all along. Raymond dismisses it, saying Parker's being too hard on himself. Now it's his turn to save Parker. Back aboard Chris and Jill's helicopter, O'Brian concludes his story. Raymond had heard more back in Terragrigia than Lansdale thought, and approached O'Brian with the information. Together, they set up an elaborate plan, involving the seeming resurgence of Veltro, in order to put heat on Morgan Lansdale. They knew that Lansdale had at least one mole inside the BSAA, so there was no way to tell any of the agents involved without the risk of blowing the entire operation. O'Brian has one last ace to play, courtesy of Quint and the data he was able to dig out of Veltro's terminal. They'd known about Veltro's two sister ships, but as it turns out, there was a third: Norman's ship, the Queen Dido. ===================================== 18xiii. Episode 12: The Queen is Dead ===================================== 5:35 AM: O'Brian explains to Chris and Jill that the Dido sank during the Terragrigia Panic. Its wreckage can be found on the ocean floor near the ruins of the city. Kirk flies them in that direction, and O'Brian signs off. O'Brian opens his desk drawer and finds the vial from the beach, wrapped in an evidence bag. Suddenly, an alarm goes off, and armed FBC soldiers storm the building. O'Brian watches it happen through his office window, right as Lansdale himself comes inside. As of right now, Lansdale says, the BSAA is under the direct supervision of the FBC. He orders O'Brian arrested as a terrorist collaborator, and two FBC soldiers put handcuffs on O'Brian. He submits peacefully, knowing that Chris and Jill are now the BSAA's only hope. Equipped with scuba gear, Chris and Jill drop off the side of Kirk's helicopter and into the water. It's easy to find the wreckage of the Dido, and Jill's able to open one of the hatches to get below decks. Some of the inner bulkheads are jammed, requiring the use of a plasma torch to open. The interior of the ship is rusted and overgrown, inhabited only by the carnivorous blobs that have been washing up on shore. That, Chris says, explains why Morgan cordoned off the area. He didn't want anyone finding the blobs and wondering where they came from. As unthreatening as the blobs were on land, they're very dangerous underwater. The pulse grenades that were so effective on the Zenobia only stun the blobs for a few seconds, and all Jill can do is avoid them. As Chris does his best to rewire an ancient control panel, she goes off on her own to try to reactivate the ship's emergency power. That lets them through an old rusted security gate, and from there, up a ladder. The hatch at the top of the ladder leads them onto a higher deck of the ship, which still has air. As they come up out of the water, they notice a dead man slumped against a nearby wall, wearing an armband and vest that identify him as an agent of the FBC. He hasn't been dead for long, and he's holding a voice recorder. It contains his name, Dario Barioni, and his last request, which is to turn the recorder over to "General" Lansdale. Barioni was part of an FBC combat team sent to the Dido to claim a video log. The members of Veltro that still lived inside the wreck weren't willing to give up without a fight, however, and Jack Norman in particular fought like a demon. By 7:48 PM the previous night, Barioni was the last survivor of his team. They were unable to fulfill their objective. It turns out they're inside the Dido's guest cabins, although a year of being underwater and inhabited by lunatics hasn't done the decoration a lot of good. The area is littered with corpses, many of which have been laid out on the dining room table. The next room contains the video equipment and backdrop that Jack Norman used to record his ultimatum. As Jill walks into the room, a projector flips on, playing a recent video of Norman. He's visibly lost his mind, and holds a vial of the T-Abyss. Norman twists off its end and jams it into his arm, as he's come to see the T-Abyss's mutation as a nearly religious transformation. As he waits for the virus to take effect, Norman pulls a PDA out of his pocket and waves it at the camera, threatening Morgan Lansdale with it. He recorded every meeting they had and has every file on the PDA. A nearby double door leads to the Dido's equivalent of its sister ship's grand ballroom, down a long staircase littered with dead FBC agents. Jack Norman's voice can be heard through the door, still quoting Dante. He's set himself up with a throne in the ballroom, a king of a kingdom of one, with a Veltro flag behind him. When he sees Jill and Chris, he assumes they're Lansdale, there to steal the video log from him. As Norman threatens them with it, another mutative spasm strikes him and he writhes in pain, dropping his PDA to the floor at the foot of his throne. Jill picks it up quickly, and she and Chris both run to the other door. Norman tells them to wait. Whether it's from living in the wreck of the Dido for a year or some natural resistance, the T-Abyss he took has yet to mutate him appreciably. He decides to seal the deal, and as Chris and Jill watch, he bites off the end of another vial. That's enough to kickstart his personal evolution, and Norman instantly begins to grow. His first attack is a vicious claw strike that Jill barely ducks, and she drops Norman's PDA. It skids into a corner. 6:40 AM: Jack Norman, no longer human, makes his last stand. The double dose of the T-Abyss has let him mutate further and faster than any of the other infectees they've seen, even Rachael. He's acquired a new organ mounted inside his skull that disorients Jill with flashes of light, creating the illusion that he's teleporting around the room or conjuring false images of himself. She notices that the real Norman, wherever he is, often emits a purple gas from his mouth. He's big and durable, but he has a glass jaw, and she's able to knock Norman off-balance with shotgun blasts to his exposed heart. Jill plays a guessing game, doing her best to see through Norman's illusions and counterattack. He's one of the most durable mutants either of them has ever faced, to the point where Chris wonders aloud if Norman's immortal. His weak spot turns out to be a pulsating yellow organ on Norman's back, which is protected by an armored carapace. As the fight wears on, Norman becomes more reckless, and he finally leaves himself open to attack from behind. Jill shoots the organ, which explodes into a disgusting shower of fluid. Norman roars in defiance, then falls to the floor. Norman says aloud how glad he is that he can finally die, and reaches out for the Veltro flag with the last of his strength. As he goes limp, his hand knocks over some lit candles, which set the flag alight. Jill picks up Norman's PDA from where it fell. The first video she pulls up on it is shot with a hidden camera from behind Jack Norman, sitting at a table somewhere as Morgan Lansdale explains his plan: dispersion of the virus via a UAV on the cruise ship. Lansdale even picks up a briefcase and opens it so Norman can have a look inside, showing off eight vials of "bonafide T-Abyss." The meeting comes off like Lansdale hiring mercenaries rather than conspiring with known terrorists, which amuses Norman. It's like Lansdale's slumming. Jill beams the video straight to BSAA headquarters, where it plays in O'Brian's office on the big monitor screen. The FBC soldiers look at each other, confused, as O'Brian turns to Lansdale with just a hint of smugness. Lansdale admits he's underestimated the BSAA, and maybe O'Brian as well. O'Brian offers Lansdale the vial Jill found, saying he can have it back now that the BSAA's done with it, but Lansdale doesn't rise to the bait. He's picked up O'Brian's copy of the "Divine Comedy," and asks O'Brian if he can see Lansdale's dilemma. If he hadn't caused the Terragrigia Panic, Lansdale claims, the world would still be completely ignorant of the threat they face from bio-terrorism. He goes so far as to say that no one has the right to detain him, as he's done what he's done in the name of the greater good. O'Brian, not buying his argument for a second, places him under arrest for the same charges Lansdale had just leveled against him. Lansdale's own soldiers escort Lansdale out of the room, but not before he accuses the BSAA of making a huge mistake. ================================================================ 18xiv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS ================================================================ In the wake of Morgan Lansdale's arrest, the FBC is dissolved. Most of its agents and resources are transferred to the BSAA. The BSAA is subsequently overhauled, made into an international organization under the auspices of the United Nations. Quint and Keith are shown walking away from the crater that was once Valkonien Mokki Airport, seemingly unhurt. Keith goes on to become a leading figure at the BSAA's East African branch, while Quint refuses promotion and continues to work in the main BSAA office's R&D department. Parker is found adrift off the shore of Malta and rescued. He's shown reading a BSAA manual and recovering from his broken leg. A month later, he returns to work as a Special Operations Agent at the main BSAA office. Clive O'Brian stepped down from his position as the head of the BSAA, although he retained the respect of his subordinates. He went on to serve as an advisor while writing a detective novel. Chris and Jill are shown as they approach the front door of Ozwell Spencer's mansion, just as in "Lost In Nightmares." "...they have no idea what horrific fate awaits them." Finally, in an upscale coffee house somewhere, Jessica Sherawat is reading a copy of the "Divine Comedy." A man sets a vial of the T-Abyss down on the table across from her, and without looking, she says, "Almost too easy, wasn't it?" The company just let them "take Morgan out with the trash." The man, wearing a pair of sunglasses, is glimpsed briefly in reflection. "It's a tough world," he says, and starts to leave. Jessica has one question, though; why did he save Parker? Raymond Vester turns around and takes off his sunglasses. He had his reasons, he says. Jessica notes that the BSAA isn't as useless as she'd thought it was, and he agrees. "The fun's just getting started," Raymond says, and walks away. ======================================== 18xvii. Conclusions About The Conclusion ======================================== 1. Pretty much every major character except Jack Norman has survived. 2. I'm not even willing to count Rachael out, since at absolute worst, she eats an RPG in the cargo hold and you never see her again. In this series, that's the equivalent of a playful wink. 3. Morgan Lansdale has been arrested as a terrorist sympathizer, and does not appear to have any allies left. With Jack Norman's video files, he's likely to be convicted for what could be thousands of separate charges. 4. The United States's Federal Bioterror Commission has been closed. 5. Jessica Sherawat and Raymond Vester are working for an unknown third party, and escaped the sinking of the Queen Zenobia with a sample of the T-Abyss virus. 6. Veltro has been thoroughly wiped out. If there are any members left, they're hiding really well. ======================== 18xvi. Random Commentary ======================== 1) The episodic structure of Revelations doesn't make a lot of sense for a stand-alone game. I wonder if it got most of the way towards release as a serial download and was repurposed for the 3DS at the last minute. It'd explain a couple of things, like the load times. 2) Heh. "Double Mystery." It sounds like something Encyclopedia Brown would handle. 3) An awful lot of the game's later plot wouldn't happen or would happen somewhat differently if Chris had asked Jessica out on a date at some point. The only way she could've been more obvious is with a lap dance. (I don't know if it's just to provide ironic foreshadowing for Jill's "death," but Chris is so devoted to Jill in Revelations that it's bordering on romantic obsession.) 4) You can find the FBC's 2004 charter on a chair in a storeroom while you're playing as Parker during Episode 3. Looking at it, it's easy to see why Lansdale thought he needed more authority, as the charter makes the FBC sound like forest rangers in lab coats. 5) Jack Norman's recital at the end of Episode III is from Canto XXXIII of Dante's Inferno: http://www.classicreader.com/book/142/33/ There's a pretty good writeup on Ugolino on Wikipedia if you're curious. He's got one of the creepier stories in the whole poem, and this canto shows up more than once in Revelations. 6) So I guess Hunters eat human bodies whole now. Good to know. 7) It's difficult to appreciate just how transcendent a dick move Episode 6 is until your second time through the game. They've gone out of their way to make you think it's the Zenobia, to the point where there are unreadable files in the same locations, and the fighting's so intense after you reach the casino that it glosses over a lot of the other issues. 8) The theme of Episode 7 is "Parker says something that would make Jill roll her eyes." It's the worst day of his life! Hunters?! It's like all his old enemies have come back to haunt him! 9) Looking at how similar big projects have worked in the real world, you could probably assume that Terragrigia would not be repeated. The game makes it sound like they'd barely gotten in through the door when Veltro obliterated the place, so I can't see a lot of investors raring to go on a second one. 10) The Japanese version of Revelations shipped with a bonus DVD. One of the features on it is Jessica's Report, a translation of which is available on Project Umbrella. It provides a little background material and is generally an entertaining read. 11) Cinematic references in Revelations include: -- The whole game has a lot of the 1989 James Cameron movie _The Abyss_ in it, right down to the enemies that look like they're made of water. -- There's a deer head on the wall of the cabin that Jill wakes up in. That deer head has shown up in multiple RE games, as noted under RE4's summary above. -- The Pale Rider revolver from Raid Mode is reminiscent of the comically large gun the Joker uses in the 1988 _Batman_ movie. ========================================= 19. RESIDENT EVIL: OPERATION RACCOON CITY ========================================= RE:ORC is an online third-person shooter developed by Slant Six, the studio behind the PlayStation 3's SOCOM series. The game's main story campaign is from the point of view of the Wolfpack, a group of six Umbrella mercenaries who see action during the destruction of Raccoon City, and who inadvertently wander into and out of the events of both RE2 and RE3. A second campaign is available as a paid download, starring Echo Six, a U.S. Special Forces team that undertakes various missions at the same time as the Wolfpack. RE:ORC was made and marketed as an "alternate universe" game, giving the player the opportunity to effect and change the events of both RE2 and RE3. Since it's explicitly non-canon, summarizing it in this document is largely pointless. =================== 20. RESIDENT EVIL 6 =================== Impending. ======================================================================= 21. NON-GAME SOURCES AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ======================================================================= This section contains information on the two Wesker's Report documents, both of which were produced to provide fans with answers to some of the lingering questions from the earlier RE games, as well as a list of the few plot holes and dangling threads remaining in the series. ==================== 21i. Wesker's Report ==================== A special-issue DVD was packed in with the Japanese release of Code Veronica: Complete. Meant to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the release of the original Biohazard, this disc contained bonuses like an interview with the games' directors and Shinji Mikami. One of those extras is Wesker's Report, a video diary of Wesker's involvement in the series up to that point. It's stitched together out of scenes from RE and RE2, and narrated by Wesker's CV voice actor. At the time it was released, Wesker's Report was an attempt to fix some of the series's plot holes, such as Ada's survival, and it brought up more questions than it answered. In the eleven years since its release, however, most of the allegations in Wesker's Report have been contradicted, retconned, or outright ignored by later games in the series. As of RE:DSC, Wesker's Report is an artifact that can safely be ignored, and is only of interest to die-hard fans. If you want to know where Wesker's reputation as a manipulative bastard came from, it starts with this. ======================== 21ii. Wesker's Report II ======================== Wesker's second report was first made available on Capcom's Japanese website, as part of the promotional push for the GameCube remake of the first RE. Each of its five parts represents a report written by Wesker, supposedly to Ada Wong, as a summary of the twenty years that he spent as a researcher for Umbrella. It's actually a really interesting read for plotline enthusiasts, and does a lot to solidify the series's chronology and storyline. Naturally, that means it was never officially translated in English. (I'm using the translation from rehorror.com. Thanks, Chris Bound, for sending me the link.) Wesker was first assigned to the Arklay mansion laboratory at the age of eighteen, on July 29th, 1978. He and William Birkin, who was sixteen, were assigned to the facility by Ozwell Spencer himself, and appointed the chief researchers. At that time, the Arklay laboratories were performing research on the Ebola virus. Ostensibly, the research was meant to provide countermeasures for Ebola in the event that someone used it as a weapon, but Umbrella was really studying it for use as a bioweapon. At this time, William Birkin also intended to combine the T-Virus with Ebola, to create a new, enhanced virus. On their first visit to the Spencer mansion, Wesker and Birkin had their first encounter with an unidentified woman, who was then twenty-five. For the last eleven years, the woman had been a test subject for the research on the T-Virus. No one knew her name, or how she had come to be there. Three years later, Alexia Ashford was appointed the chief researcher at Umbrella's Antarctic facility, which caused Wesker a lot of grief. A lot of the older researchers at Arklay still respected Edward Ashford and wouldn't shut up about his granddaughter's accomplishments. Wesker decided, out of irritation with the "old fools" who worked for him, to use them as test subjects. Wesker had two bigger problems, though. One was that Birkin's ego was wounded by Alexia's appointment. His work suffered as a result. Another was a snag they'd hit in their research. At this point, Wesker and Birkin were working at Spencer's behest on making the T-Virus into a fully effective bioweapon. They had managed to get it to the point where 90% of the subjects infected with the T-Virus became zombies (the remaining 10% simply died), but Spencer would settle for nothing less than 100%. That bothered Wesker, as Spencer was apparently throwing good money after bad; he had suddenly stopped caring about the project's profitability. Wesker began to wonder what Spencer was planning, even as he and Birkin started work on the bioweapon that would eventually be known as the Hunter. Wesker's final report for 1981 deals with the aforementioned mysterious woman. The Arklay lab went through human "test subjects" at an incredible rate, but they were quickly replaced. The only test subject who had managed to survive was the woman, who clung to life despite being ravaged by the Ebola virus. Wesker couldn't figure that out, either, as the data he gathered from her wasn't any different from that of any other test subject. Wesker's next report came two years later, in the winter of the sixth year he spent at Arklay. Since his last report, the research at Arklay had come to a virtual halt, but the dry spell was broken by news of Alexia Ashford's death. She had apparently made a mistake while working on the T-Veronica virus, one of her personal projects. It was rumored that Alexia had injected herself with it, but Wesker disregarded those stories. With Alexia dead, William Birkin changed back to the driven scientist he'd been when he first arrived at Arklay. (There's a slight discrepancy here, as CV implies that the T-Veronica virus was a secret project, while Wesker's Report 2 implies that most people knew about it. On the other hand, Wesker says that he'd meant to find out more about Alexia's research all along, but had to put that project aside for later. Wesker may have independently learned Alexia's secret.) Wesker began to have suspicions about Ozwell Spencer's motivations. Wesker's private studies of the T-Virus had revealed that it could infect most forms of life, from plants to insects and larger animals. If that was the case, then why was the Arklay mansion situated in the middle of such a large forest? In the event of a breakout, the mansion's solitude wouldn't prevent the spreading of the virus. If anything, the plant and animal life in the Raccoon Forest would spread it further and faster. It seemed to Wesker as though Spencer had set up this laboratory because he *wanted* the virus to spread. Wesker resolved to gather more information, and he couldn't do that as a simple researcher. Quietly, he continued his work with Birkin, to conceal his true motivations from Spencer. Birkin married another researcher at the facility, and they had a daughter in 1986. Two years later, Wesker and Birkin's research ran into a new set of problems. They had begun planning the creation of a powerful bioweapon, the Tyrant, but Birkin's method of creating the Tyrant, which utilized the T-Virus, had almost no chance of success. In their simulations, only one subject in a hundred million would actually become a Tyrant after being subjected to the process. The rest would simply become zombies. An Umbrella facility in Europe had come up with a plan to circumvent this problem, known as the "Nemesis Project," and with their help, Wesker managed to get a sample of their work from the French facility. (1988: Wesker wrings a virus sample out of a French laboratory. 1998: an assault team is sent after the Raccoon City labs on orders from the head of Umbrella's French division. 2002: a crazy bastard who might be French takes the fall for the Arklay outbreak. Coincidences are not useful. See the RE2 FAQs for more.) The Nemesis itself was a parasitical life form. It would take over a host and create a bioweapon with enhanced intelligence and incredible power. The problem that the European branch had encountered was that the Nemesis parasite invariably killed its hosts. Wesker theorized that if they could prolong the survival time of a host, he and Birkin could get the credit for the Nemesis Project. It happened that Wesker had access to a perfect test subject. The mysterious woman was still alive, despite the tortures inflicted upon her, so she seemed like a natural candidate for the Nemesis parasite. When Wesker tested the parasite on her, it entered her brain and disappeared. After further testing, Wesker discovered that the woman had somehow consumed the parasite. This occasioned a new series of tests on the woman, which would in time give rise to a new bioweapon: the G-Virus project. The next report was written seven years later. Wesker had been transferred to Umbrella's secret service, while Birkin's work on the G-Virus was authorized in 1991. Neither of them spent much time at Arklay anymore, as Wesker wasn't a researcher anymore and Birkin did most of his work in the labs underneath Raccoon City. Apparently, Birkin first discovered the G-Virus inside the body of the woman who wouldn't die in 1988. The G-Virus, like the T-Virus, mutated its hosts, but unlike the T-Virus, would keep mutating the host on its own. While those infected with the T-Virus might change if they were exposed to another stimulant, like radiation, the G-Virus caused constant changes inside its subjects. That was why the woman had been able to survive anything the Arklay researchers had thrown at her, from the Nemesis parasite to Ebola; the G-Virus simply mutated her to accomodate the new virus in her system. Birkin's stated intention with the study of the G-Virus was to take this mutation to its furthest extent, to see what would happen. (A frequent question that's come up in my e-mail is exactly how the G-Virus came to be inside Lisa's body in the first place. The series never really gets more specific than this: after they stuck every disease and virus they had into Lisa Trevor, they eventually noticed she had the G-Virus. It is the result of Lisa being a cauldron of disease for thirty years. That's all you get for an explanation. Go home.) Wesker was dumbfounded that Spencer had actually allowed Birkin to pursue the research. He cynically noted that Spencer hadn't shown up at Arklay for years, almost as if he was expecting something bad to happen there. Even with Wesker's move to the secret service, he hadn't been able to get any more insight into Spencer's plans. Wesker came to the mansion in 1995 to try and kill the unkillable woman. The consumption of the Nemesis had made her slightly more lucid, although her behavior was erratic. When she had first been injected with the "mother virus," all those years ago, she had been known to rip the faces off of other women and wear them herself. She had recently resumed that behavior, and had killed three researchers. Since she wasn't needed anymore for the G-Virus research, the order came down to get rid of her. While it took three days, she was finally declared dead, and the president of Umbrella disposed of her body. (At least, he said he did. The images that accompany the last page of the Report confirm that the "woman who wouldn't die" was Lisa Trevor.) Wesker left the Arklay labs in 1995, still wondering what Ozwell Spencer had in mind. =========================== 21iii. Unanswered Questions =========================== RESIDENT EVIL: 1) As per Wesker's Report II, what did Spencer actually do with Lisa Trevor's body? RESIDENT EVIL 2: 1) If Raccoon City was being overrun by zombies, how did both Leon and Claire manage to avoid hearing about it? How did they get into the city without noticing the destruction or the quarantine, or being stopped by the military blockade? (To some extent, this question is the result of the Raccoon City outbreak being gradually increased in intensity and scope. Starting with RE3, the city itself has gone from the suburb from RE2's exterior segments to a small but thriving metropolis, with its own zoo, university, subway, trainyard, and waterfront. When RE2 was released, it was apparently intended that the outbreak was a sudden event in an isolated town, but RE3 turned it into a major disaster that had been going on for a week by the time Leon and Claire arrived.) 2) If you inspect Jill's desk in the STARS office, there's a photo of a man, "probably her boyfriend." Who is it? (Back in the day, this was a reasonably popular topic. It's since died down.) 3) How was Mr. X able to track the G-Virus? (Was it just smarter than it looked? Could it smell the vial?) RESIDENT EVIL 3: 1) Why did the U.S. government attack the Dead Factory? (Keep in mind that RE:ORC's Echo Six campaign is non-canon.) 2) Why does Carlos wait for two days before going to find an antidote for Jill? What does he "have to take care of" after he leaves Jill in the chapel? RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR: 1) What were the Cleaners? (Andrew Fernando writes in to say that Brady's official guide for Survivor lists the Cleaners as "robotic special forces troops," set to disintegrate upon death.) 2) Who is Ark? Lott calls him a detective and Ark knows Leon somehow, but one of the side effects of Ark not knowing who he is for most of the game is that we know next to nothing about Ark himself. 3) Why did Ark think it was a good idea to pose as Vincent? (It's supposedly to collect information, but it sounds like a really stupid plan.) 4) Who set fire to Vincent's office? It's the only place in the whole city that's sustained any fire damage. 5) Who the hell names a kid "Lott"? RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA: 1) What happened in the three months between RE2/RE3 and RE:CV? At this point, it's one of the least-explored points on the entire timeline, with the exception of the events of Survivor. 2) What did Claire do or see inside Umbrella's Paris office that had them going after her in the middle of the city with an attack helicopter? 3) How did she get inside the base in the first place? She's not exactly a master spy. 4) Exactly what were Alexia's powers? She's got a number of different abilities that don't share a common theme, which may suggest that the final-stage T-Veronica mutation was only limited by her imagination. 5) What was it about Alexia's sudden appearance that made Wesker drop Chris and run away? 6) What does D.I.J. stand for? RESIDENT EVIL ZERO: 1) Where'd Rebecca go after escaping from the Spencer mansion? 2) Where's Billy? 3) What happened to Billy Coen in Africa, and did it have something to do with the mother virus? (For some reason, Billy can identify the corpses of Progenitor victims on sight, and never says how or why he knows that. With the later revelations about the virus's origin in RE5, it's worth asking if Billy's mission in Africa was anywhere near Kijuju. Of course, I really doubt that this is more than a coincidence.) 4) Why did the Bravo team's helicopter crash? (In the original RE, Rebecca mentions at one point in Chris's game that she was the last one to service the helicopter, which was the source of a fan theory at the time that Rebecca was quietly in league with Wesker. No such claim is made in the remake.) 5) From Steven Collins: when the Alpha team finds the Bravo team's helicopter, it should be relatively close to both train tracks and the wreckage of the MP vehicle that was transporting Billy, but it isn't. Who moved the helicopter? RESIDENT EVIL 4: 1) Why does Wesker want Leon's body (cf. Krauser's Notes)? RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK - FILE #2: 1) How does Alyssa know what happened to Kurt in the hospital? RESIDENT EVIL: UMBRELLA CHRONICLES: 1) Who or what caused the outbreak at the Caucasus Facility? It appears to happen entirely at random, and neither Sergei nor Wesker seem to have anything to do with it. RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS: 1) Who are Jessica and Raymond working for? (Jessica's Report indicates that Jessica at least knows Excella Gionne, which a lot of fans point to as proof that she's working for Tricell.) ========================================================================== 22. MISTAKES ========================================================================== In addition to the cheerful ignorance of pretty much the entire science of biology, there are a few other errors scattered throughout the series. This section lists them just for fun. Contributors to this section include myself, Cal Adams, "CVXFREAK," Joseph Brooks, Michael Soo, Mark Chang, Andrew Leonard, Frank Kool, James Middleton, Rob MacGregor, and "TwistingGears." RE0: If you examine the Dining Car Key, what the tag says and what the text field says it says are two entirely different things. REv.2: Presumably, the gunshot heard at the start of the game is fired by Kenneth Sullivan. However, when you watch Kenneth's film in the media room at the end of the game, he fires three times. George Trevor's last diary entry is dated November 31st. There are only thirty days in November. (I'm including this for the sake of having it, so I don't hear about it again. All in all, though, give Trevor a break, huh? He was starving to death.) The Observation Note file, ostensibly written by William Birkin, has a comment in it about how Birkin wants to rub his success in Alexia Ashford's face. The problem there is that the success he's talking about is the G-Virus, which was first discovered in 1988, five years after Alexia's "death." Therefore, either Birkin's unhinged, Birkin and Wesker knew that Alexia faked her death, or this is a genuine mistake. Until I hear something else, I'm considering it to be the latter. (Dan Kirk makes an interesting observation in that we have no idea when Alfred's delusion started; he could've been masquerading as Alexia for quite some time. As such, Birkin might've thought that Alexia was still alive, thanks to Alfred.) RE2: Very few of the guns in the game are correctly labeled or firing the right ammunition. When you fight the G-Type in Leon B, it wrenches off a chunk of the railing to beat you with. If you look in that room before the fight, that chunk of the railing isn't there. In Claire A, when Claire sees Leon on the monitor room in the Umbrella lab, Leon isn't bandaged. In Leon A, the gun that Leon concludes is Ada's is actually Annette's; Ada's gun clearly fell off the walkway with her. In the N64 port, when Ada catches up to Annette in Leon A, you'll hear Claire's voice instead of Ada's during Annette's expository FMV. The Night Watchman's Diary file has a couple of continuity errors, especially in light of the timeline established by later games. The upside-down flag in the RPD briefing room is indicative of a state of emergency, and isn't actually a mistake. RE3: The RE3 manual claims that Jill, at the age of twenty-three, is a former member of the United States Delta Force. Delta is comprised of either Green Berets or Army Rangers, neither of which admit women at the time of this writing. Further, even if we assume the setting allows otherwise or if Jill was a member of Delta's "Funny Platoon," it would be extremely unlikely for Jill to reach Delta by 23, let alone to have left. RE:ORC does feature a mixed-gender U.S. Special Forces team, which suggests that women have less difficulty gaining admission to combat squads in the RE universe, but it's also non-canon. (Subsequent games have glossed over Jill's military career as fast as possible; for example, her RE5 file lists what she can do but doesn't say how she came by those skills. Comparatively, Chris has been ex-Air Force since his introduction.) Brad Vickers is killed by a tentacle through the head. This would make his becoming a zombie, as seen in RE2, impossible. (As we know from both gameplay and Brian Irons's paranoid rant in RE2, an injury that damages the brain prevents a human from becoming a zombie. The injury that kills Brad punches a big hole through his head; if you check his body after the fight with Nemesis, Jill notes that his face has been "decimated.") No one ever actually tells Jill Nicholai's name. She sort of figures it out on her own. As mentioned above, the area code on the Grady's Inn sign in the introduction is for Manhattan Island. For those of you who aren't Americans, that would place Raccoon City, with its mountain range, big forest, handy lake, and Midwestern locale, somewhere in New York City. The Mercenary's Diary file is written in a book with the words "Diary of Chris Redfield" on the cover. Chris apparently has his own line of hardcover journals. RE:S: In real life, the Nanbu pistol, also known as Handgun 4, was chambered to fire 8mm rounds. Survivor's 9mm parabellum rounds wouldn't fit in the gun. CV: It doesn't actually snow in most of Antarctica. It's too cold. Steve manages to run out of ammo in both guns simultaneously after shooting his father, after he's just blown the hell out of the wall in the last room with the gun in his right hand. (I would further note that Claire somehow makes one clip fit two guns.) If Alexander Ashford had genetically engineered a single embryo to produce intelligent offspring, it shouldn't have resulted in fraternal twins. Twins are the result when a single zygote either develops into two embryos or when two separate egg cells are fertilized by two separate sperm. (It makes you wonder what that surrogate mother he hired was doing in her spare time.) CVX: The five-minute countdown to a nuclear explosion conveniently stops right before Chris's showdown with Wesker, as if the bomb doesn't want to go off until it sees how the fight turns out. RE:O: In the longer, character-specific endings, we see the missiles hit Raccoon City while it's still dark. This contradicts both the beginning of "Decisions, Decisions" (it's twilight when the characters arrive at the university) and RE3 (where the missiles hit right after dawn). RE4: The game is apparently set in an alternate universe where people on Spain's western coast still use the peseta and speak badly conjugated Mexican Spanish, yet are not actually in Spain. RE:O2: Once again, the missiles hit at the wrong time. RE5: As with RE4, the location of Kijuju is sort of deliberately confused. The KAZ is apparently an oil-producing country in West Africa, but their currency is the Nigerian naira and the natives all yell at the player in Swahili, the official language of a handful of nations in East Africa. The entire final fight with Wesker, as noted on TV Tropes, is spent in such close proximity to pools of lava that all three characters should be having serious health issues. Being that close to molten rock is usually enough to kill a person. RE6: The inhabitants of the country of "Etonia" are speaking in Serbian. ================================================================== 23. Say What?! ================================================================== You people are crazy. In the years before RE4 came out, the RE series had a certain cult appeal, and every new game added six or seven unsolved plot threads to the mix. The fanbase rapidly turned into a nonstop carnival of pure weirdness concerning the game's various unsolved mysteries, and most of the theorists wrote to me at some point. Say What?! is meant strictly for fun. This is not an invitation to send me even *weirder* theories, or indeed, to send theories at all. All theories regarding Wesker's survival predate Wesker's Report, save #19. All theories regarding Nemesis's origins predate the RE film and Wesker's Report 2. 1. Wesker survived RE because there is more than one Wesker. There is actually a *series* of Weskers, created by forces unknown, which are sent out to perform various tasks. These Weskers are: 1a. ...clones. 1b. ...robots. 1c. ...robot clones. 1d. ...robot killer death clones. Yeah, bitch. 1e. ...Rebecca. Yes, that's right, *all* of them are *Rebecca*. She's *very clever*. 1f. ...Nemesis. Turnabout is fair play. 1g. ...created by Dr. Mephisto for his own evil purposes. Some of them have as many as *five* asses! Quake in terror, mortals! The five-assed Wesker thirsts for your blood! 2. Nemesis was actually: 2a. Wesker. The radiation from the nuke turned him human again. (This, and the other radiation-based theories, all stem back from before Outbreak, when we all thought the missile at the end of RE3 was a nuke. Capcom's walked that back a bit since those days.) 2b. The original Wesker. The one in CV was a clone (with/without "Hunter genes," depending on who's talking). 2c. Jill's anonymous "boyfriend," mentioned in RE2. 2d. Ada. She survived the end of RE2 by using the G-Virus, and then turned right around and became Nemesis. (The G-Virus also enables limited time travel.) 2e. Rebecca. 2f. The (previously) unidentified guy in the STARS group photo. 2g. Regina White. No, I don't know why he'd be Regina, particularly since if Regina exists in the RE universe, she'd have been eleven in 1998. 2h. Hey, Billy Coen could've been Nemesis! (HATING YOU SO MUCH) 2i. Hey, D.I.J. could be Nemesis, who was turned into a mouse by the nuke's radiation! (...am I the only one who didn't learn about radiation from Silver Age Marvel comics?) 2j. American "prop comic" Carrot Top, in his video game debut. 2k. He was sculpted out of delicious tapioca pudding, and left in the microwave too long. 2l. No one actually *made* him. They found him clogging up the floor drain in the Dead Factory. 2m. Nemesis is 1952 Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. "STAAARRRSSSS" is really code for "Eisenhower beat me, so I will extract revenge on you, Jill! Rrraaarrggghhh!" (I always thought Adlai looked a little shifty.) 3. Wesker is "obviously" a vampire as of CV. He's fast, he's strong, he's arrogant... he's a vampire! Come on! Work with me! 4. Jill quit S.T.A.R.S. and the RPD because of--ahem--unwanted attentions from Chief Irons. (According, that is, to "anonymous sources" inside the development staff. Why is it that everyone and their mom, EXCEPT ME, has "anonymous sources" inside Capcom?) 5. You can play as [Rebecca/Wesker/Akuma] in RE2. (No, you can't. Rebecca and Wesker are purely Internet rumors, but the Akuma rumor was printed in one of Electronic Gaming Monthly's April Fool's issues, and like everything else that showed up in their April Fool's issues, the rumor spread like influenza and has far outlived its funniness. According to EGM, if you beat the game in under an hour and a half, using *only* the handgun and knife, Akuma would become playable. Vincent Merken did it, probably just to prove he could, and it didn't work.) 6. Wesker works for the American government (yet another fact from those "anonymous sources"). 7. Brad was an Umbrella spy before his death. (And not a very good one, either.) 8. Annette Birkin threw the rocket launcher in RE2. (It's Ada's voice actress (a guy on Evil-Online actually ran a spectrograph and proved it), it's Ada's polygon model, Leon thinks it's Ada, and Ada's still alive.) 9. D.I.J. is the Ashfords' butler. The T-Virus turned him into a mouse. Now, he uses his powers to fight evil! 10. Lara Croft threw the rocket launcher in RE2. Yeah. I know. The girl gets around. 11. Nemesis was a G-Virus creature, because the Resident Evil 3 two-page magazine ad shows a broken vial of the G-Virus. (It's not the conclusion that I have trouble with, so much as it is the process by which that conclusion was reached.) 12. Ada was Rebecca in disguise, who was in turn Nemesis (who lived in the house that Jack built!). 13. In CV, Wesker is, and I quote, a "super stealth Tyrant." 14. Nemesis was a G-Virus creature! He was he was he was! Here's an incredibly unlikely series of events that would explain his being a G-Virus creature, none of which are so much as hinted at in the game! (Remember what I said about taking this too seriously?) 15. Resident Evil 1.5 was a better game than RE2; it had hand grenades, better scenery, and Elza Walker was a better protagonist than Claire. The only reason it was canceled was because Square lured away most of Capcom's design team so they could work on Parasite Eve. (...yeah. It's worth mentioning that I asked the guy who sent me this to produce a source for it, and he never replied.) 16. Nemesis escaped from the ruptured tank in RE2's double-locked room. 17. The reason Rebecca disappears after RE is because Wesker used her brain to make the RE Tyrant. (There's that time travel thing again.) 18. Wesker's body was rebuilt, using the genetic material of a Hunter, by an Unspecified Third Party, Probably His Employer In CV (TM). That Unspecified Third Party (TM) has been mentioned to me so often that it's earned its WWWF Grudge Match (TM)-style (TM). 19. Wesker survived RE because the Tyrant threw him off of the Spencer mansion's balcony. (This was sent in *after* the Wesker's Report updates, by a charming individual who claimed he'd e-mailed Capcom and that was what they'd told him.) 20. This one comes from the RE0 gamefaqs.com boards: Wesker's Plot Device Virus was a special, mutation-free strain of the G-Virus. (The problem is that Birkin doesn't perfect the G-Virus at all for another two months, so it's unlikely that he'd have a better version on tap.) 21. Osmund Saddler is Ozwell Spencer. Their names are so similar, after all; they've just *got* to be the same guy. ================================================================== 24. About the Authors ================================================================== I work as a freelance writer, and have written several strategy guides for DoubleJump Books. Dan Birlew's author's information can be found in his strategy guides, available from Brady. Also consult www.danbirlew.net. ================================================================== 25. Conclusion ================================================================== Thanks to Dan Birlew, for starting this document and letting me update it. Thanks also go out to Ben Plante, who's apparently my editor; to Toby Normoyle, who sent me Wesker's Report dubbed onto videotape back in the early 2000s (you younger people have no idea how difficult some things could be before YouTube came along), as well as the uncensored introduction to RE, the new ending for CV, and some RE1.5 movies; and to everyone else who's contributed to and helped shape this document. I appreciate most of the letters, and I've probably let you know if I didn't appreciate yours. At the 2003 Digital Arts Conference in Melbourne, a paper was presented entitled "Reading Resident Evil-Code Veronica X." This document was used as one of the source references. If you're interested, it can be found at: http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Tosca.pdf If you're interested in placing this document on your own website, please e-mail me for permission. Naturally, using this document for anything other than non-profit purposes, or altering the content of the document in any way, are both strictly forbidden. It's also your responsibility to make sure that the copy of the analysis that you're hosting is the most recent one. Questions, comments, corrections, and feedback are welcomed. Please e-mail me at multimedia.superstar at gmail dot com. Note that sending me any of the following will at best get you a rude response: -- theories (this applies to *everyone*) -- requests or questions about an update -- unsolicited attached files -- questions that have already been specifically answered in this document -- viruses. Please do me a favor and run some scanners. I get *lots* of viruses, and it's all because of this FAQ. Thomas Wilde a.k.a. Wanderer multimedia dot superstar at gmail dot com