So we finally had a glimpse of Resident Evil Village gameplay. Thanks to the recent re showcase and game demo on PS5, we were even able to visit the village castle for ourselves. And to be honest we can’t get enough of this new classic gothic horror direction. The sexy vampires, werewolves and spooky castles must be a nightmare.
But what exactly does this new information tell us about the overall story of Resident Evil Village? Or even what’s going on in the entire Resident Evil timeline. It’s time for a theory.
The story of Resident Evil Village is set a few years after the events of Resident Evil 7, you are once again playing Ethan Winters. He and his wife Mia have been living peacefully in a new place. Apparently under the protection of the BSAA, trying to build a new life together, but suddenly, as often happens in horror games, tragedy strikes them once again. According to the official Resident Evil Village website, it appears that BSAA captain Chris Redfield attacked them, and in the footage shown in the early trailers, Chris Redfield appears to have actually murdered Mia, and then he kidnapped Ethan and Mia’s daughter, whose name is Rosemary. Then the story seems to focus on Ethan has to get his daughter back, which means he has to travel to a frozen village in eastern Europe.
So why does Chris Redfield betray BASS and Ethan, Chris has been one of the central heroes of the Resident Evil series from the beginning. He is a former member of stars who has saved the world many times and worked directly for the BSAA, an organization that fights the evil bio-terrorist group umbrella, is the threat behind all Resident Evil games.
At the end of Resident Evil 7, he descends from a helicopter bearing the blue Umbrella logo, a confusingly named organization that aims to clean up the chaos caused by the Red Umbrella Group, and it works with the BSAA to achieve this goal. So it doesn’t make sense that they’d suddenly turn on a family they’re protecting. But there’s something different about Chris, and the new artwork announced in the game seems to suggest that he’s not just gone rogue, but possibly feral. Could Chris have been compromised, or turned into a werewolf.
It could mean werewolf blood, it could mean a werewolf alliance, or it could just mean that he’s turned into a lone wolf, but one thing is for sure, Chris has a plan.
Is Ethan’s young daughter Rosemary important to that plan, or is it Ethan himself? I mean, what advantage might Capcom’s description of a normal human Ethan have over a real trained military agent, Chris?
Let’s put those questions aside for a moment. What does this have to do with a village in Eastern Europe? It seems the whole area is prone to ancient rituals, has a penchant for the occult, and has plenty of gothic monsters as a facade.
We think that might be a contributing factor. On the official website, Capcom has included an image showing a part of the castle with various family crests on the walls, the names of the 4 families.
Taken on it’s own,, this information makes little sense, but after watching the latest footage of the game previewed at the Re showcase, and playing the Resident Evil Village demo, “The Maiden”, things start to make a little more sense. Her name is Alcina Dimitrescu and the castle is her home, Within its walls, she and her daughters imprison young women. If the notes you find in the maiden demo are to be believed, they create a uniquely flavored wine with their blood. The lady and her daughters all display classic vampiric qualities and they also display abilities not a million miles away from marguerite bakers in Re7. The ability to control or turn into swarms of insects. The symbol of this house Dimitrescu, glimpsed in the crest on wine bottles and doors and even on the lady herself, is a flower. This flowering plant, native to West Africa, was bred under certain conditions to produce a native virus It is possible that this flower, or at least a similar one, is where the ancient Dimitricu family drew their vampiric powers.
Now we come to the other crests, we don’t know much about the other two families, but we have heard the name Heisenberg before. The tall lady mentions him directly, mentions that Ethan probably managed to escape him in the village before going to the castle and later, when confronted with Ethan, the tall lady says “you escaped from my brother’s idiotic games didn’t you” so this leads us to believe Heisenberg is somehow believed to be her brother, so the two families are somehow linked in a familial way.
This character we’ve glimpsed in some of the trailers could be Heisenberg. Also, in this clip it looks like he and Ethan are preparing for a boss fight. The character also carries a large hammer slashing mace type thing that some werewolf figures wielded elsewhere in the demo. So let’s say for a second that the Dimitrescu house represents a vampire and the Heisenberg house may represent a werewolf.
We’re not sure yet how their horse and horseshoe symbols fit into this theory. But let’s go ahead and do it. The other two houses would not represent other monsters and therefore other mutated DNA altering virus strains, house Morrow seems to be associated with water and the symbol for house Beneviento falls back on the ships we have seen before in the Resident Evil series. But either way, every time we see these four crests in footage of the game they are linked by one thing, the umbrella logo. Chris could be leading Ethan to eastern Europe to try and get back to the very beginning and how and why the umbrella was created. And it’s possible that Ethan or Baby Rose will have a starring role in any family planned ceremony. In this scene, Mother Miranda, the tall lady speaks to on the phone, could be the matriarch of the Beniviento family or the Moreau family, or she could be someone else entirely.
Finding a special child is not entirely surprising, the Resident Evil series has always used children as hosts for deadly virus strains or evil intentions, see lisa trevor, sherry birkin, natalia corda and evelyn . In the new orphanage sequence added to the Resident Evil 2 remake, there is a whole network of child experiments going on. Apparently, evil organizations and cults think that children are the perfect conduit for these biological weapons. It may be a practice that dates back to the founding of Umbrella.
The symbol has appeared on screenshot videos, Capcom says it’s very important to the story. So much so that the development team thought it might give away too much. It just looks like a sort of mutant fetus surrounded by bird wings, but it could also be the original Umbrella logo or where the design of the Umbrella logo came from.
An exploration of their heritage and ancestry that can be traced back to these four ancient houses, each of them representing an older, more classic horror archetype, each tied to a different strain of biological weaponry that we encountered at one point or another in the Resident Evil timeline.
Not only do we have a European village set up and then move to a castle area, we have one of the new merchants which will be selling us healing items ammo and grenades, weapons and weapon upgrades. And buying trinkets that we find in the local area. According to Capcom this merchant Duke will be just like the original merchant and he will appear in specific locations in order for Ethan to browse his wares.
Echoning our Re4 even further, is the return of the attache case inventory system. So expect a beautiful arrangement of perfectly symmetrical suitcases filled with as many firearms as we can carry. Although now we get the added bonus of being able to craft resources too. All these callbacks to Re4 are interesting though, as we are in a different part of Europe but everything else about this whole setup. A kidnapped young woman culting the locals and the evil nobility is super familiar. Whether there’s a thematic reason why Capcom is clearly drawing on the aesthetic of IV or whether there’s a deeper lore connection at work here. Well, in any case, it seems to be for each region. Villages will be divided up based on these family crests, with each family likely to have a memorable boss character behind them. One part we can almost count as confirmation is that the castle is ruled by Lady Alcina, who has fans a bit hot under her collar.
In Resident Evil 7 there was really only a single enemy type apart from the bosses and it’s nice to see that the village has changed a lot. You have thralls wielding rather flashy old weapons, you have smaller werewolves and huge werewolves, you have sexy vampires and also a swarm of bees and we’re in for a good time.
So we have a release date for Resident Evil Village, probably on May 7th, but hopefully we will get more information on the story before then. Do you have any theories of your own as to why Chris is in the business of kidnapping babies, what role these families will play or why Capcom are setting out to make everyone thirsty for their main villain in this one.
