A DETAILED PLOT ANALYSIS OF THE --------------------------------------- ---- RESIDENT EVIL ---- --------------------------------------- VIDEOGAME SERIES BY CAPCOM ENTERTAINMENT Begun by Dan Birlew, 1998 Updated by Thomas Wilde with permission, 2000-2003 *****************************CONTAINS SPOILERS************************** This thesis contains spoilers. If you have not already played the games, the authors strongly suggest that you do so before reading the document. The best introduction to the games is to play them. ************************************************************************ TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction, Legal Stuff, Disclaimers, and Update History 2. Dead Men Telling Tales: RESIDENT EVIL i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL ii. Story Differences Between Chris and Jill's Games iii. Differences Between RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL "2.0" iv. Random Musings 3. Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2 i. The Plot Thickens ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3 iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2 iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2 v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame vii. Conclusions About The Conclusion viii. Random Musings 4. Nobody Here Gets Out Alive: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS i. The Death of Raccoon City ii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS iv. Different Paths v. Different Endings vi. The Epilogue Files vii. Conclusions About The Conclusion viii. Random Musings 5. Ten Thousand Bullets: 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 Musings 6. Sibling Rivalries: RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA i. A Lovely Island Hideaway: CODE VERONICA, Part One ii. The Return of Chris Redfield: CODE VERONICA, Part Two iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA iv. Conclusions About The Conclusion v. The Ashford Family Diaries vi. Random Musings 7. Becky's Big Adventure: RESIDENT EVIL ZERO i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL ZERO iii. Conclusions About the Conclusion iv. Random Musings 8. Ghost Ships: RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN i. Coming So--Aw, To Hell With It 9. Ten Thousand *More* Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: GUN SURVIVOR 2 10. We Cover the Waterfront: RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM i. Introduction ii. 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 Musings 11. A Long Time Dying: RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK i. Introduction 12. Unanswered Questions i. RESIDENT EVIL v2.0 ii. RESIDENT EVIL 2 iii. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS iv. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR v. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA vi. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO vii. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM viii. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK vi. A Look At Wesker's Report vii. Wesker's Report 2 13. Frequently Asked Questions i. Document and Series Questions ii. RESIDENT EVIL iii. RESIDENT EVIL 2 iv. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS v. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR vi. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA vii. RESIDENT EVIL: THE MOVIE viii. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ix. RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN x. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM xi. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK xii. RESIDENT EVIL 4 14. Say What?! i. The Weirdest of the Lot 15. Mistakes 16. Easter Eggs 17. About the Authors 18. Conclusion ============================================================= 1. Introduction, Legal Stuff, Disclaimers, and Update History ============================================================= And just like the movies We play out our last scene I won't cry, you won't scream -- Alien Ant Farm, "Movies" Dan Birlew began this thesis in 1998. I lucked across it in 1999, just when I was starting to get good and obsessed with Resident Evil, and found it to be a useful resource. After the release of Resident Evil 2 for the N64, I wrote a transcription of the EX Files from that game, combined with some notes on the RE storyline for the sake of the N64 crowd. That transcription is currently hosted by gameFAQs.com (among others), and after I wrote it, I got a lot of e-mail from N64 owners asking about the finer points of the storyline. After about the twelfth e-mail I got, I went back to look at Birlew's analysis for help, and wound up deciding that it needed an update; rather than answering a flood tide of e-mail, I could just point at this document and say, "Lo! I have come down from the mount with answers!" Birlew had already told me earlier that he wasn't planning on updating this document and, in fact, was legally prohibited from doing so. I asked him if I could do it. Please note the following, which was not extracted under duress of any sort: > Thomas Wilde has my full permission to continue the > Resident Evil Thesis in my place. He has full permission > from me to use any materials from my former versions that > he sees fit. I relinquish these materials to him, since I > am unable to continue or update the Thesis due to certain > agreements I have made with certain companies. > > Sincerely, > Dan Birlew > formerly known as "President Evil" 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 2000-2003, Thomas Wilde, except for those clearly labeled parts that are copyright 1998, Dan Birlew. All recognizable concepts from the Resident Evil series are copyright Capcom, and their usage in this document does not constitute a challenge to that copyright. And so on. And so forth. All rights reserved; violators will be fed to the Neptune. +------------ READING THIS DISCLAIMER *COULD* SAVE YOUR LIFE -----------+ | | | Before we begin, I'd like to issue a general disclaimer. I don't | | mind people e-mailing me to ask questions that aren't covered in | | this FAQ, but: | | | | I'M NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR "THEORIES." | | I'M NOT INTERESTED IN "ANONYMOUS SOURCES." | | I'M NOT INTERESTED IN INFORMATION "FROM THE RE STAFF." | | | | This document deals in actual, documented, in-game plotline | | information. Don't send me your dissertation on why Rebecca is a | | spy, don't tell me anything that you got out of one of S.D. Perry's | | novels, don't tell me anything that a friend of a friend was told by | | a friend who had a friend who delivered pizza to the RE staff, and | | don't e-mail me naked pictures of your sister because "she looks | | just like Jill" (wait... actually, go ahead and send those). | | I don't mind questions, but I do mind having my time wasted. | | If you *do* send me a theory, don't expect me to reply. | | If I don't reply, don't get upset. I warned you. | | Read this entire document before you send me any questions. | | If you send me some kind of outlandish claim, have an | | official source ready to back it up. | | | | Please note that for my purposes, an "official source" does not | | mean that you make something up about there being someone who | | works for Capcom who is willing to risk his job by answering | | spoilery questions about one of their flagship series at the | | behest of some dork with no noticeable English skills and an | | AOL account. I am comfortably certain that anyone who writes me | | to claim that they have such an acquaintance is lying to me, | | in an attempt to get my attention. I would like to point | | out that not only am I wise to this scam, but there is an | | an entire wing built onto Bellevue to house the surviving | | morons who tried, and succeeded, to get my attention by | | acting stupid. Trust me; you and I both have better | | things to do. Seriously. | | | | All power to the people, and ban the $%#&ing bomb. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +-------- NOT READING THIS DISCLAIMER CAUSES CANCER IN LAB RATS --------+ | | | This is a *storyline* FAQ. It deals strictly with plot | | elements of the Resident Evil series. It is not a gameplay | | FAQ. If you're having trouble getting through the game, I | | encourage you to seek out the various online FAQs written | | for the Resident Evil games (particularly those by Dan | | "President Evil" Birlew, Brett "Nemesis" Franklin, Vincent | | Merken, Henry LaPierre, Vesther Fauransy [although I recommend | | him with slight reservations; his FAQs are a little weird], | | and "Stinger 3:16"). They are all available on www.gameFAQs.com, | | among other places, and can probably be found at the same place | | where you found this document. | | | | In short, send the gameplay questions to one of those | | talented gentlemen, and/or check out their FAQs. They're | | very well-written, and have helped me with my own | | gameplay problems in the past. | | | | I *WILL NOT* reply to e-mail asking for gameplay information, Game | | Shark codes, cheats, secrets, or file transcriptions. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +-- IF YOU DON'T READ THIS DISCLAIMER, I GET TO HIT YOU WITH A PICKAX --+ | | | No, you are *not* Shinji Mikami. I'm comfortably certain that | | you don't work for Capcom of Japan, either, especially if you're | | e-mailing me from an America Online account. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ======= Updates ======= [Old updates deleted.] June 5th, 2003: -- hi! Did you see me at E3? I was the guy wandering around with a leather laptop bag, looking vaguely like he'd been hit in the face with a brick. I have updated with my impressions of the playable Resident Evil: Outbreak, formerly known as Resident Evil Online. June 30th, 2003: -- Resident Evil: Dead Aim is both easy and now in the analysis. It's Resident Evil... in the *future*. September 13th, 2003: -- letters, I get letters. And they make me tweak things. For example, I screwed up on a Dead Aim FAQ; it's fixed now. September 26th, 2003: -- stupid Paul Anderson, making me rewrite the FAQs on the movie, mutter grumble snarl moan. October 3rd, 2003: -- a long-overdue cleaning of the links list. ======================================== 2. Dead Men Telling Tales: 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 deserved notoriety for some of the worst dialogue and voice acting in console history, it also gained a fanatical following. 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, represents a new beginning for the series; it boasts ridiculously realistic graphics, a much-improved script, a better cast of voice actors (albeit that isn't saying much, as fourth-grade nativity plays have better voice acting than the original RE), and the same difficult gameplay that characterized the original, as well as a number of story elements that were left out of the original game (such as the infamous Trevor's Letters). This synopsis covers the storyline of the 2002 remake of RE. If you're looking for the original game's synopsis and FAQs, you can check them out as a separate file (eventually) at: http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/writing/birlew-re.txt =============================================== i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL =============================================== Following the strange deaths of a number of citizens of Raccoon City, the local police department has put the Special Tactics and Rescue Squad, a special force dedicated to stopping local terrorist activity, on the case. The STARS immediately sent its Bravo team, led by Enrico Marini, into the Raccoon Forest, where several of the murders occurred. The Bravo team promptly disappears. On the night of July 24th, 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... and the helicopter's pilot, dead and mangled beyond recognition. The architects of this massacre, a pack of wild dogs, soon spring an ambush, which kills Joseph Frost, a member of the Alpha team. The rest of the team attempts to fight the dogs off, but the dogs don't seem to mind gunshot wounds. The whole situation proves 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 stranded on the ground. After a headlong flight through the woods, the Alpha team takes shelter inside the nearby Spencer mansion, an old estate which was supposedly abandoned. 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 here, while defending himself against the mansion's current inhabitants. Chris will run into 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 on the floor... and crouching over him is the zombie that killed him. 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. Even worse, the zombies must be decapitated or incinerated, or a second "death" will simply cause a zombie's mutation into the berserk clawed monster that the mansion's former 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. Apparently, the people who once lived here were working on some kind of experiment, and that experiment has gone awry. Notes from the mansion's original architect, George Trevor, reveal how the mansion's new owners left him to die in the mansion's hidden labyrinths, and how they may have tortured his wife and daughter in a similar fashion. 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. Conventional weapons 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 die easily enough when the flooded observatory is drained. It's in the dormitories that new clues to the nature of this mansion are discovered; the powerful Umbrella corporation would appear to have 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 joins him. These "Hunters" are powerful and relentless, and rarely show up alone. Evading this new threat, the character is able to visit areas in the mansion that were previously locked, using a key found in the dormitories, and is thus able to find the materials 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, the purpose of which is unknown. At one end of the tunnels, hiding in a darkened dead end, the character finds Enrico Marini, the captain of the Bravo team. He's wounded, and 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 Enrice. The character gives chase to Enrico's assassin, but the arrival of a pack of Hunters covers the assassin's escape. At the tunnels' end, yet another elevator takes the character to an underground river and a loading dock. After another encounter with the twisted creature from the cabin, the character unlocks yet another door, this one leading to 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 he needs 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, a sick suspicion may begin to grow in the player's mind. 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, which has somehow reached this area by unknown means. 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, in fact, Lisa Trevor, who was experimented on by Umbrella's scientists. She has spent the last thirty years in agonizing pain, locked inside a constantly mutating body that cannot die, and has been driven quite insane. 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 has 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 sacrifice the STARS, in the name of covering up the accident and generating combat data on Umbrella's monsters. As if that wasn't enough, the team member that Wesker claimed to be "separated" from was instead 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 his secrets to. He plans to doublecross Umbrella by blowing up the mansion and all its secrets; the betrayal of STARS was simply to cover his tracks as well as the company's. To this end, he's blackmailed Barry Burton to help him destroy evidence. As the horrified character watches, Wesker unleashes the most powerful bioweapon in Umbrella's arsenal: the Tyrant, a humanoid creature built to kill. Unfortunately for Wesker, it isn't very good at taking orders, and its first act is to turn on the man who thought he was its master. 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. 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, and upon seeing the character's signal flare, he begins to descend to the helipad. Of course, nothing is ever that easy. With two minutes to go until the mansion's destruction, the Tyrant bursts from the rooftop. It has shaken off the sluggishness from its months of storage, and now moves with the controlled strength and speed of 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. ==================================================== ii. 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 go get Chris some serum from the infirmary. If Jill's poisoned, she'll pass 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 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 will kill Barry. 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 like a trout, 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 will set the charges in the power room, which will trigger 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 will be slain by the Tyrant, and will drop 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 do that 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 that Wesker's slipped away in the confusion. You soon find out that he's set the charges in the power room, as with Rebecca, above. -- Jill, alone: almost identical to Chris's scenario without Rebecca, as above. ============================================================== iii. Differences Between RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL "2.0" ============================================================== 1. If you're a veteran player of the first 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), whereupon something large will eat him. 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 what options you have when you deal 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. 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, as 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. 8. If your support character manages to make it to the end of the game, 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 and lifting him into the air by his neck (I use the male pronoun so I don't have to type "he or she" a lot). 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, and you'd find a Chimera standing over Wesker's dead body. Such is no longer the case with 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. =================== 2iv. Random Musings =================== 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. To understand her true significance, 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 additional credence to the statement, in Survivor, that Lickers 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_. It might've been in the original, but if it was, I didn't see it. -- 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. ============================================================ 3. Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2 ============================================================ ===================== 3i. The Plot Thickens ===================== The original Resident Evil is a relatively straightforward horror game. Its sequels have been entirely different, mixing horror with equal parts of action, mystery, and conspiracy. Each RE game since the second has had an intricate series of subplots, as well as at least a few independent mysteries to solve. Furthermore, each game has left a lot of questions unanswered at the end. In other words, things get a lot more complicated from here on out. One of the stranger wrinkles in the RE storyline is the weird way that RE2 and RE3 relate to each other. I have the two games listed separately here for the sake of maintaining some kind of order, but in actuality, half of RE3 takes place before RE2, and the other half takes place well afterwards. This is noted in RE3's plot summary, below. ================================== 3ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3 ================================== After the "mansion incident" in July of 1998, Chris Redfield attempts to start an official police investigation of Umbrella, but Chief Brian Irons sabotages it. Suspecting that Irons might be on the take, Chris requests an investigation of Irons's background and a federal probe into Umbrella. With typical government efficiency, the FBI doesn't respond to Chris's requests until the night of September 29th, when Claire gets their fax in Chris's old office. Chris begins investigating Umbrella alone. He manages to uncover a great deal about Umbrella's operations inside Raccoon City, including the work on the G-Virus and the location of the labs underneath the city. He's apparently so intent upon his work that, to his sister Claire, it looks as though he's dropped off of the face of the Earth. In August of 1998, Chris finally tells Jill Valentine about what he's been doing. In mid-September, without telling Claire, he and Barry Burton leave for Europe to further investigate Umbrella. Jill elects to stay in Raccoon City for a while, intending to investigate Umbrella's underground labs. At some point, Jill resigns from the S.T.A.R.S. and the Raccoon City police department for unknown reasons. (We can make all sorts of guesses, though, most of which involve Brian Irons.) ==================================================== 3iii. 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 2 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, 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. Thanks to Irons, there are no survivors of the RPD's siege besides himself. 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 some sort 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-Virulent 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. =================================================== 3iv. 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. =========================================================== 3v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B =========================================================== 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 instead of implanted. 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. ============================== 3vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame ============================== 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. ========================================== 3vii. A Brief Summary of The 4th Survivor ========================================== 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 mo  ment, 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. ======================================= 3viii. Conclusions About the Conclusion ======================================= Resident Evil 2 leaves us with the following resolutions: 1. William Birkin's laboratory and research have been destroyed. 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 may have also survived. 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. =================== 3ix. Random Musings =================== 1. As pointed out by Dan Birlew in the original version of this document, Tofu, another hidden character, is also accessible in RE2. However, his scenario is so incredibly silly that it doesn't really apply to the storyline. He is, after all, a block of bean curd with a knife. 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. So why, exactly, didn't anyone clean out Wesker's desk? They thought he was dead. 4. Annette's claim, to Ada, that William Birkin created the T-Virus was contested by files in Survivor and CV, which in turn has been further complicated by RE0. An attempt to unravel the issue of who created the T-Virus is contained within the FAQs, below. 5. Note that "The 4th Survivor," as of right now, is the only RE minigame to actually figure into the plot. 6. 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_. ======================================================= 4. Nobody Here Gets Out Alive: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ======================================================= RE3 has more replay value than any other RE game to date, with three endings and plenty of secrets to unlock, as well as the incredibly fun (read: addictive and frustrating) Mercenaries minigame. It also introduced the Dodge feature, which let players duck or roll out of the way of incoming attacks with the push of a button, and featured the return of RE's Hunters. ============================= 4i. The Death of Raccoon City ============================= The threat did not end with the destruction of the Arklay lab. There are still monsters loose in the Raccoon Forest, and Umbrella's experiments continue at a half-dozen hidden labs inside the city. Everything changes in late September of 1998. After Umbrella's attack on William Birkin, as shown in RE2, sewer rats carry the T-Virus into Raccoon City. While the epidemic is somewhat slow to start, it spreads very, very quickly. Soon, zombies are roaming the streets. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are killed by both the zombies and the mutants the T-Virus creates. Raccoon City is placed under martial law. The Raccoon police force tries to fight back the zombie invasion, but their efforts are sabotaged from within by their police chief, Brian Irons. Not only does the steadily-getting-crazier Irons somehow prevent the RPD from calling in backup from outside Raccoon, but he deliberately spreads confusion among the policemen. As a result, the police's first major battle against the zombies, on September 27th, is a near-total disaster. The few surviving police withdraw to the RPD building and reinforce it to withstand a siege by the undead. Over the next three days, the policemen and surviving civilians die one by one, cut down by either mutants, zombies, or Irons himself. By the time Claire and Leon arrive at the RPD on September 30th, the only living cops are Irons and Marvin Branagh. As the police battle the zombies, two helicopters marked with Umbrella logos land in the city and drop off a small number of armed men. These men have better equipment than the police, but they're a relative handful of men against an army, and soon they, too, are running for their lives. By September 28th, Raccoon City is a ghost town, swarming with zombies and monsters. A military blockade surrounds Raccoon City, enforcing a quarantine. No help is coming. Thousands are dead. Somehow, Jill Valentine has managed to survive all of this. On the morning of September 28th, alone, she makes her last bid for survival: her last escape. ======================================================= 4iii. A Summary of the Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ======================================================= Jill's escape attempt begins with an explosion, as she literally blasts her way 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. Jill, alone, leaves the warehouse. The streets are disturbingly quiet, with only the occasional zombie wandering around. On her way through a back alley, Jill is surprised when a man suddenly bursts out of a nearby alleyway, pursued by a mob of zombies. She's doubly surprised when she 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 enigmatic comment, 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, so 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. Its face is permanently stuck in a lipless grimace. (Roughly two days from now, Leon will meet Mr. X, who looks a lot like this thing.) Jill is frozen in horror as the creature grabs Brad by the face and lifts him into the air. It kills Brad by shoving a tentacle through his head, 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 surviving police, but fortunately, 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 a man 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 an oversized cannon 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. She seems to have lost the creature. As Jill makes her way uptown, she finds a dead man wearing the Umbrella logo. According to his diary, the dead man was a member of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service, an in-house paramilitary unit maintained by Umbrella. For some reason, Umbrella's hired and sent mercenaries into the 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, and another has fallen victim to a new creature, some kind of giant, mutated insect. These "drain deimos" attack Jill as she passes through a construction site, and they don't live long enough to regret it. Jill steps back onto the street outside the construction site, and sees a man run into a restaurant. Jill follows him inside, and the man introduces himself as Carlos Oliviera, a corporal in the UBCS. 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 appears again, entering 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 restaurant counter. 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 also knocks the creature unconscious. 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 follows him, but the creature makes its return appearance, 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 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 asks her insultingly 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 tends the man's wounds as best she can, then 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 dead, 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, and leaves. Jill manages to find some engine parts and returns to the cable car to see if she can fix it. Outside the cable car, Mikhail, despite his wounds, massacres a horde of zombies and collapses. 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, there's no reason for him to 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. While the power cable and fuse she's found will work, she needs a special additive for the motor oil. She heads back into Raccoon, towards an Umbrella-owned sales office and chemical warehouse. Before going to the office, Jill stops by the warehouse in downtown Raccoon where she left the survivor earlier. Inside, she finds a group of zombies greedily devouring his dead body. In the trailer that the man was hiding in, Jill finds a book where the man 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. His callousness horrifies Jill. Jill lets herself into the office's storage locker, where she finds the additive she needs. At the same time, though, another horde of zombies finds the sales office. Jill hears Nicholai scream in agony, and 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 fights it off and 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 suddenly, it shakes with a tremendous impact. Jill cautiously investigates, to find that the creature stalking her has somehow broken in. With nowhere to run, Jill knocks it to the ground with a barrage of grenades. 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 brake, but the car doesn't come to a full stop 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. She finds Carlos inside the tower. For some reason, Carlos is 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, as usual, by 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. 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, to find the bell's mechanical ringer has been dismantled. Solving another of the puzzles that seem to be everywhere in Raccoon City, she finds a key to unlock a storeroom downstairs. 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 comes flying in. Jill waves it down, and for a moment, thinks that she's finally safe. She is, of course, wrong. Someone fires a missile at the helicopter. As it explodes, the helicopter plows into the clock tower. Burning wreckage showers the courtyard. 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 been infected with the T-Virus. Suddenly, Carlos arrives and attacks the creature. The creature, more annoyed than hurt, returns fire. Carlos is knocked silly by a near-hit, 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 face-down into the flames from the burning helicopter. Jill limps over to Carlos and passes out. Carlos wakes up and cradles Jill in his arms, desperately trying to wake her. 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 on the night of 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, some kind of viciously clawed reptile, screams at Carlos. Jill would recognize it as a Hunter, one of the deadlier bioweapons she encountered in the mansion. After a vicious, albeit brief, fight, Carlos kills the thing 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 winds up going 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. See Frequently Asked Questions, below.) Carlos finds a set of instructions in the lab. Using them as well as the laboratory's machines, he creates a vaccine that'll be 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 is completely destroyed, crumbling inward on itself. 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. Either the fire has forced it to mutate, or it just burned off its clothes and this is how it's looked all along. 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 starts to wonder aloud whether the creature can be stopped at all, and Carlos says that he's sure it can; he doesn't sound real 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 at 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 throws herself off of the bridge and into the river below it. 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 nuclear 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 obviously 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 walks through a door and locks it behind him. 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. Given what's *in* the waste area, that might be a fate worse than death. 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. As it falls dead for a second time, Jill notices the body of an Umbrella scientist in one of the trash heaps. Searching his pockets, she 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 supervisors, 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 and an older model of the Tyrant, 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. Apparently, exposure to whatever was in Umbrella's toxic waste dump somehow allowed it to survive. It is now saturated with acidic toxins, and spits them forth in a lethal shower. Jill frantically hooks up the last two batteries to the rail cannon. Paracelsus's Sword begins to charge up. Left with no other choice, Jill has to turn and fight back. The Nemesis is still a vicious opponent, but it's nowhere near as tenacious as it was, and Jill's assault drives it away. The Nemesis limps to the other side of the room and begins to chew on the Tyrant's corpse. This places it in front of the rail cannon, which fires. 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 nuclear strike hits. Before she can leave, the Nemesis gets back up for one last attempt to kill her. Jill dodges a blast of venom and grabs a Magnum from one of the dead soldiers. Jill stands over the the Nemesis and empties the gun into its head. Finally, bleeding from its 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. ============================================================= 4iii. 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 nuclear missile flies past the helicopter and hits the center of Raccoon City. The surviving zombies look up at confusion at the bright light, just before they're destroyed. A wave of fire rolls across the entire city, utterly destroying it. All that remains 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 then treated to a news broadcast. The morning's top news story is, of course, the nuclear 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." ==================== 4iv. 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. ===================== 4v. Different Endings ===================== The ending I've used for the summary is apparently the official one, as one of the files in Resident Evil: Survivor is written by Nicholai on October 5th. The other two possible endings are detailed below, and both of 'em wind up with Nicholai being real dead. 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." ======================= 4vi. 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, although not without tears, and preparing for another mission. -- Hunk is a little crazy, and has a tendency to be the only one to survive the missions he's sent on. He's seen without his mask in his file. ====================================== 4vii. Conclusions About the Conclusion ====================================== Resident Evil 3 leaves us with the following information: 1. Raccoon City has been vaporized. Thousands are dead. 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. In theory, she's now immune to it. 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 members of 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. While we know that he's still alive by the time of Code Veronica, we don't know what his reaction to the offer was or if the man making it was actually with the government. (Wesker's Report says that Leon has joined an "underground anti- Umbrella group," but once again, nothing specific.) 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 nuking 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. ===================== 4viii. Random Musings ===================== 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. As I've mentioned below under Unanswered Questions, the military blockade around Raccoon is apparently manned by spider monkeys. Neither Leon or Claire so much as see a blockade, and we've seen no fewer than six 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.) 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's cool and should've been the subtitle of the American version, but that's me.) 5. Although the back of the CD 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. Just shut up). 6. According to an article in "Game Informer," Nemesis's design was one of the rejected designs for Mr. X, though in the sketch they published, Nemmy's rocket launcher was an elaborate rifle. 7. Cinematic parallels in RE3: -- _Return of the Living Dead_ also had an ending which involved a nuke. The end scenes of the movie and the end scenes of RE3, showing the nuke 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 similar scene in _Return of the Living Dead, Part 2_, especially if you opt to electrify the zombies. ================================================ 5. Ten Thousand Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR ================================================ Survivor, also known as Gun Survivor, is a cross between Resident Evil and a first-person shooter. If you're playing something other than the North American release, then you get to use a light-gun with the game, which is probably a lot more fun; if you're in North America, however, you get to move your gunsight around the screen with your control pad, and the game gets very annoying. In any event, Survivor is the story of an amnesiac man who wakes up in the middle of a biohazardous outbreak. He must fight to stay alive, while he tries to figure out just who he is, what he's doing here, and why everyone he meets is either scared of him, or is trying to kill him... ========================================================== 5i. 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. He yells, "You won't get away!" He fires once, apparently hitting something vital, and the helicopter begins to burn. 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. All he has is his Glock 17 pistol. 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 kneels over him, and 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 lone zombie interrupts his examination. He executes the zombie, 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 synonymous with "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 nothingness. 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 sewer 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 is, in fact, 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 put down the escape attempt by shooting down the fleeing boys as they tried to escape. Vincent intimidated the prison's chief into reporting the incident to Umbrella as a mass suicide. 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 winds up reenacting the boy's escape route by climbing down the side of one of the guard towers. At the bottom of the guard 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 bioweapon. 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; the entire room looks like a charcoal briquette. A bank of security monitors is still active, and he can see a little girl sitting at a security 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 sends it crashing to the ground, and 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. The boy from earlier threatens Vincent with his bat. He 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, and 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 an eavesdropping Lott had found out about the "spy." Ark remembers what had happened, just before the helicopter crash. He 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 pubescent 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 slow and 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. =========================================================== 5ii. 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, dodging its claw swipes and mad lunges. For once, the Tyrant's uncontrollable mutations work against it. Ark's assault eventually triggers another mutation; the Tyrant's muscles swell to an immense size, to the point where it can barely move. It is still dangerous, but it's no longer able to dodge Ark's assault. Eventually, his attacks wear the creature down, and it collapses in a bloody heap. 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, pieces of it raining into the ocean. 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 that they can fly as long as they have fuel. They fly into the rising sun, and the credits roll. ====================== 5iii. 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 will show up at the end of the game. 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 the chance 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. ===================================== 5iv. 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. 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. Nicholai Ginovaef is currently working for Umbrella in some kind of advisory capacity. 6. Leon Kennedy is alive and is still working against Umbrella. 7. Umbrella is a lot more depraved than we thought. Each Tyrant that's created means that a teenager died screaming. ================== 5v. Random Musings ================== 1. Say what you will about how lame CV's ending is, but Survivor's ending just blows it out of the water. 2. Separated at birth: Andy, and Chrono Cross's Sprigg? 3. I really don't much 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. For example, due to the limitations of the control pad, dogs are the toughest enemy in the game. 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. ================================================== 6. Sibling Rivalries: RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA ================================================== Code Veronica initially came out for the Dreamcast, but was rereleased as Code Veronica X in September of 2001. It's easily more than twice as long as any previous RE game, with a surprisingly elaborate story, and as such, is going to require the Plot Summary From Hell. You might want to go get a drink or something. The rerelease of CV contained a few new scenes and a much longer ending. All new scenes will be enclosed in [brackets] over the course of the summary. Code Veronica, in brief, follows Claire Redfield as she continues to look for Chris. She's captured in an Umbrella facility in Paris and sent to an Umbrella-run prison camp in South America. She manages to escape when the prison is attacked by an unknown third party, and must contend with Alfred Ashford, the insane descendant of one of the original founders of Umbrella. The last third of the game features the long-awaited return of Chris Redfield, as he arrives on the island to try and save Claire. Unfortunately, not only is he too late, but an old enemy is waiting for him. ===================================================== 6i. A Lovely Island Hideaway: CODE VERONICA, Part One ===================================================== 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, a bright light coming through a window blinds her. When her eyes clear, she sees an attack helicopter hovering outside the building. Its chaingun begins to warm up. Claire doubles back and ducks into the nearest hallway, as the chaingun chews the guards that were chasing her to ribbons. 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. Claire is captured, and, ten days later, is taken by helicopter to an isolated prison. She spends most of the ride there with a bag over her head. It's taken off as a guard tells her what her serial number is, and welcomes her to her new home. Another guard cracks Claire in the face with the butt of his rifle. Claire 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 outside her cell, he slumps into a nearby chair and pulls an empty bottle of medicine out of his pocket. He throws it against the floor in frustration. Not 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 of 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. One good 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 the wall mount they're on 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 caught himself in Alfred's trap, and 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 from the trap. Steve, happy with his new guns, shows off for Claire. Claire recognizes the guns as the ones 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. Having said his piece, he leaves, 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 in, hoping to use it to get away, but instead, winds up in an underwater port for seaplanes; this must be the "airport" that Steve was talking about. A cargo plane is docked inside. If Claire finds a pilot, she could use it to escape. Even better, she's already found one of the three keys she'll need to unlock its hatch. 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 as a trade 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 of the balcony, but Claire drops her gun and 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 is seemingly frozen in place. The zombie turns towards Claire. Claire yells for Steve to help her as the zombie bends down to attack. Steve hesitates for a single long moment, then levels both Ingrams at the zombie and yells, "FATHER!" He empties both guns into the zombie, trying to fire even when he's out of ammunition. Slowly, Steve 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 keycard she found earlier, Claire is able to unlock most of the doors inside the base. Among other things, she finds a grenade launcher and a vial of the kind of 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 tells her what the password to the lab she had to escape from earlier is, as well as letting her know that the lab's systems have finished the ventilation process. Claire heads back there. 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; either dolls or books cover every available surface. A larger-than-life doll dangles from the chandelier hook in the ceiling; it has been 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 have 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 torture chamber, 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 about twenty feet away. [He walks up to the struggling-to-move Claire and cruelly puts one foot on her shoulder. It will pain Chris to see Claire die, Wesker says. However, 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 he realizes that 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. He maintains a hangar here. Alfred climbs into a Harrier jet marked with the Ashfords' crest, and promises Claire that he will 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 turns to her. 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 realizes that they're over the Antarctic. 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, saying that the plane is trashed. At his suggestion, they split up and 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 died. 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 by far 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 spider webs. The axe across his chest is thrown across the room and sticks in the floor. Nosferatu staggers forward, still roaring... 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 directly quote her, waxes the monster. Using Alfred's rifle, Claire calmly shoots out Nosferatu's exposed heart. (Claire really has started being very blase about this whole thing. It's cool.) 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. They are his last words. He dies. The woman's eyes widen in anger. Claire and Steve talk and joke as they drive towards freedom. Something shatters the roof of Umbrella's Antarctic base. In a blur, moving so fast that it's unidentifiable, it 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. The snowmobile is knocked onto its side. The thing that hit it lashes around the snowmobile like a boa constrictor, slamming it again and again 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. ========================================================== 6ii. The Return of Chris Redfield: CODE VERONICA, Part Two ========================================================== As Claire and Steve's snowmobile is destroyed, a small boat lets off a passenger on Rockfort Island. Slowly, Chris Redfield climbs hand-over-hand up a sheer cliff, burdened by a heavy bag filled with equipment. Leon managed to contact him, and he's come to rescue Claire. 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 any 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. [CV Complete note: the man in black's monologue is slightly different. It is also much, much fruitier.] In the room where Alfred ambushed Claire, one of the Ashford crests is lying in plain sight, but 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. Unfortunately, that means he has to figure out some way to get into the base's underground waterway and find the crest. 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 manages to evade 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 altered.] 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 slowly begins to strangle Chris. Chris punches Wesker in the face, knocking off his sunglasses. This reveals Wesker's eyes. To Chris's shock, they are yellow, and 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, an experiment that turned his father Alexander into a monster, and Alexia's decision to experiment on her own body. 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 each member of the Ashford family wears 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 submerged 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 move beneath the ice. 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 is dusty and little-used, and Chris finds Alexia Ashford's research notes inside. The girl 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 to experiment on herself. The other lab is cutting-edge and has been carefully maintained. A trail of dried blood leads 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 takes Alfred's ring from his body, recognizing it as one of the three proofs that Alfred mentioned in his diary. 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. There's still one place Chris hasn't gone. He heads to the fifth floor, and as he walks down the hall, he hears... calliope music. A merry-go-round, sized for children and with two horses, is spinning in the middle of a carefully built playground. The room next to the playground is a rude shock. Alexander's sanctuary looks very much like the front hall of the mansion outside Raccoon. At the top of the stairs, 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 the coccoon off of her, 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. She's sure he's somewhere in the base. 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 a snake, complete with a mouth, 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... and 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. She runs, and Steve gives chase. Ducking Steve's axe, Claire rolls underneath the gate as it closes. She can already tell that it 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. Claire falls to the floor. The tentacle thrashes, like a thing in pain. It 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. Alexia casually backhands him. Despite his own superhuman strength, Wesker tumbles across the room; one might guess that an ordinary man would've been killed instantly. 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, which don't seem very well-suited to an adult. (For all intents and purposes, these bedrooms are exactly identical to the bedrooms on the island facility.) Chris finds little of interest in them besides another pair of locked music boxes with jewels missing from the 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 abandoned 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 Ashford'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 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, and the automatic locks are released. 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 ant's exoskeleton. As Alexia transforms, Chris spots a nearby emergency locker. The labels on the outside say that it contains an anti-B.O.W. 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 the chance to escape. Alexia begins to undergo a terrible transformation. Her body expands like Steve's, changing into something much, 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 begins to break 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. ==================================================== 6iii. 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. A massive pipe falls between them, and Wesker takes the worst of it by far. Holding his horribly burned face, Wesker promises Chris that the next time they meet, he'll kill Chris. "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 flames. 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. ==================================== 6v. 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 to a base without a self-destruct device.) 2. Albert Wesker has also survived. 3. Steve Burnside may or may not be dead. 4. Rodrigo Juan Raval did not survive. ("I have cool looks, a great voice actor, and lots of potential... which is why I'll be killed after three lines of dialogue." Thanks, Nippy.) 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 has a new employer. That employer is apparently a competitor of Umbrella's in the field of biological research and warfare, and is just as cutthroat as Umbrella is. 7. Umbrella is not the only company performing research on the T-Virus. As a matter of fact, they have vicious competition in that particular field (as embodied by Wesker and his "new employer"). If Chris and company *do* destroy Umbrella, their problems may just be beginning. 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 we were led to believe. We knew it was an international corporation that virtually owned Raccoon City, but this is the first indication we've had that it privately recruits and trains its own army. 12. Albert Wesker stole Steve Burnside's body before he escaped. Whoever Wesker's working for has a sample of Alexia's virus. ============================== vi. 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 "hidden in plain sight," where it's 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." That virus eventually gave rise to the "Progenitor" virus, and, from there, to the infamous 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. In RE3, we see Umbrella's commercials for its name-brand painkillers, cold relievers, and whatever the hell Aquacure was supposed to be. Umbrella also appears to make its own equipment, as we've seen security systems (RE2), computer OSes (RE, RE2, RE3, CV), industrial equipment (RE, RE2), weaponry (RE, RE2, RE3), medical supplies (RE0), and a commuter train (RE0) with the Umbrella label. Even your handy First Aid Spray is an Umbrella product. Edward had a son, Alexander, who got a degree in biogenetics and assisted his father with his research. In 1970, Alexander caused an accident which killed Edward. 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 next generation of Ashfords, and Alexander himself, trace the Ashfords' fall from grace directly to the accident that killed Edward, and to Alexander. (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. Whatever Alexander did must've not just killed his father; it must've pissed Spencer off. See below.) In an attempt to gain back some respect, Alexander commissioned the construction of a research facility in the Antarctic, making it out of a transport terminal. Inside the facility, he had a series of rooms built, patterned after 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. (Lemme English-major at you for a second here. 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, 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, for all intents and purposes, a queen ant, complete with an anthill and her own swarm of mutant soldier ants. To kill her, Chris places a set of wings back onto a metal dragonfly, and in so doing, unlocks the path to Alexia's destruction. 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 what she named the T-Veronica virus. 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 and stored herself in a secret lab underneath Antarctica. Either Alfred or Alexia came up with a cover story for this, saying that Alexia had died in an unspecified "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. ===================================== 6vi. Random Musings on CODE: VERONICA ===================================== 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, characterwise, 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 9mm slug 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, though, 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 ex-Air Force *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 and a member of an elite police unit at 18; and Steve is a crack pilot, gunman, and can operate seemingly any kind of heavy machinery at the tender age of 17. Sherry must have been hiding her *true* power. 8. If I could get a biker jacket with the same design on the back as Claire's vest, it'd be very cool. You finally get to see what it says across her shoulders just before the last fight with Alexia: "Let Me Live." This is the same design that's on the back of her alternate outfit in RE2. (See Easter Eggs, below.) 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. The visual parallels between RE and RE:CV are as follows: -- the shotgun rack/lever trick. -- the general appearance of the front hall of Alexander's mansion. -- the rotating tiger statue. -- the goddess statue holding a bowl, which contains a map. -- the goddess statue room looks almost identical to the same room in RE. -- the hallway where Claire encounters the tentacles, while she chases Alexia, is modeled after a similar hallway in the east hall of the Spencer mansion, right down to the extra ammunition hidden under the display cases and enemies bursting from the right wall. 12. You can get a slightly alternate cutscene if you trigger the Alexia/Wesker showdown fight before you use the Crane Key to trigger the giant spider fight. 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. -- 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_, a character named 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." -- alert 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). I didn't fail to notice that; I figured it was kind of obvious. Stop e-mailing me. ============================================ 7. Becky's Big Adventure: RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ============================================ RE0 could be described as the "behind the scenes" version of REv.2. In the two days between the Bravo team's helicopter crash and meeting Chris Redfield in the Spencer mansion, Rebecca Chambers, the field medic and lone survivor of the STARS Bravo team, and Billy Coen, an ex-Marine and accused murderer, find themselves in the middle of someone else's revenge plot. A mysterious stranger, a man in a white robe who holds some kind of strange power over a new kind of bioweapon, is out for vengeance against Umbrella, and Rebecca and Billy are simply in the way. RE0 is the first game in the series where you can actually control both characters at once, via a bizarre and surprisingly effective "partner switching" system. There are occasions in the game where you have to split Rebecca and Billy up. For this summary, in the event that the player has a choice as to which character goes where, I've simply gone with whoever I wound up sending into a given situation in my game. ===================================================== 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 every passenger aboard the train is dead. Several of them, however, 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 and underconfident 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..." 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, in the entrance to the dining area, while she takes care of everything. 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 will 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 when it knocks her through a hole in the roof, into the kitchen. Here, she finds a key they need, but can't get out because of a door with a jammed lock. Using a dumbwaiter, Rebecca sends the key to Billy, who 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 a 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, dead. 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, and requests further orders. 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, without any guidance, is going to crash. Rebecca takes a keycard off of the desk and tells Billy to wait here 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 a 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 of the facility 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 required key, but is then 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, set up as some kind of strange chess fetishist's office, proves to belong 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 must be at least twenty years old, details Marcus's creation of a virus he calls "Progenitor," and further, 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 just have to 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, and a nearby prisoner manifest seems to suggest that this is a medieval-style detainment center for Umbrella's human 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 this 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. This "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 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; her response, while looking directly at Billy, is 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 obviously done with this topic: "That was then, this is now." Rebecca tells him that now, her teammates think he killed those MPs in the forest, but 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. That final key opens a door on the second floor of the facility, 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, and have improvised some Molotov cocktails from gasoline and glass bottles. Burning the zombies to death, 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. Now the door they came in through 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 slays the creature with a bombardment of napalm-laced grenades, and, using the hookshot that they picked up all the way back on the train, rappels up to 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 way to a newly-constructed cable car, which they intend to use to get out. 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, congratulating "James" on his graduation from a university in 1939. Billy concludes that the young man they've seen controlling the leeches 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 abyss below the car's track. As Rebecca rushes to the ledge, she herself is attacked by a leech zombie, which she incinerates a moment later. 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.) 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, then brings the turntable up to meet her from the control room. 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 STARS this creature's name: a Tyrant. Now, all Rebecca knows is that it's enormously powerful, incredibly ugly, and after her. It takes nearly two full clips from Rebecca's Magnum before the Tyrant falls down, defeated. 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, which dislodges him from his handhold. Billy yells in pain as he slides further into whatever new complex they've found. Rebecca's bridge leads to a power control room, which is currently dark. A brief bit of computer work restores electricity to the area, which lets Rebecca take a nearby lift downwards. 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, before finally finding Billy. When Rebecca gets there, 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 somehow found his dead body. It crawled inside his mouth and began to spawn. Somehow, the T-Virus inside the leech resurrected Marcus, as an inhuman monster, capable of shapeshifting through the control of his army of superintelligent leeches. Now, Marcus says, he's returned, and "the world will burn in an inferno of hate!" Billy shakes his fist at Marcus ("GEEEESE!") 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 a marshmallow in the microwave. Marcus turns into an inhuman creature, the ultimate expression of the "leech zombies" Rebecca and Billy have been fighting all night. It leaps to the ceiling, and from there, to the attack. Marcus's claims come very close to coming true. He attacks with vomited streams of acid and the stretching tentacles that now serve him as arms. Nothing Billy and Rebecca hit him with seems to make an impact. After enduring enough small-arms fire to kill a dozen ordinary men, or a couple of Tyrants, Marcus screams in 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, still alive, shies away from the light, and Rebecca realizes that the leech's somehow vulnerable to sunlight. 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 of the dock opens, bathing the queen leech in full, direct sunlight. Enraged and in pain, it lashes out, knocking both humans across the shipping dock. As Rebecca gets back up, she notices a heavy revolver, hidden behind a stack of crates. She seizes it, yells, 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 the size of a truck tire. It screams and falls apart, the pieces of its body plummeting back down the elevator shaft, and into the rising fireball of the facility's imminent self-destruction. Billy and Rebecca make a mad dash for safety. The Umbrella training facility is engulfed in a thunderous explosion 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, which 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 as 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, *might* be dead. Yes, he was punched full of holes and left bleeding on the bottom floor of a vast underground complex that exploded very soon thereafter, but this is Resident Evil, and he's already come back from the dead once. 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. The Progenitor is presumably derived from Ashford and Spencer's "mother virus." 5. The T-Virus was derived from a combination of the Progenitor virus and the DNA of a leech in 1978 by James Marcus. 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 Musings =================== 1. 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. 2. Unless I missed something, it's rather strongly implied that Billy was innocent of the crimes he was accused of, or that there's more to the story than Billy bothers to tell Rebecca. He's another character who knows a damn sight more than he lets on, as his reaction to the bodies in the factory attests. (Here's a point: we know Umbrella bails out soldiers and mercenaries who've somehow screwed up their lives, and gives them a "second chance" of sorts as members of the UBCS. I find myself wondering if Billy's "prison transfer" was going to go anywhere near a prison.) 3. 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 when they meet in REv.2.) 4. Somehow, Enrico Marini got from Raccoon Forest to the labs underneath Raccoon City without using the turntable or the cable car. Personally, I'd like to know how he did it. (This is not a request for "Resident Evil Negative One: Enrico's Story," it's just a note about a particularly wacky bit of geography.) 5. The final battle against the queen leech is like a demented beerslam of all the final encounters in every RE game to date, 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 almost every 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. 10. As "Nemesis Resident" notes, if the Alpha team landed right next to the Bravo team's helicopter, they should've found the wreck of the MP vehicle. That in turn makes me wonder if someone found the time to move the helicopter, or the MP vehicle, between RE0 and REv.2 (Billy? Wesker? Marcus?). 11. Daniel Weissenberger has a note that's sufficiently bizarre that I felt like sharing it: "James Marcus' 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. 12. Cinematic references in RE0: -- is Billy's tattoo a deliberate reference to Seth Gecko's tattoo in _From Dusk 'Til Dawn_, or did someone with a laundry pen get real bored? (Vincent Merken writes to point out that if you turn the RE0 box counterclockwise and look at Billy's tattoo, it looks like it says "Mother Love." See "Easter Eggs," below.) -- 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. I am one of five, perhaps six, people who've seen that movie. ========================================== 8. A Three-Hour Tour: RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN ========================================== Barry Burton is sent to board a cruise ship, where the T-Virus has broken loose, in order to rescue Leon Kennedy, and a mysterious survivor named Lucia. =============== 8i. Coming Soon =============== Once I play through RE:G, which will be hard, because I *hate it like rats*, I'll add information on it to this document. I appreciate the offers I've received to contribute analyses of the game, but no thank you. In the meantime, go read Efrem Orizzonte's analysis of Gaiden, available at www.gamefaqs.com. ============================================================ 9. Ten Thousand *More* Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL GUN SURVIVOR 2 ============================================================ Also known as "Fire Zone," this Namco/Capcom collaboration is a retelling of sorts of Code Veronica. It stars Claire, Steve, and a liberal helping of every monster to date in the RE series. It's also a dream that Claire's having, as she's unconscious in the crashed plane in Antarctica during CV, and as such, has no bearing on the plot. ===================================================== 10. We Cover the Waterfront - RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ===================================================== A PS2 title, Dead Aim is the latest in the Gun Survivor series. In Japan, it's known as Biohazard Gun Survivor 4: Heroes Never Die. Uncharacteristically, for a game in the Survivor series, it doesn't suck. ================= 10i. Introduction ================= September 18th, 2002: a vial of the experimental T-Virus is stolen from a safe at the Umbrella facility in Paris. September 22nd, 2002: the Umbrella-owned ocean liner the Spencer Rain is seajacked by the group responsible for the theft of the T-Virus. This group turns out to be made up of followers of a charismatic former Umbrella employee named Morpheus Duvall. The seajacking is part of a blackmail scheme by Duvall. He contacts the governments of the United States and China, and tells them that unless he's paid five billion dollars by both governments, he'll fire T-Virus-laden missiles at major cities in both nations. At some point, he also unleashes the T-Virus against the passengers and crew of the Spencer Rain, including his own followers, transforming it into a near-literal ghost ship. At some point, both Bruce McGivern and Fong Ling find their way onto the Spencer Rain. McGivern is an American covert operative working for an anti-Umbrella unit within the United States Strategic Command. Ling works for China's Safety Department in a similar capacity. Both have been charged with infiltrating the Spencer Rain, and putting an end to Morpheus's blackmail plot. Hilarity ensues. ============================================================ 10ii. 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 on the deck of the Spencer Rain, underneath the night sky. 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 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; one of the crew notes in a letter to his brother that he serves people he's seen on TV. Now, they're a full load of rich and powerful zombies, slumbering now, but slowly waking back up as they smell fresh prey. Bruce uses a discarded key to get out of the guest cabins to 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 amidst the wreckage. Finally, he turns 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 at Bruce and Fong Ling, 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. Bruce manages to kill one by emptying his new shotgun into it, then dispatches the other in a barrage of pistol fire. 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 rams it home 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, where crewmembers' belongings are kept, Bruce walks into a richly furnished presentation room. 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, two on either side of a podium. One of the tanks is broken, while the other three are empty. The Spencer Rain was a secret mobile display facility for Umbrella's bioweapons. Bruce picks up a crowbar from the floor, and opens a binder to find Umbrella's notes on their recent 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 an electromagnetic field. That field can repel bullets, rendering the virus carrier nearly invincible. 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 what's standing before him is Morpheus, who's infected himself with the TG-Virus. Morpheus is, just as the file said, 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 soon leaves herself, cheerfully calling Bruce a "don-gua," which she says 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, for unmentioned reasons, blamed for the Spencer mansion outbreak, and Umbrella fired him. The reasons for his attacking the Spencer Rain are now clear. 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 the captain's Magnum pistol. 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 and sees something strike Fong Ling to the ground. She cradles her arm and begins to stand, but Bruce is there, standing protectively 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 squares off against the Tyrant. It's payback time. 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 a misshapen hump on its back, the creature 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, and is rewarded by the creature falling 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 botched 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, to find a working radio. He gets in touch with his superiors, to find that if his demands are not met, Morpheus 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 rotting zombies, and finds her way outside onto the facility's heliport. Suddenly, beams of red light appear from the sky, and one focuses on Fong Ling's 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 laser blast 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 water has apparently been running until very recently. Bruce reaches that freight elevator in one piece, but as he pushes the button to bring it back up, 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 had 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 creature, which cannot find him as long as he stays quiet. In a sort of game of hide and seek, Bruce shoots the Alpha to death with his silenced pistol; the creature dies, unable to find whatever'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. Alone, Fong Ling continues into the facility. Its staff has succumbed to yet another T-Virus infestation, and lies on the floor, seemingly dead. The lab is running on emergency power, which deactivates 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 pauses a moment too long 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. To find the key to that padlock, 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 relies upon its spawn to defend it. Bruce blasts it to pieces with his shotgun. The incinerator is the only way into the facility's main lab. Inside, Bruce discovers a weapons locker, hanging open and containing a futuristic-looking rifle. The manual is on a desk; this charged particle rifle was designed to penetrate the field surrounding a TG-Virus carrier. A dead scientist nearby clutches the key to the padlock. In Morpheus's office, Bruce finds Morpheus's 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, to face off against Morpheus for the last time. Morpheus is still far, far faster than Bruce, and has mastered his new powers to such an extent that he can generate and throw bolts of lightning. This does him very little good. His chosen battleground, amidst the capacitors that power the missile silo, is Morpheus's last mistake. Bruce provokes Morpheus into a textbook game of cat and mouse, but what Morpheus doesn't realize is that he's the mouse. The particle rifle performs as advertised; it cuts through Morpheus's electromagnetic field, and after several blasts, seems to have killed Morpheus. Bruce races 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 just chalks it up to his being a "don-gua." Suddenly, the countdown starts. Bruce and Fong Ling have five minutes in which 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. ============================================================= 10iii. 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 with something that isn't a throat. The particle rifle's battery is dead. Bruce makes a break for it. The corridors of the silo are occupied only by the dead, the last few survivors of the facility's staff. Bruce blows them away, barely keeping ahead of Morpheus's newly pliable form. 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. Fong Ling 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, and prepares for a final showdown. Morpheus marches doggedly 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 Bruce is running out of ammunition, the punishment takes its toll, and Morpheus leaves himself open for one second too long. Bruce takes one, final perfect shot at Morpheus's head, 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, shocked into silence and immobility, Morpheus's body swells into something enormous, crackling with electricity. Whether Morpheus's bioelectricity touched it off, or whether he crushed something he shouldn't've, he winds up doing Bruce and Fong Ling's job for them. The entire lab facility is engulfed in a thunderous explosion; the missiles are destroyed before they can be fired. 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, a "don-gua." Fong Ling smiles and asks him if he'd known the entire time. Bruce shrugs, and says he's been to China before. She kisses him softly, as the helicopters draw near. ================================================================= 10iv. 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 resulting pathogen, when introduced into a human body, creates something very much like an electrified Tyrant, which is intelligent, agile, and completely immune to gunfire. Granted, Umbrella had the foresight to create a weapon capable of breaching a TG-carrier's electromagnetic field, and you could probably poke it to death with a stick, but *damn*. 6. Umbrella markets its bioweapons. =================== 10v. Random Musings =================== 1. Chris's dramatic statement at the end of Code Veronica seems to have lost some of its impact. Here we are, four years later, and Umbrella's still around. 2. Bruce's organization, the Anti-Umbrella Pursuit Investigation Team within the U.S. Strategic Command, adds another name to the list of parties that might have recruited Leon in his RE3 Epilogue. It's by no means definitely them, but it's a possibility. 3. It's actually kind of a smart move on Umbrella's part to have something like the Spencer Rain. It has a helipad, so people can go and leave whenever they want, and as long as they stayed in international waters, they could sell whatever they wanted outside of the jurisdiction of any nation. 4. Dead Aim boasts the most sensible environments of any game in the series so far. There're plenty of bathrooms, and the labs have everything you'd expect a lab to have. The only sour note from where I'm sitting is the oddly mazelike missile silo. 5. So the Spencer Rain sank into the ocean, where fish will no doubt devour the tender flesh of all the dead T-Virus carriers. Does this seem really, really bad to anyone else? 6. 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.) I've got to say, I'm hoping we see her again. (Her character design's pretty good too; she looks sexy even though she's fully dressed and obviously loaded for bear.) 7. *Boy*, TG-Virus Morpheus looks like Alexia Ashford, doesn't he? I wonder why... (For that matter, the blind fat thing and the Insane Cancers in Silent Hill 3 look remarkably similar.) 8. 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.) 9. Cinematic influences in Dead Aim: -- before everyone e-mails me, yes, there's Matrix Morpheus and Dead Aim Morpheus, but aside from the long black coat, the two characters are nothing alike. One's a big black guy with a slightly fanatical streak, and the other's a vain, narcissistic Sephiroth cosplayer. -- Fong Ling and Bruce's relationship reminds me of, like, every James Bond movie there is. ============================================= 11. A Long Time Dying: RESIDENT EVIL OUTBREAK ============================================= In the fall of 2003, PS2 owners will get the chance to head back to Raccoon City. In groups of up to four, you'll step into the role of one of eight potential survivors of the Raccoon outbreak. The screenshots that've been released so far hint at a lot of interesting things, like being able to barricade doors, assist wounded characters, and, finally, more hand weapons. ================= 11i. Introduction ================= As the rats watch, William Birkin becomes something more, and less, than human. He is more than a match for the team of masked men who were sent to take his virus. 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 slowly devoured... Aboveground, later, an all-night bar is serving its six customers. A seventh runs into the diner, suddenly, and goes straight to the women's room. She's a Japanese girl, skinny, dressed like a college student or backpacker, and she frantically begins to cut her hair. A few minutes later, someone punches his way into the diner. He's not alone. The bartender tries to reason with the newcomers; he's quickly dragged down, and, to the horror of the customers, eaten. The eight survivors--Alyssa, a journalist; Cindy, the bar's waitress; Yuko, the girl in the bathroom; Kevin, a Raccoon City police officer; Mark, a Vietnam veteran and security guard; George, a surgeon; David, a plumber; and Jim, a puzzle fanatic who works at the trainyard--are suddenly under siege. [To be continued. This game is gonna be a *bitch* to summarize.] ======================== 12. Unanswered Questions ======================== This section is for the questions that remain about the Resident Evil series. This deliberately does not include small plot holes; this is only for plotline elements that Capcom has deliberately left unsolved, or for plot holes that could easily be plotline elements. If a question is in this section, there's *nothing in any game* that answers it. Don't send me your speculation about any of these. ==================== 12i. RESIDENT EVIL 2 ==================== 1. Who does Ada work for? (No, actually, *not* Umbrella. See the FAQs for RE2, below.) 2. (from "JRMShutout") Who was the "suspicious individual" from the Patrol Report file? (It's entirely possible that this was a member of Hunk's team, but it's never said.) 3. The question has finally arisen enough times for me to put it in here: if Raccoon City was being overrun by zombies, how did both Leon and Claire manage to avoid hearing anything about it? Was the government keeping everything that quiet, and if so, why did they let Leon and Claire into town in the first place? ("Curses! They used the main road into town! Our one weakness!") 4. (from Michael Conroy) How did Mr. X know to go after the pendant? (Could it smell the G-Virus or something? Was it simply smarter than one thinks and privy to Birkin's secret?) 5. What's with Jill's boyfriend? (See the FAQs for RE2, below.) ============================== 12ii. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ============================== 1. Why did the U.S. government attack Umbrella's factory on October 1st? (Did they want to destroy the T-Virus, or did they want it for themselves? As a corollary, how did they manage to get the rail cannon into the factory's power room?) 2. Why did the government order a nuclear strike on Raccoon City? (The issue here isn't how the government knows about the outbreak; that's obvious. The issue is what they know that made them decide upon nuclear sterilization of the area, as opposed to sending in the CDC. This is a B-movie, yeah, but it could be an interesting plot point. Conspiracies abound...) 3. If there was a military blockade in place around Raccoon City, how did both Claire and Leon manage to drive right into town? (It's entirely possible that the quarantine was lifted on the 29th due to the imminent nuclear strike, but even then, there should have been police, military, and press stacked three deep in every direction around Raccoon.) 4. What was the offer made to Leon? (According to Wesker, Leon joined an "underground anti-Umbrella group," but that technically doesn't explain what RE3's mysterious offer was.) 5. (from Jim Stevenson) Why does Carlos wait for two days before going to find an antidote for Jill? What does he do in that time? 6. For that matter, what did Carlos "have to take care of" when he left Jill in the chapel? (What could have possibly been so important that he'd leave a convalescing Jill alone with Nemesis so close by?) 7. What did Leon and Claire fight about, why did Sherry stay with Leon, and why did they split up in the first place? ============================== 12iii. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR ============================== 1. What were the Cleaners? Why did they dissolve upon death? 2. What's up with Leon? He's not dead, obviously, but how does he know Ark, and why did he send Ark to Sheena Island? 3. Who *is* Ark? Is he a cop, a detective, a government agent, a military operative, or something else? (Some people have said that he's a reporter, but he never says any such thing.) 4. Why did Ark think it'd be a good idea to pose as Vincent? (Alert readers have noted that Ark said it was to collect information on Vincent. However, this is still pretty damned lame; what did he do, walk up to people and ask them to tell him about himself?) 5. Who set fire to Vincent's office? (It's the only place in the entire city that's sustained fire damage.) 6. Who the hell names their kid "Lott"? ================================== 12iv. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA ================================== 1. Who are Wesker's new employers, and exactly what are they up to? (This is also known as the "HCF question," after Wesker's logo in Battle Mode. Speculations run rampant about who Wesker's working for now, running the gamut from the American government to the Lord of Darkness himself, but there aren't any solid answers just yet. Wesker's Report suggests that Wesker's working for an unnamed competitor of Umbrella's, which is a different competitor than the one he was trying to get in good with in RE.) 2. Where did Alfred get the idea that if he killed Claire, it'd restore the glory of the Ashford family? Does Umbrella really consider Claire that much of a threat? (Alert reader Chris Armour points out, and rightly so, that Alfred is crazy, and, as such, plays by his own rules.) 3. Exactly what was Alexia capable of? She could secrete that burning ichor, she controlled all those enormous tentacles that came seemingly out of nowhere, she apparently managed to spawn and/or control a legion of mutant ants, she changed shape every so often, she was stronger and faster than Wesker, she coccooned Claire, and she was still fairly intelligent and logical. More to the point, she comes out of cold storage early with no obvious help from Alfred, she activates the computers in her storage room without touching them, and when she sends the tentacle to smack the crap out of Claire and Steve, she has no way of knowing that they're responsible for what happened. (As a corollary, how did Alfred survive the fall from the drilling room?) 4. What has Chris been doing for the last three months? For that matter, what has *everyone* been doing for the last three months, besides sitting around being prequel bait? 5. This is just an idle question of my own, but what did Claire do or see inside Umbrella's Paris facility that had Umbrella going after her, in public, in downtown Paris, with an attack helicopter? 6. Here's another of my own questions: what was it about Alexia's appearance that stopped Wesker from killing Chris? All she does is appear on a viewscreen and laugh. 7. As was rightly pointed out by "Utopia" on the Evil-Online message boards, how did Claire manage to infiltrate Umbrella's Paris facility? (She's described in both RE2 and CV as an inquisitive college student who loves riding motorcycles. The words "master spy" were nowhere in that description.) 8. What does D.I.J. stand for? ======================= 12v. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ======================= 1. What happened to Billy Coen in Africa, and what did it have to do with the mother virus? (I initially thought that Billy's exclamation in the factory was simply an RE2-style plot dodge; it's assumed that the player knows what a given virus is by now, if only from files, so the character does too. However, Billy says "mother virus," and no file in RE0 mentions that. They're all about the Progenitor.) 2. Did James Marcus somehow *intend* to free Billy Coen? (Leaving aside the convenience of the Bravo team's helicopter crashing near the train in the first place, the train and truck being so close to each other to begin with is either a massive plot contrivance or it's somehow deliberate. One wonders if Billy's captors were affiliated with Umbrella.) 3. Why didn't Marcus go after Wesker and Birkin when he had the chance? (He knows they're there, he has the means, and they're two of the three people that Marcus is really, genuinely pissed off at.) 4. Where in the chrome-handled, double-barrelled, fuel-injected special limited edition *hell* has Rebecca *been*?! 5. Where's Billy been since the end of July? 6. Exactly why did the Bravo team's helicopter crash? (Several people have noted the panicked scream of "Engine failure!" before the crash, but one might justifiably wonder if there might've been more to it than that. That helicopter seems to have homed in right at the center of the plot.) ============================= 12vi. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ============================= 1. How did Bruce and Fong Ling get onto the Spencer Rain in the first place? ============================== 12vii. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK ============================== None yet. =============================== 12viii. Imported Headaches: A Look At 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 some bonuses, such as an interview with the games' directors and Shinji Mikami. One of those extras is Wesker's Report. This lengthy movie is stitched together out of footage from each of the games in the series (with the notable exception of Survivor, which is apparently counting for even less than I thought it was). It tells the story of the series from Wesker's perspective, and in so doing, attempts to clear up some ongoing plot holes and mysteries about the Resident Evil storyline. In this section, I'll be examining and summarizing Wesker's Report, to break it down into useful information and useless information, and I will do so while popping an aspirin every thirty-two seconds, because this damn thing makes my head hurt. Wesker, in narration, tells us about how he'd begun his career intending to become a researcher for Umbrella. After meeting William Birkin, however, he made a different choice. Instead, he wound up becoming a police officer. Due to its illegal activities, Umbrella had quite a few employees working within the Raccoon police department for the purpose of covering up their mistakes. Wesker rose to become the captain of the Raccoon STARS unit. In July of 1998, Wesker was told to keep the STARS away from the Spencer estate, but the murders eventually forced his hand. The STARS could no longer be kept out of Raccoon Forest. Wesker's orders promptly changed; instead, he was to lead the STARS into the mansion to their deaths, and send the resulting combat data to Umbrella. That way, Umbrella got rid of a thorn in its side, and it got an idea of how its monsters did against trained opponents. Wesker followed his orders, and most of the STARS were killed by Umbrella's monsters. Unfortunately for Umbrella, Wesker had plans of his own. He intended to doublecross Umbrella by stealing its ultimate achievement, the Tyrant, and using it to buy his way into one of Umbrella's competitors. All he needed was a bit of combat data in order to expedite the process. To do that, he needed one of the surviving STARS to fall prey to the Tyrant. Wesker blackmailed Barry Burton to "play the Judas," and Barry led Jill straight into the Tyrant's lab. (While I'm at it, Wesker's narration seems to imply that he blackmailed Barry into killing Enrico Marini; the scenes shown of Enrico's death feature Jill, alone, and Wesker says that he "used Barry to get to Enrico." I'm not sure whether this is sloppy narration, or if it's deliberate. In REv.2, we see Enrico's assassin's leg, which *looks* like it belongs to Wesker, but there's no way to be sure.) Furthermore, Wesker had planned ahead. He had gotten a virus from William Birkin earlier which induced a deathlike state in its user. The user would awaken eventually from this state, with the added bonus of superhuman power. Wesker knew that Umbrella was a lot less likely to come after him if the company thought he was dead, so he used both the virus and the Tyrant to fake his own death. As Jill watched, horrified, the Tyrant turned on Wesker, stabbing him through the chest. Wesker slumped to the floor, confident that everything was going according to plan. (And what a plan it was, Got-No-Lungs Boy.) (It's worth mentioning here that this part of Wesker's Report has already apparently been made obsolete by REv.2, in that Wesker can now escape. In Jill's best ending, Wesker quietly vanishes after the fight with the Tyrant.) Wesker made one serious mistake, however, and that was seriously underestimating both Chris and Jill. Jill managed to come out the winner in her match with the Tyrant, and when Chris destroyed it on the roof of the Spencer mansion, Wesker's entire plan was neatly derailed. Upon waking up, Wesker swore revenge against the STARS. Two months later, after the botched raid on William Birkin's lab, Wesker returned to Raccoon City. He was there to gather data on the Nemesis, sent by Umbrella's European branch to assassinate Jill. While he was at it, he joined forces with Ada Wong, another agent sent to spy on Umbrella, in order to lay his hands on a sample of Birkin's G-Virus. Ada was able to operate in the open, while Wesker, the "dead man," had to stick to the shadows. Wesker sent Ada undercover to try to find and capture Sherry, and her pendant containing the G-Virus sample. Unfortunately, in a way, Ada betrayed Wesker. She fell for Leon, failed to obtain a sample of the G-Virus, and wound up nearly dying in a fall from the lab walkway. She still had some value to Wesker, however, and he saved her life. (The version of RE2 shown in the Report has any number of minor inconsistencies. Sherry is shown talking to Claire, but she doesn't have her pendant; meanwhile, Leon is shown destroying Mr. X, as well as in Ada's Leon B death scene. Wesker claims that Mr. X was sent to dispatch Leon and Claire, who were trying to uncover Umbrella's secrets, but that doesn't make any sense; when Mr. X shows up, neither Leon or Claire know what's happened in *Raccoon*, let alone anything about Umbrella. James Livingston writes to point out that Wesker may simply have gotten some bad information, or is leaping to conclusions, but that's not in character for a man who is telling us all about how he's been the puppet master for the entire series up 'til now.) Somehow, Wesker had managed to get "[his] people" into Raccoon City. They rushed to get the sample of the G-Virus that Leon threw away (apparently intending to vacuum it up off the floor or something), but Hunk beat them to it and escaped. Finally, Wesker tried to capture Birkin alive, but Leon and Claire had already killed him. Wesker wound up getting samples of the G-Virus from Birkin's corpse. (There's an odd dichotomy here. As Wesker tells the above story, about capturing Birkin, the Report is showing the final battle between Leon and Mr. X. I think someone may have gotten confused. (Furthermore, Wesker talks about the bombing of Raccoon City at one point, and the Report shows the final movie from RE3. The movie, however, shows Barry's helicopter from the outside, and on the inside, it shows the scenes from the third ending, where Carlos is flying the chopper.) The Report concludes with Wesker saying that Sherry is "safely in our hands." He would never underestimate Birkin, and muses that "there's something about this little girl." If you've spotted any number of plot holes in the above narrative, then you're not alone. (Vincent Merken writes to point out the biggest plot hole, one that I'm kicking myself for not noticing on my own. In a nutshell, it's this: "...basically Wesker is retrieving inferior products for his current employers." If Wesker is infected with a virus that lends its host superhuman strength, speed, and resilence, *and* lets the host *keep* their human intelligence, why the hell did he want the G-Virus or the Tyrant? Couldn't he have just bought his way into one of Umbrella's corporations with this wonder virus he carries around in his bloodstream? If he *did*, and that's why he's working for whoever he's working for in CV, then why do they want the T-Veronica virus at all? Wesker's virus works within days, while Alexia's takes *years*. (Oh, and by the way...? SHUT UP. I'm not looking for you to try and justify Capcom's enormous plot hole. Those are *theories*. You're actually *using* the word *theory* when you write to me about this. I grow weary of your tiresome illiteracy, Internet.) Quite frankly, the Report is a quick fix, a series of hastily improvised plot points that doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny. Fortunately, certain events in the Report have already been addressed by REv.2, and we can only hope that more is to come. ================================== 12ix. The Woman Who Wouldn't Die: Wesker's Report 2 ================================== Wesker's second report was first made available on Capcom's Japanese website, as a series of still images divided into five parts. Each part represents a report written by Wesker, supposedly to Ada Wong, over the course of the twenty years he spent as a researcher for Umbrella. It's decidedly more interesting than the first Report, and actually does a great deal to solidify the series's chronology. (I'm using the translation from rehorror.com. Thanks to 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. (Note that in 1978, not only was Ozwell Spencer, the co-founder of Umbrella, still alive, but the T-Virus had already been invented. Also note the appearance of another traditional RE theme: child prodigies.) At that time, the Arklay laboratories were performing research on the Ebola virus. Ostensibly, the research was meant to study 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 great deal of grief. Respect for Edward Ashford, the late founder of Umbrella and the "first one to find the original virus," still ran high among the older researchers at the Arklay facility, and as a result, they couldn't stop talking about Edward's granddaughter. 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, and his work suffered as a result. Another was a snag they'd hit in T-Virus 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 by Umbrella's president. 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 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 seems to intimate that the T-Veronica virus was a secret project of Alexia's, while in Wesker's Report 2, it seems that most people knew about it. It's odd. On the other hand, Wesker does mention here 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 simply 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 almost seemed to Wesker as though Spencer had set up this laboratory because he *wanted* the virus to spread... but why? 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, once again, Wesker and Birkin's research ran into 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 Wesker managed to get a sample of their work from the French facility with Spencer's help. (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, below.) 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 just so 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 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 idea: 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 was no longer a researcher, and Birkin did most of his work out of 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 given the intervention of an outside force, 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-mails is exactly how the G-Virus came to be inside Lisa's body in the first place. You know as much as I do, folks, but let's be fair here. Lisa was apparently a guinea pig for bioweapons research for, what, twenty years? During that time, according to Wesker, she was hit with every virus and mutagen to come out of Arklay, just to see what it'd do. We don't really *need* to speculate as to where the virus came from; with that many unstable mutagens and experimental pathogens in her system, it's a wonder she didn't turn into a rutabaga or something, let alone become the host for a whole new virus.) 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. (One of the pictures of the woman in the final report confirms that she was Lisa Trevor, but her hideaway underneath the cabin in REv.2 raises an interesting question: what was really done with her supposedly dead body, and why?) Wesker left the Arklay labs in 1995, still wondering what Ozwell Spencer had in mind. ============================== 13. Frequently Asked Questions ============================== "You can't spell analyze without anal." -- Ben Plante Before you e-mail me to ask me a question for this section, please take the following six items into consideration: 1) the Resident Evil series is essentially a series of B-movies, sort of the offspring of the recent Japanese boom in horror combined with their current love for zombie films. A good Japanese B-movie (that isn't an oxymoron) is generally more concerned with visual impact than internal consistency. It's a tendency, in Asian cinema, to simply say that a thing is; in Western cinema, we tend to say that a thing is, and then explain why. A lot of my more confused correspondence comes from people who're expecting the latter half of the equation from RE, not understanding that it simply isn't going to come. There are zombies; there are mutants; they are both created by a virus. Thus endeth the justification. 2) also remember that these are, first and foremost, video games. Cinematically, for example, it makes no sense that a police station would be a strange maze of puzzles, traps, and intricate locks, but in a video game, it's expected. 3) furthermore, also note that Resident Evil games are notorious, and justifiably so, for their utter lack of attention to realistic architecture. I am fully aware that there are never enough bathrooms in any Umbrella base, and that Umbrella's shipping and manufacturing plants were designed by a schizophrenic. I cannot explain why, either. 4) there is an article of applied philosophy called Occam's Razor that, in a perfect world, would be taught to all students alongside their ABC's. The Razor is the principle that the simplest solution to a given issue is often the correct one; it serves as a warning to a would-be philosopher to not think too damn much about the answer to a given problem. While it's arguably the most impious use of the Razor ever devised, I'd urge would-be RE problem solvers/conspiracy theorists to keep the Razor in mind at all times. In other words, if your idea or explanation for a given issue requires more than two sentences of explanation, it involves the word "might," or it hinges entirely upon a hypothesized action by one of the characters, not only is it a theory, but you are putting far too much thought into it and it is probably untrue. 5) please consider your question carefully. I've been getting a lot of questions that could only be answered by a member of the development team (i.e. where did Nemesis get the rocket launcher, why does Character A carry out Action B, etc.), which I obviously can't answer. I may *look* as though I have access to more information than you do, but I really don't. 6) *please* check the entire document for the answer to your question, before you e-mail me. I am not your research assistant. ======= LEGEND: ======= RE = the original Resident Evil RE:DC = Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PSX) RE1.5 = the canceled beta version of RE2 REv.2 = the Gamecube remake of RE BOW = Bio-Organic Weapon; Umbrella in-house acronym used in several files. Here, used as a catch-all term to refer to any monster created by Umbrella or by its viruses. deus ex machina = Latin; "ill-educated catamite" ================================== 13i. Document and Series Questions ================================== Q. Why'd you write/update this? A. First, I'm a pretty big Resident Evil fan, despite my well-publicized loathing of the original game. Second, I was getting a lot of e-mail about RE2's various plot holes, and immediately thought of the previous version of this document. I was reading it to confirm a couple of things, and it occurred to me that it could use an update. As I had a lot of free time that semester, I wrote to Dan and volunteered to update it for him. He said "yes" and, little suspecting what I was about to endure, I set to work. Q. How long did this take you to write? A. The first update (where this first appeared on gameFAQs.com with my name on it) took me two or three 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 the RE "fan community." 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 hell of a lot of patience... well, hell, *period*, but less so with anyone who can't read for content. Q. Why don't you want to hear my theory? Don't you have a sense of humor? A. I should think it's obvious that I *do* have a sense of humor, given even a casual perusal of this analysis or any of my other FAQs. My rationale for not wanting to hear anyone's theories is, simply, this: Resident Evil fans are *crazy*. I hung out on RE fan boards fairly regularly before, while, and after I updated the analysis for the first time, and it seems like every third RE fan has a vast overarching conspiracy theory, founded upon the most specious evidence and frequently based upon information that any rational person can see is irrelevant, that Explains It All (tm). They irritated me then, and they irritate me now. 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 has become, people take it to extraordinary extremes. (There's a guy in Britain who used to keep me updated on his attempts to replicate the G-Virus.) 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. It's nothing personal. I simply can't be bothered to have to catalogue fan theories *and* in-game information. As a general rule, if your letter contains the words "theory," "speculation," "hypothesis," "idea," "rumor," or "Trent," 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. You've got twelve websites you could consult. Use 'em. Q. Will you put [something from the previous version of the Thesis] back in? A. Not likely. This thing is big enough as it is, and if I start including stuff like Dan's comparison of _Aliens_ and RE2 in here, then I'll start talking about Code Veronica and the literary Gothic, which will draw the weirdos out of the woodwork, which in turn will inevitably lead to my becoming even more of a damn fanboy than I already am, and quite frankly, no one wants that. Despite what you may think, I do have something which I laughingly refer to as a "life." Q. Here's a joke that implies that the green herbs are, in fact, cannibis sativa, or, if you prefer, marijuana! Aren't I entertaining? A. Only if that was the first time I'd heard the joke. Q. How many RE games are there, and what systems have they been released on? A. The original Resident Evil was released for the PSX, Saturn, and PC, with the Director's Cut and Dual Shock editions following soon afterward for the PSX. Resident Evil 2 has come out for the PSX, Dreamcast, N64, Gamecube, and PC. The PSX has seen the original version, as well as the Dual Shock edition which included the Extreme Battle Game (see below). The N64 'port is a highly-compressed version of the original, which includes some extra files and the Randomizer gameplay option (again, see below). The Dreamcast version is a Windows-CE-powered 'port of the PC version, which includes the Extreme Battle Game, two extra difficulty settings, and two unlockable image galleries. There is also a "Resident Evil 2" for the tiger.com portable system, but let us be frank here. It does not count in the series, or, really, as anything besides a waste of valuable, finite chemical resources. RE3 is available for the PSX, PC, Dreamcast, and Gamecube. The latter two versions have a couple of extra outfits for Jill, and the Mercenaries game is permanently unlocked, but they're otherwise identical to the PSX version. RE3 has been announced as an upcoming port to the Gamecube. Survivor has only come out for the PSX. RE:CV originally came out for the Dreamcast. A year and a half later, Capcom released RE:CVX for the PS2 (and, in Japan, the Dreamcast), which is the same game, albeit with about ten minutes of additional cinemas. CVX has been announced as an upcoming port to the Gamecube. Gun Survivor 2, a.k.a. Fire Zone, is a PS2 and arcade game that'll probably never make it to the United States. (Gun Survivor 3 was released in the US as Dino Stalker, and is a Dino Crisis sidestory.) Resident Evil Gaiden is for the Game Boy Color. Resident Evil 2.0, Resident Evil Zero, and the forthcoming Resident Evil 4 are all Gamecube exclusives. Resident Evil: Dead Aim, also known as Biohazard Gun Survivor 4: Heroes Never Die, is a PS2 exclusive, as is Resident Evil: Outbreak. Q. Where can I read the games' files online? A. You can find transcriptions scattered around various FAQ sites, like gamefaqs.com. Q. Do you have any Game Shark or other cheat codes? A. No. As a card-carrying member of the Survival Horror Elite(tm) (our motto: "Guns are a luxury, not a necessity"), I don't need them. Q. Why is the series called Biohazard in Japan and China, and Resident Evil in North America and Europe? A. Because the heavy-metal band Biohazard has copyrighted that name in North America and Europe. Q. Who does the voice acting? A. Claire Redfield....................Alyson Court Leon S. Kennedy....................Paul Haddad Ada Wong...........................Sally Cahill Sherry Birkin......................Lisa Yamanaka William Birkin.....................Diego Matamores Annette Birkin.....................Jennifer Dale Ben Bertolucci.....................Rod Wilson Brian Irons........................Gary Krawford Jill Valentine (RE3)...............Catherine Disher Carlos Oliviera....................Vince Corazza Mikhail Victor.....................Ben Campbell Nicholai Ginovaef..................Roger Honeywell Brad Vickers (RE3).................Evan Sabba Dario Rosso........................Tony Rosato Chris Redfield (RE:CV).............Michael Fipowich Steve Burnside.....................Bill Houston Rodrigo Juan Raval.................Victor Roach Alfred Ashford.....................Peter Oldring Alexia Ashford.....................Leila Johnson Albert Wesker (RE:CV/RE0)..........Richard Waugh Chris Redfield (REv.2).............Joe Whyte Jill Valentine (REv.2).............Heidi Anderson Barry Burton (REv.2)...............Ed Smaron Rebecca Chambers (REv.2)...........Hope Levy Albert Wesker (REv.2)..............Peter Jessop Richard Aiken......................Joe Whyte Brad Vickers (REv.2)...............Adam Paul Forest Speyer......................Ed Smaron Joseph Frost.......................Adam Paul Enrico Marini......................Dan Hagen All of the live-action actors from RE are identified in the credits by a single name; for example, Chris was played by "Charlie," and Jill was played by "Inezh." With the exception of Richard Waugh, whose Wesker voice is uniquely recognizable (he makes Wesker sound like a snooty New England upper-crust type, which I find strangely fitting), I don't know who played who in RE0, as they aren't given any attribution in the credits. The cast is Anthony Tullo, Cyrus Lane, David Webster, Ian Downie, James Arnold, James Kee, Lyon Smith, Marcia Brackett, Natasha Martina, Riva Dipaola, Stanley Mwalawanda, Steve Kishewitsch, and Tim Grimes. (I apologize, Hope Levy fans, but she isn't in the credits for RE0, and so, the IMDB notwithstanding, she probably didn't voice Rebecca.) Q. What else have these people done? A. You can consult the Internet Movie Database [http://www.imdb.com] for many of these actors' filmographies. A warning, however: the IMDB is based on readers' submissions, and, as such, is not infallible. Q. What movies are the games based on? A. George Romero's "Dead Trilogy" of films are the first and most obvious influences. I'd also point to _Return of the Living Dead_ and its two sequels, as there are scenes in RE2, RE3, and CV which appear to be outright taken from those films. Q. T-Virus, G-Virus, T-Veronica virus... what's the scoop? A. All of Umbrella's viruses spring from the "mother virus," which was created by Ozwell Spencer and Edward Ashford at some point in the early twentieth century. We know almost nothing about the "mother virus," except that for some reason, a pile of old skeletons reminded Billy of it. The "mother virus" was further refined, in the mid-twentieth century, into the "Progenitor" virus (cf. Marcus's Diary 1 in RE0), which was tested on various animals as a method of creating bioweapons. Its exact effects are unknown, but Marcus's diaries in RE0 note that a Progenitor-virus creature is almost uncontrollable, living only to feed on other living things. The Eliminators, Lurkers, and cockroaches in RE0 are all Progenitor-virus creations. James Marcus created the T-Virus on September 19th, most likely in 1977, by mixing the Progenitor virus with leech DNA and through lots and lots of illegal human experimentation. William Birkin then studied the virus for years, working to improve it and use it to create bioweapons such as the Hunter and Tyrant. When the T-Virus infects an organism, it mutates the creature into a monster. Humans turn into zombies, while animals tend to grow, mutate, and become homicidal. The T-Virus can be transmitted aerially (despite the Reporter's Memo file in RE3, there was at least one occasion in which the T-Virus was, in fact, spread via the air: CV) and, apparently, via contact with the bodily fluids 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, and effects all vary wildly. Umbrella has created a T-Virus vaccine, which has been given to Jill Valentine. (It has been pointed out repeatedly, most recently by alert fanboy Pedro Luchini, that a vaccine prevents infection, and does not cure it. I tend to chalk this up to a translation error, myself.) The T-Virus is also an integral part of the creation of monsters such as Hunters and Tyrants. 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 creature infected with the T-Virus may mutate further with appropriate stimuli, the G-Virus simply continually mutates its host until the host's death, and let me tell you, that host takes some killin'. In Lisa Trevor's case, the G-Virus enabled her to survive exposure to Ebola, the T-Virus, *and* the Nemesis parasite, among other things, although it cost Lisa her humanity, intelligence, and sanity. By the time of RE2, William Birkin had spent ten years working on the G-Virus, and whatever changes he made on it in that time may be responsible for the very different effects that the G-Virus has in RE2. A creature infected by Birkin's G-Virus is a rapidly mutating killing machine. It possesses incredible strength, can heal very quickly, endure insane amounts of punishment, and generate miniature embryos, which it'll attempt to implant in other organisms. If these embryos reach maturity, they'll quickly kill their hosts and crawl off on their own. 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. There was a vaccine effective against the G-Virus, the "Devil," but it may have been lost when William Birkin's labs were destroyed. Hunk and Wesker both got away from Raccoon City with samples of the G-Virus, although Ada Wong may not have been as lucky. Alert reader "Knave" points out that according to the Vaccine Synthesis file in RE2, the Devil "vaccine" does not destroy the G-Virus, but instead simply arrests its development. Sherry herself may be a viable G-Virus sample. The T-Veronica virus was created around 1983 by Alexia Ashford, by combining the T-Virus with a dead virus Alexia found inside the body of a queen ant. If it's used on a human, it'll create an uncontrollable mutant with homicidal tendencies, as evidenced by both Alexander Ashford and Steve Burnside. However, if an infected human is placed into cold storage for about fifteen years, her body is able to cope with and adapt to the T-Veronica virus, and that human thereby gains a truly obscene amount of power. Alexia Ashford went through this process, and in so doing became the meanest mother in the valley. The only surviving sample of the T-Veronica virus is in Steve Burnside's body, and as of the new ending for CV, Wesker's got it. Also mentioned, in RE3, is the NE-T virus. 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. By 2002, Umbrella's experimentation has yielded the TG-Virus, a mixture of the T-Virus and Birkin's G-Virus. Those infected by the TG-Virus become powerful bioweapons, much like a Tyrant. These creatures are protected by an electromagnetic field that can repel bullets, and which is only breachable by a charged particle rifle created by Umbrella's scientists. Further, in addition to superhuman speed, strength, and agility, a TG-Virus carrier retains his human intelligence and reasoning. (Well, theoretically, anyway. Morpheus Duvall is, for various reasons, not the ideal test subject.) Should a TG-Virus carrier be killed, the G-Virus's effects kick in, creating an enormous globular fiend much like the final form of the G-Type. Finally, a discussion of the viruses wouldn't be complete without mentioning the Plot Device Virus, which is what let Wesker survive the end of RE (see below). Q. Why doesn't your main 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 somehow possessing natural immunities to a lot of pseudoscientific gobbledygook about the T-Virus's infectiousness. The simplest answer, I think, is that in a game where the object is to survive, playing a zombie would be counterproductive. (With that said, there's a rumor circulating that Leon's infected by the Progenitor virus in RE4.) Q. I'm confused by the timeline. How can RE3 take place *during* RE2? What's up with the whole Ashford/Marcus/Spencer thing? What's going on? A. The official order of events can be approximated thusly: early to mid-20th century: Edward Ashford and Ozwell Spencer discover or create the "mother virus." Years later, the mother virus is further refined, into the virus codenamed "Progenitor," by a research team that included James Marcus and Ozwell Spencer. (One would presume that Edward Ashford was also present.) (cf. files in CV, RE0) 1967: after George Trevor, a famous architect from New York, builds the Spencer mansion, Ozwell Spencer himself invites Trevor and his family out to see the mansion. This invitation is a trap; Jessica and Lisa Trevor are captured, and George is imprisoned beneath the mansion in a maze created for the purpose by Spencer. George's attempts to escape lead him to an inescapable room, where Spencer has helpfully left him a tombstone with Trevor's name on it. George, trapped there, starves to death, while his wife and daughter become test subjects for the Arklay scientists. Later, Jessica Trevor is killed, and Lisa Trevor remains a guinea pig for the next twenty-eight years. (Trevor's Letters, REv.2) 1968-1969: Ashford and Spencer found the Umbrella corporation. (cf. CV) 1970: Alexander Ashford accidentally kills Edward, discrediting the Ashfords and handing the reins of Umbrella to Ozwell Spencer. (Spencer's obviously in complete control by the time Wesker comes to work at Arklay in 1978, as per Wesker's Report II, and Alexander becomes the head of the Ashford family in 1970, as per the history of the Ashford family in CV.) September 19th, 1977 (inferred from Marcus' Diary 1, RE0): James Marcus creates the T-Virus. Oddly, it would appear that Dead Aim marks the T-Virus's twenty-fifth birthday. 1978: Albert Wesker and William Birkin are assigned to the Arklay research facility, located in the Spencer mansion outside Raccoon City. (Wesker's Report 2) 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) 1983: Alexia and Alfred test the T-Veronica virus on Alexander Ashford, thus creating Nosferatu. Alexia subsequently enters cryogenic storage. (Alfred's Diary and Virus Research Report, CV) 1988: Wesker gets the Nemesis parasite. William Birkin discovers the G-Virus in Lisa Trevor's body. James Marcus is assassinated. (Wesker's Report 2; Investigator's Report 1, RE0) 1995: Wesker's transfer to Umbrella's "secret service" finally goes through. (Wesker's Report 2) 1996: Wesker forms the STARS in Raccoon City, to combat a recent increase in local domestic terrorism. (Manual to original PSX RE; see below) 1997: Lieutenant Billy Coen's unit of Marines is sent to Africa. Whatever happens next, at least twenty-three people die, and Billy is charged with their murder. (Billy's flashback; Court Order For Transportation file, RE0) May 11th, 1998: the T-Virus outbreak at the Spencer mansion. Ignoring the movie, James Marcus takes the credit for the outbreak, while Morpheus Duvall, for whatever reason, takes the blame. (The date comes from one of Nicholai's reports in Survivor. Marcus claims to have caused the outbreak in RE0, when speaking to Wesker and William Birkin via the security monitors. Also see the Dismissal Notice in RE:DA.) July 23rd, 1998: a cleanup team is sent to the old training facility in the Raccoon Forest by 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. In so doing, Marcus inadvertently (?) frees Billy Coen from the MP vehicle he was being transported in. When the STARS Bravo team's helicopter crashes nearby, Rebecca investigates the train and meets Billy. The two of them spend the next few hours being chased around the training facility. July 24th, 1998: Rebecca and Billy's final showdown with James Marcus, in the treatment plant below the training facility. Rebecca leaves Billy in the Raccoon Forest and goes to the Spencer mansion to rendezvous with the Bravo team. That night, the Alpha team begins its search for the Bravo team and finds the Bravos' helicopter. They're promptly chased into the Spencer mansion, where the real fun starts. July 25th, 1998: at or around daybreak, Wesker's betrayal is revealed, the Tyrant is disposed of, and the remaining members of the Alpha team escape via helicopter just before the Spencer mansion explodes. late July to mid-August, 1998: with no real evidence, an admittedly ridiculous story, and Brian Irons working against them, the surviving STARS have no luck convincing anyone in the RPD about what actually happened to them. Chris Redfield continues his investigation into Umbrella alone. (Mail to Chief, Mail to Chris, RE2; Chris's Report, RE2 EX; Jill's Diary, RE3) 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, and while she's at it, she quits the RPD. At this point, she presumably begins laying low, as 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) early September: cases of the "cannibal disease" begin to appear in Raccoon City, via escaped monsters attacking humans, and the T-Virus slowly working its way through the forest. While there have been cases of infection in the city as early as June, the Arklay outbreak has accelerated the process. (M. Watchman's Diary, Sewer Manager's Diary, RE2) Around September 22nd: A team of black-ops agents are sent, possibly by Umbrella's French division, to William Birkin's laboratory, intending to get a sample of the G-Virus. One of them is trigger-happy, and hilarity ensues. In the resulting massacre, the G-Type munches on a number of virus containers, and sewer rats carry a megadose of the T-Virus into the city. September 23rd-27th: the death of Raccoon City. The RPD has a massive skirmish with the zombies at the beginning of the outbreak, which the zombies win. The remaining police and civilians retreat to the RPD building, where most of the survivors are killed in a slow war of attrition with the zombies, Lickers, and, in a shocking heel turn, Brian Irons. (Operation Report 1, Operation Report 2, Chief's Diary, RE2) September 28th, daytime: Jill shoots her way out of her apartment building, meets the Nemesis and the surviving UBCS soldiers, and fixes the cable car. Mikhail's last stand knocks out the cable car's brakes, and Jill is knocked unconscious in the ensuing crash. September 28th, night: 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 before "dying." Jill passes out, and Carlos takes her to the chapel of the clock tower. September 29th, late at night: Leon and Claire come into town and get to the RPD building. September 30th, early morning: the "death" of Ada Wong, and the final encounters with the G-Type and Mr. X. Leon, Claire, and Sherry make their escape from William Birkin's laboratory. September 30th, 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 approached by an "underground anti-Umbrella group," while Sherry is apparently captured by people working for Wesker. (RE3 Epilogue Files; Wesker's Report) October 1st, the middle of the night: Jill finally wakes up in the chapel. 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. Nicholai leaves Carlos and Jill to die, but Barry Burton intervenes at the last minute. He flies Carlos and Jill out of Raccoon, right before the U.S. government nukes it at dawn. 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 without much difficulty. November, 1998: Ark Thompson's investigation of Sheena Island, which ends with the island's destruction at Vincent Goldman's hands. Ark, Lott, and Lily escape via helicopter. December 17th, 1998: Claire Redfield is captured in Paris by Rodrigo Juan Raval, and spends the next ten days as a prisoner. December 27th, 1998: shortly after she's taken to Rockfort Island, Claire is knocked unconscious. While she's out, Wesker's assault team attacks the facility. Rodrigo frees Claire, who saves Rodrigo, discovers Alfred's secret, and escapes with Steve. December 28th, 1998: thanks to Alfred Ashford, 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 the same time, Chris Redfield arrives at Rockfort Island. He talks to Rodrigo, runs into Wesker, and commandeers one of Alfred's jets. 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. September 18th, 2002: Morpheus Duvall's followers steal some T-Virus from Umbrella's Paris facility. September 22nd, 2002: the Spencer Rain is seajacked, and, at some point, infected. September 23rd, 2002: Bruce McGivern and Fong Ling kill Morpheus, and in so doing, thwart his scheme to fire T-Virus missiles at several major American cities. 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, the first half of RE3 *does* take place in daylight, according to Jill. It just doesn't look like it because half the damn city's on fire. Q. Where the hell is Raccoon City? A. Right now, it's slowly drifting to Earth as radioactive dust. Before the nuke, 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 car Leon and Claire take in RE2 has "Raccoon" license plates). Since we know Raccoon is within a short distance of a forest, a mountain range, and (as of RE0) a lake, there are only a few places in the Midwest where it *could* be. I'd also note that wherever Raccoon is, it either has mild autumns or a warm climate, since a lot of people in RE2 and 3 are dressed for summer. Q. Are you *sure* it was a T-Virus outbreak in RE2/3? A. Some people still seem to be confused about precisely what virus escaped and caused the zombie plague in Raccoon City. Let me address that confusion right now. A) The G-Virus doesn't create zombies. It creates G-Types. B) The T-Virus is far more communicable than the G-Virus, and can spread both aerially and via being bitten by a T-Virus carrier. The G-Virus only works via direct injection of the pure stuff, so the rats couldn't've transmitted it. C) further, Hunk apparently pocketed the G-Virus well before Birkin had a chance to smash that vial, since it's in his pocket during 4th Survivor. D) Just about every narrator in the history of the series has called the Raccoon City incident a "T-Virus outbreak." So, yeah, it was a T-Virus outbreak. 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: Dreamcast and, presumably, PC owners 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. Then again, if you can't find RE1.5 screenshots on the 'net, you aren't really trying. [There are four movies of RE1.5 in action on the second disc of the Japanese Dual Shock Edition of RE:DC; I don't know if that's the case for the American version, or even if there is an American version. 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 the hell out of another monster.] Q. Where can I get the RE1.5 ROM/ISO? A. Fantasyland. It doesn't exist, as the game was never completed. You have, technically, already played through large parts of it, since many of its scenes and environments have been recycled into later games in the series. 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 released? A. Probably not. Most sources say that Mikami wasn't happy with the way the game was going, so he canceled it and started over. Every so often, a petition circulates among the online RE fan community to have RE1.5 released as some kind of "Director's Cut," or a rumor hits all the RE sites concerning RE1.5's release, but I wouldn't count on ever playing it by itself. 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. Well, Timmy, it's time for us to have a little talk. You see, in the fun-packed thrill ride that *is* Resident Evil, there are two kinds of people. There's the kind that we control over the course of a game, such as Jill, Chris, Claire, or Leon. They are bound, largely, by human limits. If they get hurt badly enough, they die; if they encounter a locked door, they'll need to find a way to open it; if they go up against a Tyrant with a 9mm handgun, they are screwed beyond the telling of it. Aside from a few obvious differences, such as Jill's ability to catch an anti-tank rocket to the face without disfigurement, Claire's black belt in Gun-Kata, or how Chris can take a good four shots to the face from Wesker and yet still retain enough basic motor skills to fly an airplane, to say nothing of their strange reluctance to so much as *try* for the #$%&ing headshot and their tendency to declare a door permanently closed and thus unimportant if there's a rock on the floor in front of it, they are much like you or I. Then... then, Timmy, there are the *other* people. These are the NPCs. The NPCs are a strange and wondrous lot, possessed of powers beyond mortal ken. These are your "helpers," and note the sarcastic quotes; these are the other, uninfected humans who assist and/or hinder you over the course of the game. I speak of Sherry, Ada, Carlos, Rebecca (the REv.2 version), Nicholai, Steve, Wesker, Barry, Annette, Alfred, and the rest of their fell breed. An NPC can move around behind the scenes of reality, to reach inaccessible areas or sweep ghostlike through roomsful of bloodthirsty Hunters. Unless they briefly *lose* these mighty powers--they pass into the realm of being controlled by the player--an NPC can do whatever the hell he or she wants, even if that means already being in a room that took you an hour to open, surviving the kind of punishment that would kill your character twice, leaving a room that has no exits, or getting through a particularly difficult part of the game without a scratch. Their powers are mighty. Whenever an NPC does something that simply does not make any sense, these powers are to blame. How did Enrico get from Birkin's lab to the Spencer mansion without using the training facility elevator? His NPC powers. How did Ada escape from the treatment facility? Her NPC powers. How did Carlos get back into the chapel from the courtyard? NPC powers. How come Steve can fire the Lugers that fast in the Disc One Bandersnatch-killing cutscene, but his rate of fire slows down considerably in the Battle Game? The loss of his NPC powers. Where the hell did Fong Ling and Morpheus go after the fight with the Tyrant? NPC teleportation fu. It all makes sense. Q. Why do RE's women always say "It's over" just before something bad happens? A. Both Jill and Claire suffer from a horrible birth defect that left them without a sense of irony. 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 swipe a firearm 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 axed by a BOW or something before your very eyes, the gun evaporates upon their death. This particular trait appears to be particularly strongly identified with submachineguns, i.e. the H&K-looking weapons carried by "Team Delta" and Hunk's assault squad. Many of us have learned to live with this sad state of affairs, but I still get a fair amount of e-mail from people who'd *really really like* to be able to grab an MP5 from those dead guys on Team Delta or take Chief Irons's Magnum or something. My answer for this is simple, yet contains all the wisdom of the ages: I blame gnomes. Q. Hey, have you read any of the novels? A. Yeah, all of them. For those who don't know, there are six 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_ is a novelization of Resident Evil 2 (Leon A/Claire B), _Nemesis_ is a novelization of RE3 (ending #3, where the Nemesis kills Nicholai and Carlos swipes Nicholai's helicopter), and _Code: Veronica_ is a novelization of CV (note: *not* CVX). There are also two original novels, _Caliban Cove_ and _Underworld_; 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_. (If you see someone refer to characters named "David" or "John" in RE fanfics, they're referring to characters from Perry's novels.) The books are all right, as pulp-horror 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 crew over at www.spoonyinc.com calls Perry's books "glorified fanfic," and I'd have to agree with that.) In the United States, the books are in surprisingly wide circulation, and can be found in any decent-sized bookstore's science-fiction section. I don't know if they've been translated into any other languages, but one reader has told me that the books are available via catalogue in the UK. Alternatively, you could always order them from Amazon. Q. Do the novels mean anything to the plot? A. Not really. The novels exist in their own little sub-continuity, a point that was driven home by RE3. In point of fact, it almost looks like RE3 was deliberately crafted to contradict Perry's novels at every turn. I'll touch upon the high points: 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. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Raccoon City got nuked on | A huge fire destroyed the city October 1st, right after Jill | at some point after Leon and Claire escaped. Leon and Claire got out | escaped on October 4th. The on the morning of the 30th of | surviving S.T.A.R.S. are, as of September. There are about | _Underworld_, being framed for the eight known survivors: Claire, | outbreak by Umbrella. The ruins are Leon, Sherry, Hunk, Ada, Jill, | being sorted through by the CDC, Carlos, and Nicholai. (Alert | the military, and some Umbrella- reader Adrian Wood points out | funded biohazard teams. Besides that according to Wesker's | Leon, Sherry, and Claire, there Report, Wesker was a survivor | were close to a hundred survivors. too. I don't count Barry, | (This means, of course, that since he was only in town for | _Underworld_ and _Nemesis_ a few minutes.) | contradict each other, but Perry's | quite aware of that, thank you.) ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- Jill Valentine is ex-Delta Force.| Jill Valentine is an ex-thief, and This means that she is also an | the daughter of notorious cat ex-Green Beret, as, according | burglar Dick Valentine, hence to alert reader Steve Clement, | explaining why she's the "master of women aren't allowed in the Army | unlocking." She joined the S.T.A.R.S. Rangers. She is twenty-three. | because her father pressured her This is somewhat implausible. | to go into a line of work that (For more on our girl Jill's | wasn't patently illegal. While military career, be sure to | this makes a little more sense check out the Mistakes section.)| than Capcom's version, it's still | ridiculous. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- 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 don't get anywhere | near Raccoon City until the night | of October 4th. Note the problems | with the timeline. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- 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 joins "an underground anti- | to have more anti-Umbrella adventures Umbrella group," and Sherry is | together, in _Underworld_, and later at some point captured by | join Chris and Barry in Paris. Claire Wesker's new organization. | gets captured at the start of _CV_ | as part of a botched operation by | the STARS. Sherry now lives with | her Aunt Kate, the *scariest | lawyer in the world*. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- 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, looking | and stuff. Perry is fixated on fiercely jailbait-cute, 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 | really kinda disturbing, when you | get right down to it. (The idea of | a Perry novelization of RE0 is | deeply frightening.) ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- 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. | Despite Trent's unofficial nature, | he continually shows up in fans' | conspiracy theories. I hate Trent. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- The exception to this is _Nemesis_, which comes with a disclaimer regarding this lack of continuity. _Nemesis_ follows RE3's plot fairly 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_ is nearly unreadable. (In Perry's defense, she does do some interesting things with Steve, but it looks like she simply ran out of space.) Q. What about the comic books? A. Avoid the Wildstorm comic books if you have to chew off your own leg to do it. Q. ...and the manga? A. The only RE manga I've ever seen were either short and jokey one-shots ("Nicholai Ginovaef," on Evil-Online, used to have a translated eight-page manga on his website which was all about Jill running around the mansion, being stupid and getting killed repeatedly), or, more rarely, h-doujins. If you find one of the latter, *don't read it*. (You can read a Seanbaby-style review of two RE H-doujins, "Bio" and "Dead Bang," at www.spoonyinc.com.) On the other hand, there are some nice-looking RE manshua. You can see a couple of dozen pages of the BioHazard 3 manshua on my personal website, thanks to alert reader "Rogue TM." They are still in Chinese, however. Point your browser to: http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/junkdrawer.html Three translated collections of Code Veronica manshua were recently released in the United States. I've seen them in Borders and Barnes & Noble in Chicago and Kansas City, and while they aren't the height of literature ("TIME to TRY OUT my NEW LUGERS!"), they're still an entertaining read. They aren't a literal adaptation of the game by any stretch, though. Q. Where can I find Resident Evil hentai? A. I have no idea. You know how you can tell I haven't gone looking for RE hentai? *I still have my eyes*. (A disproportionate amount of it has actually come looking for *me*. I will never be clean again.) Q. Why aren't there any bathrooms in Raccoon City? A. Vincent "Guns Are For Sissies" Merken has the answer: "...there might be a *secret passage* somewhere... that leads to the toilets. Since about every room in [Raccoon City] is initially locked and requires the fetching of numerous objects in previously unlocked areas, why shouldn't the can be the same? But due to memory shortage, the necessary items weren't included in the [games]. "So the cops never had to 'hold it.' They did have to plan in advance though... 'Hey, Charley, there's a chance that I might need to go to the little boys' room in about 45 minutes. I better quit and head for it right now. You cover me.'" Q. Why are the games becoming less bloody? A. They aren't anymore. Starting with REv.2, the games are back to the RE2 standard of gore, where you can blow off zombies' limbs and heads (although the super-gory death scenes for player characters appear to be a thing of the past), complete with all the slowly spreading pools of rich red blood that the Gamecube's power can render. (According to my European correspondent, Vincent Merken, this doesn't apply to the German versions of RE games. In those, dead zombies bloodlessly disappear.) Q. RE should be exclusive to the PSX and PS2! Why isn't it? A. The only reason that RE was exclusively on the PSX for so long was because it was the only viable system at the time. N64 cartridges don't hold enough data for an RE game (it took *months* for Angel Studios to compress RE2 to fit on an N64 cart). An enhanced version of RE, featuring a combat-based minigame, was actually released for the Saturn, but the system was dead by the time RE2 came out. One would presume that, given how Sega and Capcom seem to have a very strong business relationship, the Saturn would've hosted the rest of the series if it had only survived that long. Q. ...*Gamecube*? A. What? Nintendo likes money, Capcom likes money... it's a business decision. You don't *have* to play the damn games, you know. Q. Why on Earth would Capcom sign an exclusivity contract with Nintendo? Isn't this a betrayal of their core fanbase? Will RE/RE0/RE4/etc. be ported to the PS2? A. I've been getting way too much of this lately. I'm not privy to Capcom's decision-making process concerning the exclusivity contract. I have a few informed ideas--I am, after all, an experienced game journalist--but I don't care to explore them in this venue. I've been seeing a lot of this "betrayal of the core fanbase" nonsense lately, too, possibly owing to Capcom's announcement a couple of years ago that it was going system-agnostic. However, please note that the true "core fanbase" for RE picked up Dreamcasts in order to play Code Veronica, and made it a hot seller right up until the DC's demise. (If I remember the figures correctly, Code Veronica was the #4 or #5-selling DC game in the history of the system.) The "core fanbase" for RE is apparently willing to drop the money on a new console to follow their favorite series, and so, lo and behold... Finally, the RE series's move to the Gamecube is the result of an exclusivity contract of indefinite duration. Capcom is apparently looking for ways around that contract, given as how they took a bath in 2002 and early 2003, so we may see ports of RE0 and RE4 eventually. I'd be willing to bet, though, that those will be on the Xbox, as the PS2 can't push the polys to handle a straight-across port of RE0. (Want to argue with me? Play Clock Tower 3. I win.) In other words, I would like all of the aggrieved Sony fanboys who're e-mailing me to *stop*. If you're really that troubled over RE's exclusivity, then save your pennies and pick up a Gamecube; the system has more than enough good games outside of RE to be well worth the purchase, and Eternal Darkness is a lot better than any of the last few RE titles. If your retort to this comment is that your parents won't let you buy a Gamecube, then I'd imagine that you aren't old enough to be playing the RE series to begin with. Q. Will there ever be a Dino Crisis/Resident Evil crossover? A. As fun as that sounds, probably not. I've read a number of interviews with Shinji Mikami where that question has come up, and the answer is always "no." This is further reinforced by the revelation, in DC2, that Dino Crisis took place in 2009. While it'd be entirely feasible to work something out involving DC's Third Energy reactor, RE is strange enough without time travel being added to the mix. Q. Who's Shinji Mikami? A. The series' producer. He calls the shots. Q. What other games have RE characters appeared in? A. Several, actually. -- Jill's a (solidly mid-tier, last I checked) playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. -- for one of Chun-Li's Flash Combos in Pocket Fighter, she dresses up like Jill. -- Cerberuses briefly appear in one level of Cannon Spike. -- in Card Fighters' Clash for the NGPC, Claire, Leon, and Jill all have Character Cards, while Sherry, Chris, and Rebecca are on the Escape and Cover Fire Action Cards. You can also challenge "Mikami," and a number of zombies, in an area that's patterned after the front hall of the Spencer mansion. -- according to alert translator Nicolas Falduti, and confirmed by myself courtesy of alert employee Nicholas Eckert, Chris, Jill (wearing her RE3 outfit), and Nemesis get Character Cards in the import-only Card Fighters' Clash 2. -- there's a code in Trick'n Snowboarder to play as Leon, Claire, or a zombie cop in Free Mode. Q. Any other amusing cameos? A. I've run across one or two. -- in the Scarab TPB for David Mack's Kabuki comic book, there's a two-page layout of cutout paper dolls so you can clothe the heroine as you see fit. One of the cutouts is Jill's RE3 outfit. -- in Static #1 from DC, one of the main character's friends is apparently playing RE3, and doing very poorly. 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. I've read articles where Shinji Mikami claims to want to make as many Resident Evil games as there are James Bond movies, and hell, this is Capcom we're talking about here. If RE games keep selling well, the series will probably continue for quite some time. ======================== 13ii. RESIDENT EVIL 2.0 ======================== Q. Why does it take three shots from Barry's Magnum to kill the first zombie? A. ...*why does it matter*?! I think I've received this question more than any other regarding REv.2, and Eris help me, it's really starting to get on my nerves. It was because Barry was only trying to wing it; also, sunspot activity, poor aim, underpacked bullets, a Kevlar-coated *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 an explanation and have a party. Q. When does everything take place? A. According to Nicholai's notes in Survivor, the initial biohazardous outbreak occurs on May 11th, 1998. Late at night on July 24th, the Alpha Team is forced to take shelter in the mansion. Stuff happens, people die, and the mansion is destroyed. The final showdown with the Tyrant and the escape via helicopter both occur at daybreak on the 25th. 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. This isn't actually possible. Further, the scraps of information we've received about the surviving characters include elements from both scenarios; Barry betrayed the other STARS, and Rebecca is still alive. So, we're right back to where we started, which is relying on Wesker's Report. According to Wesker, the "real" version of RE was a blend of the two scenarios, with a strong nod towards Jill's game (she's Shinji Mikami's favorite character, you know). Both Chris and Jill spend most of the game free, running around the mansion accomplishing things, and while Jill gets to watch the Tyrant spear Wesker like a cocktail olive, Chris gets to blow it into tiny little pieces on the helipad. Jill also gets to kill the giant snake, while Chris is the first to encounter the Hunters. And so it goes. The problem with Wesker's Report is that it was written for the original RE, and thus a few things in it don't really apply to REv.2. It's also worth mentioning that Jill's best ending, in the remake, does allow Wesker to get away clean, with no impalement required. (In the original, Jill's best ending had Wesker escape from the Tyrant's lab, only to get cacked by a Chimera in the power room. In REv.2, Wesker disappears in the confusion while Jill fights the Tyrant.) 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 fight with the Tyrant. Q. Why does a Midwestern city have a special anti-terrorism unit in the first place? A. In the original manual for RE for the PSX, it's mentioned that Wesker *formed* the STARS. Why he did that, or how he was able to do it, are two separate and unanswered questions. Given how Umbrella likes to do business, with the black-ops troops and the occasional midnight raid, it's not entirely infeasible that Raccoon might've actually had a problem with domestic terrorism. Further, the idea of an anti-terrorist unit in a Midwestern city, as pointed out by alert reader Travis, makes a bit more sense if you consider the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Q. Where did all the Hunters come from? A. It's a subject of slight irritation with RE fans that there's nowhere in the Spencer mansion where any monsters could've escaped *from*. With the exception of the Aqua Tank, there aren't any containment facilities, broken or otherwise, on the mansion's grounds; we're left to assume that the BOWs were either allowed to roam free for some reason, or they were kept in the pits underneath the courtyard. Now, thanks to RE0, we know that the BOWs were kept and experimented upon in the complex underneath the training facility's chapel, which was only a few miles away from the Spencer estate. When James Marcus freed the Hunters and Eliminators to deal with Rebecca and Billy, the implication is that a few of the Hunters just ran off into the woods, and they show up at the Spencer estate looking for prey at right about the same time you're finished with the dormitories. It's intensely convenient, yes, but not unreasonably so. Q. How do I kill Rebecca before the second Tyrant fight? A. When you use the Emblem Key to open the office in the west wing, Chris will hear Rebecca scream. She's in the study being menaced by a Hunter. Ignore her, or wait for a good ten minutes before you go into that room, and the Hunter will kill Rebecca. Q. How do I kill Barry 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 of the edge of Jessica's crypt, and will drop 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 your final encounter with her. One is, naturally, to shoot her until she drops off of the edge of the crypt, but another method is to shove all four of the locking stones off of the edge. (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 fallen off of the face of the Earth. 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 about 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. ====================== 13iii. 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 grenade launcher? 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 isn't really all 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 *is* dressed like Roger and Peter from _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. According to Wesker's Report, it's some kind of mutant version of Leon A/Claire B where Leon did *everything*. He's shown both tossing the G-Virus into the pit after Ada *and* blowing away Mr. X. In the meantime, Sherry isn't wearing her pendant in Wesker's Report, which would seem to indicate that Ada has it, but she doesn't; apparently, *Leon* has the pendant, because Wesker says Leon got the sample of the G-Virus from Sherry, even though Leon doesn't meet Sherry at all until the end of Leon A, when Sherry doesn't have the pendant anymore. In addition, the excerpt of RE2's ending that Wesker shows is from Claire B, so William apparently never infected Sherry. Furthermore, whoever tosses Leon the rocket launcher in Wesker's Report isn't wearing Sherry's pendant, and... I've got a headache. Q. Why does the plot summary still cover Claire A/Leon B? A. Because I want something a little more substantial than Wesker's Report before I go to that much trouble. Wesker's Report is, as I said, lame, and I'm about half convinced that the next game will ignore it. If RE4 has something more concrete (like Leon saying that Ada fell to her death), then I'll rewrite the plot summary. Q. How did Ada survive? A. In Wesker's Report, Wesker says he saved her because she was still of use to him. Remember, when in doubt, Wesker was somehow responsible for it. Q. Who threw the rocket launcher? A. If you ask me, and quite a few other RE fans, it was Ada. If you mention this on an RE message board, though, someone will probably try to correct you. That someone, incidentally, needs to get out more. (And if *I'm* saying that...) Q. It couldn't've been Ada. Ada died onscreen. A. So does almost everyone else. It's only a minor setback. Q. If Ada threw the rocket launcher, how did she escape the base before it exploded? A. One would presume, given Wesker's Report, that she escaped via Wesker's superspeed. Wesker can do anything, you know. More specific answers, naturally, will have to Wait Until The Next Game (tm). Note to Capcom: explain things in more detail in RE4, or we're going to lynch you. We're gonna come and string up the *entire building*. 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 and Wesker's Report, 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 alert editor 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 side of the car. Q. How come that truck driver became a zombie so quickly? A. The aforementioned dramatic infection pattern of the T-Virus. Q. What are the RE2 EX Files? A. RE2 was rereleased for the Nintendo 64 in late 1999. (Surprisingly, it was a very good port.) Several features were added to this new version, such as the EX Files. There are sixteen EX Files, and none of them are anything to get excited about. Several are taken straight from RE3, and others hint at developments in RE, RE3, CV, and RE0. While some of them are interesting, they're mostly intended to provide background on the series for N64 owners. You can read transcriptions in the Timeline FAQ, on the N64 RE2 page on gamefaqs.com, or on my website. Q. Why are some of the N64 files different than the PSX's? A. Some minor mistakes were fixed for the N64 port. Check out the Timeline FAQ for details. Q. Are there any other differences between the N64 and PSX versions? A. Yes, but there's nothing spectacular. -- 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. -- both 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 ammunition and health items turn into something else at random. -- the Fourth Survivor minigame now has a timer. Q. What's the Extreme Battle Game? A. An extra game found in the Dual Shock edition of RE2 for the PSX and the Dreamcast port, the Extreme Battle Game is a sort of prototype for the RE3 Mercenaries minigame. It lets you pick an armed-to-the-teeth character (in descending order of difficulty: Ada, Claire, Leon, and Chris), and fight from the lab's monitor room back to the police station. Your goal is to find four antiviral bombs that are hidden in the police station, and use them to incinerate the train. The Extreme Battle Game is unlocked, like any other secret in RE2, by finishing a scenario with an A rank. 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. There were still plenty of monsters in the Raccoon Forest after RE, and, as noted in Wesker's Report 2, the Raccoon Forest itself served to slowly bring the virus into the city. The spill at Birkin's lab, however, was both sudden and massive, which explains why everything in Raccoon went to hell in the course of a week. Q. Who did Ada Wong work for? A. It's a common misconception that Ada worked for Umbrella. At the end of Leon B, Annette tells Leon that Ada works for the "Agency," and was using her relationship with John to gather information on Umbrella. As alert reader Justin Kitt points out, this implies that Ada never worked for Umbrella at all. So who did Ada work for? There's nothing in RE2 to say who that is, one way or another, except for the mention of the Agency (which, in cheap espionage fiction, is usually shorthand for the CIA). In Wesker's Report, Wesker refers to Ada as another agent, but doesn't get any more specific; it is suggestive, however, that Wesker's Report 2 is a dispatch from Wesker to Ada. Q. Why do you call it "Mr. X"? It's a Tyrant. A. Because the first RE2 FAQ I ever read called it "Mr. X." It's force of habit. S.D. Perry calls it Mr. X as well, and that's the name on the box containing 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 all 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 RE writeup, the existence of Crimson Heads lends a bit credence to the Survivor file than it previously had. Also, as Rob McGregor helpfully notes, various files in RE2 and RE3 indicate that many of those who worked in and around the sewers in Raccoon City were succumbing to T-virus infection even before the outbreak on the 22nd. This may help to explain why Lickers only appear in and around buildings that are directly linked to the sewer system, and hence why there are no Lickers to be found in RE3. 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 says that Irons had just scattered the RPD's weapons supply around the building out of concern over an unspecified terrorist threat. If something doesn't seem right to you about the fall of the RPD, you can usually 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, he wasn't just on the take, but the maniac was also letting Umbrella do the decoration. There are some lines you just shouldn't cross. The sewer entrance, on the other hand, is the work of Thomas, the chess fanboy who the RPD's night watchman hung out with. There must be some crazy in the water down Raccoon way. (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. Ben's shut up in the cellblock with a conveniently wrecked van blocking him in. As an added bonus, Irons might not even know Ben's there. He was, presumably, very busy, what with cops to hunt, the mayor's daughter to kill, being trapped 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. Probably the same reason Jill didn't try to help him in RE3. Marvin looked as though he was already dead, and by the time he was conscious enough to move around, Irons was trapped. 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.) 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. 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. They use that parasite on Lisa Trevor, who eats it, thus occasioning a new round of tests. Birkin and Wesker promptly discover a wholly new virus inside her, which becomes a cause celebre. More importantly, when Wesker got the Nemesis parasite, he says outright in the second Report that he had every intention of swiping the credit for the Nemesis from the French division. With these facts in mind, everything else falls into place. Birkin and Wesker steal the French division's big discovery and make a bigger one with it. Years later, Wesker is believed to be dead, and a group of mercenaries come to steal Birkin's big discovery on orders from the head of Umbrella France. This would appear to be significant. Q. If rats carried the T-Virus aboveground, why don't you ever find any mutated, monster rats? A. If there were mutant rats, people would be yelling about "Parasite Eve ripoffs" at the top of their lungs. Q. When did Ada reach the RPD building? A. We don't know for certain, but she has 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 arrive. 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 could've, and Sherry's a past master of Vent Fu. Q. Did any of the other police officers survive? A. No. Leon is identified at the start of his B scenario as the only survivor of the Raccoon City police department. If it's good enough for the narrator, it's good enough for me. (Of course, the presence of Kevin in Outbreak complicates this, but only slightly; we don't *know* he survives, after all.) 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. Granted, that distinction is packed with delicious sophistry, but it's a valid way around the narrator's generalization. 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. Alert reader Logan Rapp notes that at the time William comes after either man, they're both relatively defenseless, uninjured, and alone, which is kind of rare in post-outbreak Raccoon. It may be that simple. Q. How did William get into Ben's cell? A. No one knows for sure, but with the lack of windows or vents in Ben's cell, it looks like William tore the door open. 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 visibly 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 no doubt incredibly painful 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 Tyrant in there. Q. Where did that Tyrant go? A. You know. Out. Around. Seriously, though, 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 control room on the turntable's shaft 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 very same Tyrant crawls out of a pile of rubble and attempts to kick in her hairstyle. As I've said before, coincidences are not useful. Tyrants are kind of 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 would seem to be our escapee. (Some people object to this and point to the storage containers on the eighth floor of the sewage treatment facility, but it's kind of obvious that the cockroach in the computer room upstairs is the escapee.) In that case, this Tyrant's been dead for two months. Case closed. The biggest problem with this is that if this is 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, and when we see that room a couple of months later, no one's bothered to do so much as put that dead guard in a body bag. Maybe Birkin just put a new, really big door on the room--sort of the mad-scientist equivalent to kicking dirty socks under the bed--and called it a day, I don't know, but it's still a flaw in the plan. The presence of a Tyrant in Outbreak also poses a problem. 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 isn't shown. As of RE:CV, the only people in this photo who are still alive are Chris, Barry, Jill, and Wesker. Brad, Forest, and Ed have all been killed twice, or at least found dead and then killed, although Brad's still the only one to stretch his deaths out across two games. There used to be a considerable amount of 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 getting him really, really killed on the train, while the helicopter pilot was renamed Kevin in 2.0. And now you know... the rest of the story. 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. Why did Wesker have that photo of Rebecca on his desk? A. Because he's the captain of S.T.A.R.S. Stop looking for hidden layers of significance. Sometimes, they just aren't there. Q. What photo of Rebecca? A. Check the messy desk in the STARS office fifty times to get Film D. If you develop it, you'll get a photo of Rebecca, who's looking cute, athletic, and prepubescent in her RPD intramural basketball uniform. 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, who's never been given an identity beyond this (if you check the same desk in RE3 as Jill, she doesn't say anything about it), has captured the hearts and minds of many obsessive RE fanboys and -girls, even though we're probably never going to find out who he is. 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. 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. Judging by RE2's files, the attack on William Birkin's lab took place somewhere between the 19th and the 22nd, as it was the cause of the Raccoon City outbreak. Hunk, on the other hand, doesn't manage to escape the sewers until the morning of the 30th, at some point after Leon and Claire have left the RPD building. This means that, somehow, Hunk survived both a beating from William Birkin *and* at least eight days' worth of wandering around in the monster-infested sewers underneath Raccoon City, carrying a vial of the G-Virus all the while. In short, we must assume that Hunk was extraordinarily lucky and is extraordinarily tough. Wesker's Report seems to say that Hunk isn't carrying the G-Virus sample from Birkin's lab; he's carrying the sample that Leon had and abandoned. Mm-hm. Scraped it up off the floor, did he? 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 something else decked him before Leon and Claire's arrival. Q. Why don't any of the assassins come back as zombies? A. Leaving aside for a moment the T-Virus's natural playfulness, many Umbrella employees have shown a tendency to evade T-Virus infection (i.e. Annette, Nicholai, Wesker, Alfred Ashford, Vincent Goldman). Since we know a vaccine for the T-Virus exists, it's not unreasonable to assume that many of Umbrella's people have taken it. It is also not unreasonable to assume that Birkin may have simply FUBARed the troops, the R in this instance standing for "Reanimation." By Romero-style zombie rules, this would entail that Birkin broke their spines or necks; then again, as Outbreak's opening movie would appear to display, the rats might've just eaten their brains. 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. 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. The Fourth Survivor minigame itself shouldn't be treated as part of the game's plot, since it has any number of continuity errors when compared to the main game (such as the missing bookcases in the library). The only plot-related element of the minigame is Hunk's survival. Don't worry about anything else. 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. ============================== 13iv. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS ============================== Q. Why the hell is Jill dressed like that? A. I'd imagine that it's an attempt at fanservice that tragically backfired. I'm really glad that, of the RE fans that I've heard from, they're irritated by Jill's miniskirt/tube top combo, and aren't, ahem, ogling her polygon count. (It does lend itself to some truly nice-looking Jill cosplayers, though. Rowr.) 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. The survivors of that fiasco withdrew to the RPD building, where they had to undergo a lengthy siege. At the same time, Brian Irons was deliberately undercutting the RPD's efforts. They really never had a chance. Jill, on the other hand, knows exactly what she's up against. She stays mobile, never fights when she doesn't have to, and is lucky enough to never run into more than eight zombies at a time. (It's worth mentioning that most of RE3 is set in back alleys and side roads. Jill may be deliberately avoiding the most infested parts of the city.) Note that whenever Jill encounters zombies in a cutscene, she runs away if she can. 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. Well, the first and most obvious point is that Umbrella has a very good surveillance network. Furthermore, Michael Conroy notes that at the beginning of the game, Nemesis is after Brad, and Brad inadvertently leads it straight 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. With that in mind, and Jill's habit of leaving spent shells, dead monsters, smoking craters, and burning buildings everywhere she goes, it wouldn't be difficult to track her. 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 sort of 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.) Further, if Jill's "last escape" is on the 28th, and the city's been swirling down the drain since the second outbreak on the 22nd, one would assume that if there was going to be a massive, organized rescue attempt from outside the city, it would've already happened. 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] between RE3 and RE2? A. They were whisked away by elfin magic. Q. What? A. By "elfin magic," I mean, of course, dramatic necessity. Capcom put in a few subtle visual cues that you weren't going to be able to run off and play through RE2 again. Relax, kid. It ain't nohow permanent. (Note that as jarring as you may find the boarded-up doors, the game still isn't as goofy as Extermination, where Dennis Riley treats boarded-up doors the same way, but he's got a *crowbar*.) Q. Well, then, why is the window that Nemesis jumps through still there in 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, Capcom wasn't expecting there to be a Resident Evil 3 (or, more accurately, Code Veronica was supposed to be RE3; I remember seeing *very* early screenshots of CV that were distinctly polygonal and PSX-esque), so RE3 and RE2 don't agree on a wide variety of relatively minor points. Examples include the broken window, the boarded-up doors, the absence of Lickers in the RE3 RPD, and the general layout of Raccoon City (such as how the locations of Uptown Raccoon and the RE2 sewage treatment plant overlap). As with many things in RE, you have to take this with a grain of salt. 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 another member of the UBCS. You'll always see him at the sales office, but who he's there with depends on how you and Carlos dealt with Nemesis. If you killed it or knocked it out before running, Nicholai will have just killed Murphy when Jill arrives. If you escaped from Nemesis, you'll see a brief scene with Murphy and Carlos. Q. Who's Tyrell? A. Tyrell's the Cool (Doomed) Black Guy from the hospital. 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, to find it contains a bomb set to detonate when the safe is opened. 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. Nemesis has its hands full with Jill. Besides, Mr. X was only sent in a full week or so after Hunk's team failed to report back, which suggests that Mr. X's deployment wasn't so much a planned action as it was an act of desperation. (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. 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. He's wounded and unconscious. Next time you play the game, check that office again on your way out of the RPD building. Taking the Lockpick is Marvin's cue to leave. 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. Besides, it's easier to send a horrific mutant to kill someone when that person is in a town full of horrific mutants. Jill was what's called a "target of opportunity." 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. Why would he? If Nicholai's actions over the course of RE3 tell you anything about him, it's that he's a schemer. Jill's a heavily armed, highly competent fellow survivor with compatible goals. If Jill finds a way out of town and she still perceives Nicholai as an ally, Nicholai can take advantage of that and whack her when her guard's down. If she's killed by something else along the way, Nicholai can claim the credit, because he spends most of RE3 systematically acing anyone who could say otherwise. By the time he goes after Jill himself, he's killed off all the other supervisors, secured his own escape route, and, in what's apparently the official ending, goes after her with an attack helicopter. Nicholai gives one the impression that he doesn't leave much to chance. 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, to say the least, a colorful character, but his work forms the beginnings of modern pharmacology. 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 a certain sense. (For more on Paracelsus, I refer the reader to Lewis Spence's _Encyclopedia of Occultism_, or *any book on alchemy ever*.) Q. Who made Paracelsus's Sword, and how did it get there? A. According to the Classified Photo file, an unspecified agency created the Sword specifically to combat Umbrella's creations. Since the Sword is found amidst the bodies of roughly a dozen U.S. Special Forces soldiers 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. How they managed to get that cannon there, on the other hand, is a mystery. It seems safe to assume that it was assembled at some point after the 28th, although the dead Tyrants in the power room would suggest that they didn't do it without some resistance. 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. Carlos will receive a garbled radio transmission from Barry. (If you do this, Barry's arrival seems far less like a _deus ex machina_, which is why it's in the summary.) This also slightly changes the dialogue leading up to the ending FMV. Q. How do you know that Jill was infected with the T-Virus? A. It's the only virus that makes sense. We've no reason to think it was anything else. Q. So why didn't she turn into a zombie right away? A. Because it was more dramatic if she didn't. Repeat after me: the T-Virus does whatever the plot wants it to do. 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. Okay, from the top: the way I heard it, this question started because someone at Capcom, probably Shinji Mikami, said that Nemesis was actually someone we knew from the past or something. I figure that he was quoted out of context, mistranslated, or was screwing with people's heads. (Alert reader Stonewolf suggests that Mikami might've been alluding to the fact that Nemmy's design was one of the rejected models for Mr. X.) Ever since that quote made it across the Pacific, literal-minded RE fans have been wracking their brains, trying to figure out who Nemesis could have been. A few die-hard RE fans, though, had come to the conclusion that Nemesis must've been Wesker, since every other major RE character except Rebecca was accounted for, and the idea of Becky "Useless" Chambers being turned into a killer bioweapon was (and is) just silly. These people could usually back the theory up pretty well. Wesker's return in Code Veronica kinda screwed them. Now, they have to explain how Wesker could've (deep breath now) survived RE, gotten cloned (optional, dependent upon theorist), become Super Wesker, gotten turned into Nemesis, survived being shot to "death" at the clock tower, taken a long nap in a gasoline fire, mutated into Tentacle Nemesis, gotten his head burned off his body, survived being thrown into the Dead Factory's waste dump, mutated into Kinda-Looks-Like-William-Birkin Nemesis, gotten beat up by Jill again, gotten blasted twice by Paracelsus's Sword, gotten to a minimum safe distance from Raccoon City in less than five minutes despite being dead, gotten turned back into Wesker, quit his job at Umbrella, joined up with whatever organization he's working for in CV, invaded Rockfort Island, ran away before Alexia turned him into Aztec barbecue, swiped Steve's body, beaten the pudding out of Chris, fled the Ashfords' Antarctic base via a convenient submarine, and still managed to find the time to get that *great* haircut. The answer is, of course, that Wesker couldn't and that he wasn't Nemesis, but some people just refuse to give up on something once they've spent that much time on it. Not even Wesker's Report is stopping some of these dedicated conspiracists. Hell, after writing this, *I* want him to be Nemesis. At this point, there are no straight answers as to who Nemesis was. That said, Wesker's Report 2 goes into detail about the "Nemesis parasite," which turns a human host into a powerful bioweapon, and shows a picture of it. At the end of the movie, when Matt collapses from his wounds, small tentacles, much like the ones depicted on the body of the Nemesis parasite, begin to dig their way out of his body through the cuts in his skin. Matt is promptly whisked off by a bunch of white-suited scientists who identify him as a candidate for the "Nemesis project." With the stated rarity of human hosts who can survive infection, I'm forced to conclude that Matt is the Nemesis. (The issue then becomes how Matt, the bleeding-heart corporate terrorist, is turned into Nemesis, the sadistic killing machine. Personally, I blame those violent video games.) In other words, WE HAVE AN ANSWER! We SORTA KNOW WHO NEMESIS IS! Go away! You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here! Q. Was Nemesis a G-Virus creature? A. No, it wasn't. You know, a lot of people seem to have an awfully personal stake in this question. 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. 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, so your mileage may vary. 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. ("Hey! That's *my* victim!") In the ordinary 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 has a long, sordid 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. 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 recycled polygons from some other point in the series. 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 in any way, shape, or form, so their identities are more or less meaningless. ============================ 13v. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR ============================ Q. Here's a witty joke involving the phrase "voted off the island!" Aren't I funny? A. No. Q. Why was GunCon support taken out of the North American release? A. The official reason, according to a Capcom rep, is that "there is no retail support for light guns or light gun games." This sounds like a delightful crock, but at least it's an answer. Mark Chang deserves thanks for this one, because he thought to write to Capcom and get the official word on the subject. 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, that purpose isn't mentioned. Q. Hey, is Hunk the cleaners' commander? A. I kinda 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 nuke was just a formality. Q. So why aren't there bathrooms on Sheena Island? A. Look at those graphics, dude. You're lucky Ark has a nose, let alone the need for a bathroom. ================================== 13vi. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA ================================== Q. What's the difference between CVX and CV: Complete? A. CVX is a PS2/Gamecube game, while CV: Complete came out for the Japanese Dreamcast. They're otherwise identical. Q. How did Wesker survive the "mansion incident?" A. According to Wesker's Report, Wesker injected himself with a virus he'd obtained ahead of time from William Birkin. This virus would make Wesker look like he was dead, but he would eventually wake up with superhuman power. He then proceeded to fake his own death by deliberately provoking the Tyrant to attack him. That low grumbling sound you hear is that of a couple of million RE fans, all complaining simultaneously about how contrived that explanation is. As noted above, though, we've other options now. Q. What *was* Wesker's virus? A. All we know is that he got it from Birkin, and that it wasn't the G-Virus, since Birkin didn't finish his work on that until two months after the original RE. Thus endeth the available information. Q. Y'know, Steve looks a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio. Here's a witty comment about it! A. [through gritted teeth] Stop doing that. Everyone does that. Q. What's the difference between CV and CVX? A. Oh, a few things. -- the Easy and Very Easy difficulty settings, from the Japanese release, have been put back in, because little things like not having arms shouldn't keep you from enjoying Code Veronica. (It really is the easiest of the REs, you know, even on Normal.) -- 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 above. -- in CVX, Wesker gets a hit in on Alexia. In CV, Alexia slaps him around the faux Spencer mansion 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 it's by no means impossible, particularly when you consider the flight time to Antarctica. 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. If the T-Virus was accidentally spilled at the island prison, why wasn't Claire infected? A. Once again, we will temporarily ignore the T-Virus's sense of humor and focus on the facts. Looking at Rockfort, the only people who seem to get infected are the prisoners, Alfred's servants, and a couple of unlucky members of Wesker's strike team. Claire, Steve, Rodrigo, Alfred, Wesker, Chris, that guy in the clean suit who gets killed by the Bandersnatch, and at least three cargo planes filled with survivors all manage to get off of Rockfort without becoming zombies. We're left to conclude that the T-Virus was being lazy that day, it was a weak batch, or it didn't have enough time to work on everyone. Mix in access to the vaccine and the traditional viral immunity of the RE protagonist, add a splash of coagulating zombie blood, and serve over ice. (Sense is for the *weak*.) 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 is 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, in fact, a band of troops led by Wesker. In one of the new CVX cutscenes, Wesker tells Claire just that. Looking at the island's layout, much of the island is off-limits due to fires, explosions, and rubble. Furthermore, one would assume that Alfred, as the commander of Rockfort, is doing his damnedest to keep Wesker and his men away from where he thinks Alexia is. Based upon this, 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 is apparently effective enough to convince Wesker that Alexia's on Rockfort, and he only learns otherwise once he's taken over the island. He says as much to Chris in their first meeting. 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 delusion was good enough to trick his servants, Wesker, and himself. Meanwhile, the *real* Alexia has been in Antarctica, a literal ice queen, since 1983. 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 is when Alexia emerges from cryostasis. Look at his face and listen to his voice. 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 vast and wildly discordant 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. Chris found out about the T-Veronica virus by strolling into an unlocked lab in the Antarctic mine and reading Alexia's research notes, which were lying on top of a desk. Given fifteen years of opportunities for corporate espionage, the general lack of respect for Alfred that seems to be floating around Umbrella's offices, and the ridiculous lack of security at the Antarctic base--Chris didn't even need a *keycard* to get into that lab, for gods' sake; you needed a key to get into Alfred's *game room*, but he leaves Alexia's *highly secret laboratory* unlocked--the question isn't how Wesker knew about T-Veronica. It's how he managed to get taken in by Alfred's little delusion. 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 apparently had bogus information. He was looking for Alexia, and thanks to Alfred, most people thought Alexia was sitting prettily in a mansion window in South America. It's only after Wesker takes Rockfort that he knows Alexia's in the Antarctic. He may never have learned about Alfred's delusion. 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. He'd want some extra guys around as cannon fodder. Supervillains love cannon fodder! 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. He's stuck on the same part of the island as Claire and Steve, due to the various collapses and explosions, and he's apparently been gutshot. Presumably, he couldn't've reached the other airport in time, if at all. (You try doing the two-hundred-yard dash in Danger condition and see how well you do.) Q. Why did Alfred send Claire and Steve to Antarctica? A. Yeah, that doesn't really seem like the brightest possible move on his part, does it? Sure, it's a more or less completely inescapable fortress where Alfred can hunt them down at his leisure, but then again, he's got to know that Claire's moderately resourceful, and there are all sorts of things in the Antarctic base that one would think Alfred would be trying to keep people away from. We may have to chalk this one up to Alfred's insanity and leave it at that. 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 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, but I find that questionable. None of the Antarctic zombies are dressed like Rockfort guards. Besides, if I was escaping from Rockfort and found a vial of T-Virus on my plane, that damn thing's goin' *right* out the window.) 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 also 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 suits marked with the Ashford family crest), but 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. 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. Well, how about unlocking Hunk? A. A great many websites and magazines, many of which should know better, have printed that Hunk can be used in the Battle Game if you win the game with an "A," after collecting all of the maps and files in the game. This doesn't work. Q. Doesn't Wesker work for Bioject now? A. Bioject, Umbrella's "true owner" or something like that, is an unsubstantiated rumor that seems to have come out of thin air. Alert reader Steve Clement notes that there's a medical supply corporation called Bioject that has several contracts with the U.S. Navy, which makes it unlikely that there's a fictional Bioject employing superhuman assassins. Wesker's employer is currently a mystery. The only clue that we have in this area is Wesker's HCF logo in the Battle Game, and that's hardly concrete. 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 will walk in thereafter, and the game continues. When you gain control of Claire in the study, she'll be in Danger condition. To avoid being poisoned by Alexander, you can either hit him from across the helipad or go for the one-shot kill with Alfred's sniper rifle. Just zoom in on Alex's heart and fire; it may take more than one shot, but if you hit the heart cleanly, you'll see a "hidden" cutscene ("I've got you now!"). Q. Why do the winged ants attack Alexia? A. I don't know whether they attack Alexia, land on her, or just get really agitated. That particular cutscene 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. Note that to follow Wesker, Chris has to go through the previously locked cell door, and two separate holes in the wall. Apparently, that cave-in in the sorting room blocked off more of the base than we would have previously imagined. I suppose that makes sense, really, as we never do see the other end of the conveyor belts. =============================== 13vii. RESIDENT EVIL: THE MOVIE =============================== Q. Hey, have you seen the movie? A. Naturally. You can read my review of the film in my column, "Signal to Noise," in the "Specials" archives at www.gamepartisan.com. It's listed there as the second "episode" of the column, for some reason. Q. Is the movie based on the games, or what? A. The film is theoretically a prequel to the games. It's set just after the original outbreak at the Spencer mansion, although it is staged in 2002 and thus screws everything up, and in a lab complex that's apparently meant to be the one at the end of RE2. While no characters from the games, and only one game-specific monster (a single Licker), appear in the movie, there are a few throwaway lines and cameos here and there that refer to the games (an example is the STARS logo on the hood of a police car at the end of the movie, and the oft-quoted line regarding the "Nemesis Project"; see below). A sequel is in production, and appears to be RE3 with Alice thrown in, right down to the casting of Jill Valentine in her RE3 togs. Q. If the film's a prequel, then where is it supposed to take place? A. The movie starts in the Spencer mansion, and moves from there to the cavernous "Hive" research complex underneath Raccoon City. Now, gods know I've tried, but the geography of the film makes no sense whatsoever when you try to apply it to the games. I'd initially assumed that the Hive is supposed to be the setting for RE2, or was a part of the RE2 facility that was sealed off at the end of the film. If it is, then Umbrella apparently took the time to break their fully-sealed laboratory back open and clean it out so Birkin had someplace to work, only to lose the whole thing again courtesy of Hunk's team. (It's worth mentioning that in RE0, when Rebecca briefly visits part of Birkin's lab, the place looks like it's been hit by a cyclone, and what we see of the lab in RE2 is apparently the last surviving remnant of the complex that encompassed it, the training facility, and the factory. It's entirely possible that Birkin *did* simply clean his area out and reopen it, although that in turn raises the question of how the hell he got back in.) The alternative is to believe that the Hive is entirely separate from the Spencer Mansion's laboratories and Birkin's subterreanean labs. While this does stick three massive, sprawling, yet separate underground bases underneath Raccoon City, it's the only way that everything works. It may be safer for all involved to simply assume that Paul Anderson, for all his protestations that the movie works with the games, wasn't really concerned with that. Q. Hey, there's this line about the "Nemesis Project," and-- A. I *know*, thanks. See the FAQs about Nemesis in RE3, above. Q. Hey, [event in movie] figures into the games' plot. A. No, it's pretty much official now that it doesn't. While it may provide as close to an explanation of the "Nemesis Project" as we're likely to get, that's about all the value the movie has to a discussion of the plot of the games. The first movie's set in a completely new mansion with new characters, four years later, whereas the second rewrites RE3. Let's wash our hands of this before someone mentions alternate universes. Q. Will you summarize the film in this document? A. Probably not, lest New Line Cinema squash me like a bug. Besides, a film summary is out of place in a document that's specifically dedicated to games. ========================== 13viii. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO ========================== Q. ...so Rebecca's this capable heroine-type who faces down Hunters, Tyrants, and James "Leechboy" Marcus in RE0, but she's a shrieking victim in RE. 'Sup with that? A. Admittedly, Billy comes off a lot better than Rebecca, with the exception of Rebecca punk-slapping the Tyrant. Just the same, REv.2's Rebecca, who cowers in fear before a single Hunter and begs Chris to be careful, is a serious change from RE0's. Personally, I try to keep in mind that RE0 Becky hasn't found the dead bodies of most of her teammates yet and has Billy backing her up, whereas REv.2 Becky is usually alone, trapped, and emotionally exhausted. (Look at how she reacts when Chris tells her that Richard's dead.) Further, as has been noted in several online discussions I've read, it's possible that Becky's been awake for a couple of days by the time Chris finds her in REv.2. In other words, cut the girl some slack. Q. Where did all her weapons go, though? A. That's a borderline irrelevancy. Personally, I chalk it up to that last fight with the queen leech; I never seem to have any ammo coming out of that fight, so why should Rebecca? Q. How does Billy know that Rebecca's in STARS? A. She's got a STARS patch on the upper 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 RE0 didn't exist when they made REv.2. Also, a big meaty hunk of exposition about the prequel would not only wreck the flow of REv.2, but it'd spoil RE0. In-character, there are a few good reasons *not* to tell Chris about Rebecca's ordeal the previous night, such as Billy, but listing them here would be pointless speculation. I'm just sayin' that, were I the RE scriptwriter (a blessed position I hope one day to fill), I would have a few ideas on this one. 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 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. If you watch the opening movie again, Enrico looks away from the truck just before some slime drips off the windshield. That, and the relatively intact corpses of the MPs, means that Marcus's leeches did it. Q. Hey, in Marcus's flashback to his assassination, was that-- A. No. Q. But it could be-- A. *No*. Q. But Hunk's so cool, and-- A. I will shoot you with mind powers. 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, where 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. Q. Where did the Stinger come from? A. I get this a lot. The giant scorpion in the lounge car is never explained, so I chalk it up to the same viral processes that gave us the Gulp Worm, or to James Marcus bringing a surprise on board with him. Q. What's the point of the "Verse of Poetry" file? A. I've kicked this one around with a couple of my editors, and the best we can do is that it's an oblique hint that the observatory contains the facility's escape route. Q. If there was a big explosion in the Raccoon Forest a day before RE, why didn't anyone 'phone it in? A. Wesker knew it was going to blow up, Birkin's the one who blew it up, Irons is so far in Birkin's pocket that he's sorted Birkin's change, it's a fair distance away from Raccoon City, people keep turning up dead in the Raccoon Forest, and there are several dozen reasons why Umbrella wouldn't want civilian work crews or honest cops crawling all over the blast site. Do the math. 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 the students at the training facility as test subjects for the Progenitor and T-Viruses, Marcus also intended to use his invention of the T-Virus to oust Spencer from control of Umbrella (cf. Marcus's Diary 1). Cue the nice men with submachineguns. Q. What's up with James Marcus? A. Marcus does throw something of a wrench into the works of the RE timeline to this point. He's said to be the "co-founder" of Umbrella with Spencer, when Marcus writes in his diary that when Spencer founded Umbrella, Marcus couldn't've cared less about the company. Marcus's co-founder status may be some kind of revisionist history on Spencer's account owing to the active campaign to smear the Ashfords (cf. the Umbrella Memo RE2 EX File). Alternatively, the only two people who've said anything about the Ashfords helping to found Umbrella are Alexander and Alfred Ashford, both of whom had a pretty wide megalomaniacal streak and could've been exaggerating the truth. Things aren't helped any by a typo in the American version's Investigator's Report 1 file, that claims that Marcus disappeared twenty years ago. Rob MacGregor's done the inquiries on this one, and other versions of RE0 say that Marcus disappeared ten years ago. So the situation then becomes this: James Marcus was one of the scientists who helped create the Progenitor virus. When Spencer founds Umbrella, Marcus doesn't even look up from his research long enough to fake an interest, although he does accept a position as the headmaster at the Umbrella training facility. He lets his assistant do most of the actual work, but William Birkin and Albert Wesker manage to gain Marcus's confidence. 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 apparently 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 also continues his private research into the creation of mutant leeches, because he is what is technically referred to as "icky." Marcus was apparently getting a few of his test subjects from the trainees at the facility. That, and his intention to overthrow Spencer, result in his assassination in 1988. Soon thereafter, an Umbrella investigation team checks out the training facility, and what they find is bad enough for them to nail the doors shut and declare the place closed. Eventually, 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. In the immortal words of Spike, wackiness ensues. Q. If Rebecca visits RE2's lab during RE0, then how do all the various 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. For the sake of clarity, and my sanity, I'll be completely ignoring the movie. 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.) 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 smart money's on the Tyrant), 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 pretty obviously *not* the one that Rebecca finds Billy in. For one thing, RE0's plant had been shut down, and was in the process of being reopened when Marcus intervened. For another, 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, and was thus in midtown Raccoon City. The biggest problem here is the elevator in the trainyard of the training facility, which stops there, a storage area outside the training facility's cable car stop, the top floor of Birkin's laboratory, and the power station in the former treatment plant. This would seem to suggest that Birkin's laboratory, the Umbrella 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 underneath the Raccoon Forest and part of Raccoon City that consists of at least twelve subbasements, and was built on or near a natural or artificial lake or river. This further assumes that the underground rivers seen in both REv.2 and RE0 are linked, if not actually the same river. 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. How this is, I couldn't tell you; we could probably chalk this up to Birkin's labs' obviously more recent construction, or to the aftereffects of a patented Rockfort Island self-destruct device, which makes a really pretty cloud of fire but doesn't do more than knock down a couple of walls. 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're 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. 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, instead of heading into the laboratory? She's right next to the sewer system, and it'd make a lot more sense. A. I've gotten this question a lot. I can refute it by bringing up three separate points. One is that the turntable control room's hatch is pretty securely shut when Rebecca gets there, thus meaning that she can't get into the tunnel network that Leon and Claire will use in RE2. That declares the issue null and void at its outset. Second, most of the people who've asked this question are misremembering RE2's geography. The turntable isn't "right next to" the police station; it's separated from the RPD by a short series of hallways, a tram ride (one of the benefits of RE0's complex is that it establishes just how long the RE2 tram ride probably was), the medal-keyed exit from the sewer tunnels, the sewers, their control rooms, and either the secret door into Chief Irons's torture chamber or the chess-key door in the pump room, either of which would be locked from the other side. Even if Rebecca could get the hatch open, she couldn't just stroll right back to the RPD. Third, via what process of clairvoyance would Rebecca know just how close she is to the Raccoon City Police Department? The tunnels under the RPD were referred to as "secret" for a reason, and Rebecca's on her first mission for the STARS. Unless one of her super-secret child-prodigy talents is batlike sonar, she has no way of knowing where she is relative to Raccoon City. Q. When was the treatment plant closed? A. One of the major problems with RE0 is that most 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, and how very few businesses are closed suddenly in the middle of the night, and how I find it hard to believe 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 very least, 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 midtown Raccoon City, behind the park and within a few blocks of the hospital. We've no reason to believe that the two facilities were even connected. Q. What was that thing that came after Billy in the water? A. It's almost easier to say what it wasn't. It couldn't've been the Neptune, because the Neptune's locked in the Aqua Ring, and it was clearly too big to be the giant frogs that the official strategy guide calls "Lurkers." Another traditional suspect is the giant crocodile from RE2, simply because it, too, is large and aquatic, but the facts (it's too big to escape its own sewer tunnel, and it probably hasn't mutated into existence yet by the time of RE0) do seem to prohibit that. I tend to believe 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 slammed into Billy instead of just eating him. I am further guided to this conclusion by my own sense of drama; the queen leech just works better in this context than the frog would. 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. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the former inhabitant of the broken storage tube on the ninth floor of the treatment facility, since that tube's not really big enough. ========================== 13viii. RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN ========================== Q. When're you going to add Gaiden? A. When I run out of distractions, which, at this rate, will be at some point in late 2006. See, here's the thing: Gaiden blows. It's like they took that dumbass sliding meter from Tidus's Overdrives and made a shooter out of it. I've owned Gaiden since, like, June, and I keep putting it off in favor of better games. Like *Cybermorph*. I'd rather play a ten-year-old *Jaguar* game than #$%&ing Gaiden. I mean, come on. I already played through Survivor twice for you people. A man can only take so much. ============================= 13ix. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM ============================= Q. Why is it on the PS2? What about the exclusivity contract? A. The way it was explained to me by a PR rep, the exclusivity contract only applied to new games in the core Resident Evil series. Gun Survivor 4 and Outbreak have both been in development since before the contract was made, and both are "side stories." Q. Why did its name change? A. The original Survivor has a largely deserved reputation for sucking. Dead Aim doesn't suck. Therefore, it's quite understandable, from a public-relations perspective, why one might want to try to hide the connection that a new, decent game has to an old, bad game. Q. Hey, is Fong Ling Ada? A. ...you know, I kinda doubt it. There's no reason why she couldn't be, but there's also no reason why she would be, aside from them both being eerily competent Chinese women. I'd say no. 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 for his dismissal as his responsibility in the May 11th, 1998 incident at the Arklay laboratory. This came pretty much out of left field, and Morpheus's link with Arklay isn't explored any further. (Note that of the three people who know that James Marcus caused the outbreak--Rebecca, Billy, and Wesker--none of them have any reason to have told Umbrella that.) 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, as noted above. 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. ============================ 13x. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK ============================ None yet. ===================== 13xi. RESIDENT EVIL 4 ===================== Q. When's it coming out? A. Mikami's been saying that it'll come out in "200X," and is pretty sure that "X" is something less than 9. Clever little man, that Mikami. Gamespot has it listed as arriving on New Year's Eve, 2004. Q. Hey, have you seen the box art? A. No, and neither have you. The "Umbrella Rising" box art is a mildly clever fake. Q. Is it true that you'll get to play an Umbrella agent? A. Leon's the main character. (I FOUND OUT ABOUT IT, THANK YOU, I'M TOUCHED.) I have read quite a few interviews that say that RE4 will use RE0's switching system to partner Leon up with another returning character, who has been rather broadly hinted to be an agent of some kind. To judge from those hints, the second playable character might be Ada, Hunk, Wesker, or Nicholai, but then again, I'm a little leery of trusting Capcom at this point. They told me RE0 would close plot holes. Then I played RE0, and like a cold, hard slap, I realized that most adults are liars. Q. Well, what *do* you know? A. Only what I saw at E3, which consisted of Leon walking down a Gothic-ass hallway with a flashlight in one hand, then getting the crap kicked out of him by what looked like a zombie wielding a meathook on a chain. According to Shinji Mikami, we will "pee [our] pants." ============== 14. Say What?! ============== "I play violent video games. I could snap at any moment!" -- Tycho Brahe, "Penny Arcade" You people are crazy. This section deals with the weirder and wilder theories, "facts," claims, and proclamations that I've received or seen since this thesis made its freshly updated debut. Most of these theories were sent to me by fans who presented them as though they were the gospel truth. I have, admittedly, had my own fun with a few of these, and I snuck a particularly creative contribution in here. Say What?! is meant strictly for fun, and isn't intended to mock any of the people who sent me the theories in question. This also isn't an invitation to send me even *weirder* theories, send me a friend's zany theories (Peter Pap told me a funny story about a neighbor of his who's convinced Sherry was Nemesis), or, indeed, to send me 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. ============================ 14i. The Weirdest of the Lot ============================ 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, puny mortals! The five-assed Wesker thirsts for your blood! 2. Nemesis was actually: 2a. Wesker. The radiation from the nuke turned him human again. (And what about the shockwave? Survive *that*, virus boy.) 2b. Alternatively, the original Wesker was Nemesis, and the one found 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. (...so the G-Virus lets you travel back in time? William Birkin was a friggin' *genius*!) 2e. Rebecca. 2f. The (previously) unidentified guy in the STARS group photo. 2g. Regina. No, I don't know why he'd be Regina, particularly since if Regina even *exists* in the RE universe, she'd be eleven. 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 1960s 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.) 2n. *Me*. *I* was Nemesis. While I was at it, I shot Kennedy (no, not Leon, the *other* Kennedy), I wrote the book on love, and I let the dogs out. I did it all! 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 shows 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, though I am not sure how, 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. (...so he escaped from his captivity and killed a soldier just before they calmed him down and told him to go after Jill? Even for RE, that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.) 17. The reason Rebecca disappears after RE is because Wesker used her brain to make the RE Tyrant. (Now, while Becky not having a brain *would* explain a few things about the original game, this is still impossible.) 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. Once again, I'm forced to wonder if any of you psychotic little darlings actually read this thing, or if you just scan to the end to get my e-mail address.) 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. (Because, y'know, Birkin had a special version of the G-Virus available, more than two months before he finished work on the G-Virus in the first place.) ============ 15. Mistakes ============ This section is dedicated to factual mistakes to be found within the Resident Evil series. This isn't dedicated to serious plot holes or B-movie science errors; instead, it's sort of like the "goofs" category on the Internet Movie Database. In this section, we'll go over the various errors to be found within the series, just for grins. I've deliberately excluded most of the firearms-related errors, such as Leon's mislabeled shotgun. Mistakes in this section were provided by myself, Cal Adams, the erstwhile "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: 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 have every intention of considering it to be the latter. RE2: 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 FMV. RE3: The RE3 manual claims that Jill, at the age of twenty-three, is a former member of the United States Delta Force. I looked them up, and found that the Delta Force is made up of former Green Berets and Army Rangers. I made note of this in earlier drafts of the analysis, largely to make another snarky comment about how everyone in the whole damn RE series is/was a child prodigy of some kind (even Sherry is unnaturally good at something, even if that something is simply clinging tenaciously to her own life), and, as a result, have been sent more information about the Delta Force than I really needed to know. In short, summarized from many readers' letters: Jill must be a former Green Beret, because women are barred from joining the Rangers; and if she was in the Delta Force, she was in the "Funny Platoon," which is entirely dedicated to intelligence services. Translated, Jill's military background means she was trained to be a spy, not the machine expert and technician that the manual would suggest. Further, if she *is* ex-Delta Force, and she's good enough that she went from basic training to Delta in four years, with time left over to be a STARS veteran, how did she go from being a member of a ridiculously elite military unit to a sort-of policewoman in a small city in the Midwest? (The only thing I can think of that'd get you kicked out *that* fast is if Jill came out of the closet. Lemon writers, *start your engines*.) Brad Vickers is killed by a tentacle through the head. This would make his becoming a zombie, as seen in RE2, impossible. (As Brian Irons tells us in RE2, decapitation or a headshot both prevent the zombification process. Several correspondents have attempted to bring up ways in which Nemesis's tentacle could've killed Brad without damaging his brain, but if you check Brad's body during or after the fight with Nemmy, it says that his face is a "red ruin.") 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. While the Raccoon City nuke wouldn't've generated enough of an EMP to crash the escape helicopter (several readers have written in to say that in order for a significant EMP to occur, a nuclear bomb has to be air-detonated), the blast should've permanently blinded Jill. 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. This means that Survivor's 9mm parabellum rounds wouldn't fit in the gun. CV: It doesn't actually snow in 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, but that's nitpicking.) If Chris triggers the self-destruct sequence in the Antarctic, and thus gives himself only five minutes to defeat Alexia and escape, how is that oh-so-cinematic showdown with Wesker possible? Shouldn't they both have been vaporized? =============== 16. Easter Eggs =============== This section is all about listing the funny little injokes and references that can occasionally be found in the RE series, contributed by myself, Sean Wyvill, and Iain Lewis. I would be remiss if I didn't mention this. In Final Fantasy 9, there's a statue near Cid's office in Lindblum. If you examine it, Zidane will note that there's "no place to put the medal." This is largely interpreted to be a joke about RE2. Queen references: "Made in Heaven" (Claire's vest, Chris's RE leather jacket), "Let Me Live" (Claire's CV vest, her second costume in RE2), and "Mother Love" (Billy's tattoo) are the second, third, and fourth tracks on Queen's "Mother Love" album. Dino Crisis: As mentioned above, several crates in the facility basement are sporting the Umbrella logo. RE2: This is less of an Easter egg than it is a request to help me find one. RE2 came out at the tail end of a bizarre trend in Capcom games, where they worked Akuma in if they could do so in any way, shape, or form; this is why Akuma's in Children of the Atom and Cyberbots, among other games, and it's why the "Akuma in RE2" rumor was able to spread as widely as it did. I know that that particular rumor is false, but I've also heard that, somewhere in RE2, there's a shadow in a background that's shaped like Akuma. If anyone can tell me where it is, I'd appreciate it. RE3: The movie theater in downtown Raccoon, across the street from the plaque where you can find the Bronze Compass, is showing "Biohazard 4." RE:S: There's a Dino Crisis 2 poster on the wall in the Arcade, and Lott has a Street Fighter 2 poster on the wall in his bedroom. RE:CV: For no apparent reason, in the Battle Game, Rodrigo is visible behind a stack of crates in the fourth room (where Chris found the doorknob). ===================== 17. About the Authors ===================== I'm a twenty-four-year-old college student, majoring in English, a somewhat disgruntled American, and a freelance writer. Any more biographical details I'm willing to part with can be found on my personal website, at http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/. Dan Birlew's author's information can be found in his strategy guides. Pick up almost any strategy guide Brady Games has put out in the last few years, and it's probably one of his. ============== 18. 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, along with 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 let you know if I didn't appreciate yours. This document can be found at many, many websites. The following are the most likely to have the newest version: http://www.gamefaqs.com http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/writing.html The following have an older version of this document: http://www.ps2fantasy.com http://www.absolute-playstation.com/ http://www.neoseeker.com You can find an older version of this analysis at http://www.geocities.com/peterpapau. Peter, do me a favor and drop me an e-mail; your version's almost ten months old and could use the update. Note that www.gamecenter.com is currently hosting a copy of this document that dates back to the early Mesozoic, without permission. If you find unauthorized hosting or usage of this document, please alert me at twilde@gamepartisan.com. You can find Nicolas Falduti's French translation of this document at http://ritalman.thelemmings.net/story.html. 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. If you want to send me questions, comments, or feedback on this document, please note that sending me any of the following will, at the bare minimum, get you a rude response: -- theories (this applies to *everyone*) -- unsolicited attached files (please turn your spiffy HTML .sig files off) -- requests for gameplay information or puzzle solutions -- 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. With that said, please read the following before e-mailing me, and take it to heart: http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/writing/fiq.html [warning: explicit language] Thomas Wilde twilde@gamepartisan.com a.k.a. Wanderer at dark-legacy.org a.k.a. Storyteller on the gamefaqs.com boards home: http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/ work: http://www.gamepartisan.com http://www.worthplaying.com http://www.game-over.net http://www.doublejumpbooks.com