Resident Evil Village starts spooky, but by the game's final moments, action has taken center-stage. It's a time-honored tradition to have the end of a Resident Evil game go completely off the rails with massive boss fights and explosions, and Resident Evil Village certainly delivers on that front, with one moment in particular bound to go down in the Resident Evil hall of fame as one of the franchise's most ridiculous and over-the-top moments.
[WARNING: Spoilers for Resident Evil Village below]
It seems Capcom took player feedback to heart with Resident Evil Village. Resident Evil 7 proved to be pretty horrifying, especially in its opening hours. While Resident Evil Village certainly has scary moments, once again loaded towards the front half of the game, it's all action at the end, with multiple boss battles and a whole lot of lycans to kill.
That Resident Evil Village has fully transformed into an action game is obvious at the end of game's factory area, where things go from outlandish to absolutely bonkers. So what, exactly, makes one of Resident Evil Village's final battles in particular so ludicrous, even by Resident Evil standards? Well, let's just say there's a tank involved.
Resident Evil Village's Chainsaw Tank Boss Fight
It all starts to spiral out of control towards the end of Resident Evil Village's final area, the factory, where players fall down into the deep, dark underbelly of Heisenberg's domain. It's there Ethan Winters finds none other than Chris Redfield tinkering away at...something. Chris hasn't been seen for several hours of the story, and so Ethan takes the opportunity to get some answers from him. Ethan learns the truth behind what happened to Mia (she's not actually dead), and, understandably, wants some payback.
Turns out Chris has been rigging the factory with explosives while at the same time building a tank of sorts, one made of a metal/polymer hybrid material that can't be controlled by Heisenberg's Magneto-style metal manipulation powers. Chris' death machine looks cobbled together but still sports a cannon, a machine gun, and a chainsaw arm. He blows open a hole in the wall and reveals an elevator, telling Ethan to take the tank topside but to try and "stay under the radar."
This is a hilarious statement considering Chris just blew open a hole in a wall and then told Ethan to get in a tank. Things gets very loud from that point forward, as Ethan is thrust into a boss battle against a Heisenberg who has mutated into a gigantic, metal monstrosity. Players must blast Heisenberg's weak points with the tank while getting around his metal defenses. The tank's chainsaw arm isn't even used for offense, but is exclusively used to block Heisenberg's attacks. It's not long before Heisenberg destroys Ethan's tank, only for Chris to cause the factory to explode just as Ethan is about to meet his end. This makes Heisenberg more than a little angry, who then utters what is most likely one of the most meta sentences of dialogue in the entire Resident Evil franchise, telling Ethan that he's "going to murder that boulder-punching asshole, but you're first."
The phrase "boulder-punching asshole" specifically references a contender for one of the franchise's previously most over-the-top moments, in which Chris battled series villain Albert Wesker in a volcano and was forced to punch giant boulders to clear a path forward. Yes, that actually happened in Resident Evil 5, and yes, Heisenberg for some reason knows about it. And yes, it's all supremely goofy. But that's also what makes it great. The entire chainsaw tank sequence is just one ridiculous moment after another, culminating with Ethan Winters finally dying after literally getting his heart ripped out. It's incredible.
Safe to say, it's going to be hard for the inevitable Resident Evil 9 to top this. Resident Evil Village's chainsaw tank battle is the franchise at its most ridiculous, but it certainly makes for moments fans won't soon forget.