The eagerly awaited Resident Evil Village is a direct sequel to its predecessor, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The first RE game to offer a first-person perspective, RE7 helped rectify the series' gradual shift away from survival horror and towards action-shooter. This change in tone and gameplay makes RE7 a good place to jump into the series, yet it's increasingly seeming like it will ultimately be viewed as a prelude to Resident Evil Village, which builds on the new Resident Evil formula established by Biohazard.
While Resident Evil 7 is an enjoyable game in its own right, some players feel it's fairly barebones. For those uninterested in playing through RE7 before Village launches on May 7, what follows is a quick summary of relevant information that will help set up the story and characters so far.
Those who've had their interest piqued by the promotional hype for Village will also want to keep an eye out for the two RE8 demos coming soon. The overarching story of the Resident Evil series is long and intricate, but its gameplay has a much wider appeal. Puzzle-like level design and cutthroat survival mechanics are what built Resident Evil's reputation, and these do seem to be returning in Village.
Resident Evil Village & RE7 Protagonist: Ethan Winters
Ethan Winters was introduced as the player character in RE7. He was dragged into the world of engineered bioweapons during a search for his missing wife, Mia. The inciting incident of RE7 is Ethan receiving an email, supposedly from Mia, telling him to come find her at the Baker estate in Dulvey, Louisiana. What Ethan finds is a mostly derelict ranch house being used as ground zero to infect victims with a bioweapon known as Mold.
Much of the Resident Evil series revolves around the viruses created by the Umbrella Corporation, but RE7 provides a glimpse into the wider bioweapon market of the series' universe. Ethan comes to find out that the Mold is a fungal organism created by a group known as The Connections, an industry rival of now-defunct Umbrella that Mia also worked for, unbeknownst to Ethan before he unravels the mystery in Louisiana.
When Ethan arrives at the Baker estate, he finds Mia rather quickly, but she attacks him and severs his left hand. Ethan is then infected with the Mold himself, which allows his hand to be reattached, and he renews his search for Mia after escaping capture by the Baker family. With the help of the Zoe Baker, the daughter of the family and the actual sender of Resident Evil 7's inciting email, Ethan defeats the Mold-infected Baker parents, crafts a serum, and escapes the Baker property with Mia, curing her with the serum as they depart.
Following this, in a flashback and subsequent section aboard a beached tanker ship where Mia becomes RE7's player character, Mia's role in this incident is revealed. Under the employ of The Connections, she was caretaker to a successfully created bioweapon known as Eveline, which had the appearance of a 10-year-old girl. Eveline controls the Mold and all those infected with it. The Mold was introduced into Eveline's genome when she was an embryo, and she was raised to be a powerful weapon, never having a proper family. After the tanker was beached in Dulvey, Eveline used the Baker family and their residence as a means to build herself a family, due to feelings associated with her abnormal childhood.
Being rescued from the ship by Mia, Ethan ventures into a nearby salt mine that was used by the Bakers' son, Lucas, as a lab to monitor the progress of Eveline and report her status to The Connections. Before descending into the mining tunnels, Ethan hears radio chatter and witnesses helicopters flying toward the Baker house. Within the lab, Ethan finds the means to create a necrotoxin, returns to the Baker estate, discovers Eveline has rapidly aged into the old woman that was presumed to be the Baker grandmother, and uses the necrotoxin to destroy her. The canon end of RE7 shows Ethan and Mia being flown away from the Louisiana ranch by the helicopters.
Chris Redfield & Blue Umbrella In RE7 & Village
Among Ethan and Mia's saviors at the end of RE7 is Chris Redfield, one of the protagonists of both the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil 5. In the first game, Chris was a member of the Raccoon City Police Department's Special Tactics and Rescue Service during the Raccoon City incident, which resulted in the city being destroyed by the U.S. government to prevent the rampant spread of Umbrella's T-Virus. In Resident Evil 5, Chris was a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, which investigated bioweapon manufacturing and use for the United Nations.
When Chris appears at the end of RE7, he is working alongside a rebranded Umbrella Corporation known as Blue Umbrella - the company's iconic logo now blue instead of red. Blue Umbrella is the result of the company's assets being restructured following its dissolution in 2003. It now works to reverse the nefarious acts of the Umbrella Corporation, seeking out and eliminated bioweapon threats across the globe.
In the announcement trailer for Resident Evil Village, Chris is shown unceremoniously executing Mia with a pistol in front of Ethan and seemingly taking the couple's baby, Rosemary. Chris will reportedly play an integral role Resident Evil Village's broader story, as well. It's presumably Chris, then, who whisks Rosemary away to the eponymous village in Eastern Europe. Why Chris would take her and how she ended up in the village in the shadow of Castle Dimitrescu remain unclear, but they most likely have a connection to the greater mystery involving the Umbrella Corporation's machinations.
Chris was in Raccoon City when the crimes of Umbrella first began, and he appears determined to see it through to the end in some fashion. Resident Evil Village is supposedly the middle part of an RE trilogy, and the announcement trailer begins with the sentence, "His story comes to a close." Will this be the last Resident Evil game for Chris Redfield, or will Ethan Winters' story conclude before Chris caps off the trilogy he started in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard?