Resident Evil Village serves as the latest installment that hopes to help Resident Evil return to its survival horror roots. After the events of RE 7, Chris Redfield disturbs the Winters family's peace by abducting him into a mysterious European village. Now, RE 8 once again tasks players to control Ethan Winters - this time, to save his daughter Rosemary and to escape yet another hostile territory.
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However, Ethan will also find himself in the middle of a power struggle between four elites within the village. Moreover, in a survival horror zombie game where villains take on the form of vampires, werewolves, mermen, and puppets, players may wonder how Capcom manages to form a narrative connection between RE8 and RE7.
WARNING: There are many spoilers ahead!
10 Cut It Out With Ethan's Hand
Bad pun aside, Ethan's hand serves as the perfect example of why first-person Resident Evil can become just as frightening as its older games. In RE 7, Mia Winters herself severs Ethan's left hand. Thankfully, Ethan gets his hand back up and running thanks to a stapler.
Before players try to comprehend this bit of medical magic, Ethan's hand endures suffering again in RE Village. An enemy will bite Ethan's fingers off just minutes into the game. On top of that, his hand once again gets severed by a boss later in the game. But not to worry, magic with the First Aid Med will get that all better. There's an in-game explanation for this medical sorcery, but Ethan's hand still deserves a medal for that.
9 The Dulvey Gas Incident
Early on in the game, RE Village immediately ties itself to the timeline of RE 7. As per a news report, the events in the Baker House in Dulvey, Louisiana has become officially coined "The Dulvey Gas Incident." The report said that a natural gas leak from the mudrock in the area had caused the deaths of the Baker family, with the Winters couple missing. Players, and even Ethan, know that this is a cover-up.
Sadly, trauma from the incident seems to have strained the Winters' relationship. Mia tries to put the past behind and focus on Rosemary, while Ethan is dumbfounded that Mia can "simply" try to forget such a thing. To cope with his paranoia, Ethan has taken up firearms training.
8 Finding Rosemary
As game trailers suggest, Rosemary becomes the focal point of Ethan's journey throughout the Village. After all, he needs to retrieve her from the perils of the Village, a la Finding Nemo with a survival horror twist. However, more details in the game itself hint towards Rosemary's larger significance to the plot.
For instance, Ethan recalled a time he and Mia argued about Rosemary's true nature. After all, as their child, she could've inherited something from both of them.
Moreover, Rosemary's medical report stated that the BSAA will be providing results for the child's "fungal pathogen" tests. However, the closest fungal pathogens in the game would pertain to Eveline, the E-Type BOW that utilized the Mold. Chris seemingly killing Mia and sparing Rosemary seems to hint at this relation.
7 Attack On Ethan
A second bad pun aside, Chris Redfield suddenly attacking Ethan and his family make something apparently clear: his presence meant bioterrorism business. And no matter how "supernatural" the Village seems, there's going to be a virus somewhere.
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As fans would learn, Chris hid Mia and Ethan in eastern Europe precisely to hide them from the aftermath of the Baker House Incident. Unfortunately, Mia's past as a The Connections operative prior to RE 7 will drag them back to the bioterrorism scene in RE Village.
6 The Harbinger Of Death
It's always a bad sign when a protagonist meets a friendly face in a mode with no co-op. When Ethan goes into the Village for the first time, his new friend Grigori conveniently dies at the hands of a Lycan. And when Ethan gets into a safehouse with survivors, everyone except Ethan once again conveniently dies in a Lycan attack. So players can give Ethan some slack when he loudly muses that people kept on dying around him.
Aside from being a survival horror mechanic, Ethan's misfortunes with friends do begin in RE 7. After all, when a deputy came to investigate the mansion, the Bakers get to kill him too.
5 Calcium Without Milk
When Ethan finally gets the opportunity to defend himself, his enemies conveniently die without leaving corpses. Rather, they crumble into dust that fades into the wind. Aside from conserving hardware power, the crumbling effect will definitely remind players of times Ethan killed Molded in RE 7. In this context, monsters in RE Village didn't necessarily "crumble into dust," but may have calcified instead.
Players at this point can surmise that the monsters in RE Village, supernatural as they may seem, should have relation to Eveline's Molded in RE 7.
4 Back To Eveline
By the time Ethan catches up with Chris, the latter finally explains his attack in the Winters household. Not only is Mia alive somewhere else, but the Mia that Chris shot was actually Mother Miranda in disguise. On top of that, the seemingly supernatural creatures Ethan fought all resulted from Miranda's experiments with the Mold.
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And of course, mentioning the Mold now inevitably brings Eveline into the picture. Mother Miranda herself finally reveals her interest in Rosemary: the infant is Eveline's successor and true form. Moreover, Rose will become the host for Eva, Miranda's daughter who died from the Spanish Flu.
3 Not A Hero
In RE 7, the Not A Hero DLC implied that recent events transformed Chris into less than a hero. Thankfully, RE Village marked Chris's full transformation into the scruffy antihero the franchise needed. When players take control of Chris, he at some point expresses his distaste in BSAA and that the organization has become rotten.
This newfound distrust may have come from the fact that the BSAA had to cover up the Baker House Incident. As a result, Chris separated himself from the BSAA and formed his Hound Wolf Squad.
2 Under The Umbrella
Ethan discovering that the Village's noble crest resembled the Umbrella logo proved to be one of the more shocking revelations in RE Village. Thanks to Chris, the game reveals that Mother Miranda had indoctrinated students into her mission to revive Eva through the Mold, one of them being Oswell Spencer himself. However, Oswell parted from Miranda as he believed survival of the fittest was humanity's only way to evolve. When Oswell discovered the Progenitor Virus, he founds Umbrella Corporation and adopted the same logo Miranda used for her nobles.
However, perhaps more interesting is Miranda's own experiments. As it turns out, humans from the Village mutated into these monsters via the Cadou, genetically engineered organisms that Mother Miranda herself had developed to find a suitable host for Eva. She even contracted The Connections to create Eveline via Eva's DNA and samples of the Mold. While Eveline proved to be an incompatible host for Eva, The Connections still proved themselves useful by directing her attention to the newborn Rosemary Winters.
1 The Sixth Sense Moment
When Ethan seemingly "dies" at the hands of Mother Miranda, he wakes up on a cold wasteland with an apparition of Eveline taunting him. She insists that Ethan is dead, much to the latter's disbelief. It's here that Eveline explains Ethan's ultimate connection to the events of the previous game.
Apparently, the encounter with Jack after Ethan's first fight with Mia proved to be his last. Jack kicking Ethan in the head proved to be fatal after all, with Ethan having been infected with the Mold from the start. Moreover, Ethan has been dead all along, with the Mold the only thing keeping him alive. However, Ethan remained determined to save Rosemary from Miranda. He even goes to rescue her, knowing full well that killing Miranda - the Mold's host - will result in his own Mold being destroyed.
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