Resident Evil VII: Biohazard [2017]
After the mixed and generally poor reviews of Resident Evil 6, the franchise took a five-year sabbatical as far as main numbered titles go, and what we got was something that felt a bit more Silent-Hill-esque! Which was pretty amazingly done. The gameplay and the story was far, far more focused on a single protagonist experiencing psychological horror as the story ends up being reduced to a personal and visceral scale. There are still biological mutant creatures, but for the most part -- particularly the first couple hours of the game -- it's just the horror of a dude being trapped in a ramshackle swamp building with a bunch of superhuman serial killers stalking you. Back in the day, there was a fair amount of arguments (particularly when the demos/trailers came out) on whether this is a fresh breath of air, or if it's just Resident Evil aping current horror game trends. But after the game itself came out and most people experienced the game as a whole, I think it's safe to say that VII is probably one of the most solid stories and installments in the franchise. It's also a very different game, but the variety is appreciated, and I certainly enjoyed the atmosphere and the story if nothing else.
Whatever the case, though, Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (or its Japanese title, Biohazard 7: Resident Evil) undeniably has one of the most gripping, thrilling stories in the franchise's history. I certainly thoroughly enjoyed watching someone play through it, even if gameplay-wise it's not my cup of tea.
Also, is it not super-duper awesome that they got a '7' into the titles of both English and Japanese versions of the title?
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The Story:
Ethan Winters arrives on the swamps of Louisiana, looking for his missing wife Mia who has gone missing three years ago and presumed dead. Ethan arrives on a seemingly abandoned farmhouse and finds Mia in the basement. Ethan is helped by a woman named Zoe, who contacts Ethan via phone calls and informs Ethan of an escape route. During this attempt, however, Mia goes berserk and begins attacking Ethan, forcing him to kill her in self-defense. Ethan is then knocked out by Jack Baker. Ethan later wakes up to find himself in captive of the Baker family, consisting of Jack; his wife Marguerite; their son Lucas; and grandma Baker in a wheelchair. The Bakers torture Ethan and attempt to feed him human parts.
A phone call distracts the Bakers, and Ethan manages to break free from his bonds, and tries to escape the Baker mansion while being pursued. His ally Zoe later reveals herself to be Jack's daughter, the only sane member of the Bakers. The Bakers soon show that they have fast regenerative abilities, as well as control over monstrous fungus-people called the Molded. Ethan fights Jack again and manages to kill him. Mia, however, turns out to still be alive, and with Zoe's help, Ethan wants to save his wife and cure her of the infection. In the process of hunting down the ingredients for the antidote, Ethan fights and kills Marguerite, and drives away the insane Lucas.
A mutated Jack Baker attacks, and Ethan is forced to use one of the two serum doses to permanently kill Jack. With only one dose of serum left, Ethan (and the player) has to choose whether to cure Mia or Zoe. (The canon and 'good' ending is choosing Mia) Ethan and Mia heads off into the swamp where Ethan would learn several things -- a vision from Jack about the mind-controlling girl called Eveline, as well as the wreck of a tanker ship three years ago that coincides with Mia's arrival there. Ethan is then attacked by Eveline herself and captured. The amnesiac Mia remembers her original mission three years ago; that she's actually working for an unnamed corporation that was developing a fungus-based bioweapon... and the little girl Eveline is actually the bioweapon E-001. Three years ago, Eveline escaped, capsized the ship, infected Mia and forced her to believe that she is Eveline's mother, and then later on takes over the Baker family to make her own family.
Resisting long enough, Mia is able to help Ethan escape and give him a sample of Eveline's DNA. After escaping the first confrontation, Ethan ends up making his way to a hidden laboratory nearby, creates a toxin against Eveline, and goes off to the farmhouse. Despite Eveline's attempts to stall Ethan with Molded and hallucinations, Ethan manages to inject Eveline with the toxin... and finds out that Eveline's real body is the 'grandma' from earlier. Eveline mutates into a massive monster, and attacks Ethan, but Ethan is able to destroy her with the timely arrival of a group of military people called "Blue Umbrella", led by Chris Redfield (who also rescues Mia if she's alive).
Several epilogue DLC's are released for this game. "Not A Hero" details the story of Chris Redfield as he heads off to apprehend Lucas Baker, who is actually working for The Connections, the group that created Eveline. The sociopathic Lucas has been sane and immune to Eveline all along. After the end of the main story, Chris has to hunt down Lucas, braving his dungeon of monsters and traps, before facing off and killing Lucas. "End of Zoe" follows Zoe as she wanders into the swamp, and gets wounded by Eveline and is rescued by Blue Umbrella and her uncle, Joe Baker. On the hunt for the cure, they are attacked by an invincible, powerful Molded called the Swamp Man. Joe has to both get the serum, and rescue Zoe (who's abducted), before permanently killing the Swamp Man (actually the mutated corpse of Jack) and finally curing Zoe with the help of Blue Umbrella.
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The Enemies:
Molded
There aren't really that many enemies in Resident Evil VII, but after going through an alphabet soup of virus and a parasitic organism, we finally jump into a completely different disease pathogen... fungi! The Molded are the 'basic' enemy, although even the 'basic' enemy is pretty dangerous and (compared to previous installments) relatively uncommon in this far more horror-driven game. I do like the detail noted that while the Molded do sometimes require corpses to be created, they are not reanimated corpses but rather a bunch of mold filaments that fed on a corpse and just take the vague approximation of one. If there are enough general Mold material in an area, they can in fact smoosh together to create a Molded. Or, well, 'mold' enough of the fungal material, so to speak. Their entire face is taken up by nothing but huge fanged teeth, which is what they use to 'nom on Ethan. Very Venom. I approve. Oh, looking closely, too, you can even see little eyeballs in the mouth. Glad to know that even though RE7 is super-duper-serious, the monster designers wanted to sneak some cheesy details.
Making a sinister humanoid out of goop and slime is pretty basic as far as monsters go, and even the Resident Evil franchise has done weirder, but I absolutely love the imagery of black mold and fungus just creeping and crawling through the dilapidated home, some of which can turn into humanoid corpses. What initially just seemed like a generic swamp house turned would later reveal entire rooms and swathes that has been consumed by mould -- a far more extreme version of the ones you might find in your garage or your bathroom. And then the walls of mould move. Fungal monsters, I feel, is a theme that hasn't really been explored enough in video games, but fungi are another one of nature's decomposers, one of the organisms whose entire existence hinges on death and decay. Certainly a great basis for a zombie horror game! And being based out of fungus is also astonishingly appropriate for a game set in a swamp.
Conceptually, the idea of a bag of goop that is only shaped like a human body and moves weird has already been done before in the series with the RE4's Regeneradors and RE6's Rasklapanje, but being based on mold and fungi really does give these guys a truly different vibe, as does everything surrounding RE7. The atmosphere of the location, and the slow buildup and mystery as to what is causing the Baker family be so batshit crazy, and then when you finally realize that the family's many victims have been turned into walking fungus-zombies... yeah, pretty awesome!
Molded Variants
Technically for the most part of the game, you only ever face Molded, with all the enemies in the game being variants of the mutable Molded body form. It does make things a bit same-y and boring from a monster design perspective, unfortunately. We don't even get an obligatory fungus-doberman monster! It makes sense in-universe, but I kind of wanted them to branch out a bit more, y'know? At least these Molded variants aren't half-bad. Blade Molded is a bit boring, being just a Molded with a huge crescent arm. Double Blade Molded from one of the DLCs is a bit better, although it's more of the factor of the cool head-shape and spikes more than anything.
The Quick Molded (alternatively, 'Four-Legged Molded') is sort of our 'zombie dog' of the game, although it looks less like a dog and more like a giant scuttling spider monster. It runs of four longer legs but is otherwise the same as regular Molded. And Fat Molded is just... the big, durable mini-boss. This one is made of white, chalky fungus and has more deformed, goopy features.
I'm sorry -- I know, I know, these very similar-looking enemies gives the game a lot of focus, and the main appeal of VII is the atmosphere and the tense horror. But I kinda wished that the enemies look more different, y'know? I get that they went too over-the-top in terms of enemy variety in RE6, I really do. Even if they don't resort to using other cooler looking fungi other than mold, at least they could've 'molded' them into cooler looking things than just sticking to humanoid designs. Like, as overused as zombie dogs are in previous games, I'd kill for this game to have a fungus-dog or a fungus-snake or fungus-tentacles something. The basic Molded look is cool, and I like all of these variants, but it feels like they're just starting to build up to something and they just stopped.
Fumer
The DLC gives us a couple extra cool Molded variants, at the very least, even if they still feel like we're just scratching the surface of where we could go with the Moulded. The Fumer is only seen in the Chris Redfield DLC, and looks sort of cool, with a disturbingly very visible skull still held together by the mycelium; and a pale, light-green mold instead of the blacker ones of the regular Molded. I guess these Molded haven't digested their human corpses yet. These are extra-tough and are unkillable until you get special ammo. I do like how different they look despite technically just being a 'reskin', the mold textures just looks so different compared to the far more damp-looking regular Molded.
Mama Mold & Little Crawler
Also only found in the "Not a Hero" DLC (Chris Redfield just invites these strange variants to him, I suppose), "Mama Mold" is sort of a boss fight and... and it sure is a Molded shaped like a fat woman. What really works here is that face with the haunting yawning expression, though, and while it does look boring, I do like Mama Mold's boss fight as it basically splits apart and shows bits of creepy flesh inside. Also, those random hair on an otherwise nasty, crusty mold body does work in making her unnerving.
Oh, also, Mama Mold creates these 'Little Crawlers', which are vaguely insectoid little spider babies that run around, although they don't look like actual spiders. The feet look more like someone glued a bunch of feet scavenged from like, toys or something, and attached them to this little glob with a fanged mouth beneath it. They also have an eye. Something genuinely different and not humanoid!
Man-Eating Insects, Man-Eating Spiders, Gator
These are honestly more hazards than anything. You've got these Man-Eating Insects, but sadly they're only in the game for the segment revolving around Mama Baker. Mama Baker is a walking insect hive, and has at some point infected the many, many insects of the swamp with the Mould. Design-wise... eh? They look like larger versions of regular mosquitoes (although it has traits of crane flies and live in nests like wasps). Two variants -- 'Adult' and 'Young' exist, as do their spawning nests. They have stings and mandibles. Not much else to say here, they fit the swamplands vibe but are otherwise just slightly weirder insects.
We've got also a bunch of other animals, but they are kind of minor. 'Man-Eating Spiders' are kind of small spiders infected by mold that attack Ethan, and are more hazards than actual enemies. There are also centipedes, too, but I can't find any good images of them. Gators only show up in the 'End of Zoe' DLC, but despite being a Mold-infected alligator it's not even much more different than regular gators. I'd expect something like the RE2 remake's deliciously shambling plant-covered decaying gator, but this is just a gator without pupils.
Mia Winters
Bosses now! Mia Winters is a boss you fight twice in the game... but she really is just a regular lady who looks creepy because the game engine gets to deliver uncannily realistic graphics and shadows, and giving a tint of cracked, pale skin, bags under her eyes and whatnot makes her scary. The voice acting, the location and the context of Mia being someone you need to rescue turning on you and trying to murder you with her knife or her chainsaw all makes her scary. Amazing execution, and the first fight against Mia is probably the scariest part of the game as a whole. As a monster design, though? Eeeeeh. It proves that the Resident Evil team can make a regular human scary. That's good and all, but she doesn't really gives me much to talk about here.
Jack Baker
The patriarch of the fucked-up Baker family is Jack Baker, who spends the first half of the man as an absolutely scary character, a 'monster' even without over-the-top mutations. Again, as much as I do have a problem with some aspects of the game, the character writing, acting, atmosphere and voice-acting is fantastic. Jack Baker, when he's a human, is so calm and polite and well-mannered. And then he snaps very jarringly into violent, terrifying rages, showing his true personality of a psychotic mass murderer, in such a surprisingly realistic and amazingly well-done bit of acting that I have to take a moment to sit down and applaud it. For the first part of the game, in addition to being that aforementioned psychological horror, Jack is also the equivalent to, again, Mr. X or Nemesis as a villain that actively stalks your character and forces you to move quickly or stealthily. He's straight-up indestructible, tanking shotgun blasts and anything Ethan can throw at him, though at that point in the story the Bakers' true nature is still ambiguous. There's a whole analysis that could be made about how just a single person with a shovel can be so god-damn terrifying, but we're here to talk about monsters!
Thankfully this is still Resident Evil, so while your first couple of boss fight with Jack is him in his humanoid form (including a chainsaw duel!), his final battle in the base game ends up turning Jack into a writhing mass of black fungal matter around the size of a small car, as he undulates like some sort of giant noodle-centipede within a warehouse. Mutated Jack Baker has a bunch of eyeballs on his body, all of which are, of course, his weak points. It's slightly underwhelming in the franchise as a whole, but, again, the game has been so focused on humanoid enemies that the sudden appearance of something so abominable is definitely a huge surprise at this stage of the game. The animation for Mutant Jack is also pretty cool, with how he just undulates and pulses around the battlefield as he thrashes around.
In the 'End of Zoe' DLC, turns out that Jack's remains aren't even dead after three fights -- he has been transformed into the 'Swamp Man', which is... honestly a bit of an obvious ripoff of DC's Swamp Thing or Marvel's Man-Thing. It's not a bad monster to rip off, though, Swamp Thing and Man-Thing are both badasses and it fits very well into the swampy environment and the DLC sequence makes great use of him as this unstoppable juggernaut. Not too much to otherwise say about him.
Marguerite Baker
Mama Marguerite Baker also has a lot of the same things that makes Jack scary, although I remember her being a lot less hammy and more straight-up creepy. Maybe it's the character model or the specific voice they used for her. She is at least a bit more cooler than jack, because instead of relying on chainsaws and whatnot she also controls the insects in the area. Marguerite's 'monster' form is far, far more disturbing in that, well, she remains mostly human. When she begins her level proper as her mutated form, she goes around and really shows off that her monster concept is an 'insect hive queen', sending swarms and swarms of those aforementioned bug monsters at you.
And... and bug-controlling enemies aren't anything new in video games, but what makes mutated Marguerite so creepy is that her design is still almost human, but she's very clearly not. Her arms and legs have elongated so much and she crawls around walls and ceilings like a spider, and it's so unsettling to see an otherwise still-humanoid anatomy. The way that this is introduced to us, with her overly-long arm stretching out and stealing a plot device from halfway across the room? Yeah.
The most disgusting part of her design is that they tried to evoke the imagery of a pregnant woman; and Marguerite's entire abdomen has been turned into this massive mass of hole-riddled tumour that serves as a nest for her bug children. Ewwww. I don't know whether Marguerite's design disturbing me so much is actually a compliment for a horror monster design, or if it goes just a bit too far in trying to make it edgy? I don't know.
Lucas Baker
The son, Lucas, is just a dude in a hoodie but he's inarguably the most sociopathic and violent member of the Bakers. In the base game, Lucas doesn't even fight you, but relies on a long deathtrap maze to bamboozle his 'prey'. A lot of great writing and voice-acting went into Lucas's character, and I definitely appreciate him a lot. Lucas's level is basically him siccing some of the elite Molded on Ethan, as well as a whole ton of puzzles.
One of the DLC's would reveal that not only is Lucas aware of his actions all along, so not only is he happy to participate in bioterrorism, he also doesn't bat an eyelid as his parents get mind-controlled by Eveline and willingly and readily participates in the kidnapping and cannibalism that Eveline made his parents do. Eventually, Lucas transforms into... a frankly very bland-looking 'monster mode' that's just kind of generic compared to most of the B.O.W.'s in the franchise. Comparing him to half the bestiary in RE2, he's honestly pretty bland. The only real interesting thing is the huge mouth on his left hand, but ultimately if I can call one design 'a generic Resident Evil monster', this would be it. I guess it fits Lucas, though, that for all his talk, he's just a small-time goon that ends up being a footnote in Chris Redfield's cleanup op.
E-001 "Eveline"
Eveline has two humanoid forms, though the one she wants us to see is the shape of a little girl. A good chunk of Eveline's mystery is just her true nature and identity -- it's obvious that she's a mould monster, but just where she came from, and why she's so intent on creating a 'family', is pretty interestingly handled. I feel like they could've done more, but maybe that's just the part of me that wants a truly sympathetic monster character? In any case, Eveline is perhaps the first of the B.O.W.'s in this franchise that's straight-up sentient from beginning to finish instead of being a human villain who loses his/her sanity when he/she gets mutated. A lot of the backstory behind Eveline is pretty fucked-up, with how she's actually raised as a fetus (implying that she's at least partially human), how she has accelerated aging, and how the mysterious organization that created her basically assigned 'handlers' that masquerade as her parents to keep her pacified. Obviously, the sheer amount of depravities Eveline did with what she made the Baker family do ends up making her a dangerous being that needed to be put down, but there's a massive shadow of tragedy behind this poor fungus girl.
Eveline's biggest role in the game is mostly as a psychological threat and mystery, and in some parts of the story we get to see her in the height of her power, turning entire corridors into being consumed by her ever-expanding mould, as well as the whole 'mind control' thing going on by turning anyone she infects with her spores into either mindless Molded... or into warped versions of herself that she 'adopts' into her family. The mental link is also responsible for many of the hallucinations that Ethan and Mia experience throughout the game, which gives the game an excuse for some of the more quote-unquote "supernatural" imagery in the game. The idea of a fungus-based organism having a hive mind is actually one that makes sense!
In her final boss encounter has her transform into a giant flesh-glob. Mycelium-blob? It's basically the same design that Mutated Jack is, a mass of tentacles shaped vaguely like a giant worm or eel... which I suppose is appropriate for a mycelium-based organism? Oh, and unlike Jack, who's like, the size of a large animal, Eveline easily is larger than a house, bursting out of the Baker house that Ethan confronts her in, and writhes around like a goddamn kaiju before she's eventually taken down. She's also got her screaming human face in the middle of it. It's... it's not a terrible monster design, but it's also something that we've kind of seen before. Still, appropriate for the final boss of this specific game, and if nothing else at least it does keep the theme of having a massively-mutated monster as the final boss.
I could (and actually did) go on for a long while about the arguments in the fandom about how the story handles the Bakers and Eveline, and the dynamic between them, but I'm not going to -- the story the game tells is a very good one, and a refreshing new concept in the franchise that still fits with the bioweapon theme.
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Anyway, yeah. It's kind of a shame, because I really did enjoy the atmosphere of Resident Evil VII. It's one of the few games that I feel actually made use of the trumped-up graphics of modern-day gaming to actually enhance the feel of a horror game to levels that would actually be impossible for the previous generation of gaming consoles. The acting is utterly superb... and I really would be singing nothing but praises for the storytelling and defend this game to the death even for the lack of -gasp- memorable monsters... but, y'know, they sort of dropped the ball with the ending.
Oh well, there's the next game, I guess.
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