Resident Evil VII: Biohazard [2017]
After the mixed reception of Resident Evil 6, the franchise took a five-year sabbatical before finally releasing Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (cutely named Biohazard 7: Resident Evil in Japan) and it was a move back to horror. Exploiting a lot of the 'indie survival horror' games that were the vogue at the time of release, Resident Evil VII brought in a brand new game engine, a fresh protagonist, and a wonderful twist of bio-engineered weapons.
For the first time in a while, VII went back to the horror basics, starring a protagonist that isn't a zombie-outbreak veteran and is just trying his best to survive through the evil residents of a bayou -- a group of insane cannibal hillbilly family whose behaviour, of course, would be tied to a biohazard gone loose. It was genuinely horrifying particularly because it was so reserved, and the atmosphere, environments and voice-acting for the human forms of the villains were particularly great.
I have... some opinions about how the story ended, how some characters were handled, and particularly how a bunch of storyline were 'saved for DLC' (or 'told in demos') but ultimately VII, despite not being the style of game I tend to play, ended up being such a positive experience and a thrilling ride the whole through. And playing a straight-up horror isn't normally my cup of tea, but VII was absolutely excellent!
Also, is it not super-duper awesome that they got a '7' into the titles of both English and Japanese versions of the title?
(Side-note: I normally spell English with the British spelling because that's what I grew up with, but I'll be using 'mold' throughout this review since that's a word used a lot in the playthrough)
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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. Two major ones are:
- "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
One major thing that's going to make this review short is that there aren't a lot of enemies, or enemy variations. Almost all of the 'minion' enemies are just the Molded, here. A huge, significant bulk of the game has your protagonists being stalked by one of the named characters, and the Molded don't even actually show up as regular enemies until halfway through the game!
But what they represent is awesome. We don't get zombies or parasitically-brainwashed-humans-that-could-be-handwaved-as-zombies this time, but instead, we just into a completely different disease pathogen in fungi. We see the effects of the Molded on the environment even before we see the Molded, which fits with the 'mood' of the bayou, the swamp, and the dilapidated Baker household. And when Ethan goes into the basement of the main house for the first time, the dark encrusting mold around the damp basements begin to really cover walls, ceilings, and structures...
...and then some of these growths on walls just glorp out and shamble towards Ethan as these giant masses of wibbly-wobbly humanoids with gigantic fangs for faces. They are mycoid growths approximating the shape of a human, quite literally being 'molded' into a form -- a pun that the game even points out. While headshots still do more damage to them, I do like that this serves as an explanation for why these new zombie stand-ins are so tough. And that is the theme of Resident Evil VII -- even the basic enemies are tough enough to force you to either run or burn through resources, something taken forwards into the other excellent sequels like the RE2 remake.
The game is ambiguous whether the primary host creates the Molded out of just fungal mass, or if she needs human corpses. Different bits of evidence in the game imply both, and we do see Molded just morphing out of walls or ceilings... but one of the victims whose decapitated head we find later on in the game actually has the Molded fangs grow out of the upper part of his head; and the bodies that the Bakers cut up has to go somewhere.
Also, while it's hard to see with the darkened environments of the game, when the Molded open up their mouths, their 'tongues' are actually eyeballs. It's fast and something you probably won't realize until you start looking at screenshots, but it's a cute little nod to Resident Evil's campier backgrounds. Is that why headshots are so effective? We're hitting the eyeball-weak-spot?
Fungal monsters, I feel, is a theme that hasn't really been explored enough in video games, and when they do, they show up as toadstool-headed friends. I like my Myconids and whatnot, but taking the grisly, slimy feeling of mold and lichen growing and expanding in a dark and damp environment is something that can get horrifying.
Molded Variants
That said, it does make it a bit hard for me to do a monster review when all the enemies in the game are quite literally variants of the same thing. Almost all the enemies in the game are Molded, with the two major variants being the Blade Molded (who are a bit spikier and have an oversized blade-arm) and the Four-Legged Molded (who are faster and more agile, taking the role of the 'dog' enemy of this game).
And Fat Molded is just... the big, durable mini-boss, fought a couple of times once you've gotten stronger guns. It's tougher, and it vomits a stream of damaging poison. Notably, it's one of the only 'common' enemies to not have a monstrous fanged mouth.
Again, I'm not knocking this game for being economical in its creatures, since the focus of making the horror come from the atmosphere and the narrative is the primary focus of Resident Evil VII. Moreso than any other entry in the franchise, these Molded minions aren't meant to be the focus, but an accessory to the horrors of the Baker family.
Animals
And just like that, the only other hazards in the game are the Man-Eating Insects, which are bird-sized bugs; the Man-Eating Spiders that are creepily-animated as they scuttle and block doors; and the Mold-Infected Gator that shows up in some of the DLCs.
The Insects and Spiders are particularly tied to one of the bosses below, Marguerite, and are a sign that she's wandering near an area. They're neat as parts of the level, but being just animals, I can't say much about them.
Fumer
We're into DLC territory now, specifically the 'Not a Hero' DLC. Most of that DLC focuses on the characters, but there's a minor subplot of the 'WM-series' (White Mold) of bioweapons, mutated from the original set of Molded.
WM-002 'Fumer' is covered in fully white mycelia, being fuzzier and with more exposed flesh and a skull-like face. I suppose that makes it a bit different, but it's not the most exciting variation. Their rapidly-growing fungal mutations make them invulnerable to regular ammo, however, requiring 'RAMROD' anti-regeneration ammo to kill them. Oh, as their name implies, they also belch out a bunch of fumes. They're a serviceable 'elite' enemy, but I felt they were disappointing from a monster design perspective.
Mama Mold & Little Crawler
The host of the 'WM' is WM-001, Mama Mold... who doesn't really get much context beyond being a bigger, stronger White-Mold Molded. It's basically the 'Fat Molded' variant above with the same fuzzy white fungus of the Fumer placed onto her. She's at least got a really creepy yawning mouth, and I did enjoy the boss fight against her. Her fungal-flesh splits apart at the seams and shows creepy pulsating flesh inside.
Far more interesting are Mama Mold's Little Crawlers, which look like frog-spider creatures... until you look a bit closer on what they are. 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. And that fanged mouth has a finger-toe jutting out of it like a tongue! Creepy! They also have at least one eye! They are mostly summoned by Mama Mold, and scuttle around, and can leap and attack your face like an Alien Facehugger.
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Mia Winters
Bosses now! Which are the focus of this game, anyway.
Mia Winters is the wife of the protagonist, Ethan, and for the parts of the game that she menaces you, she's basically just a stringy-haired horror lady channeling all the best ladies in horror like Sadako as she scuttles and stalks you. She attacks you with a chainsaw, yeah, but as a visual design she's just a lady.
Great execution on the game designers and voice actors in having her flip-flop between being reasonable, being panicked, to being batshit-crazy at the drop of a hat. The fungal mind-control was well-foreshadowed, but your first impression of Mia is still going to be terror with the jumpscares and voice acting. Plus, what she represents -- the protagonist's loved one not just killed, but having her mind and independence corrupted into something wrong and violent. Again, kudos to the Resi VII team for making a human feel scary.
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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