A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE
---------------------------------------
---- RESIDENT EVIL ----
---------------------------------------
VIDEOGAME SERIES BY CAPCOM ENTERTAINMENT
Begun by Dan Birlew, 1998
Updated by Thomas Wilde with permission, 2000-2005
*****************************CONTAINS SPOILERS**************************
This thesis contains spoilers. If you have not already played the games,
the authors strongly suggest that you do so before reading the document.
The best introduction to the games is to play them.
************************************************************************
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction, Legal Stuff, Disclaimers, and Update History
2. Dead Men Telling Tales: RESIDENT EVIL
i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL
ii. Story Differences Between Chris and Jill's Games
iii. Differences Between RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL "2.0"
iv. Random Musings
3. Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2
i. The Plot Thickens
ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3
iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2
iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2
v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B
vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame
vii. Conclusion
viii. Random Musings
4. Nobody Here Gets Out Alive: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
i. The Death of Raccoon City
ii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
iv. Different Paths
v. Different Endings
vi. The Epilogue Files
vii. Conclusions About The Conclusion
viii. Random Musings
5. Ten Thousand Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
iii. Different Routes
iv. Conclusions about the Conclusion
v. Random Musings
6. Sibling Rivalries: RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
i. A Lovely Island Hideaway: CODE VERONICA, Part One
ii. The Return of Chris Redfield: CODE VERONICA, Part Two
iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE
VERONICA
iv. Conclusions About The Conclusion
v. The Ashford Family Diaries
vi. Random Musings
7. Becky's Big Adventure: RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
iii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
iv. Random Musings
8. Ghost Ships: RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN
i. Coming So--Aw, To Hell With It
9. Ten Thousand *More* Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: GUN SURVIVOR 2
10. We Cover the Waterfront: RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM
i. Introduction
ii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM
iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM
iv. Conclusions About the Conclusion
v. Random Musings
11. With A Little Help From My Friends: RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK
i. Introduction
ii. Scenario One: Outbreak
iii. Scenario Two: Below Freezing Point
iv. Scenario Three: The Hive
v. Scenario Four: Hellfire
vi. Scenario Five: Decisions, Decisions
vii. Plot Branches and Side Notes
viii. The Remain Hopeful Endings
ix. The Regretful Endings
x. Conclusions About the Conclusion
xi. Random Musings
12. Everything Old Made Dead Again: RESIDENT EVIL 4
i. Introduction
ii. Village of the Damned: RESIDENT EVIL 4, Part One
iii. The Trick is to Keep Breathing: RESIDENT EVIL 4, Part Two
iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 4
v. So Much for Being Subtle: ASSIGNMENT ADA
vi. Puppet Masters: SEPARATE WAYS
vii. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter One: Ring the Church Bell
viii. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Two: Rescue Luis
ix. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Three: Retrieve the Sample
x. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Four: Stop Leon's Assassination
xi. SEPARATE WAYS, Chapter Five: Obtain the Sample
xii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
xiii. Random Musings
13. My Favorite Apocalypse: RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK - FILE #2
i. Introduction
ii. Scenario One: Wild Things
iii. Scenario Two: Underbelly
iv. Scenario Three: Flashback
v. Scenario Four: Desperate Times
vi. Scenario Five: End of the Road
vii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL:
OUTBREAK - FILE #2
viii. Multiple Endings
ix. Plot Branches and Side Notes
x. Conclusions About the Conclusion
xi. Random Musings
14. Unanswered Questions
i. RESIDENT EVIL v2.0
ii. RESIDENT EVIL 2
iii. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
iv. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
v. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
vi. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
vii. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM
viii. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK
ix. A Look At Wesker's Report
x. Wesker's Report 2
xi. RESIDENT EVIL 4
15. Frequently Asked Questions
i. Document and Series Questions
ii. RESIDENT EVIL
iii. RESIDENT EVIL 2
iv. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
v. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
vi. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
vii. RESIDENT EVIL: THE MOVIE
viii. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
ix. RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN
x. RESIDENT EVIL: DEAD AIM
xi. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK
xii. RESIDENT EVIL 4
xiv. RESIDENT EVIL: OUTBREAK, FILE #2
16. Say What?!
i. The Weirdest of the Lot
17. Mistakes
18. Easter Eggs
19. About the Authors
20. Conclusion
=============================================================
1. Introduction, Legal Stuff, Disclaimers, and Update History
=============================================================
Dan Birlew began this thesis in 1998. I lucked across it in
1999, just when I was starting to get good and obsessed with
Resident Evil, and found it to be a useful resource.
After the release of Resident Evil 2 for the N64, I wrote a
transcription of the EX Files from that game, combined with
some notes on the RE storyline for the sake of the N64 crowd.
That transcription is currently hosted by gameFAQs.com (among
others), and after I wrote it, I got a lot of e-mail from N64
owners asking about the finer points of the storyline.
After about the twelfth e-mail I got, I went back to look
at Birlew's analysis for help, and wound up deciding that it
needed an update; rather than answering a flood tide of
e-mail, I could just point at this document and say, "Lo!
I have come down from the mount with answers!"
Birlew had already told me earlier that he wasn't planning on
updating this document and, in fact, was legally prohibited
from doing so. I asked him if I could do it. Please note the
following, which was not extracted under duress of any sort:
> Thomas Wilde has my full permission to continue the
> Resident Evil Thesis in my place. He has full permission
> from me to use any materials from my former versions that
> he sees fit. I relinquish these materials to him, since I
> am unable to continue or update the Thesis due to certain
> agreements I have made with certain companies.
>
> Sincerely,
> Dan Birlew
> formerly known as "President Evil"
Every time I say "me" or "I" in this document, it's Thomas
talking; every time I say "we," I refer to the audience of RE
as a whole. This document is copyright 2000-2005, Thomas Wilde,
except for those clearly labeled parts that are copyright 1998,
Dan Birlew. All recognizable concepts from the Resident Evil
series are copyright Capcom, and their usage in this document
does not constitute a challenge to that copyright. And so on.
And so forth. All rights reserved; violators will be fed to
the Neptune.
+------------ READING THIS DISCLAIMER *COULD* SAVE YOUR LIFE -----------+
| |
| Before we begin, I'd like to issue a general disclaimer. I don't |
| mind people e-mailing me to ask questions that aren't covered in |
| this FAQ, but: |
| |
| I'M NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR "THEORIES." |
| I'M NOT INTERESTED IN "ANONYMOUS SOURCES." |
| I'M NOT INTERESTED IN INFORMATION "FROM THE RE STAFF." |
| |
| This document deals in actual, documented, in-game plotline |
| information. Don't send me your dissertation on why Rebecca is a |
| spy, don't tell me anything that you got out of one of S.D. Perry's |
| novels, don't tell me anything that a friend of a friend was told by |
| a friend who had a friend who delivered pizza to the RE staff, and |
| don't e-mail me naked pictures of your sister because "she looks |
| just like Jill" (wait... actually, go ahead and send those). |
| I don't mind questions, but I do mind having my time wasted. |
| If you *do* send me a theory, don't expect me to reply. |
| If I don't reply, don't get upset. I warned you. |
| Read this entire document before you send me any questions. |
| If you send me some kind of outlandish claim, have an |
| official source ready to back it up. |
| |
| Please note that for my purposes, an "official source" does not |
| mean that you make something up about there being someone who |
| works for Capcom who is willing to risk his job by answering |
| spoilery questions about one of their flagship series at the |
| behest of some dork with no noticeable English skills and an |
| AOL account. I am comfortably certain that anyone who writes me |
| to claim that they have such an acquaintance is lying to me, |
| in an attempt to get my attention. I would like to point |
| out that not only am I wise to this scam, but there is an |
| an entire wing built onto Bellevue to house the surviving |
| morons who tried, and succeeded, to get my attention by |
| acting stupid. Trust me; you and I both have better |
| things to do. Seriously. |
| |
| All power to the people, and ban the $%#&ing bomb. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+-------- NOT READING THIS DISCLAIMER CAUSES CANCER IN LAB RATS --------+
| |
| This is a *storyline* FAQ. It deals strictly with plot |
| elements of the Resident Evil series. It is not a gameplay |
| FAQ. If you're having trouble getting through the game, I |
| encourage you to seek out the various online FAQs written |
| for the Resident Evil games (particularly those by Dan |
| "President Evil" Birlew, Brett "Nemesis" Franklin, Vincent |
| Merken, Henry LaPierre, Vesther Fauransy [although I recommend |
| him with slight reservations; his FAQs are a little weird], |
| and "Stinger 3:16"). They are all available on www.gameFAQs.com, |
| among other places, and can probably be found at the same place |
| where you found this document. |
| |
| In short, send the gameplay questions to one of those |
| talented gentlemen, and/or check out their FAQs. They're |
| very well-written, and have helped me with my own |
| gameplay problems in the past. |
| |
| I *WILL NOT* reply to e-mail asking for gameplay information, Game |
| Shark codes, cheats, secrets, or file transcriptions. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+-- IF YOU DON'T READ THIS DISCLAIMER, I GET TO HIT YOU WITH A PICKAX --+
| |
| No, you are *not* Shinji Mikami. I'm comfortably certain that |
| you don't work for Capcom of Japan, either, especially if you're |
| e-mailing me from an America Online account. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
=======
Updates
=======
May 1st, 2005:
-- the Vienna Tweaked remix.
July 25th, 2005:
-- the Outbreak File #2 update.
November 14th, 2005:
-- the Separate Ways update.
========================================
2. Dead Men Telling Tales: RESIDENT EVIL
========================================
In 1996, Capcom released Resident Evil for the PlayStation.
RE was, and is, a strangely difficult adventure game which
put the player up against an ancient mansion filled with
secrets, puzzles, and, incidentally, ravenous flesh-eating
zombies. While the game gained a degree of deserved notoriety
for some of the worst dialogue and voice acting in console
history, it also gained a fanatical following.
In 2001, Capcom announced that they were remaking the original
Resident Evil for the Nintendo GameCube. The remake, released
in North America on May 1st, 2002, represents a new beginning
for the series; it boasts ridiculously realistic graphics, a
much-improved script, a better cast of voice actors (albeit
that isn't saying much, as fourth-grade nativity plays have
better voice acting than the original RE), and the same
difficult gameplay that characterized the original, as well
as a number of story elements that were left out of the
original game (such as the infamous Trevor's Letters).
This synopsis covers the storyline of the 2002 remake of RE.
If you're looking for the original game's synopsis and FAQs,
you can check them out as a separate file (eventually) at:
http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/writing/birlew-re.txt
===============================================
i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL
===============================================
Following the strange deaths of a number of citizens of Raccoon
City, the local police department has put the Special Tactics
and Rescue Service, a special force dedicated to stopping local
terrorist activity, on the case. The STARS immediately sent
its Bravo team, led by Enrico Marini, into the Raccoon Forest,
where several of the murders occurred.
The Bravo team promptly disappears. On the night of July 24th,
the STARS Alpha team follows the Bravos into the forest by
helicopter, looking for clues as to their disappearance.
They soon find the Bravo team's helicopter and its dead pilot,
mangled beyond recognition. The architects of this massacre,
a pack of wild dogs, soon spring an ambush, killing Joseph
Frost. The rest of the team attempts to fight the dogs off,
but the dogs don't seem to mind gunshot wounds.
The whole situation proves to be too much for Brad Vickers, also
known as "Chickenheart," the helicopter pilot for the Alpha team.
He panics and takes off, leaving the rest of the Alpha team stuck
in the middle of the forest. After a headlong flight through the
woods, the Alpha team takes shelter inside the nearby Spencer
mansion, a supposedly abandoned country estate.
The player's role in the game begins at this point. As either Chris
Redfield or Jill Valentine, two of the five survivors of the Alpha
team, the player must find out just what's happening here, while
fighting off the mansion's current inhabitants. Chris will eventually
find and partner up with Rebecca Chambers, the field medic and lone
survivor of the STARS Bravo team, while Jill will be assisted by
Barry Burton, a police veteran and fellow Alpha team member. The
game unfolds differently depending on which character is chosen.
The character's investigation of the mansion begins with Albert
Wesker, the captain of the STARS Alpha team, instructing the character
to check out the source of a nearby gunshot. Upon investigating, the
character finds Kenneth Sullivan, a member of the Bravo team, dead
at the hands of a zombie. When the character tries to report back
to Wesker, he's vanished.
Wesker's disappearance is the beginning of a long stretch of bad
luck. The mansion is inhabited by hordes of flesh-eating zombies,
killer crows, more dogs, and a giant snake. Further, the zombies
must be decapitated or incinerated, or a "dead" zombie will mutate
into the clawed abomination that the mansion's late inhabitants
have nicknamed a "Crimson Head." Fortunately, there are more
powerful weapons and ammunition hidden within the mansion, as
well as stores of kerosene to use against the zombies.
As the character advances through the mansion and the outlying
buildings, discarded papers and uncovered journals begin to hint
at what's really happened here. Apparently, the people who once
lived here were working on some kind of experiment, and that
experiment has gone awry. Notes from the mansion's original
architect, George Trevor, reveal how the mansion's new owners
left him to die in the mansion's hidden labyrinths, and how
they may have tortured his wife and daughter.
Eventually, the character manages to unlock a door at the back
of the mansion, opening the way to the graveyard and dormitories.
Here, in an isolated cabin, the character is ambushed by a twisted
parody of a woman. Clad in a tattered dress and shuffling towards
the character on legs that have been chained together, the creature
screams as it attacks. Even the character's most powerful weapons
will do no good, and the character is forced to retreat.
In the scientists' lodgings, the mystery only deepens. Other
experiments have produced a massive, bloodthirsty plant, codenamed
Plant-42, as well as a trio of mutated sharks. The character manages
to dispatch the plant with the help of the scientists' notes, and
the sharks are left helpless when the flooded observatory is drained.
It's in the dormitories that new clues to the nature of this mansion
are discovered; the powerful corporation Umbrella has something to
do with these scientists, and for whatever reason, the scientists
are very interested in the STARS.
After Plant-42 is dispatched, Wesker reappears, claiming to have
been separated from the rest of the team following a monster
attack. He tells the character to return to the mansion and finish
the investigation there.
Upon the character's return to the mansion, a new monster appears.
These "Hunters" are powerful and relentless, and rarely show up
alone. Although Hunters are now stalking the halls of the mansion,
the character is able to visit new areas using a key found in the
dormitories. Thus, he's able to find the materials to reactivate
an elevator in the courtyard behind the mansion.
The elevator lets the character through a secret door, which
leads to an old series of mining tunnels. At one end of the
tunnels, hiding in a dark cavern, the character finds a wounded
Enrico Marini, the captain of the Bravo team. He tells the
character to stay away. STARS, he says, has been betrayed.
Just as he's about to reveal the identity of the traitor,
a single gunshot rings out from behind the character, killing
Enrico. The character gives chase to Enrico's assassin, but
the arrival of a pack of Hunters covers the assassin's escape.
Yet another elevator, at the other end of the tunnels, takes
the character to an underground river and a loading dock.
After another encounter with the twisted creature from the
cabin, the character finds a drainage ditch, which has been
made, over many years, into a candle-lit hideaway.
In this hideaway, which looks like nothing so much as a young
girl's room, the character finds the last thing he needs to
open the last door back in the mansion. A ladder in the hideaway
leads back up to the cabin in the graveyard, where the twisted
creature was first encountered. When combined with the information
in Trevor's letters, and recently discovered research notes, a
sick suspicion may begin to grow in the player's mind.
The last door in the mansion leads down a long flight of stairs,
to the crypt of Jessica Trevor. It is guarded by the twisted
creature from the cabin. The character, assisted by either Barry
or Wesker, manages to open Jessica Trevor's sarcophagus, and the
creature jumps into a nearby pit after taking Jessica's skull.
A letter in the coffin removes all doubt; the twisted creature
is Lisa Trevor, who was experimented on by Umbrella's scientists.
She has spent the last thirty years in agonizing pain, locked
inside a constantly mutating body that cannot die. The ordeal
drove her insane a long time ago.
The character proceeds on alone. Trevor's crypt leads directly
to an ornate fountain, which conceals the entrance to the real
laboratories, deep underneath the Spencer estate. The character
descends, into the dank corridors of the laboratory, where more
surprises await.
Not only has Wesker betrayed the STARS, but he has been complicit
in this mansion's experiments all along. A slideshow in the lab's
audiovisual room identifies Wesker, wearing his characteristic
sunglasses, as one of the leaders of this group. He has been
instructed by his supervisors at the megacorporation Umbrella
to betray the STARS, in the name of covering up the accident
and generating combat data for Umbrella's monsters. As if that
wasn't enough, the team member that Wesker claimed to be
"separated" from was actually taken prisoner. He or she is
inside a dark cell in the laboratory, awaiting release.
Wesker himself is preparing for his last and greatest betrayal,
deep in the laboratory's storage room. He explains himself to
the character, almost as if he needs someone to tell his
secrets to. He plans to doublecross Umbrella by blowing up
the mansion and all its secrets; the betrayal of STARS was
simply to cover his tracks as well as the company's. To this
end, he's blackmailed Barry Burton to help him destroy evidence.
As the horrified character watches, Wesker unleashes the
most powerful bioweapon in Umbrella's arsenal: the Tyrant,
an inhumanly dangerous monster. Unfortunately for Wesker,
it isn't very good at taking orders, and its first act is
to turn on the man who thought he was its master. Its second
is to come after the player's character, who will discover
that for all the Tyrant's power, it has a glass jaw. A few
Magnum rounds or acid grenades drop it in its tracks.
The character must now run for his life. The laboratory's
self-destruct sequence has been activated (either by Wesker
or by a well-meaning Rebecca), and very little time remains
before the entire mansion is blown sky-high. Rescuing the
captive STARS member in the back room, the character runs
out to the mansion's helipad and signals Brad "Chickenheart"
Vickers. Brad has been circling above the forest all this
time, awaiting word from one of his teammates. He sees the
character's signal flare, he descends to the helipad.
Of course, nothing is ever that easy. With two minutes left
on the self-destruct device's timer, the Tyrant bursts from
the rooftop. It has shaken off the sluggishness from its
months of storage, and now moves with the controlled strength
and speed of a freight train. Even with help from Barry or
Rebecca, the character is barely able to stay alive.
With seconds to go before detonation, Brad Vickers drops a
rocket launcher onto the helipad. An anti-tank rocket proves
to be more than even the Tyrant can handle, and it's blown
to pieces.
The surviving STARS climb onto Brad's helicopter. As Brad
lifts off, the Spencer estate explodes into a pillar of
flame. The STARS are left battered and bloodied, but alive...
with a story to tell that no one will believe.
====================================================
ii. Story Differences Between Chris and Jill's Games
====================================================
1. At various points in Jill's game, you may run into Barry,
who's acting very suspicious. You'll find him in the aquarium
room on the second floor at one point, where he's destroying
evidence (he'll already have torn the first couple of pages
off of the Researcher's Will file). You can also overhear a
conversation between him and Wesker outside Dormitory 002.
To trigger the encounters with Barry, discover Kenneth's
body, and return to the dining room without fighting the
zombie.
2. If Chris is poisoned by the giant snake, you'll take control
of Rebecca, who'll have to get Chris some serum from the
infirmary. If Jill's poisoned, she'll pass out in the hall
outside the attic, and wakes up in the infirmary at full health.
3. Jill can manufacture V-Jolt by herself, then use it in the
boardroom in the Aqua Ring to weaken Plant-42. When she enters
that room, Plant-42 will grab her, and Barry will come in with
a flamethrower to rescue Jill. Chris has to fight the plant on
his own, unless Richard died in the mansion attic; if that's
the case, Rebecca will have to save Chris by making V-Jolt.
4. In the final encounter with Lisa Trevor, Jill will find
Barry standing over Jessica's coffin. When Barry tries to
point his gun at her, Jill takes it away from him and points
it at him. Then, when Lisa arrives, the player can choose
whether or not to give Barry his gun back. If you do, Barry
will help out in the ensuing fight with Lisa; if you don't,
Lisa will kill Barry.
In Chris's scenario, you'll run into Wesker in Jessica's tomb,
who'll aid you against Lisa. If Wesker gets knocked off of the
platform, he'll reappear in the lab at the end of the game,
offering no explanations.
5. If your supporting character is still alive, it will change
the final encounter with Wesker:
-- Chris, with Rebecca: inside the lab, Wesker will
explain his motivations and shoot Rebecca in the
chest. While Wesker's standing in front of the
Tyrant's tank, it will wake up and gut him,
stabbing right through the side of its containment
tank. After Chris defeats the Tyrant, he'll find
that Rebecca's still alive, thanks to her bulletproof
vest, and that Wesker's definitely dead. Upon leaving
the laboratory, Rebecca will set the charges in the
power room, which will trigger an emergency evacuation
procedure and unlock all the doors in the lab. You
may then rescue Jill and get to the helipad.
-- Chris, alone: Wesker is slain by the Tyrant, and
drops the Master Key. You can use that key to open
Jill's cell door and to get to the helipad.
-- Jill, with Barry: Barry will hold Jill at gunpoint
when she enters the lab. Wesker will gloat to Jill
about his plan, but in so doing, will let slip that
the threat he's been holding against Barry was a
bluff; his family isn't in any danger. Barry will
unexpectedly overhear that and knock Wesker
unconscious. He doesn't act in time to prevent
Wesker from draining the fluid from the Tyrant's
tank, however, and the Tyrant will escape shortly
thereafter. It knocks Barry unconscious before it
turns on Jill. After the fight, you'll find that
Barry's okay, but Wesker's slipped away in the
confusion. You soon find out that he's set the
charges in the power room, as with Rebecca, above.
-- Jill, alone: almost identical to Chris's scenario
without Rebecca, as above.
==============================================================
iii. Differences Between RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL "2.0"
==============================================================
1. If you're an expert player of the original game, the remake
is expressly designed to mess with your head. In the event that
a puzzle or ambush has carried over to the remake from the
first game, there's usually a different solution, another
wrinkle to the puzzle, or monsters come from completely
unexpected directions. (Zombies and Hunters can open doors.)
2. Richard Aiken would die no matter what you did in the
first game, regardless of how quickly you brought him the
serum. In the remake, saving Richard will let him survive
until you fight the giant snake (Jill's game) or enter the
Aqua Ring (Chris's game), at which point something will
eat him. If you save him, he'll give you his radio, and
you'll be able to take his combat shotgun after his death.
Richard's death also affects what options you have when
you deal with Plant-42.
3. The Chimera that haunt the power room now look a great
deal like RE3's drain deimos.
4. As mentioned above, zombies that are "killed" without
being decapitated must be incinerated. Otherwise, they'll
eventually rise again as the vicious Crimson Heads.
5. It is *much* easier to get your support character killed
in the remake. To get Barry killed in the original Resident
Evil required a series of bizarre choices and decisions that
might or might not have worked; here, all you have to do is
refuse to give him his revolver.
6. Naturally, the biggest addition to the remake is that of
the unfortunate Lisa Trevor, as mentioned above. More about
Lisa can be found by reading Wesker's Report 2, as detailed
below.
7. If Wesker "dies" in the encounter with the Tyrant, you
can search his body to find a file written by William
Birkin. In it, he writes about how the G-Virus is almost
finished, and how he wishes he could rub his success in
Alexia Ashford's face.
8. If your support character manages to make it to the end
of the game, s/he'll help you in the final battle with the
Tyrant, on the helipad. During this time, if the Tyrant
manages to knock your character down, it'll leave you
alone in favor of grabbing your support character by the
neck. Unless you shoot the Tyrant at this point, it'll
kill your support character, which will cue the fifth
possible ending.
9. In the original game's best ending for Jill, you could
return to the power room after the self-destruct sequence,
and you'd find a Chimera standing over Wesker's dead body.
Such is no longer the case in the remake; the power room
is empty.
10. The mansion wardrobe is now hidden in the darkened
closet in the east statue room. Check the large painting
against the back wall. It's actually a door.
11. Chris meets Rebecca when he enters the mansion attic;
she is no longer lurking evilly in the infirmary with a
can of bug spray. In REv.2, this is the first time Chris
and Rebecca meet, period, since as we learn in RE0, the
Raccoon Forest investigation is Rebecca's first case as
a member of STARS.
12. In the helipad encounter, the Tyrant can and will
bat an incoming rocket out of the way with its claw.
===================
2iv. Random Musings
===================
1. I have to admit that I'm disappointed with the remake.
They kept some of the stupid things, like Chris's low item
capacity, and didn't address the issue of Rebecca's survival.
2. The Lisa Trevor subplot appears, at first glance, to be
almost completely meaningless; it's just there to add another
Tyrant-esque monster. To understand her true significance, it
helps to hunt down a translation of Wesker's Report 2, which
is discussed further below.
3. The existence of Crimson Heads in RE lends credence to
the statement in Survivor that Lickers, the wall-crawling
monsters first encountered in Resident Evil 2, are mutated
zombies. If a zombie can mutate into a faster form that's
sporting vicious claws, it's entirely feasible for it to
mutate further into the still-vaguely-humanoid Licker.
4. Cinematic references in RE:
-- the deer head in the study is from the 1990 remake of
_Night of the Living Dead_. It might've been in the
original, but if it was, I didn't see it.
-- I may be on crack, but the end sequence of the game,
with the Tyrant bursting from the rooftop, seems to
be taken almost frame-for-frame from a 1990 Japanese
sf film called _Zeram_.
-- alert reader Jay Yencich writes to say that the
opening title-screen sequence of RE is much akin to
the death and zombification of Roger in _Dawn of
the Dead_.
-- according to Dan's official RE strategy guide, Chris
and Jill's alternate costumes are from _The Mexican_
and _Terminator 2: Judgement Day_, respectively. Chris
is dressing like the Brad Pitt character in the former
film, while Jill is dressing like Linda Hamilton in
the latter.
============================================================
3. Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2
============================================================
=====================
3i. The Plot Thickens
=====================
The original Resident Evil is a relatively straightforward
horror game. Its sequels have been entirely different,
mixing horror with equal parts action, mystery, and
conspiracy. Each RE game since the second has had an
intricate series of subplots, as well as at least a few
independent subplots to work through. Furthermore, each game
has deliberately left a few mysteries unsolved by the end.
In other words, things are about to get a lot more complicated.
One of the stranger wrinkles in the RE storyline is the
weird way that RE2 and RE3 relate to each other. I have the
two games listed separately here for the sake of maintaining
some kind of order, but in actuality, half of RE3 takes
place before RE2, and the other half takes place well
afterwards. This is noted in RE3's plot summary, below.
==================================
3ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3
==================================
After the "mansion incident" in July of 1998, Chris Redfield
attempts to start an official police investigation of
Umbrella, but Chief Brian Irons sabotages it. Suspecting that
Irons might be on the take, Chris requests an investigation
of Irons's background and a federal probe into Umbrella.
With typical government efficiency, the FBI doesn't respond
to Chris's requests until the night of September 29th, when
Claire gets their fax in Chris's old office.
Chris begins investigating Umbrella alone. He manages to
uncover a great deal about Umbrella's operations inside
Raccoon City, including the work on the G-Virus and the
location of the labs underneath the city. He's apparently
so intent upon his work that, to his sister Claire, it
looks as though he's dropped off the face of the Earth.
In August of 1998, Chris finally tells Jill Valentine about
what he's been doing. In mid-September, without telling Claire,
he and Barry Burton leave for Europe to further investigate
Umbrella. Jill elects to stay in Raccoon City for a while,
intending to investigate Umbrella's underground labs.
At some point, Jill resigns from the S.T.A.R.S. and the Raccoon
City police department for unknown reasons. (We can make all
sorts of guesses, though, most of which involve Brian Irons.)
====================================================
3iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2
by Dan Birlew
====================================================
On the night of September 29th, 1998, Claire Redfield
motorbikes into Raccoon City. She is a college student, and
is searching for clues in the disappearance of her older
brother Chris. On the other side of town, Raccoon Police
Department recruit Leon Kennedy is making his way to the
Precinct for his first day of duty. Stopping to investigate
a mysterious corpse in the middle of the street, he fails to
notice the figures closing in behind him. Claire pulls up to
a diner for a late meal, but finds that she is intended to
be the next course.
Both characters are surrounded by zombies. They collide in
the alley behind the diner, where Leon saves Claire. Finding
an abandoned police cruiser, they make a run for it.
In the car they get acquainted, while Claire finds a gun in
the glove compartment. But they are not alone. In an amazing
sequence, a zombie leaps out of the backseat and struggles with
Leon. The rookie loses control of the vehicle and they crash into
a wall. The zombie flies through the windshield. Before they can
catch a breath, a dying trucker bears down on them in a massive
gas tanker. The two leap out of the wreck as the tanker collides
and flips over, exploding in a huge ball of flame. The characters
are separated by the blaze, and each must make their individual
way through the game.
This is the point at which the player begins, choosing which
character to assume based on which of the two game disks are
loaded. When the player finishes with one character's adventure,
the save file enables the player to approach the same game from
the other character's perspective, in a reverse game. Thus, the
scenarios progress as either Claire A & Leon B, or Leon A &
Claire B. There are differences in each game, and there are
differences in each combination. In addition, whatever the
first character does in their scenario affects the second
character's game.
For the purpose of brevity, this synopsis will follow the
plot as it occurs in the Claire A & Leon B combination, which
is by far the more structurally sound of the two scenario
combinations.
Claire begins on the Raccoon City streets, now overrun by the
zombies who have come out due to the crash. By baiting them
in a certain direction, she figures out that she can create
openings in their ranks and slip past them. She ducks into a
gun shop, hoping to find ammo for her weapon.
Inside, the clerk points a crossbow at her. After she
convinces him that she's not a zombie, he locks his door.
With a slightly sexist attitude, he admits he doesn't know
what is happening in Raccoon City or where the zombies have
come from. Claire finds some ammunition for her gun and
starts to move on just as the undead lay siege to the store.
Crashing through the display window, they tackle the shop's
employee and chew him to pieces on the floor. Unable to save
the man, Claire's only hope is to run through the back door.
(In the N64 RE2 'port, we find out this man's name is Robert
Kendo, and he's the owner of the gun shop.)
Weaving her way through the slow moving ghouls, she makes
her way to the police station. S.T.A.R.S. helicopter pilot Brad
Vickers is encountered near the precinct, recently deceased
and come back by diabolic means. Executing this former hero,
Claire enters the Raccoon Police Department. She finds that
the place has been electronically locked and barricaded
against an apparent siege by the undead.
Leon finds himself directly behind the Police Department. He
has a shorter run than Claire, but must find the key to get
into the maintenance shed at the back of the Precinct. All
the while, flesh eaters converge on him. He gets lucky and
finds a back stairway to the roof of the station, but he
witnesses a rescue attempt fail.
A helicopter appears overhead. There is a lone precinct
survivor on the roof, signaling to it. Zombies attack the
unfortunate wretch. He sprays random machine gun fire
everywhere, accidentally killing the helicopter's pilot.
The helicopter crashes into the station and explodes into
flames. There's a water tank near the wreckage that can be
used to put out the fire, but Leon will need a valve handle.
Claire finds a cop lying on the floor of an office, seriously
wounded and dying. (In RE3, we learn that the cop's name is
Marvin Branagh.) In a brief speech, he tells Claire that her
brother Chris, and the other S.T.A.R.S., tried to get them to
believe that they'd encountered zombies in the woods outside
Raccoon, but no one would listen to them. He gives her the
card key that will open the electronic locks in the Precinct.
He tells her to rescue the other survivors in the police
station and get out. When she starts to protest, the
half-disemboweled officer sticks a gun in her face and
rudely orders her out. He locks the door behind her. Claire
accesses the computer in the main hall, unlocks the doors,
and continues on.
In the zombie-infested office on the first floor, Leon finds
the necessary tool to put out the fire. When he opens the
water tank and douses the blaze, another helicopter appears
overhead. This one is towing a rack of huge cylinders. One
of them detaches and drops. The bomb-like container blows
apart, revealing a huge humanoid creature. The giant crashes
through the roof of the precinct. The trenchcoated menace
heads right for Leon, who empties his weapon into the
stalking monstrosity before it falls. When Leon leaves the
room, the sinister intruder rises... and follows. Little
does Leon know, but anyone who had survived the mansion
incident might recognize this creature as a new and improved
version of the Tyrant.
At the same time on different sides of the station, Claire
and Leon both encounter a new and deadly lifeform.
Amphibious and spider-like, these creatures look like
crawling people turned inside out. They lash out with claws
and an incredibly long and sharp tongue. Police documents
refer to these creatures as "lickers," and no one knows
where they came from.
On the second floor of the west wing of the precinct house,
Claire finds the S.T.A.R.S. office and the log kept by her big
brother Chris. This document explains that he and the other
S.T.A.R.S. members had no luck investigating the involvement
of the Umbrella Corporation in the mansion lab incident. They
departed for Europe to search for Umbrella's main
headquarters. Suddenly a fax comes in, addressed to Chris. A
federal investigation on Umbrella has yielded naught for
clues, but an inquiry posted to the internal affairs
division by Chris regarding Raccoon Police Chief Brian Irons
has been answered. By his record, the Chief would appear to
be a deranged genius and former rapist.
Back outside the office, Claire catches sight of a young
girl being pursued by a zombie. While Claire dispatches this
thing, the fleeing little girl bumps into Leon. Frightened
out of her mind, she ducks into a small opening in a broken
door before he can stop her. Leon and Claire reunite. Leon
admits that this place is dangerous, and Claire suggests
that they split up and look for the girl and a safe exit. The
rookie cop gives her a radio so they can keep in contact.
Leon finds the two parts of a police operation report,
detailing the events of the past few days. The courageous
citizens of Raccoon made a grim standoff in the precinct
house against the flesh-eating undead. But some escaped the
precinct through the exit to the basement in the east wing.
He also finds a note addressed to him from the RPD, and the
party favors for a surprise welcome party they were planning
to throw for him. It seems his party has been cancelled.
He heads for the basement while Claire is startled by a
woman's screaming on the second floor. In order to save
whoever's in trouble, she needs a bomb to clear the helicopter
wreckage. Nearby, she finds the key to unlock the door
downstairs and save the wounded cop. When she returns to
him, he has been fighting off zombies unsuccessfully. Claire
now learns why he rudely forced her to leave him. He
rises, transforms into a zombie, and attacks her. Sadly,
Claire incinerates him. She finds a detonator and a chunk
of plastique, and heads back upstairs.
In the basement, Leon is fired upon by a beautiful woman
named Ada Wong. She's looking for a reporter named Ben
Bertolucci in one of the basement jail cells. After Leon
graciously helps her clear some wreckage out of the way, she
ditches him. He tries to catch up to her, but instead finds
the incarcerated reporter in one of the jail cells. Ada
catches up to them now, but where she went first is a
mystery. Questioning Ben, Ada reveals that she's looking for
her boyfriend John, who works out of an Umbrella branch
office in Chicago. He disappeared in this area some months
ago. Ben refuses to tell her what he knows about what's
happening in Raccoon City. Just then, a monstrous roar fills
the air. Ben has locked himself in his cell for protection
and refuses to leave, but directs the others how to get out
of the Precinct. Ada takes off, and Leon runs after her.
Claire detonates the plastique near the helicopter wreckage
upstairs. She finds an office full of stuffed trophy
animals... and a more gruesome trophy on the desk. The
Mayor's daughter lies sprawled out, a medium-sized wound at
her abdomen. Behind the desk sits Police Chief Brian Irons.
He has completely lost his mind. Although the girl's wound
looks like a bullet hole, he claims that she was attacked by
a zombie, and that she will resurrect within an hour. The
only way to stop the zombification is to decapitate the
victim or put a bullet through the brain. He admits that
taxidermy used to be his hobby (which links him to the
Umbrella mansion, because of all the stuffed trophies found
by the S.T.A.R.S. team there). He asks to be left alone,
and Claire is only too willing to get away from him.
In the room next to the Chief's office, Claire hears the quick
footsteps of someone fleeing from her. She finds the little
girl crouched in the dark. She radios Leon to let him know
that she cleared the helicopter wreckage and found the
little girl. The little girl says her name is Sherry Birkin,
and her parents work at the Umbrella plant. Her mother
called her during the T-virus outbreak and instructed her to
go to the police station for safety. She has heard her
father's voice in the station, but can't find him. Also, a
creature is stalking her. A mighty roar emanates from
nearby. Sherry runs off, and Claire tries to pursue her. In
the office, the Chief and the dead woman's body have
disappeared. However, he has left behind his diary detailing
the extents of his depravity.
Leon has found the sewer system that runs under the city. In
the processing plant, he comes across what appears to be the
exit door but doesn't have all the necessary keys to get
through. Going back, he finds Ada also investigating the
sewage plant. She has found an open vent shaft that she can
get through with a boost. She hits the ground on the other
side, startling the same little girl Leon and Claire
encountered previously. As she runs off, Ada notices that
the little girl dropped her pendant. Amused, she decides to
keep it in case they meet again. After a quick search, she
finds a precinct key and returns to where Leon waits. She
throws the key back through the vent, but she can't get back
herself because the vent is too high. Once again, Ada runs
off on her own against Leon's orders.
Leon returns to the precinct house, searching for the last
few keys he needs to get out. While looking for clues on the
first floor, the horrible Tyrant bursts through the wall, and
only falls after Leon empties his shotgun into it. Leon races
upstairs and finds more items he needs. The Tyrant follows.
Again, Leon is forced to shoot it out with this brute. The
thing is finally subdued, even if only for the moment.
After gathering several keys of her own, Claire finally
catches up to Sherry in the Chief's office. Behind the desk
is a secret elevator, and Claire makes Sherry stay behind
while she goes to investigate. The elevator lowers her into
some kind of custom dungeon beneath the precinct, lit by
flickering torches. As Claire cautiously creeps down the
hall, she hears the Chief scream.
In his private chamber, Chief Irons is backed into a corner
by a hideous mutating creature. Something shoots out of this
thing's hand and down Irons's throat.
In a hideous torture room, Claire finds the Chief, ranting,
raving, and armed. He explains to Claire that his town has
been torn apart by the experimental monsters of the Umbrella
corporation. He tells her that a man named William Birkin is
to blame. Claire recognizes the name. Irons states that
Sherry is Birkin's daughter. Completely paranoid, the Chief
is ready to kill Claire. Before he can execute her, something
bursts through his upper torso from within. A small creature
leaps out of Irons and falls down an open chute nearby. Claire
follows this thing, only to see it quickly grow into some kind
of horrible infant. The thing attacks her, but she destroys it
fairly easily. She runs back to the second floor to get Sherry;
their escape route is now clear.
Leon makes his way to the precinct's clock tower where he
finds the final piece in the Chief's bizarre architectural
puzzle. Now able to exit the police station, he finds an
open dust chute and slides back down to the basement. Upon
landing, he hears Ben screaming in the jail cell nearby.
Leon runs to the reporter's aid, but is too late. The same
thing that impregnated Irons has gutted Ben. The dying
reporter gives Leon a document which entangles Raccoon
City's chief of police in a government conspiracy. In terrible
pain, Ben dies. Ada finally catches up to Leon, and they
read this document together. It is a series of letters from
William Birkin to the police chief, describing in detail how
Umbrella was bribing the chief to keep secret their actions
in the town. Birkin had learned that Umbrella sent spies to
steal his research. Ada then rushes off, explaining only
that she has to find John. She thinks he's in the chemical
plant. Leon is prevented from following by another call from
Claire. She has found a different exit from the precinct and
will join him in the sewers.
Leon runs after Ada, but in the sewage plant, he is
confronted by the mutating Dr. Birkin. The scientist wrenches
a steel pipe off of the wall and attacks Leon with it. Leon
empties a full clip of Magnum bullets into the scientist,
who doesn't fall. Instead, Birkin dives into the muck of
the sewers.
In the sewer beneath the station, Sherry is separated from
Claire when a drainage chute opens and sucks her into a
lower level. Sherry runs for safety, finding herself in a
garbage room. Just when she finds a nice shiny trinket, the
floor springs open and dumps her into the garbage hold.
Knocked unconscious, she fails to see a monster slouch out
of the darkness. Birkin has found his daughter at last.
Ada abruptly rejoins Leon, and he admonishes her for
running off. She agrees to stick with him, for now.
Searching everywhere to find Sherry, Claire runs into her
mother, Annette. The suspicious woman worked with her
husband William on a bioweapon called the G-Virus, a
mutagenic substance that turns whatever it infects into
a giant monster. Birkin injected himself with the virus
when armed Umbrella agents seized the virus from him.
When Birkin was accidentally shot, he used the virus to
keep himself alive. The G-Virus rejuvenates dead cells,
but it also mutates them. He became a monster, a "G-Type,"
and hunted his killers down. The T-Virus leaked from his
laboratory after the attack, and was carried into Raccoon
City by the rats in the sewers.
The G-Virus seeks to spread by finding other host bodies.
When Annette learns that Sherry is in the chemical plant,
she becomes upset. The virus can only be spread through a
complimentary genetic host. Birkin will try to find and
impregnate Sherry with a virus embryo. From somewhere close,
they hear the little girl scream. Claire sends Annette
searching in the opposite direction and continues on.
Leon and Ada search the chemical plant for weapons and
ammunition. They bump into the frantic Annette. Ada chases
the armed scientist. Annette turns and fires on her pursuer,
but Leon jumps in front of Ada and takes the bullet. While
Leon lies unconscious and seriously wounded, Ada chooses to
run after Annette.
Claire finds the garbage dump and spots Sherry, lying
unconscious on a heap of rubble. She calls out to the little
girl, but a gigantic alligator hears her and attacks. Claire
runs back down the corridor and finds a switch to release a
gas canister. When the alligator grabs the canister in its
huge maw, Claire shoots the cylinder. The resulting explosion
flings chunks of the sewer beast's head everywhere. Moving
to Sherry, Claire spots somesort of red worm slithering away;
it is one of William's embryos. Stirring, Sherry complains
of stomach pains. Claire assures her that everything will be
all right. She leads Sherry out of the spider-infested sewers,
past the bodies of several soldiers wearing gas masks...
Ada hounds the scientist through the sewers to the central
control area. Annette blasts Ada's gun out of her hand, an
adept shot for a scientist. She advances on Ada,
interrogating her. Learning that Ada is looking for her
boyfriend John, Annette realizes that she's talking about
one of the researchers at the mansion lab. She knows that
John turned into a zombie, and then died when the lab was
destroyed. She makes it seem that William was working at the
mansion as well, and that he developed the G-Virus there.
Annette starts to explain the new G-Virus to Ada when she
spots her daughter's pendant around the woman's neck. In a
suddenly aggressive manner, she demands to have it. A cat
fight ensues, ending with Ada punching Annette and sending
her flying over the rail. Inside Sherry's pendant, Ada finds
a secret compartment containing a sample of the G-Virus.
Claire and Sherry discover an underground tramcar. After
powering it up, they ride for some distance to an unknown dock.
Apparently they aren't out of danger yet, as the grunts of
the undead are heard nearby. Claire blasts through corridors
full of zombies. They arrive at a train turntable platform.
Inside the engine car, Claire finds the key to the control
panel outside. An alarm sounds upon activation, and the
girls run back inside the car. The entire platform
disengages and drops. It seems they have found some sort of
large secret elevator. Sherry is overcome by her stomach
pains and passes out. Her monstrous father shows up,
threatening to smash the traincar to pieces. Claire runs
outside and ducks a steel rod flung at her by William. The
screaming madman mutates, growing a new head and a
vicious-looking claw. Claire quickly pelts the thing with
enough flame grenades to burn down a forest. When the G-Type
is finally face down in a pool of its own blood, Claire runs
back into the train car. The elevator finishes its descent,
and she carries the unconscious girl into an Umbrella
loading dock. It would seem she has discovered a large
underground laboratory.
A slightly delirious Leon awakens and hunts for Ada. He
finds her in the subterranean garbage dump. After bandaging
his bullet wound, she lets him know that John is dead. She
doesn't seem terribly upset though, and insists they get out
of the sewage plant. At the tram platform, Leon recalls the
car. They board and head for the train elevator. On route,
they are attacked by the G-Type, which isn't dead yet. It
stabs one gigantic claw through the ceiling over and over,
seeking the passengers. Ada fires at the hand, blowing off
one of the fingers. The monster retreats. The two slip out
of the tram and make for the train platform.
Claire sets Sherry on a cot in the security office. She
gives Sherry her vest to keep her warm. The girl stirs, and
lets Claire know that she trusts her and depends on her.
Claire assures her that she will find something to cure her.
Leon has to recall the train elevator platform. Leaving Ada
in the control room, he descends to a secret security room
and there finds the necessary key. When he flips on the
surveillance camera aimed at the door he just entered, he
sees Umbrella's ugliest and most fearsome agent hot on his
trail. After one more battle with this 'Mr. X', Leon returns
to the upper control room to find Ada unharmed. He recalls
the elevator from there and they descend to the lab. But
their moment alone is not to be enjoyed. William is back,
and he exacts a terrible revenge against Ada. His claw
shoots through the wall, stabbing her in the back. She
passes out, and Leon goes out to fight William. The
G-Type has grown two new arms and doubled in size. Leon
pumps the thing full of shotgun blasts before it does any
good. Bleeding heavily, William leaps onto the elevator
shaft wall and leaves Leon alone.
In the lab, Claire figures out that the main power conduit
has been shut down. She finds a fuse for power connection,
and then she is free to explore the lab. Umbrella has
conducted further experiments with plant vegetation, as a
titanic vine grows up from the bottom of one shaft. Its
offspring slide along the ground, spitting acid at her.
Worse, there is an even stronger variety of the "lickers"
here than those encountered before.
The elevator platform's engine overheats, and it stops on an
upper floor of the lab. Leon leaves the wounded Ada in the
train car while he goes searching for something to patch her
wound. He crawls through a vent duct and drops into a
corridor. The elevator platform restarts and continues to
descend. Leon has lost Ada again. He finds an emergency
elevator that will take him down to where Ada has gone, but
it needs power. He finds a door to a "Power Room," but it is
locked. In a room with a huge smelting pit, he fights his
way through the tougher new breed of "lickers." He connects
the emergency elevator's power and goes up to the lab. In
what is obviously William Birkin's former experiment room,
he finds the power room key and goes back to the first level.
Leon runs off the elevator, but not very far. Annette Birkin
somehow sneaks up on him, brandishing a pistol and a vial
of blue liquid. She accuses him of being a spy, just like
the girl he's with. Leon denies that Ada is a spy, and Annette
laughs. She's done a background check on Ada, and has discovered
that Ada works for "the Agency." She's an undercover agent,
using her relationship with John, the researcher, to gather
information on Umbrella. Annette declares that no one will
take her husband's virus from her, and prepares to shoot
Leon. Mr. X suddenly crashes through the ceiling behind Leon.
Annette flees. Evading the powerful giant, Leon gets to the
power room and unlocks it. The monster has followed him, and
now the rookie cop is cornered. Shots ring out. Ada is back,
blasting away at the unholy behemoth. Unfortunately, she runs
out of bullets. As she reloads, the Tyrant seizes her and
lifts her into the air. Ada fires several rounds point blank
into his face. Temporarily blinded, the giant swings Ada into
a control panel, denting the panel and probably breaking every
bone in her body. Blood gushing from his face, Mr. X falls off
the platform into the smelting pit. Leon runs to Ada's side.
In her last moments, she tells him that she's fallen in love
with him. Leon kisses her passionately. Ada goes limp and dies.
Leon screams in grief. Near Ada's body, Leon finds a master key
that fell out of Ada's pocket when Mr. X dropped her.
After Claire finds a keycard in the research room, Annette
pops up again. She's still armed and dangerous, and somehow
knows that Claire tried to kill William. After Claire tells
Annette that Sherry has been infected by the G-Type, the
monster growls nearby. Excited, Annette runs after him.
William crashes out of the ceiling, still alive. More
monster than human now, he cuts his own wife down with one
terrible claw swipe. When Claire rounds the corner he leaps
back up into the ceiling. A dying Annette begs Claire to
save her daughter, giving her detailed instructions on how
to create an antidote to the G-Virus, using materials that
can be found somewhere in the lab.
The damaged central unit in the power room is wracked by
explosions. Lightning bolts course up and down the huge
column. A computer voice comes online to announce that the
self-destruct sequence has been activated, and all personnel
should evacuate to the cargo train platform at the lowest
floor of the lab.
At the edge of the iron smelting pit, a gigantic clawed hand
emerges from the red hot pool. Mr. X isn't down for good
yet, and he may be more dangerous than ever.
Claire runs out to the monitor room. A motion detector
alerts her that someone else is in the lab. Leon is
onscreen, emerging from the power room. Claire tells him to
go back to the security office to rescue Sherry while she
creates the G-virus antidote.
Leon rides the elevator back down into the lab, and retrieves
the barely conscious girl. He uses the master key in the
elevator to take the emergency access tube and reach the
lab's escape route, a high-speed train.
Following the instructions for the G-Virus vaccine, Claire
rushes to the VAM room on the Lab's fourth floor. Killing
several last zombies, she finds a vaccine cartridge. Reading
the instructions for the "Devil" vaccine, she inserts the
cartridge into the machine and starts it up, allowing the
base vaccine to be synthesized. She takes the cartridge and
heads back down to Birkin's lab.
Leon finds the train without power. Laying Sherry on the cot
inside, he finds a platform key at the back of the train and
hurries to power up their escape transport.
Claire inserts the base vaccine into the virus antidote
synthesizer in Birkin's lab, and the machine creates the
"Devil" automatically. On her way back out, she accesses a
corridor to the experimental containment room, where she
finds a huge cargo elevator that will take her down to the
train platform.
An explosion rocks the entire lab. The computer announces
that the self-destruct sequence has begun. There are only
five minutes remaining until total detonation.
Leon races across a bridge over the train to the opposite
platform. There he unlocks the containment chamber for the
power plugs for the train's generator. He takes the plugs
into the next room and inserts them into the power grid. The
computer warns him that the power will be completely shut
down momentarily in order to power up the train. In the
blackout, a huge creature lands behind him. A transformed
Mr. X is ablaze from his dip in the molten vat. With two
huge claws, he charges at Leon, knocking the poor guy from
one end of the room to the other. Suddenly another familiar
shape appears, at the top of the gantry over them. Still
wearing Sherry's pendant, Ada drops Leon a rocket launcher.
The cop recognizes her, but doesn't have a moment to spare.
He dives for the launcher, scoops it up, and fires at his
vicious adversary. The creature explodes into a dozen body
parts. The power comes back on and so do the lights. With
two minutes until detonation, Leon runs back to the train.
Waiting patiently for the elevator to reach her floor,
Claire's thoughts are suddenly interrupted as something
smashes through the ceiling right above her. She backs up
just in time to avoid being squashed as the G-Type drops
into the room. She fires several grenades into the genetic
monstrosity, but all she does is trigger yet another mutation.
The creature's newest form is doglike, pursuing Claire on
four legs and slashing at her with a mouthful of jagged
fangs. Claire runs around the room, playing matador as it
charges at her. Finally, her weapons have an impact on the
thing, and it dissolves into a puddle of genetic jelly.
Claire's elevator arrives, right on cue, and she descends
to the train loading platform.
Leon finds the train platform crawling with naked zombies.
Blowing their heads off left and right, he fights his way
to the switch that opens the gate blocking the train's path,
and throws it. As the gates open, he returns to the train
and starts it up. Slowly, the train comes to life.
Claire gets to the platform just as the train is taking off.
She sees Leon, leaning out an open door, yelling for her to
get on. She misses that opportunity, but luckily there is
another open door.
Once she's inside, the Umbrella lab completes its detonation
sequence in a huge explosion. The train rocks, throwing a
still-unconscious Sherry to the floor. Claire quickly
administers the vaccine to her and they wait. Finally, Sherry
comes to and thanks Claire for saving her. Leon thinks that
the danger is over, but Claire disagrees. She still has to
find her brother. Leon moves up into the cockpit. Still upset,
he says goodbye to Ada.
The train suddenly lurches. Leon moves back into the cabin
with the girls. No one can figure out what the disturbance
was. Leon runs toward the back of the train. The train is
equipped with the same computer system as the lab. The
computer warns them that a bio-hazardous material has been
detected on board. The train will detonate in just two
minutes. The cabin is locked, and Leon is unable to get back
to Sherry and Claire. He runs to the back of the train to
search the cargo compartments.
At the rear, giant tentacles smash through the ceiling. Leon
races back to the front as the G-Type makes an encore
appearance. Birkin is now nothing more than a gigantic black
blob, pulling itself forward with four huge tentacles. Leon
blasts the thing until it loses solidity once more. Then he
heads back toward the cabin.
===================================================
3iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2
===================================================
Leon, standing on the gap between the train's two cars,
tries to get back inside and discovers the door has locked.
Claire can't open it from the other side. The biohazard
is still present, apparently... and still after Sherry.
The G-Type has reformed, and attempts to smash into the
cabin. Claire, not knowing where Leon is, tells Sherry to
hide. Sherry opens a vent to the cockpit and crawls through.
She promises Claire that she can stop the train.
Leon is on top of the engine car, climbing up to the
cockpit. He looks behind him to see the G-Type's tentacles
searching for him.
The main body of the G-Type smashes into the cabin. In order
to hide, Claire climbs down through a hatch and hangs onto
the bottom of the train while it's still moving.
Leon rips open an escape hatch on the roof of the cockpit.
Sherry hasn't had so much luck figuring out which button to
push. Leon spots the emergency stop switch immediately and
points it out to her. Sherry slams her fist on the button.
The train brakes. Sparks shoot out from behind the wheels as
the transport slows, dousing Claire in a shower of yellow
fire. She fights to hold on.
The train stops. The computer warns that the train will
detonate in thirty seconds. Claire crawls out of her hiding
spot and with a sigh of relief, spots daylight at the exit
of the train tunnel. Leon and Sherry are out, looking for
Claire at the front of the train. She joins them just as the
G-Type smashes into the cockpit. The heroes dash for the
mouth of the tunnel, through which they can see the rising
sun. They've lived to see the morning of September 30th.
The monster's tentacles smash through the cockpit
windshield, searching for its enemies. The computer counts
down, 5, 4, 3, 2...
At the last second, the G-Type realizes what's about to happen.
The heroes leap clear of the tunnel.
The transport train detonates quickly car by car, from the
rear to the front. A vicious geyser of fire blasts out of
the tunnel.
Claire and Sherry get up, commenting that they both look
pretty awful. Leon rises, but is already moving off, saying
they don't have time to waste. Claire wonders why. Leon
turns and tells them, "Hey, it's up to us to take out Umbrella."
Blackout. Heavy metal theme music and the credits roll.
===========================================================
3v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B
by Dan Birlew
===========================================================
If you play the game in the opposite order, starting with
Leon first, the plot is different in several respects:
1. Sherry keeps her pendant throughout the game. This means
that Ada never obtains the pendant or the G-Virus sample it
contains. Also, Mr. X wants the G-Virus, so he goes after
Sherry and Claire and not Leon and Ada.
2. Annette explains William's mutation and the cause of the
outbreak to Ada, rather than to Claire. Claire finds Annette
after Ada knocks her over the rail, and Annette falls
unconscious soon afterwards.
3. Sherry is never impregnated with a G-Type embryo, so
Claire doesn't have to create a G-Virus antidote. Thus, no
mention of an antidote is heard.
4. Ben Bertolucci is impregnated by Birkin with a G-Type
embryo that later bursts out of him. Why Birkin would
implant him with this is never discussed or explained.
5. Chief Irons is ripped in half by Birkin.
6. Annette is fatally wounded when the G-Type pounds on the
ceiling in the lab and drops a pipe on her head. Leon takes
the G-Virus sample that she is holding.
7. Leon confronts Ada about being a spy. Annette, barely
alive, shoots Ada. Leon's love falls over the rail into a
deep chasm. Enraged, Leon tosses the G-Virus after her.
8. In the game's finales, Leon confronts the G-Type while
Claire battles Mr. X. Likewise, while escaping from the RPD,
Claire fights the G-Type embryo and Leon is attacked by
Dr. Birkin.
9. In Claire's final confrontations with Mr. X, she lures
him into the smelting pool by tossing Sherry's pendant with
the G-Virus over the side. On the trainpower platform, Claire
is aided in her battle against the mutated Mr. X by Ada. This
provides a larger mystery than the previously explored
scenario. How did Ada survive such a fall?
10. At the end of the closing movie, it is Claire instead of
Leon who leads them off, saying, "Chris... I have to find you."
Perhaps the reasons why the previous plot summary focused on
Claire A/ Leon B are now clear. The focus scenario is much
richer in plot and explanations. There is not as great a
leap of faith required to believe that Ada still lives.
Resident Evil 2 is a game much richer in story than its
predecessor, as is evidenced by the number of pages needed
to summarize the plot versus that of the original Resident
Evil. In this chapter of the story, questions are raised.
Some are answered, while others may never be solved.
==============================
3vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame
by Dan Birlew
==============================
A couple of secret games are available to the most capable
of Resident Evil survivors. With the right timing, skill,
and stamina, players will receive an A ranking in Resident
Evil 2. While the secret weapons gained make for a fun
replay, the most interesting aspect of this ranking is a new
playable character named "Hunk." The players are asked to
create a new save file for a minigame called The 4th
Survivor, the special mission suitable only for this
seasoned Umbrella agent. The 4th Survivor is a "battle
game." The player is given a limited amount of ammunition, a
simple goal, and an enormous army of evil monsters to outwit
in order to survive. This side-adventure is a true test of a
player's survival skills.
Whether it is his real name or a codename is uncertain, but
Hunk is certainly a buff character. Dressed in militaristic
biohazard containment gear, Hunk's eyes glow with the power
of his infrared goggles. He runs much faster than the usual
Resident Evil playable character, even when seriously wounded.
Playing as Hunk requires a good amount of quick thinking and
strategy on the part of the player. While some strategies
can be useful every time, the game's enemies sometimes react
differently to Hunk. This means that The 4th Survivor is
always a challenge, even to seasoned Resident Evil veterans.
==========================================
3vii. A Brief Summary of The 4th Survivor
by Dan Birlew
==========================================
The game begins in a total blackout. Someone is thinking,
"G-...G-Virus... I have to deliver it to Umbrella..." The
scene opens at the end of the sewer station, sometime after
Ada and Leon have made their way to the Lab, but before the
end of the regular game. A body floats face down in the
muck, one of the Umbrella infiltrators sent to steal the
G-Virus from renegade scientist William Birkin. The body
stirs, shifts, and shows signs of life. Slowly, Hunk regains
consciousness and rises.
After a quick look around, Hunk pulls out his radio. "Alpha
team here," he says through his gas mask, "Mission
accomplished."
"Roger," confirms another agent on the radio. "We'll meet
at the rendezvous point."
A map cuts in. A blinking beacon light shows Hunk that he
has to get to the second floor roof of the RPD precinct house
in order to be airlifted out. Hunk takes off up the stairs.
Between this stealthy agent and his goal is a small army of
the evil dead. Zombies plague his flight, along with giant
spiders, killer dogs, and slithering botanical experiments.
He has only a limited amount of ammunition, and must balance
his present needs against what he may encounter in the future.
Luckily he has some herbs to heal himself and treat poisons,
but it's not a lot. Leon and Claire have already taken all of
the ammunition from the RPD, so Hunk is stuck with what he has.
The zombies have retaken the Precinct in greater numbers
than ever before, and have laid several traps for the
unfortunate Umbrella agent. With some skill, he just barely
avoids these. But as he nears his goal, the insanity grows.
Each room bears an ever-greater horde of ghouls, quickly
converging on the lone survivalist. Shaking off his
attackers, he clears a pathway out with the barrel of his
gore-splattered gun.
After several close calls, Hunk tops a staircase to the
second floor of the RPD. He's halfway home, but the
nightmare is not yet over. Stomping toward him is a
monstrosity he has only heard rumors about at his agency. At
long last, Umbrella has perfected the Tyrant, and they've
sent it after the G-Virus. Somehow able to sense that Hunk
possesses a sample, the monster attacks him. Reasoning with
the beast would be no use, so Hunk evades the slowly
advancing thing and moves on.
In the final hallway, Hunk meets the Tyrant once again. How
it got over here so quickly is a real mystery, one Hunk
doesn't have time to solve. Evading the hulk yet again, the
agent reaches the roof and lights his last flare to signal
for a rescue.
The pick-up chopper swoops overhead immediately, as if it
has only been a block away this entire time. It hovers over
the precinct for an unbearably long moment, then a bright
spotlight is trained on Hunk. Impatiently, he waves for them
to come down and get him. The helicopter quickly lands and
airlifts the tired and wounded operative. As the Umbrella
chopper soars off into the ominous skies, a brief epilogue
appears on the screen. The agent has delivered the virus to
Umbrella, promising that this is the end of one nightmare,
but only the beginning of another.
=======================================
3viii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
=======================================
Resident Evil 2 leaves us with the following resolutions:
1. William Birkin's laboratory and research have been
destroyed.
2. Somehow Umbrella has almost perfected a Tyrant, and has
more at their disposal. Their research continues elsewhere.
3. Leon, Claire, and Sherry have all survived.
4. Ada may have also survived.
5. Raccoon City is in ruins.
6. Leon has a new mission in life, while Claire continues hers.
7. The rest of the S.T.A.R.S. team may be somewhere in Europe.
===================
3ix. Random Musings
===================
1. As pointed out by Dan Birlew in the original version of
this document, Tofu, another hidden character, is also
accessible in RE2. However, his scenario is so incredibly
silly that it doesn't really apply to the storyline. He is,
after all, a block of bean curd with a knife.
2. Mr. X isn't really very committed to his mission. He seems
to deliberately put it on hold a couple of times to go after
the player. This is most obvious in either B scenario, where
Mr. X leaves the character carrying the G-sample alone in
order to go down the elevator shaft after the player.
3. So why, exactly, didn't anyone clean out Wesker's desk?
They thought he was dead.
4. Annette's claim that William Birkin created the T-Virus
was contested by files in Survivor and CV, and is flatly
contradicted by RE0. An attempt to unravel the issue of
who created the T-Virus is contained within the FAQs below.
5. Note that "The 4th Survivor" is the first RE minigame
to actually figure into the plot. We won't see this again
until Assignment: Ada in RE4.
6. In the seven years since RE2 was released, virtually
every environment in it has been used as the setting for
some part of another game. Much of the RPD was recycled
for RE3 and RE:O2's "Desperate Times" scenario, Rebecca
visits part of the shipping lanes underneath the city in
RE0, and RE:O's "Below Freezing Point" scenario is set in
Birkin's laboratory.
The only parts of RE2 that haven't reappeared in a later
game are the Raccoon sewer system and the city streets
from the start of the A scenario.
7. Cinematic references in RE2:
-- the Umbrella lab is sort of a mixed bag of film
influences; I recognized bits taken from _Day of
the Dead_, _Return of the Living Dead Part 2_, and
_Return of the Living Dead Part 3_.
-- Leon is dressed more like Peter and Roger in _Dawn
of the Dead_ than like any other officer in the RPD.
-- the giant alligator may be a reference to the undead
alligators at the beginning of _Day of the Dead_.
-- okay, so I mentioned _Zeram_, right? The big pink
quasi-embryo that crawls out of Irons/Ben, as well
as the little pink embryos that crawl out of *that*,
look a lot like a similar creature, which is spawned
by an alien, in _Zeram_.
=======================================================
4. Nobody Here Gets Out Alive: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=======================================================
RE3 has more replay value than any other RE game to date,
with three endings and plenty of secrets to unlock, as well
as the incredibly fun (read: addictive and frustrating)
Mercenaries minigame. It also introduced the Dodge feature,
which let players duck or roll out of the way of incoming
attacks with the push of a button, and featured the return
of RE's Hunters.
=============================
4i. The Death of Raccoon City
=============================
The threat did not end with the destruction of the Arklay
lab. There are still monsters loose in the Raccoon Forest,
and Umbrella's experiments continue at a half-dozen hidden
labs inside the city.
Everything changes in late September of 1998. After Umbrella's
attack on William Birkin, as shown in RE2, sewer rats carry
a fresh wave of pure T-Virus directly into Raccoon City. Within
minutes, the epidemic has begun. Soon, dozens of zombies are
roaming the streets. Raccoon City is placed under martial law,
and the casualties begin to mount at a shocking rate.
The Raccoon police force tries to fight back the zombie invasion,
but their efforts are sabotaged from within by their police chief,
Brian Irons. Not only does the steadily-getting-crazier Irons
somehow prevent the RPD from calling backup from outside Raccoon,
but he deliberately spreads confusion among the policemen. As a
result, the police's first major battle against the zombies, on
September 27th, is a near-total disaster. The few surviving police
withdraw to the RPD building and reinforce it to withstand a siege
of the undead. In the next two days, the policemen and surviving
civilians die one by one, cut down by either mutants, zombies, or
Irons himself. There are a handful of survivors, but not many.
As the police battle the zombies, two helicopters marked with
Umbrella logos land in the city and drop off a small number of
armed men. These men have better equipment than the police,
but they're a relative handful of soldiers against an army, and
soon they, too, are running for their lives.
By September 28th, Raccoon City is a ghost town, swarming with
zombies and monsters. A military blockade surrounds Raccoon City,
enforcing a quarantine. No help is coming. Thousands are dead.
Somehow, Jill Valentine has managed to survive all of this.
On the morning of September 28th, alone, she makes her last
bid for survival: her last escape.
=======================================================
4iii. A Summary of the Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=======================================================
Jill's escape attempt begins with an explosion, as she literally
blasts her way out of an apartment building. Jill takes shelter
inside a nearby warehouse and meets another survivor. She tries to
get him to come with her, but he refuses to leave the warehouse.
Jill tells him that their only hope is to get out of town, but
he shuts himself inside a nearby trailer rather than listen.
Jill, alone, leaves the warehouse. The streets are disturbingly
quiet, with only the occasional zombie wandering around. As she
sneaks through a back alley, a man suddenly bursts out of a
closet, pursued by a mob of zombies. Jill recognizes him as
Brad Vickers, and runs after him.
After chasing him through the streets and back alleys of
Raccoon, Jill finds Brad inside a local bar. They briefly
talk about what's happened to the city. Brad, although he's
wounded, gets up, telling Jill that "he's comin' for us.
We're all gonna die! He's after S.T.A.R.S. members. There's
no escape!" With that, he leaves the bar.
Outside, Brad's nowhere to be found, so Jill sets out on her
own. She emerges onto the street in front of the RPD building.
Both ends of the street are blocked by car crashes, but a nearby
alleyway leads further uptown. The door to it is locked, but Jill
left a set of lockpicks in her desk at the RPD. She heads there.
In front of the RPD building, Brad Vickers finds Jill again.
He looks like someone dropped a truck on him. He starts to
say something, but is cut off by the arrival of a new monster,
a humanoid creature dressed in black. Its face is permanently
stuck in a lipless grimace. (Roughly two days from now, Leon
will meet Mr. X, which looks a lot like this thing.) Jill is
frozen in horror as the creature grabs Brad by the face and
lifts him into the air. It kills Brad by shoving a tentacle
through his head, throws away his body, and advances on Jill,
muttering a single word: "...S.T.A.R.S...."
Jill's weapons seem to have no effect on the creature. She
ducks inside the RPD building and slams the doors behind
her. Although the doors buckle under the creature's attack,
they don't give. Safe for the moment, Jill searches the
building for equipment and ammunition. More than half of the
building has been sealed off by the few surviving police, but
she can still get to her old office.
The S.T.A.R.S. office is wrecked. Someone has deliberately
broken the radio and the desks have been ransacked. As Jill
leaves with her lockpicks, the radio plays an incoming
transmission from someone named Carlos. His unit has been cut
off and no survivors have been found. He asks for anyone who
can hear him to respond, but the broken radio can only receive
transmissions. All Jill can do is wish him luck as she leaves.
The only warning Jill gets before the creature returns is the
sound of shattering glass. It jumps through a window on the
first floor of the RPD, toting a rocket launcher in one hand.
Dodging a barrage of missiles, Jill barely manages to get out
of the RPD building alive. She picks the lock on the alleyway
door and keeps running. She seems to have lost the creature.
As Jill makes her way uptown, she finds a dead man wearing
the Umbrella logo. According to his diary, the dead man was a
member of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service, an
in-house paramilitary unit maintained by Umbrella. For some
reason, Umbrella's hired and sent mercenaries into the city.
More dead UBCS soldiers turn up elsewhere. One is lying in
front of a nearby parking garage, killed by a pack of zombie
dogs. Another has fallen victim to a new creature, a bizarre
breed of giant, mutated insect. These "drain deimos" are
surprisingly dangerous, but shots to their unarmored belly
kill them in seconds.
Jill steps back onto the street outside the construction
site, and sees a man run into a restaurant. Jill follows him
inside. He introduces himself as Carlos Oliviera, a corporal
in the UBCS, and asks if Jill's okay. When she expresses
disbelief--Jill can't believe that anyone from Umbrella
cares whether she's okay or not--Carlos elaborates: his
squad was told to rescue Raccoon's civilians, but the mission
went wrong the moment they landed. Before he can continue,
the creature stalking Jill reappears, coming in through the
restaurant's back door.
As the creature charges, Jill notices a gas leak in the
restaurant's kitchen. She and Carlos hide behind the counter,
and as the creature stops next to the leaking pipes, Jill
throws a lit oil lamp at it. The ensuing explosion nearly
kills both Jill and Carlos, but knocks the creature out.
As they leave the restaurant, Jill asks Carlos why his squad
was sent to Raccoon. Carlos's answer--that they're rescuing
civilians--isn't good enough for Jill, since the destruction
of Raccoon is largely Umbrella's fault. Carlos replies that
he and his fellow mercenaries are just hired hands, and if
Umbrella had some kind of ulterior motive for sending them
in, he doesn't know what it is. If Jill wants answers, she's
asking the wrong guy. The sound of shattering glass inside
the restaurant cuts him off. Carlos invites Jill to join his
squad, and runs off. Jill starts to follow Carlos, but the
creature comes after her again, seemingly unhurt.
After losing the creature in Raccoon's shopping district,
Jill hides inside the offices of the Raccoon Press. Inside,
she finds another gemstone that matches one she found in
the RPD building. They turn out to be the missing parts to a
time lock on the gates to Raccoon's city hall. Jill repairs
the lock and opens the gates.
The city hall is boarded up, and looks as though it's been
undergoing the same kind of siege as the RPD. Past it is a
trainyard, where one of Raccoon City's cable cars is parked.
Inside the cable car, Jill meets a gray-haired man wearing
the same logos as Carlos. Jill greets him, assuming he's one
of Carlos's teammates. The man asks her insultingly how she
managed to survive. Jill replies that she's a S.T.A.R.S.
member, which seems to satisfy him. He walks into the next
car, leaving Jill alone with a badly wounded and delirious
UBCS officer. Jill tends the man's injuries as best she can,
then follows the grey-haired man.
Carlos is in the next cable car, and renews his invitation
from earlier. The gray-haired man, who is apparently Carlos's
commander, says that they can't trust Jill. Before Jill can
respond, Carlos says that they need her help, as their unit
has been reduced to Carlos, the gray-haired man, and Lieutenant
Mikhail, the injured man in the last cable car. His commander,
Nicholai, grudgingly agrees, and tells them about his plan.
An extraction helicopter is waiting for a signal from their
team. The designated landing zone is by the St. Michael Clock
Tower, a Raccoon City landmark. Nicholai intends to use the
cable car as a mobile shield to get them through Raccoon City,
although the car will require repairs first. Carlos and Jill
agree to this plan, and the three of them split up to look for
parts for the cable car.
Jill heads to a nearby gas station first, to get motor oil.
Carlos enters the station behind her, but a mob of zombies
sniffs them out. As Carlos keeps watch, Jill finds a locked
cabinet with oil in it. Carlos steps outside to fight off the
zombies. Jill hurriedly opens the lock and grabs the oil.
Before she can get outside, a live wire falls into a pool of
motor oil in the gas station's garage, starting a fire. Jill
sprints out the front door as the place burns down around her.
Outside, Jill finds Carlos slumped against the wall, next to
a pile of dead zombies. Jill briefly thinks he's dead, but
Carlos shakily gets to his feet. The fire suddenly spreads
outside, to the pools of gasoline leaking from wrecked cars,
and then to the gas station's pumps. Jill and Carlos barely
escape an explosion that completely destroys both the gas
station and most of the block that it's on. As they pull
themselves to their feet, Carlos tells Jill that he's going
to look for extra equipment. He leaves.
Jill finds some engine parts and returns to the cable car
to fix it. Outside the cable car, Mikhail, despite his wounds,
massacres a horde of zombies and collapses. Jill runs up
to him and demands to know if he has a death wish. Mikhail
insists that he cannot stop fighting just because he's wounded.
Even though the zombies are innocent victims as well, as Jill
says, Mikhail sees no reason why he should take responsibility
for anything that's happened to Raccoon. After all, none of
the UBCS soldiers are really involved with the company. Jill
agrees, and says that that's the only reason she's trusting
the UBCS at all.
Jill helps Mikhail back into the cable car and tells him to
rest. She also tries to repair the cable car's engine.
She has everything she needs, except a special additive
for the motor oil. She heads back into Raccoon, towards
an Umbrella-owned sales office.
Before going to the office, Jill stops by the warehouse in
downtown Raccoon where she had taken shelter earlier. Inside,
she finds a group of zombies greedily devouring the body of
the man who'd refused to come with her. In the trailer that
the man was hiding in, Jill finds a book where the man has
written his final words. His name was Dario Rosso, and he
had always meant to be a novelist.
When Jill reaches the office, Nicholai is already there. He
has just killed another UBCS trooper who was infected with
the T-Virus. Jill demands that Nicholai explain why he shot the
man, who was still conscious. Nicholai explains to Jill, as
if it's obvious, that it took fewer bullets to kill the man
before he became a zombie.
Jill lets herself into the office's storage locker, where she
finds the additive she needs. At the same time, another horde
of zombies finds the sales office. Jill hears Nicholai scream.
When she fights her way back into the office, both Nicholai
and the UBCS mercenary's body are gone.
On her way back to the cable car, Jill has another encounter
with her stalker outside City Hall. Once again, Jill runs
for her life. The creature doesn't follow her to the next
street, and before Jill can wonder why, the ground crumbles
under her feet. She's dumped into part of the Raccoon sewer
system, which a large, mutated worm has claimed as its own.
Jill escapes from the sewers via a conveniently located
emergency ladder.
Jill finishes her repair work on the cable car. Carlos walks
in, and Jill tells him that Nicholai won't be joining them.
Carlos grimly accepts the news, and offers to drive the
cable car. The car begins to glide smoothly away from the
station, but it shakes suddenly from a tremendous impact.
Jill investigates, and finds that the creature stalking
her has busted into the cable car. With nowhere to run,
Jill knocks it to the ground with a barrage of grenades.
The creature gets right back up again, seemingly unhurt
by an attack that would have killed anything else.
Suddenly, Mikhail opens fire on the creature with his
assault rifle, commanding Jill to get out of the cable car.
The creature advances on Mikhail, whose rifle jams at
exactly the wrong moment. The creature backhands him against
the wall, then throws him across the cable car. A tentacle
emerges from the creature's hand, coiling around its wrist
like a striking snake, and it walks towards Mikhail to
finish him off. Just before it reaches him, Mikhail rolls
over, pulls a grenade from his vest, and pulls the pin. The
resulting explosion knocks the creature out of the back of
the cable car, kills Mikhail, and destroys the cable car's
brakes. Jill pulls the emergency brake, but the car doesn't
come to a full stop until it hits a wall. Jill blacks out.
Jill regains consciousness alone in the courtyard of the St.
Michael Clock Tower, next to the twisted ruin of the cable
car. Night has fallen and the sky's cleared. She finds Carlos
inside the tower, who's now convinced that Umbrella has no
intentions of letting them out of town alive. Before he can
get hysterical, Jill slaps him, asking him if he's just
going to give up. Carlos retorts that he just can't handle
what's happening, and runs off.
The clock tower is nearly deserted, except, as usual, by the
occasional zombie or giant spider. Jill finds several more
dead mercenaries within it, one of whom is carrying a copy of
the UBCS's mission plan; sure enough, they were here to rescue
civilians, but were specifically after Umbrella's employees.
The UBCS's extraction chopper is in the suburbs of Raccoon,
waiting for someone to signal it by ringing the clock tower's
bell. Jill runs up to the bell tower, to find the bell's
mechanical ringer has been dismantled. Solving another of the
puzzles that seem to be everywhere in Raccoon City, she finds
a key to unlock a storeroom downstairs.
On the balcony of the clock tower, the creature returns,
seemingly unhurt. Jill rips the wiring out of one of the
clock tower's searchlights and electrocutes the creature. As
it lies twitching, Jill makes her escape, but once again, it
gets up and gives chase. For some reason, though, it doesn't
follow her downstairs.
In the storeroom, Jill finds an ornate gear that'll fit in
the bell's ringer. She runs back upstairs and installs it.
The bell starts to ring, and as Jill rushes outside, the
extraction chopper comes flying in. Jill waves it down, and
for a moment, thinks that she's finally safe.
She is, of course, wrong.
Someone fires a missile at the helicopter. As it explodes,
the helicopter plows into the clock tower, showering the
courtyard in burning debris. Jill looks up to see the
creature standing on top of the clock tower, its missile
launcher in its hand. It jumps down in front of her, intent
upon finishing her off once and for all. Before Jill can
react, the creature stabs her with one of its tentacles,
and Jill immediately begins to feel shaky and ill. She's
been infected with the T-Virus.
Suddenly, Carlos arrives and attacks the creature. The
creature, more annoyed than hurt, returns fire. Carlos is
knocked silly by a near-hit, but manages to blow up the
missile launcher. As he passes out, Jill opens fire on the
creature, hitting it with everything she has. The creature,
after taking enough damage to kill an army, finally staggers,
then falls into the flames from the burning helicopter.
Jill limps over to Carlos and passes out. Carlos wakes up
and cradles Jill in his arms, desperately trying to wake her.
Jill is unconscious for two days, during which Leon Kennedy
and Claire Redfield make their own escape from Raccoon City.
She wakes up in the chapel of the clock tower after midnight
on October 1st. Carlos has been watching over her. She doesn't
feel any pain from her infection, but that in itself worries
her. Jill makes Carlos promise that if she turns into a zombie,
he'll kill her. Carlos says that he'll find something to help
her, and that she'll be safe in the chapel until he returns.
Carlos leaves the clock tower through a door in the storeroom,
and finds that he's down the street from a hospital. He
investigates, hoping to find something to cure Jill.
The hospital lobby is strewn with dead men and partially
locked down with a steel shutter. As Carlos enters, a zombie
slowly shuffles towards him from the back of the room.
Before Carlos can shoot it, something decapitates the zombie
from behind. A new creature, some kind of viciously clawed
reptile, screams at Carlos. Jill would recognize it as a
Hunter, one of the deadlier bioweapons she encountered in the
Spencer mansion. After a vicious, albeit brief, fight, Carlos
kills the cerature and enters the head doctor's office.
Carlos takes the head doctor's private elevator to the fourth
floor. The hospital is crawling with Hunters and the occasional
zombie. There, in the hospital's file room, he finds Nicholai,
who is holding a smoking gun and standing over the body of
another UBCS member. Carlos has a lot of questions for Nicholai,
but the only answer Nicholai has is that he--Nicholai--is
"one of the supervisors." That's all Carlos needs to know.
Nicholai points his gun at Carlos, but before he can fire,
the man on the floor pulls the pin on a grenade. Both Carlos
and Nicholai run for cover, and Nicholai winds up going out
the fourth-floor window.
Carlos is confused about what just happened, but he continues
his search. To his surprise, he finds another of Umbrella's
laboratories in the hospital's basement, where two creatures
are floating in incubation tanks. They look like Hunters,
but where the Hunters Carlos has been fighting are sort of
generically reptilian, these appear to be deliberately
patterned after frogs. (These are probably the MA-121
Hunters mentioned in RE2's EX Files. See Frequently Asked
Questions, below.)
Carlos finds a set of instructions in the lab. Using them
to operate the laboratory's machines, he creates a vaccine
effective against the T-Virus. Running back to the clock
tower, he finds a surprise waiting for him in the hospital
lobby. Someone has set explosives to demolish the hospital.
Carlos leaves the hospital at a dead run, taking cover from
the explosion inside the alley leading to the clock tower.
The hospital collapses in on itself in a burst of flame.
In the clock tower, the ceilings are buckling and groaning,
as if the tower is planning on following the hospital's
lead. As Carlos crosses the clock tower's front hall, the
creaking intensifies into a pounding. With a sudden crash,
the creature that has chased Jill throughout Raccoon City
breaks through the wall. The creature's heavy coat has burned
away, revealing that it's covered in writhing tentacles.
Carlos tries to fight the thing, but it's only interested in
getting to Jill. Fortunately, Carlos beats it to the chapel.
Carlos gives Jill the vaccine. The drug takes effect almost
immediately, and Jill wakes up. She asks Carlos what
happened to him, and Carlos says that he just had another
fight with the monster. Jill wonders aloud whether the
creature can be stopped at all. Carlos says that he's
sure it can, but he doesn't sound convinced. Jill realizes
that the creature is toying with them. Carlos then tells
her about Nicholai's survival, and warns her that although
he doesn't know what Nicholai has planned, he's sure that
Nicholai is their enemy. Claiming that he has to "take
care of some things," Carlos leaves.
Jill runs into the creature as she leaves the chapel. She
leads it a merry chase through the clock tower, losing it
along the way, and ducks into Raccoon's city park.
The park is infested with monsters, but Jill easily takes
care of them. Inside the tool shed in a local graveyard, Jill
breaks through a bricked-up doorway and discovers an abandoned
Umbrella command center. Several documents are scattered
throughout the room. One of them, a report from one of the
supervisors, finally gives her a name for the creature that's
been chasing her; Umbrella calls it the "Nemesis," and they
sent it to kill the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members. The unnamed
supervisor continues to speculate that if the Nemesis is still
loose in the city, then the S.T.A.R.S. must be very hard to
kill... but they can't hope to evade it much longer.
Nicholai is waiting for Jill when she leaves the command
center. He's impressed at her survival, but refuses to help
Jill in any way. When Jill asks him, he admits that the true
mission of the UBCS was to gather data on Umbrella's
bioweapons in a combat situation, but no one ever expected
the UBCS units to be completely wiped out. After a sudden
tremor shakes the ground, Nicholai runs off.
As Jill follows Nicholai, the earth falls out from under
her. The giant worm that Jill fought in the Raccoon sewer
system is back, but not for long. The worm destroys the
graveyard trying to kill Jill, and she responds with a
barrage of bullets and grenades. When Jill climbs out of
the wreckage of the graveyard, she leaves the worm's
cooling corpse on the ground behind her.
The park has been overrun by a fresh wave of zombies while
Jill fought the worm, but they're little more than
annoyances at this point. On one of the park's isolated
footpaths, Jill finds two more dead UBCS soldiers, one of
whom is clutching a set of orders from Umbrella. The orders
confirm what Nicholai said earlier. The supervisors were
also instructed to destroy the hospital and all the data
stored inside it. Umbrella is covering its tracks, and for
some reason, a lot of their supervisors are winding up dead.
The footpath leads to a rickety bridge, which in turn leads
to an abandoned factory. As Jill walks across the bridge
towards it, the Nemesis jumps onto the bridge in front of
her. Jill leaps off the bridge, into the river below. The
Nemesis, after she's gone, turns and walks towards the factory.
Underneath the bridge, Jill finds an entrance to an old
sewer duct, and from there finds her way into the factory. A
quintet of zombies spring a crude ambush on her, but Carlos
arrives and saves Jill a second time. Jill thanks him, and
he tells her that a missile is going to be launched into
the center of the city at dawn, which is coming soon. The
two of them have to split up and find some way to escape,
or they'll be caught in the blast. Carlos puts a hand on
Jill's cheek and tells her to watch out for Nicholai.
The factory is nowhere near as abandoned as it was supposed
to be. Umbrella has been conducting experiments with the
T-Virus here and using the facility to dispose of toxic
waste; as a result, the factory is crawling with Stingers,
Hunters, and powerful, mutated zombies. As Jill explores,
a sudden burst of gunfire sends her running for cover.
Chortling, Nicholai locks himself inside the radio room.
Jill accidentally stumbles into the facility's trash
room. Not only does the door lock behind her, but the room's
automated systems come online; in five minutes, the room
will automatically dump everything in it into the factory's
waste area. Given what's *in* the waste area, that'll almost
certainly be fatal. Just as Jill thinks things can't get
any worse, the trash room's lights come on, revealing an
old friend. The Nemesis has been waiting for her.
For the first time in four days, Jill gets lucky. She ducks
underneath one of the Nemesis's wild swings, and it tears
open a pipe on the wall. Whatever is flowing through the
pipe is corrosive enough to burn off half of the Nemesis's
tentacles almost instantly. As the Nemesis recovers, Jill
shoots out another pipe, drenching it in acid a second time,
and then a third. The Nemesis screams, covered in horrible
burns. It falls down, and doesn't get back up. Jill notices
the body of an Umbrella scientist in one of the trash heaps.
She searches his pockets and finds a keycard which unlocks
the trash room doors. As she gets out, the Nemesis's body is
dumped into the waste pool.
The factory's speakers crackle to life, and a woman's voice
reports that a missile attack has been detected. Jill runs
towards the door Nicholai went through and unlocks it with
her new keycard. The door leads to a communications tower. As
Jill picks up a portable radar receiver, the radio suddenly
comes to life. Outside, Nicholai taunts Jill from a helicopter,
and rakes the tower with a burst of machine-gun fire. Apparently,
he's the one who's been killing supervisors, simply so Nicholai
could get more bargaining power when it comes time to negotiate
his bonus with Umbrella. He says that he had also intended to
collect a bounty which Umbrella had placed on Jill's head, but
he decides to fly away instead. Jill, he says, is doomed anyway.
Carlos runs in. He hasn't had any luck in finding an escape
route, but he refuses to give up. He frantically uses the radio
to scan all frequencies. A familiar voice comes over the
radio. Someone else is coming in a helicopter, specifically
for Jill. All the two of them have to do is meet it at the
factory's helipad. The factory's systems alert Jill and
Carlos that the missile has been launched, and unlock
the door to the helipad. Jill heads there, and Carlos runs
back into the factory to make last-minute preparations.
Apparently, the factory used a scrapyard as their landing
zone. Jill runs through a maze of crushed and stripped cars,
and finds that a small war was fought here recently. Several
dead U.S. Special Forces soldiers are lying outside of the
factory's power room, as well as the burning corpse of a
mutant (actually a Mr. X unit, like the one that attacked
Leon the day before). An official report is on the ground
near one of them, accompanied by a photograph of an
experimental new weapon code-named "Paracelsus's Sword." The
report specifically mentions using it to fight Umbrella's
bioweapons. The Sword is an enormous rail cannon, and looks
like just the thing to take out a Tyrant, but it's far too
big to have been snuck in. There's a mystery here, but Jill
doesn't have time to figure it out.
Jill enters the power room, and an explosion from outside
seals the door shut behind her. Dead bioweapons are lying
everywhere, including several Mr. X units, one mutated,
with several dead soldiers lying among them. (Alert reader
Petri Rantala points out that the dead, clawed Tyrant in
the corner has claws on both hands, which would lead one
to believe that it's a mutated Mr. X rather than an old
Tyrant.) On the other side of the room, Jill finds the
Paracelsus's Sword cannon, still hooked up to the factory's
power plant and aimed directly at the dead Tyrant. Jill
tries to turn it on. The cannon's computer tells her to
hook up several oversized batteries strewn around the room.
As Jill shoves the first battery into place, she hears the
sound of dripping water behind her. Chemicals slowly begin
to leak into the room. Jill turns around, and the Nemesis's
"corpse" falls through a hole in the ceiling. It squirms
towards her, mutating with every move it makes. It's somehow
managed to survive its bath in the waste dump by mutating
into a new quadrapedal form. It is now saturated with
acidic toxins, and spits them forth in a lethal shower.
Jill frantically hooks up the last two batteries to the rail
cannon. Paracelsus's Sword begins to charge up. Left with no
other choice, Jill has to turn and fight back. The Nemesis is
still a vicious opponent, but it's nowhere near as tenacious
as it was, and Jill's assault drives it away. The Nemesis limps
to the other side of the room and begins to chew on the Tyrant's
corpse. This puts it directly in front of the charged rail cannon.
The rail cannon's blast shakes the room, tears through a
four-foot block of scrap metal, vaporizes the Tyrant's
corpse, and doesn't really look like it hurts the Nemesis
much at all. A second blast finally sends the Nemesis
screaming to the ground. Jill checks the radar receiver,
which tells her that she has less than five minutes before
the missiles hit. Before she can leave, the Nemesis
gets back up for one last attempt to kill her, firing a
blast of venom at her head. Jill rolls out of the way,
grabs a Magnum revolver from a dead soldier, and slowly
pursues the writhing Nemesis across the room. She empties
its cylinder into the Nemesis, and finally, bleeding from
its every pore, it stops moving.
Jill leaves the power room and takes an elevator up to the
helipad. Carlos takes the elevator up just after she does
and runs forward, lighting a signal flare. A blue-and-white
helicopter slowly descends to the ground in front of Carlos,
and both he and Jill climb aboard with a few minutes to spare.
=============================================================
4iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=============================================================
Jill thanks the helicopter's pilot, who says that he couldn't
just let her die. Jill seems to recognize him and leans forward.
The pilot turns to her and asks her, "Are you ready to finish
this?" (The pilot's apparently supposed to be Barry Burton,
although it's never said out loud.)
A flash of light outside the window draws Jill's attention.
The missile flies past the helicopter and hits the center
of Raccoon City. The surviving zombies look up in confusion
at the bright light, just before they're consumed in a wave
of fire. All that remains of Raccoon City is a smoking crater.
As the helicopter flies east, Jill, looking out the window
at what used to be Raccoon, vows that Umbrella is going down.
We're shown a news broadcast. The morning's top news story
is, of course, the strike on Raccoon. The President and
Congress planned and executed the destruction of Raccoon
City, which has been "literally wiped off the map." More
than a hundred thousand casualties are expected.
"Our hearts go out to the citizens... of Raccoon City."
====================
4iv. Different Paths
====================
The game's basic plotline can vary each time you play
through it. However, while the details change, the
fundamental events are always the same (Nicholai apparently
dies at some point before you activate the cable car, Jill
always finds Carlos somewhere inside the clock tower, etc.),
so they aren't worth listing in full here. For most of the
choices, I've just kinda picked the one that I liked more
and used it for the summary.
The exception is that I deliberately placed Carlos in the
gas station. Nicholai is a huge badass, but I'm not willing
to believe that he's enough of a badass to survive an
explosion that levels a city block (unless the explosion, as
Vincent Merken and I have theorized, knocked him through a
plot hole). I can accept a lot, but that's just crazy.
=====================
4v. Different Endings
=====================
The ending I've used for the summary is apparently the
official one, as one of the files in Resident Evil: Survivor
is written by Nicholai on October 5th. The other two possible
endings are detailed below, and both of 'em wind up with
Nicholai being real dead.
Ending #2:
Instead of negotiating with Nicholai, Jill blows him out of
the sky. Aside from that small yet satisfying detail, this
is the same as Ending #1.
Ending #3:
Instead of jumping off the bridge, Jill shoves the Nemesis
off and walks into the abandoned factory via the front door.
She and Carlos meet up in the second-floor break room, where
a visibly exhausted Carlos tells her about the incoming
missiles. Things proceed as above after that, but when Jill
reaches the trash room, she's ambushed by Nicholai. From
cover in front of the trash room, Nicholai explains that
there's a "modest" bounty offered by Umbrella for whoever
kills Jill, which he intends to collect. Jill tells him,
basically, to stick it.
Nicholai replies by firing a couple more shots at Jill.
Something, probably the Nemesis, grabs Nicholai from behind.
Jill hears him scream, followed by some wet crunching
sounds. When she rounds the corner, she finds Nicholai's
dead body hanging off of the pipes in the ceiling.
When Jill reaches the communications tower, she hears an
incoming transmission from Carlos. Carlos tells her to take
the nearby radar receiver and meet him elsewhere.
After Jill's showdown with the Nemesis, she rides the
elevator up to find Carlos waiting for her in Nicholai's
helicopter. Jill watches Raccoon explode as they fly off,
saying that this time, "they've gone too far."
=======================
4vi. The Epilogue Files
=======================
Every time the game is beaten on Hard Mode, an Epilogue is
shown after the credits and ranking screen. There are eight
Epilogues, each dealing with a major character from RE; in
order, the files are about Jill, Chris, Barry, Leon, Claire,
Sherry, Ada, and Hunk. Each file is about a paragraph long,
and is accompanied by original character art.
From the Epilogue Files, we know the following:
-- after escaping Raccoon, Jill found one of Chris's hideouts.
It was trashed, but Chris wasn't there. She plans to keep
looking for Chris so the two of them can finally take down
Umbrella. Carlos and Barry may or may not be with her.
-- Barry has left his family. He doesn't intend to return to
them until he's paid his friends back for betraying them.
-- after they escaped the lab at the end of RE2, Leon angrily
told Claire to leave him and Sherry alone. She promised to
return, and disappeared into the woods near Raccoon.
-- Leon has been made some kind of unspecified offer by
either the U.S. government or someone claiming to represent
them. He attempted to get them to leave Sherry out of this
offer, but she "knows too much." We do not know what Leon's
response to the offer was.
-- Sherry is in the custody of the U.S. Army, and is waiting
for Claire to come back.
-- the woman who had called herself Ada Wong survived. She
is leaving that identity behind and preparing for another
mission.
-- Hunk is a little crazy, and has a tendency to be the
only survivor of his missions. He's seen without his
mask in his file.
======================================
4vii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
======================================
1. Raccoon City has been destroyed. Thousands are dead.
2. Jill and Carlos have survived, thanks to Barry Burton.
3. A vaccine exists for the T-Virus, and it's been given to
Jill. In theory, she's now immune to it.
4. Ada and Hunk are both still alive. This brings the known
total of Raccoon survivors to eight, out of more than a
hundred thousand.
5. Jill is newly dedicated to the destruction of Umbrella.
She's looking for Chris.
6. Umbrella is actively seeking the deaths of the remaining
members of S.T.A.R.S.. They have a "modest" price on Jill's head.
7. Claire Redfield is somewhere in America, continuing her
search for her brother.
8. Leon Kennedy and Sherry Birkin are in government custody.
9. Leon has gotten an unspecified "offer" from someone claiming
to be a government agent. (Presumably, this offer is genuine,
and is how Leon got the job he has in RE4.)
10. The U.S. government has attacked at least one Umbrella
facility with very little, if any, success.
11. Umbrella actually tried to *stop* the government from
blowing up Raccoon. Apparently, there's something else going
on here that we don't know about.
12. Hunk survived. Umbrella has a sample of the G-Virus.
13. Someone on the development team hated Brad's guts.
=====================
4viii. Random Musings
=====================
1. In the power room, scattered amidst the dead Tyrants, are
shards of red containment capsules, similar to the one that
Umbrella used to transport Mr. X in RE2. If anyone was wondering
where that helicopter might have gone after it visited the
RPD, it isn't a enormous intuitive leap to say it went to
the Dead Factory.
2. As I've mentioned below under Unanswered Questions, the
military blockade around Raccoon is apparently manned by spider
monkeys. Neither Leon or Claire so much as see a blockade, and
we've seen no fewer than seven helicopters, some unmarked, enter
and leave Raccoon's airspace without any problems. (Count 'em.
You might even come up with a few that I missed.)
3. The Mercenaries minigame, while horrifyingly addictive,
doesn't really apply to the storyline. I would've thought
that this was obvious, but apparently, it isn't.
4. For those who didn't know, RE3 was subtitled Last Escape in
Japan. This is why Jill uses that phrase a lot. (Personally, I
think it should've been the subtitle of the American version,
but that's me.)
5. Although the back of the CD case says that Jill quit S.T.A.R.S.,
she never says as much in the game. As a matter of fact, she claims
membership several times ("Hey, I'm no ordinary civvie!" Shut up,
Jill. Just shut up).
6. According to an article in Game Informer, Nemesis's design
was one of the rejected designs for Mr. X. In the sketch they
published, Nemmy's rocket launcher was an elaborate rifle.
7. As established by the epilogue of Outbreak, the bomb that
destroyed Raccoon City wasn't actually a nuclear weapon. Further,
the missile Jill and Carlos see was just the first of many.
8. Cinematic parallels in RE3:
-- _Return of the Living Dead_ also had an ending which involved
a missile attack. The end scenes of the movie and the end
scenes of RE3, showing the missile arcing towards ground
zero, aren't identical but are thematically similar.
-- furthermore, _Return of the Living Dead_ also has a scene
where a small army of zombies rush a police barricade.
-- the power station sequence is much like a scene in
_Return of the Living Dead, Part 2_, especially if you opt
to electrify the zombies.
-- according to my co-worker Alicia Ashby, the bombing of
Raccoon City reflects a very common plot point in Japanese
pop culture. Man, you drop two nukes on some people and
they just never let you forget about it.
================================================
5. Ten Thousand Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
================================================
Survivor, also known as Gun Survivor, is a cross between
Resident Evil and a first-person shooter. If you're playing
something other than the North American release, then you
get to use a light-gun with the game, which is probably
a lot more fun; if you're in North America, however, you
get to move your gunsight around the screen with your
control pad, and the game gets very annoying.
In any event, Survivor is the story of an amnesiac man who
wakes up in the middle of a biohazardous outbreak. He must
fight to stay alive, while he tries to figure out just who
he is, what he's doing here, and why everyone he meets is
either scared of him, or is trying to kill him...
==========================================================
5i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
==========================================================
In late November of 1998, an isolated city called Sheena Island
is the site of another T-Virus outbreak. In a short time, Sheena
Island is a ghost town, chiefly inhabited by Umbrella's monsters.
As the undead mill through the streets, a helicopter flies over
the town. A man in white, holding a gun, clings to one of the
helicopter's landing struts. He yells, "You won't get away!"
He fires once, apparently hitting something vital, and the
helicopter begins to burn. As the helicopter plummets towards
the street, the man in white falls off.
Some time later, a man in jeans and a brown parka wakes up
next to a burning helicopter. He doesn't remember anything about
who he is, where he is, or what he's doing there. All he has
is his Glock 17 pistol.
The man, our hero, sets out to explore the city. On the next
street over, he finds the body of the man in white, who looks
like he's dead. Our hero kneels over him, and finds a set of
dogtags in the man's hand, identifying him as Ark Thompson.
Our hero thinks that the man looks familiar, but a lone zombie
interrupts his examination. He executes the zombie, and finds
a rusted key in its pocket.
The key unlocks the front door of a nearby church. The church is
small, and relatively well-maintained; the only discordant note
is the Umbrella logo, carved into the wall above the altar. In
the church manager's office, our hero finds the man's diary, where
he has written about the destruction of the American city of Raccoon
at the hands of the renegade scientist, William Birkin.
Our hero leaves through the back door of the church, to an isolated
street where a pay phone is ringing. Whoever it is hangs up as soon
as our hero answers the 'phone.
After a brief fight with a pair of Lickers, our hero finds his way
to another ringing pay 'phone. He picks it up, and whoever is on
the other end calls him Vincent. Our hero is confused, but the
man continues talking, calling him a murderer. He denies it, demanding
more information from the man on the 'phone, but the man hangs up.
Suddenly, helicopters appear overhead. Our hero ducks into a nearby
arcade as men in the black and blue uniforms of SWAT officers
descend from overhead. Their commander, his voice muffled by a
respirator, reminds them of their orders; they are to cleanse the
area of its infection.
Inside the arcade, our hero sees a team of cleaners dispatch two
zombies, but then they attack him. Apparently, "cleansing the area"
is synonymous with "killing all the witnesses." Up close, the
"cleaners" look more like gorillas dressed in body armor than anything
else; their arms reach almost to their feet, and they roll around on
their knuckles like apes. They're remarkably fragile, though, and our
hero easily dispatches them. As they die, they scream like wildcats,
and their bodies dissolve into nothingness.
Our hero, as he searches the arcade, is nearly killed by a sniper.
The sniper yells a threat at "Vincent," but doesn't take another
shot. Our hero sneaks out of the arcade's basement, jimmying open
a manhole and entering the sewers.
The sewers are blissfully quiet. In the sewer manager's office,
our hero finds the man's diary. He has written about his meeting
with Vincent, the cruel and vicious man who was promoted to the
post of the city's supreme commander. When the manager took a
picture of Vincent for a souvenir, Vincent got angry. As our hero
searches the manager's desk, he finds the picture of Vincent. It
is of himself. Clearly, our hero concludes, he must be Vincent. He
must be this cruel man that he keeps hearing about.
As he contemplates this, a young boy enters the manager's office
behind him. As Vincent turns around, the boy begs him not to
kill him. Vincent is confused, and tells the boy that he won't
hurt him, but the boy doesn't listen, and runs away. Vincent
gives chase.
The boy's exit route leads straight to the front doors of a place
that claims to be Paradise. It is, in fact, a prison. Inside,
Vincent kills several zombies, and finds the diary of the prison's
warden. He refers to the prisoners as "guinea pigs," and has
written that a "mass suicide" that had taken place in mid-October
was, in fact, an escape attempt. Vincent put down the escape
attempt by shooting down the fleeing boys as they tried to
escape. Vincent intimidated the prison's chief into reporting
the incident to Umbrella as a mass suicide.
As bad as that is, the cell block is worse. Vincent finds the diary
of one of the former prisoners on a bed in one of the cells. The
prisoner was a boy, abducted from the Congo in late August and
brought to Sheena Island. He and his fellow prisoners were all
young, between fourteen and twenty years of age, and were gathered
from all over the world.
According to the boy, everyone in Sheena Island was an Umbrella
employee, even the women and the children. While he and his fellow
prisoners weren't mistreated, the guards took one of them to a
factory, elsewhere on the island, every so often. Whoever was
taken would never come back.
The boy eventually found out why, by eavesdropping on a conversation
between some factory workers in the nightclub. For whatever reason,
the factory workers were ordered by Vincent to take the prisoners,
the "guinea pigs," and extract some kind of material from their
brains. The boy heard this, and immediately resolved to escape.
When word of the disaster at Raccoon City reached Steena Island,
the prisoners used the guards' uneasiness to stage their escape
attempt. One way or another, the boy writes, he's probably dead,
but he'd rather die trying to escape.
Vincent finds a coil of rope nearby, and uses the boy's planned
escape route by climbing down the side of one of the guard towers.
At the bottom of the tower, Vincent finds himself face-to-face
with a massive, trenchcoated figure. Clearly inhuman, it attacks
Vincent, and takes nearly three dozen bullets before it falls.
While Vincent has no idea what he's just killed, Leon would
recognize it as Mr. X.
Two more of the creatures are waiting for Vincent inside a nearby
nightclub. Barely evading them, Vincent bursts out the front door,
and finds himself across the street from a skyscraper bearing
the Umbrella logo. Clearly, he thinks, this is where Umbrella
controlled the island from. Memories flash through his mind as
he looks at the building, but they come and go too quickly.
The office is populated by zombies, Lickers, and the occasional
Hunter. Vincent blasts his way to the thirteenth floor, into
what would appear to have once been the office of the supreme
commander-- his office. There's been extensive fire damage
recently. A bank of security monitors is still active, and
he can see a little girl sitting at a security console elsewhere
in the building.
Vincent finds his own diary on his old desk. In it, he's written
about many things, such as the escape attempt that he thwarted via
gunfire, and a boy named Lott who told him about a spy on the island.
His final entries speak of a plot amongst his subordinates on the
island. Due to his brutal execution of the escapees, his subordinates
planned to gather evidence about the incident and report it to Vincent's
superiors at Umbrella. Vincent, in a fit of insane rage, unleashed
the T-Virus on Sheena Island, making it look like an accident. Now,
he intends to dispatch the spy and return to Umbrella for his reward.
Vincent's search is interrupted by a Mr. X unit punching through the
wall. After another intense gunfight, Vincent picks a keycard out of
the rubble. The keycard opens a door further down the hallway, to
the security office.
As Vincent enters the office, he hears an aged voice, claiming to
be his mother. His mother begs him to stop committing his horrible
c