The main story of Resident Evil Village is pretty clear: Ethan Winters, the returning hero from Resident Evil 7 sets out to rescue his kidnapped daughter from a strange, monster filled East European Village. That's the short version, at least. Throw in Vampire Mommy, a Castle, werewolves, Chris Redfield apparently turning evil and you've got most of the key plot points sorted. However, [dramatic music] there's quite a few interesting details that aren't immediately obvious; things that you can only really piece together if you've been breaking down all the trailers and info to date, pouring over all the footage and screens, and seen behind closed doors gameplay that Capcom's only shown to the press so far.
Which is what I've been doing. So, coming up we've got six bits of Resident Evil Village info that you might not know about, that open up a whole can of wormy questions for the game.
Obviously, huge potential spoiler warnings here for all sort of things if you continue.
1. We've probably only seen the first few hours of the game
While it might feel like we've seen a lot of Village, we've probably only seen, at most, the first three or four hours. From all the trailers and footage, as well as the demo, we're 100% certain this is the timeline so far: Chris Redfield attacks Ethan and Mia at home, apparently killing Mia and taking their daughter Rose. Either as a prisoner or a stowaway Ethan ends up in one of Redfield's trucks and reaches the village. From there he explores, is told Rose is in the Castle and meets some villagers. At some point he loses half his left hand, possibly to a Lycan bite, before being captured by Heisenberg while trying to get into the Castle. He's taken as a prisoner to meet Mother Miranda, Dimitrescu, Moreau, and Beneviento. He then escapes and successfully gets into the Castle to face Dimitrescu and her daughters.
Nearly all of what we've seen so far comes from this sequence of events. There's been a few brief clips of other areas, most notably Hesinberg's Factory, but otherwise, all we've seen (and played in the recent demos) is from the very opening of the game.
2. The Mold bioweapon might important but it's not the only thing at play
There's always a bioweapon of some sort at the heart of Resident Evil games. In the past we've had the Progenitor strain of viruses – mainly T, G and Uroboros, along with a host of variants like the Las Plagas parasites and Mold. That last one seems the most likely suspect for Village as both Ethan and Mia were infected by Mold in Resident Evil 7, before killing the E-Type bioweapon responsible, Eveline.
Without Eveline, the effects of Mold might be gone but if traces of it remain in Ethan and Mia they might have passed it onto their daughter Rose. That could explain why Mother Miranda wants the child for a ritual. There's a symbol throughout the Village that appears to show a D or E type embryo from Mold bioweapon research in a nest, surrounded by Mother Miranda's wings suggesting she intends to hatch or birth something.
However, Lady Dimitrescu's size and claws are extremely similar to Tyrant characteristics, which could suggest some sort of T-Virus involvement but, for reasons explained in the next part, that seems unlikely. Finally, while there's nothing quite like the werewolves in Resi to date, animal crossovers have been a common theme in the past.
3. Mother Miranda created Lady Dimitrescu, the others, and may pre-date the T-Virus
While Lady Dimitrescu is the breakout star, she's clearly second fiddle to Mother Miranda. She leads the show and rules over Dimitrescu, Heisenberg, Moreau and Beneviento. It also appears that she created them, as you can find a note in Dimitrescu's room that states "she gave me this castle, obedient daughters, everlasting life".
That suggests that Mother Miranda is the source of everything, somehow. As shown by an altar in the village, the locals worship this group with Mother Miranda as it's leader. A note in the castle dated 1958, that appears in the PS5 Maiden demo, talks about the "Mistress and her daughters", suggesting this group has been around since at least then.
That's extra interesting when you consider the Progenitor virus, that led to the T-Virus outbreaks in the first two games, wasn't discovered until 1966 in Africa where it originated. Although, like the European Las Plagas, the source Progenitor virus can be traced back to the end of the Stone Age. It suggests that whatever happened to Miranda and the others was a local, natural outbreak compared to more scientifically engineered bioweapon incidents.
4. Chris Redfield leads the Hound Wolf squad, seems to be evil, but might not be the only army in the village
While it looks like Chris Redfield appears to have turned evil, killing Mia and taking Ethan's baby, it's not entirely clear what's happening. For example, the footage of Redfield killing Mia and taking the baby doesn't appear to show the Hound Wolf squad's distinctive uniform of fur collars and night vision goggles. Instead, those soldiers are in all black with balaclavas. That uniform appears again on a soldier in the crashed van Ethan later escapes from. So either they change uniforms, or there are two separate military units in the game.
There's also a clip showing Ethan tangling with a Hound Wolf soldier, as Chris looks on – a scene that actually has a lot of information hidden away in it. Firstly, it's in the same snowy mountains as the main game, showing it takes place after Ethan escapes from the van, so Chris is active in the Village too. Secondly, it looks like Ethan still has an intact left hand, so this encounter happens early, as his fingers are missing not long after he reaches the village. And, thirdly, there's some lab equipment briefly visible, suggesting someone is studying what's going on.
There's a few theories here. One is that Redfield has become disillusioned with the fight against Bio Organic Weapons and gone rogue, while another is that he's being controlled or manipulated in some way. The Hound Wolf name, the Lycan monsters, and art showing Chris merged with a wolf certainly suggest he may be more than human at this point.
5. You'll need to kill the four sub bosses to reach Mother Miranda, who may have a link to Umbrella
This is probably obvious but Dimitrescu, Heisenberg, Moreau, Beneviento are all going to have to die, closely followed by Mother Miranda. We've seen emblems for the Dimitrescu, Heisenberg, Moreau and Beneviento houses being slotted into some sort of pedestal, and it looks like you'll need all four to unlock access to Mother Miranda.
One interesting thing is that the house crests are always linked by what appears to be the Umbrella logo, presumably representing Miranda. That doesn't really make any sense at the moment because the Umbrella logo was based on the coat of arms of British aristocrat and Umbrella founder Dr. Oswell E. Spencer – a man with no known Eastern European connections. The only appearance of Eastern Europe so far in the Resident Evil universe is the Edonia Republic, which saw the use of the C-Virus in Resident Evil 6.
6. This is probably one of the biggest locations in a Resident Evil game yet
As we mentioned before, we've probably only seen the opening few hours of Resident Evil Village. We've also got a Collector's Edition map that shows about 12 named locations. Four of these appear to be lairs for the main villains – Castle Dimitrescu, Heisenberg's Factory, Moreau's Reservoir, and House Beneviento. Then there are other locations like the Sluice Gate, Mill, Ceremony Site, Stronghold and so on.
We can also get a sense of scale with this map thanks to the recent demos. The Maiden of War is the statue you find right at the start of the Village gameplay demo, while Luiza's House is the location you reach at the end where you retrieve the Demon's Crest. A behind closed doors preview also gave us a look at the Castle Dimitrescu map revealing it to be a relatively small area and clearly only part of the journey.
