Summary
It seems fair to say that theResident Evilseries has some of the best enemy variety of any horror gaming franchise ever. For last almost three decade nows,Resident Evilhas continued to put out some of the most horrifying enemies foes in gaming, from the hulkingMr. X and Nemesisto the terrifying Licker, the absolutely heart-stopping Regeneradors, and every monstrous bioweapon in between.
The most recentResident Evilentries aren’t an exception, either, withResident Evil 7’s mold zombies andResident Evil Village’s lycans being pretty terrifying in their own right.TheResident Evilfranchiseis constantly setting a high bar for itself in terms of enemy variety, but if horror titles likeDead Space 3prove anything, it’s that even the biggest and best horror franchises can drop the ball in an instant, and when they do, it’s usually game over.
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While mostResident Evilgames get a tad chaotic in their final act,Resident Evil Villageturns it up to 11.Resident Evil Village’s endingsees players take control of two characters on two separate, but connected planes of action. On one hand, players are getting hit with huge revelations that Ethan Winters has actually been dead for years, and on the other, they’re controlling Chris Redfield, blasting their way through the village with explosives. Mixed in with the non-stop action, players can find a ton of Easter eggs and references that connect the events ofVillagenot only withResident Evil 7, but the widerResident Eviluniverse as a whole.
There’s a lot to take in here already, butResident Evil Village’s ending goes just one step further and ends on a cliffhanger that reveals that the BSAA are using bioweapon soldiers in their operations, a reveal that could have massive ramifications in subsequentResident Evilgames. First introduced in theUmbrella Chronicles, the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance is a group that seeks to eradicate the use of any and all bioweapons, and Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are two of the organization’s earliest members. But by the time ofResident Evil Village, Chris has become distrustful of the BSAA, and that seems to be cemented withVillage’s ending, which sees the BSAA using the very thing they swore to destroy.
While this cliffhanger ending leaves the series in a great spot, it does raise a potential issue regardingResident Evil 9’s enemies. With Chris Redfield on his way to the BSAA European headquarters for answers, it would make sense that the BSAA become some kind of primary antagonist faction inResident Evil 9, or at least another entry in the near future. However, if the BSAA are using human-like bioweapons, thenResident Evil 9could easily end up trapped in the same pitfall thatDead Space 3stumbled into.
TheDead Spaceseries features some of the most iconic enemies in gaming with its assortment of Necromorphs, which is whyDead Space 3’s human enemieswere such a disappointment back in the day. A series centered around body horror and slow, methodical scares and third-person shooting,Dead Space 3’s human enemies just didn’t fit the series' prior tone, or its gameplay mechanics, and the same might be true forResident Evil 9if it uses the BSAA as an antagonist. WhileResident Evil’s enemies have always fought back, they’ve never really shot at the player, at least not with weapons, and that just isn’t baked into the series' core gameplay formula. On top of that, an army of faceless BSAA soldiers just won’t have the same visual flair as evenResident Evil’s most mundane enemy design.
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