Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a 2017 survival horror game developed and published by Capcom. A major installment in the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil 7 diverges from the more action-oriented Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, returning to the franchise’s survival horror roots, emphasizing exploration. The player controls Ethan Winters as he searches for his long-missing wife in a derelict plantation occupied by an infected family, solving puzzles and fighting enemies. It is the first main series game to use a first-person view.
Resident Evil 7 is the first full-length game to use Capcom’s in-house RE Engine. The development was led by Koshi Nakanishi, director of the 2012 Nintendo 3DS game Resident Evil: Revelations. A year prior to its announcement at E3 2016, it was presented as a virtual reality demo called Kitchen. The team took inspiration from the 1981 film The Evil Dead, scaled back the game to one location, and used a first-person perspective to immerse players. Two downloadable content scenarios were released, Not a Hero and End of Zoe.
Resident Evil 7 was released in January 2017 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and in May 2018 for the Nintendo Switch in Japan. It also supports the PlayStation VR headset. The game was considered a return to form for the series; critics praised the gameplay, innovation, and uses of virtual reality, but the boss battles and final chapter received more polarizing reception. As of March 2021, the game has sold 9 million copies worldwide. It was nominated for several end-of-year accolades. A sequel, Resident Evil Village, was released on May 7, 2021.
The player controls Ethan Winters from a first-person perspective as he searches a derelict estate for his missing wife. Although Ethan is a civilian with few combat skills, he is able to arm himself with a variety of weapons including handguns, shotguns, flamethrowers, explosives and chainsaws against the estate’s residents, the Baker family, as well as humanoid fungal creatures known as the “Molded”. He can block attacks to reduce damage. Various sections of the game are spent being pursued by members of the Baker family, who, if engaged in combat, can only be temporarily incapacitated. However, these encounters are avoidable by means of stealth, or running away.
Unlike Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, the gameplay emphasizes horror and exploration over action. The inventory uses a grid-based system with an initial capacity of 12 slots, but may be expanded several times over the course of the game. An item can occupy up to two spaces, and four items may be assigned to the D-pad. Item boxes found in save rooms may be used to manage and store items, and can be retrieved from different item boxes for later use. Items in the inventory can be used, examined, or combined with other items to increase their usefulness. Many of the game’s puzzles require that items be examined under certain conditions in order to reveal secrets. Tape recorders can be used to manually save the game’s progress, which, depending on the given difficulty level, may require the use of a cassette tape. Videotapes are scattered for Ethan to find, which place the player in the perspective of a different character, often revealing plot information or clues needed to solve a puzzle. The PlayStation 4 version is playable in virtual reality using the PlayStation VR headset.
In July 2017, Ethan Winters is drawn to a derelict plantation in Dulvey, Louisiana, by a message from his wife, Mia, who has been presumed dead since going missing in 2014. He finds Mia imprisoned in the basement of a derelict house, and frees her. She tries to lead them out, but suddenly becomes violent and attacks him, forcing him to kill her. After receiving a call from a woman named Zoe offering assistance, Ethan is attacked by a revived Mia, who cuts his left hand off with a chainsaw. Ethan seemingly kills Mia again in self-defense, before Jack, the patriarch of the Baker family, appears and captures Ethan. After Zoe reattaches his hand, Ethan is held captive by Jack, his wife Marguerite, and their son Lucas, along with a seemingly catatonic elderly woman in a wheelchair. Ethan escapes, but is pursued around the house by Jack, who continually attacks him and displays powerful regenerative abilities. In the basement, Ethan discovers sludge-covered, mutated creatures known as Molded. Zoe reveals that she is Jack’s daughter, and that the family and Mia are infected, but can be cured with a special serum.
Ethan makes his way to an old house to retrieve the serum ingredients, kills Marguerite, and has visions of a young girl. Lucas captures Zoe and Mia and forces Ethan to navigate a booby-trapped barn to find them. He chases away Lucas and frees Zoe and Mia. Zoe develops two serum doses, but they are attacked by Jack, now heavily mutated; Ethan kills him using one of the serums. Ethan, as the player, must choose to cure either Mia or Zoe:
If Ethan chooses Zoe, Mia is heartbroken, despite Ethan’s promise to send help. As he and Zoe flee on a boat, Zoe reveals that the Bakers were infected after Mia arrived with a young girl named Eveline when the wreck of a tanker ship washed ashore. Eveline stops their escape by calcifying Zoe, killing her, and Ethan is knocked from the boat by a creature.
If Ethan chooses Mia, which is the canonic path, Zoe gives a bitter farewell to him and Mia. As he and Mia flee on a boat, they come across the crashed tanker, where they are attacked by the creature and knocked from the boat.
In either case, Mia awakens next to the wrecked ship and searches for Ethan while experiencing visions of Eveline, who refers to Mia as her mother. Eventually, Mia’s memory is restored, revealing that she was a covert operative for a corporation that developed Eveline as a bioweapon, codenamed E-001. Mia and agent Alan Droney were to escort Eveline as she was transported aboard the tanker; Eveline escaped containment, killed Alan, and sank the ship. She infected Mia in an effort to force her to be her mother. Mia finds Ethan and gives him a vial of Eveline’s genetic material.
If Ethan cured Mia, she resists Eveline’s control long enough to seal Ethan out of the ship; if he cured Zoe, Mia succumbs to Eveline’s control and attacks Ethan, forcing him to kill her. Ethan discovers a hidden laboratory inside an abandoned salt mine. He learns that Eveline is a bio-organic weapon capable of infecting people with a psychotropic mold that gives her control over her victims’ minds, resulting in insanity, mutation, and superhuman regenerative abilities. Eveline grew up obsessed with having a family, driving her to infect Mia and the Bakers and lure Ethan. Lucas was immunized against Eveline’s control by her creators, The Connections, in exchange for providing observations on her.
Using the lab equipment and Eveline’s genetic material, Ethan synthesizes a toxin to kill her, and proceeds through tunnels that lead back to the Baker house. He overcomes Eveline’s hallucinations, and injects Eveline with the toxin. She reverts to her other form, the elderly woman in a wheelchair; Eveline has been rapidly aging since escaping. Eveline mutates into a large monster and, aided by the arrival of a military squad led by Chris Redfield, Ethan kills her with an anti-bioweapon pistol. Canonically, Chris extracts Ethan and Mia in a helicopter branded with the Umbrella Corporation logo.
Not a Hero
BSAA agent Chris Redfield teams up with the now reformed Umbrella Corporation, also known as Blue Umbrella, in order to apprehend Lucas Baker and uncover evidence on the mysterious group that created Eveline, called “The Connections.” After rescuing Ethan Winters and sending him away on a helicopter, Chris proceeds into Lucas’ lab in the salt mine, where he accidentally runs into one of Lucas’ traps and has a bomb attached to his left wrist. Undeterred, Chris continues his pursuit. He tries to rescue several captured Umbrella soldiers, but they are killed by Lucas’ traps. Eventually, Lucas activates a timer on Chris’ bomb. Chris is forced to freeze the bomb in liquid nitrogen, disabling it long enough for him to remove it.
With the bomb removed, Chris battles his way through more of Lucas’ Molded and traps. He then finds his way into a secret Connections research lab, where Lucas had killed all of the Connections researchers and plans to betray the organization. Chris manages to corner and shoot Lucas, which triggers a mutation in his body. Chris battles and eventually kills the mutated Lucas, and stops him from transferring all of his data on Eveline to an unknown party. With his mission done and Eveline’s infection contained, Chris returns to the Umbrella base camp for an urgent call.
End of Zoe
Following the path in the main game in which Ethan cures Mia instead of Zoe, Zoe wanders into the swamp and is apparently killed by Eveline; however, a pair of Umbrella soldiers find her body and discover she is still alive. They are ambushed by Joe Baker, Zoe’s uncle, who lives in the Dulvey swamps and has not been affected by Eveline’s mold. Joe initially believes Umbrella is responsible for Zoe’s condition, but a surviving Umbrella soldier claims they have a cure for Zoe stored in a nearby shack. Joe goes to the shack, finding a partial cure, and returns to find the Umbrella soldier killed by a Molded.
Joe initially flees with Zoe on a boat to find the Umbrella base but is soon forced to search for the base on foot. A powerful and seemingly unkillable Molded called the “Swamp Man” pursues them along the way. Joe and Zoe find the Umbrella base abandoned. They learn that the cure has been moved to a nearby paddle boat. Joe boards the boat and, after encountering the Swamp Man once again, uncovers a full dose of the cure. The Swamp Man captures Zoe before Joe can administer the cure. Joe gives chase into a heavily infected portion of the swamp and finds Zoe in an abandoned church. Inside, Joe is ambushed by the Swamp Man, who is revealed to be a heavily mutated Jack Baker. Jack knocks Joe unconscious and throws him into the swamp water to die.
Joe washes up near the Baker mansion and finds himself in the midst of a battle between the Molded and Umbrella forces. He recovers an Umbrella power gauntlet and enters the mansion, where he successfully kills Jack and administers the cure to Zoe just as Umbrella reinforcements arrive, including Chris Redfield. Chris assures Joe and Zoe that they are there to help, and Zoe is fully cured of her infection. She then receives a phone call from Ethan, and thanks him for keeping his promise to send help for her.
