Village Diaries #1: Annihilation Reiterated

(Note: This is a game play diary of Resident Evil VIII: Village. These are rough and casual thoughts and analysis as I play through for the first time.  Much of what follows can be considered spoilers.)

All good horror stories start by evoking annihilation, and the reason they do that is to trace out the mortal bounds of the story. We’re not just dealing with death as a consequence in horror, we are dealing with death as an atmosphere. This is especially poignant in horror games, because unlike films, TV, or books, the main character can actually die during any confrontation along the narrative path.

So far, Resident Evil VIII has steeped me in annihilation. Throughout my first hour of play as protagonist Ethan Winters (returning for another round of terror after surviving Resident Evil VII), I saw my wife shot to death in our home by Chris Redfield (who I thought was my friend), I searched the bodies of paramilitary escorts killed in a car crash, I walked through a forest of ritually culled crows dangling from branches (one was still alive), I recoiled from the sight of about half-a-dozen severed goat heads strung up over an alleyway, I tripped over a dead horse, and I witnessed the nice man who gave me his handgun for self defense ripped apart by some kind of lycanthrope. And even after all that I had to crawl out of a mass grave.

I get it: death is on the table.

Taxidermy is a type of annihilation. Chaos reigns.

The hyperbole of ruination I was shown is appropriate because Resident Evil is a trope-exploder, and that’s what makes it endure as a franchise. The series defined the 90s survival horror genre’s absurd puzzle solving structure and byzantine franchise plotting, and instead of eventually forsesaking that in favour of new trends of narrative accessibility, it’s leaned into its own identity for 25 years. After decades of sustaining itself though autocannibalism, Resident Evil is a glorious celebratory pastiche. But it’s not simply a collage of horror’s most beloved icons – Resident Evil is a collage of Resident Evil’s most beloved icons. It’s a game that takes a horror idea it created and amplifies it to such absurd levels through the process of reiteration that it evokes fear and delight in the same moment.

So yes, I laughed when the nice man, screaming, was ripped apart by the werewolf. That’s ok. That’s the point.

The self-referential nature of the series has allowed for its most recent entries to effectively innovate and surprise with small diversions form the expected formula. 2017’s Resident Evil VII: Biohazard adopted the first-person viewpoint of the legendary lost video game P.T., and incorporated found footage tropes as gameplay elements. This time around, the innovation (so far) seems to be in storytelling and aesthetics. The opening cut scene is a striking departure from Resident Evil’s commitment to its own reality, with stylized animation and fairytale story book aesthetic. But the biggest departure is Ethan’s struggles with his post-traumatic life.

In the wake of the Baker family massacre, Ethan and Mia moved to Europe, had a baby and named her Rose. Three years have passed since the chainsaw fights and mold zombie encounters of Resident Evil VII, and as I complete my first task -- putting Rose to bed after story time -- I see all the signs of a man struggling with his traumatic memories. He admits to being paranoid when I investigate a survivalist manual on his bookshelf, and a journal entry on his laptop shows he feels trapped in the memories of the biohazard:

“...I still feel like part of me is trapped in that hell hole back in Louisiana,” he writes.

This is everything I hoped for when I first found out Ethan was the playable character in Village. What made him so compelling on his first tour of traumatown was his lack of knowhow. Resident Evil traditionally puts you in the shoes of a supercop, or private military officer, or some other zombie-killing machine. Ethan was just some regular guy whose cool wife left him. And now he’s just some regular guy with unresolved trauma issues whose “friend” killed his wife and stole his baby.

Bold of a game to start with an escort mission.

Beyond the textual references, the game’s self-referential trope-exploder nature helps embody Ethan’s post-traumatic fear for the player. Yes, it’s happening all over again for our poor protagonist, but it’s happening all over against for us too: the domestic cold open recalls Resident Evil III’s apartment-bound introduction, the unwinnable daylight village siege I just completed evokes the initial chainsaw mob encounter of Resident Evil IV, and then there’s Ethan’s poor hand.

Last time around, early on in his splatterfest found footage rescue mission, the possessed Mia cut off Ethan’s hand with a chainsaw. This time, he had two fingers of that same reattached hand ripped off in a scuffle with a wolfman. I saw it happening, and I could do nothing to stop the bad memories from manifesting in another terrible iteration. It’s all happening again. Different, but the same. A recurring nightmare. And so far I’m delighted.

---

How it started: Had to put my kid to bed.

How it’s going: Mutilated and cold, looking for a the second medallion to open some kind of vampire gate.