Though I consider Resident Evil Village an enjoyable game, it's undeniably rather unsatisfactory in some aspects. More specifically, story-wise. For the first time ever since the RE5/RE6 era, Capcom decided to make another "story oriented" Resident Evil game, and the result was as expected: lacking in many ways.

The game itself isn't bad, but there are aspects that had could make the game much more interesting if they focused more on it. The biggest issue and my main complaint is the character waste. Without an exception, all of the Lords were underutilized and presented in a very shallow manner, even the one that had more participation in the story. This detail weighs as a immense negative point on the game's overall quality, since they play a huge role in the story and make up most of the content of the game. With the exception of Moreau ー who's too far gone and doesn't have the required intelligence ー all of them could have had more depth and development than what we saw. They have the qualities needed: captivating characters with cool designs, their own customized areas and unique personalities, but never reached their peak because they were robbed of the exploration of the themes that could add authenticity to the characters such as their past/background, motivations, etc. So regardless of how promising they are, since we haven't seen beyond their surface and don't know understand and know enough about the characters themselves, they end up slightly shallow and simple. The consequence of this lack of humanization is that in the end they didn't receive an ounce of dignity or empathy even in death. A cruel fate that feels even harsher when you remember that all of them were once normal people that just happened to be victims of Miranda's evil scheme.

It feels rather frustrating to see a good character go down without being fully explored, especially on Dimitrescu's case, since she was a character that everyone had high expectations for because she was used as a marketing strategy to attract the public by being the focus of the game's demo & trailer. Everyone was interested on the game because of the beautiful tall vampire lady, but turns out she appears only in the beginning of the game and barely has significance in the rest of the story. I didn't expect a redemption for her, it would be unrealistic and out of nowhere ー the game made clear that she's more inclined towards evil than morally-grey by the way she and her daughters are unnecessarily cruel and see the villagers like nothing but food stock, so it would indeed be difficult to create a situation in which she cooperated with the player's side. Besides, there's the huge factor of her blind loyalty to Mother Miranda and the fact that Ethan literally murdered her daughters; so redemption or a change of heart seems in fact out of question for her, but making her the first one to die was so anti-climatic and humiliating. The least they could do was make her be one of the last characters to go, so she could hunt Ethan until the end for avenging her daughters. It would have made more sense for her final fight to have happened before Heisenberg's. They could have done literally anything else instead of killing her off during the first twenty minutes of gameplay and never bringing her up again as if she's insignificant. There were countless possibilities for her, yet they decided to follow the worst and less satisfying route.

Now, the next topic and the reason why I'm obsessed with this game despite everything: Karl Heisenberg. Imagine giving us one of the best characters in the whole franchise: a hot dilf-coded villain with a dark past and problematic personality that show signs of redeeming qualities, and then preceding to completely waste all of his potential as both; a possible ally and a character, by not exploring the depth of his person. If any character should've had redemption in this story, it should have been Karl. What is the point of adding the detail of his disloyalty and hatred for Miranda if that wouldn't make any difference in the end, because Ethan doesn't even consider his offer of a partnership and we're forced to kill him either way? Why give him a whole "character arc" focused on his disdain for his fake Mother, who happens to be the main villain, and not give him a chance of joining the protagonist's side when they both share the same enemy? I think the reason for that is simply laziness.

Not that he has to be a good person to be on the good side, but it's also implied he possibly wasn't evil like Dimitrescu, who drained people of their blood and committed cannibalism, or Moreau, who brutally experimented on the living. Heisenberg experimented solely on the dead, and though definitely unethical, didn't directly inflict pain on anyone ー and that makes me assume that maybe he's a morally grey character who's done bad things, and while definitely not the most moral man on earth, still has a line; differently than his "family". But unfortunately we'll never know for sure, since Capcom decided to not give us any more lore. Regardless of which one it's canon, it's still understandable why Heisenberg acts the way he does. I believe it's the consequences of living the nightmarish hell of having to constantly humiliate yourself by serving the person you despise the most, your worst enemy in the shape of a Mother — the very same person who stole your freedom and turned you into nothing but a puppet, a monster, a weapon. All this time, he was just fighting to recover his stolen freedom, fueled by his raw hatred for this woman who stripped him of his dignity, hurt his pride, and took his autonomy away by force. But at the end, he witnessed all he worked so hard for in flames in front him as he died alone under the freezing rain, in the same hell he wanted so badly to escape from. His fate was merciless and cold, even for someone like him.

You could argue that some of the Lords deserved their fates, but Donna's case is for sure the most unfair of them all. She truly did nothing wrong and was just a victim. Her gardener's diary entries prove that she's always been a gentle and lonely person, and the fact that even after being infected with the Cadou and gaining hallucinogenic abilities all she wanted was to help people meet with their loved ones again only further proves her goodness. She has nothing but old dolls in her house, it's clear that this woman didn't bother anyone and lived a quiet life by the waterfall, where she was isolated from everyone else. Donna deserved better than to die alongside her dusty dolls, her only friends, left to be forgotten forever.

The point I meant to make clear by now is that these characters being villains didn't stop me from feeling affection for them ー it never does, actually. So even if surviving wasn't a possibility, I wish we had at least seen more of their human side, their lives aside from Miranda, or their past, before getting locked away in the village by her. There were so many things, small details that I wanted to know about them, what's their age? Birthday? Any family left? Friends? Past lovers? Was Dimitrescu always this heartless? When exactly did Heisenberg realize that Miranda was manipulative and didn't love them, didn't really see them as her family? How did he manage, unlike his "siblings", to see through her manipulation? The way Heisenberg speaks of Miranda sounds more similar to someone who's been hurt and had their trust broken instead of someone that's always hated their current enemy, especially because of his line "She doesn't care for us, no. Her humanity is long gone. I must destroy her." There are so many unanswered question, so much I wanted to know. But for sure what I wanted the most on this whole story was for them to have at least received a little bit of empathy, instead of being referred as monsters all the time. As a player and someone who enjoys the characters, it feels unfair to hear that. They were people too.

Now that I've talked about all the characters, I think it's important to emphasize that despite it being annoying to watch good characters being underutilized, none of that would be a surprise if this was just another typical Resident Evil game. This franchise has always has been awful when it comes to writing and making the characters constant on the series, just look at the amount of cool characters that literally never showed up again after their first appearance (Carlos, Billy, etc) ー and it's even worse when it comes to villains, since they're never offered the chance of redemption. For that reason, I never have high expectations when it comes to character development or story, however... it was made clear enough by trailers and by how much more cinematographic this game is compared to any other that Village was meant to be less survival horror than usual and more story/character focused, more movie-like. And since that was the direction they were heading to, the least they could do was create a story in which the plot and characters are equally developed and work in unison.

My biggest disappointment with this game really is mainly directed at the mediocre writing, because gameplay wise the game is good. As previously mentioned, the survival horror aspects are much less present, item managing is barely needed unless playing on hardcore and the game is pretty forgiving of your mistakes — similar to RE4, it rewards you for killing enemies rather than punishing you, a mechanic that doesn't work well in a survival horror game as it doesn't force you to be cautious with your resources and spend them wisely. You can just go on a killing spree and you'll be fine, and knowing that makes the game's atmosphere significantly less tense.

There was more criticism than praise in my words so far, so allow me to mention my next point, which is in my opinion the best part of Resident Evil Village: the atmosphere and exploration. I was enchanted with the scenery of the gothic isolated Romanian village filled with blood, monsters and death, the breathtaking and detailed Baroque architecture of the Dimitrescu Castle, the calm, eerie silent snowy regions that fills you with a sense of desolation and dread. The game is visually magnificent ー snowy montains is a landscape that can hardly go wrong. Last but not least, another resemblance to Resident Evil 4, the merchant and his requests was the perfect addition to encourage map exploration and therefore reproduce the impression of a open-world game. Hunting treasures and searching for ingredients for the Duke's kitchen were genuinely fun things to do.

I must finish by saying that if this game wasn't part of the Resident Evil series, it'd probably be a 9/10 for me. But carrying the name of a loved franchise comes with expectations, and I found that many of them weren't met. Still, even if not life-altering, Village is still a great, solid game with a high replay value and a decent story, so I personally recommend it and find it worth playing, because as long as you don't expect the game to be similar to the classic RE games in terms of gameplay or horror level, or don't get too attached to the good-looking antagonists, the game's half-assed writing probably and less challenging than usual gameplay won't bother you and you'll be able to have fun with it. I don't think every game should be a masterpiece, and this one, even with all the mentioned downsides, still delivered a emotional and beautiful story about family love that was able to make me sympathize, connect with the characters and cry a river at the ending, so I consider it a good game even if I think it could've been better with a few changes in the direction of the story.

(review cross-posted on my tumblr cosmos-daughter)