As we made our way through a darkened hallway as Grace in Resident Evil Requiem, we heard a clanking of chains before the game’s take on the Stalker enemy burst into view, bellowing a challenge that honestly had us frozen in our seats just like Grace was on screen.
Then began a game of cat and mouse, with us scrambling to get as much distance between Grace and the new monstrosity whilst keeping our eyes open for a suitably dark corner to use as a hiding spot. She created tension even before she entered a room, the clanking of her chains a slow metronome that built up terror and fear in the moments before her approach.
But she could also stay quite silent when she didn’t want to be heard, getting the drop on us just when we thought we were ahead of her, forcing wrong turns via a sheer sense of panic that sets in when she does make her presence known. But how does she measure up against Mr. X and Nemesis, two of the deadliest Stalkers in franchise history?
Well, it’s a close one in some ways, but there’s a clear winner at the end of this particular race. Does the Girl Stalker from Requiem manage to outdo her distinguished peers and score high on the fear scale as the best version of the enemy the developer has ever created? Let’s find out.
The Thrill of The Chase
For starters, we didn’t want to base our decisions on shock value alone, and we’re looking at a variety of parameters to compare the three heavyweights with. We took a long, hard look at how unpredictable they could be, the psychological impact that their presence (or absence) creates, the way they influence pacing in their sections, whether the threat they present escalates over time, and the amount of agency we as players have in devising a strategy to deal with them.
To that end, it’s best to look at how each one decides to hunt you, and how each game utilizes that specific preference to create the tension that Stalker enemies are known for throughout the franchise. Beginning with the Girl Stalker, she clearly likes to play with her food before she eats it. She seems to like the chase, designed to break patterns and make you wonder if she isn’t just lying in wait for you after seemingly giving up her chase.
She’s devious, her ability to use the ceiling and vents to stay out of your line of sight making her a shifting threat that you’re forced to adapt to as you make your way through areas where she’s actively tracking you. We’re probably going to be hearing those clanking chains in quiet places for a while.
Now, let’s look at Mr. X, particularly the version of him in Resident Evil 2 Remake. He may not be as physically imposing as his fellow counterparts, but that doesn’t make him any less of a threat as a living time limit. Spend too long in an area and you know he’s coming for you, consistency and a dogmatic determination to get his hands on you being his main weapons.
It’s easy to learn his patterns, and there are even ways to stun or stagger him for a momentary reprieve, but those are just last resorts, with running from him always being the better option. That sets up his role in the game perfectly, as you’re often thinking about him even when you’re trying to figure out a puzzle or navigating hallways that he can turn into problems to make objectives feel like they’re farther than they really are.
Last but not least is Nemesis, who relies on aggression and shock to pursue you at points in the story that are bookmarked by surges of danger and intimidation. Jill’s a battle-hardened STARS member, but that doesn’t mean anything in the face of a threat that feels like a way to interrupt comfort and pick up the pace when Jill’s story begins to lull her into a feeling of relative safety.
He also comes back stronger – and smarter – from every encounter, making the threat he presents always outweigh your confidence in your abilities. He’s a relentless and aggressive threat that you just cannot bring down, who is scary partly because the game dares you to try fighting back, or gives you the agency to run like hell. You quickly learn that the latter option is always better.
Doing Things Differently
We’ve got three Stalkers taking distinctly varied approaches to giving us reasons to check around corners when we navigate their respective games. But what about Requiem’s Girl Stalker had us comparing her particular brand of chaos to her iconic predecessors.
Firstly, there’s the matter of how she announces herself in one moment, wanting you to make a run for it while she gives chase, versus the fact that she can go deathly quiet while you’re hiding in fright, the knowledge that she’s out there paralyzing you in the moment as you wait to be sure that she isn’t lurking about.
Then there’s the matter of how Grace is so abjectly terrified of her that she stumbles and falls while running from her. It automatically changes the gameplay loop on such a fundamental level that you can’t help but feel Grace’s panic, with both the first-person and third-person POVs working quite well to convey that feeling of helpless desperation that the Stalker’s presence brings.
We had so many instances where we were quite confident about making our way through environments, secure in the knowledge that we had enough herbs and bullets to survive an accidental encounter or two with a zombie. But that was before The Stalker showed up and forced us to play like absolute noobs, her terrifying presence and sinister hunting techniques making us wonder if it was time to take a break from playing the game. We’re not going to forget an early game section where we needed to move a trolley to grab something that was out of reach, only for a bottle to clang to the floor, inviting a roar from the Stalker and the gradual clanking of her chains as she made her way to us.
You can be sure we were freaking out the whole damn time, scrambling for cover and even holding our breath while she looked right at our hiding spot. Honestly, it was nerve-wracking stuff that set the tone for our time with her over the course of Grace’s stint at the Rhodes Hill Care Center.
An Intense Competition
It’s not time to pit the Girl Stalker against her contemporaries, starting with Mr. X. The towering brute deserves applause for the sort of predictable pressure he brought to our time in RE2, the knowledge that he was coming for us lending a sense of urgency to exploration and puzzle solving, while running from him was as panic-filled as the franchise had ever managed at the time.
Playing the remake after so many years of replaying the title didn’t diminish the fear he could invoke in the slightest, as you knew he could take you down so effortlessly that trying to fight him head-on felt like a joke at your expense. But his predictability was also how he could be thwarted from his mission to kill you as brutally as he could manage. He was a way to include predictable pressure while the Girl Stalker brings adaptive dread to her hunting grounds. Between the two, the Girl Stalker is a far deadlier foe, and a more frightening one to boot.
But what about Nemesis? The creature’s appearance and size might place it at an advantage against the Girl Stalker. He’s deadly, his vicious hunt of former STARS members making him feel like a presence in Raccoon City whose single-minded determination to track you down and end you meant that he was never too far away from where you were.
He was the benchmark of a Stalker enemy, his raw aggression and relentless pursuit of Jill making him far deadlier than Mr. X, a sort of iconic presence in a city overtaken by chaos and carnage. But there were no mind games with Nemesis, no wondering if he was really gone or was just lurking out of sight to try and get the drop on you. After all, Mr. X walks, but Nemesis can run!
Nemesis’s shock value was loud and in your face, while the Girl Stalker does use the same tactics, but intersperses them with underhanded measures that have you constantly second-guessing her next move, and getting it wrong so consistently that you have to really work hard to test the ceiling of her unpredictability in Requiem. Nemesis may have the missile launcher and the ability to mutate into a massive form, but the Stalker feels smarter in how it adapts, avoiding light like the plague and using ducts and ceiling openings to drop in and grab you. Just play the underground holding cells section, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Between the Girl Stalker and Nemesis, it’s quite a close contest, but Requiem’s most terrifying monster takes the prize for introducing a layer of psychological invasiveness that Nemesis didn’t entirely manage to create for Jill. The enemy’s latest iteration isn’t just stronger and faster, but is also smarter and more willing to switch up its tactics once it has your scent.
Winner, Winner, Grace Dinner
And there you have it. The Girl Stalker takes the crown and takes her place at the very top of the series’ deadliest Stalker enemies. Her time in the game is filled with so many moments of sheer terror where you’d rather stay put and sit still just to be sure that she isn’t coming back to the room you’re in. And you’re going to wait a little longer just to let your nerves settle down from an encounter with her anyway.
Mr. X and Nemesis did come close to invoking that same fear, but it was via design choices that allowed them to use their particular skill sets effectively. But the Girl Stalker is something else as she weaponizes uncertainty to disrupt player habits in ways that make each encounter with her feel like a new gold standard for Resident Evil’s particular brand of horror.
We’d ask her to take a bow, but we’re certain that the sentiment would be lost in translation, drowned out by the feral roar that we knew was coming, but would still have us running the other way and looking for the nearest light switch.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.