With Resident Evil Village’s launch right around the corner, it won’t be long before we all get our hands on the game and dive into all of its secrets, thrills, and mysteries. But ahead of that, there’s plenty of new info on the game that’s emerged in recent days and weeks. Thanks to a number of previews, hands-on impressions, and more by several outlets, we’ve had a lot of details on the upcoming horror game to dive into, and here, we’re going to talk about a few of those details.
THE FOUR LORDS
Resident Evil Village is putting a great deal of emphasis on building up its enemies, it seems, and in a recent IGN article, the game’s primary antagonists received plenty of new details. On the top of the food chain is Miranda, a mysterious masked woman who seems to be leading the cult that rules over the titular village. Working under her command is the group known as the four Lords- there’s Lady Dimitrescu, Karl Heisenberg, Salvatore Moreau, and Donna Beneviento. Let’s speak about each of them in a bit more detail.
LADY DIMITRESCU
Lady Dimitrescu has been grabbing headlines regularly since she was first revealed, and we’ve already heard plenty about here- but here’s the gist. This giant of a woman rules over the castle in the village, and according to Capcom, she and her design were inspired by vampires. Recent previews – including one on the official PlayStation blog – have also confirmed that during the castle section of the game, she functions as stalker enemy, while an IGN hands-on article has talked briefly about mini boss fights against Dimitrescu’s daughters, i.e. the three witches.
DONNA BENEVIENTO
Donna Beneviento is quite an interesting character. She also has a puppet with her called Angie, who may or may not be alive. Donna and Angie preside over the section of the game known as House Beneviento, and according to director Morimasa Sato, House Beneviento is an evolution of the style of horror we saw in Resident Evil 7.
KARL HEISENBERG
We’ve seen Heisenberg a few times in Resident Evil Village trailers by now. The hat-wearing, bespectacled, hammer-wielding villain has seemed like an intriguing character for a while, and more details in the IGN article make him seem even more interesting. His base of operations is the area known as Heisenberg’s Factory, which is seemingly full of deathtraps and deadly mechanisms, and curiously enough, seems to be the only area in the entire village that isn’t covered in snow. Oh, and according to GameSpot’s aforementioned preview, he also seems to have the ability to move things with his mind, which is… curious, to say the least.
SALVATORE MOREAU
Salvatore Moreau has his own thing going on- in that he looks disgusting, based on the images shared by IGN. He’s a malformed, twisted, barely humanoid man, and according to Capcom, his design was inspired by gothic horror merman. Art director Tomonori Takano says he was designed “with the concept of creating the most repulsive character on Earth.” Moreau operates out of a reservoir close to an abandoned fishing village, and given all the watery theming, the area and its enemies are probably going to be pretty, well, watery.
GARGOYLES
We’ve seen quite a lot of different enemy types in Resident Evil Village so far, and it’s clearly an area where the game seems to be a major improvement over RE7. Another new enemy that was recently shown off was the gargoyles. GameSpot describes them as “half-bat” creatures, while the PlayStation Blog preview gives a brief glimpse of them as well, showing their erratic movement patterns as they take to the air. They should be interesting enemies to fight.
ETHAN’S JOURNAL
Interestingly enough, Ethan also keeps a journal in Resident Evil Village, Arthur Morgan style, and players can keep checking it throughout the game. It contains Ethan’s thoughts on events in the story (which means it also serves as something of a convenient in-game recap should you ever need it) as well as sketches. It remains to be seen what other purposes it might serve, but even based on what’s described of it so far, it seems like an interesting addition to the game that should help add some flavour to not only Ethan as a character, but the game’s storytelling as a whole.
THE MAP
The map is a crucial tool in any Resident Evil game, and that’s going to be true in RE Village as well. And the map in this game, it seems, is divided into three separate categories- there’s exteriors, there’s buildings, and there’s underground, with each having their own separate tab on the map screen. It seems Resident Evil Village’s titular setting is going to be a layered and dense one based on that, and we can’t wait to see what secrets it holds for us.