Capcom recently confirmed that they’ve started working on DLC for Resident Evil Village following “popular demand” for it, and seeing as said DLC is still early in development, it’s probably going to be a while before we hear more about it, much less play it. Even so, what’s exciting about the prospect is that Resident Evil Village is ripe for additional content. There are quite a few characters and story arcs that future content could potentially focus on, and here, we’re going to talk about a few directions that Village DLC could potentially take.
NOTE: There are spoilers ahead for Resident Evil Village. If you haven’t finished the game, turn back now.
HOUND WOLF SQUAD
Ethan Winters is the primary protagonist in Resident Evil Village, and you spend most of the game playing as him, but series mainstay Chris Redfield has a major presence throughout the story as well. From the very first second of the game to the very last, Chris serves a major role in the narrative, and right at the end, we also get to play as him, as he attacks the village with his rogue BSAA unit, known as the Hound Wolf Squad, to take down Miranda. And these characters are an obvious candidate for DLC.
Resident Evil 7 let us play as Chris in one of its expansions, after all, and seeing as he’s a crucial part of the ongoing story, there’s every chance that we once again get to play as him in DLC. Specifically, we’d love to play through an expansion set in the past, where we get to learn more about the Hound Wolf Squad and its characters, and how and why they broke off from the BSAA, which, of course, should also flesh out Chris’ own backstory as well. In the game, they talk about one of their missions in “the desert”- maybe we could play through that mission ourselves as Chris?
LADY DIMITRESCU
Lady Dimitrescu took the industry – particularly the Resident Evil fanbase – by storm before Village even launched, and from her visual design to her role in the story to her backstory to her commanding presence every time she’s on the screen, it’s not hard to understand why she’s instantly become a fan favourite. Some, however, haven’t been too pleased with the amount of screen-time she gets, serving essentially as the main antagonist of just the game’s first section before dying and never showing up again.
Honestly, we’d be surprised if Resident Evil Village DLC doesn’t bring her back in some capacity. Her backstory and past are fascinating enough as it is, so being able to learn more about her and her daughters is an exciting prospect. Maybe we could even play as her in an expansion set several decades before Village even begins, and get to experience some of her story ourselves? Or perhaps the DLC could do something similar to the Maiden demo and put us in the shoes of a new character while still ensuring that Lady Dimitrescu has a major role to play. Of course, there’s nothing stopping Capcom from doing something that is set after Village. Sure, Lady D technically died in the game, but this is Resident Evil. No one is ever really dead. Jack Baker supposedly died in RE7’s base game, but he came back in the End of Zoe DLC, so you never know. Maybe we’re not done with Lady Dimitrescu just yet.
KARL HEISENBERG
As good as Lady Dimitrescu was as a character, you’ll find quite a few Resident Evil fans who’ll tell you that fellow Lord of the Village Karl Heisenberg was just as fascinating, if not more. Whether it’s his attempts to form an alliance with Ethan, or his resentment towards Mother Miranda and what she did to him, or the fact that he’s literally making an army of mechanical monsters in his factory to take her on, or just the plain and simple fact that he’s got really cool powers- Heisenberg never fails to grab your attention every time he’s even mentioned. So of course, we would love to see more of him as well.
The perfect way to bring him back would be to focus on his attempts to defeat Miranda- perhaps we could play as him in an expansion set before Village, perhaps in a story that’s running concurrently with Ethan’s own attempts to stop Miranda, or perhaps he, too, isn’t really as dead as we might think. Again, this is Resident Evil, so it’s best to assume that pretty much every character death can be reversed. Either way though, seeing as Karl Heisenberg is one of the best and most fascinating Resident Evil villains in some years, we sure hope Capcom puts the spotlight on him in DLC once again.
ROSE WINTERS
This, too, is sort of an obvious candidate. Resident Evil Village does some surprising things in its final act, and by far one of the most unexpected developments is what’s clearly a significant time jump following Ethan’s death, with Rose all grown up and apparently in training thanks to her abilities. An expansion that puts the focus squarely on her would clear up a lot of questions. What’s going on with Chris all these years later? What’s going on with the BSAA? Where’s Mia? What sort of abilities does Rose have? Exactly how big of a time skip even is this?
Of course, there’s every chance that Capcom decides to keep this stuff reserved for a full-fledged mainline sequel. RE Village’s ending makes it abundantly clear that Rose Winters is going to have an important role to play in the series’ future, so there’s every chance that Rose’s story is deemed to crucial or big for DLC. After all, if Capcom just started working on Village DLC, they obviously hadn’t planned it before, which means that any major plans for Rose’s story would already be in motion for sequels, not DLC.
THE MERCENARIES
This would be the least exciting form Resident Evil Village DLC could take. Capcom brought back the fan-favourite Mercenaries mode with the series’ newest instalment, and it was obviously a crowd-pleasing decision- fans have been beginning for The Mercenaries to come back for quite some time now. Currently, however, Village’s Mercenaries mode isn’t nearly as packed as, say, Resident Evil 4 or Resident Evil 5. It’s possible, then, that Capcom decides to add additional maps or playable characters to the mode. Sure enough, that would probably take them the least amount of time to develop, especially compared to completely new story content.
Honestly, DLC focused on The Mercenaries would be disappointing- that’s definitely not what most people have in mind when they think of new RE Village content. Even so, if it does end up happening, we can rest assured that no matter what, it will at least add to the game’s replay value. The Mercenaries is a ton of fun, so being able to play more of it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.