With just a week left before the release of Resident Evil 7, we are utterly excited to wander through the halls of the Dulvey Haunted Mansion and experience the horror inside. However, while we’re all ready to play Resident Evil 7 for the horror, our minds are thirsting for questions answered. The long streak of promotional releases left us with excitement and questions we wanted RE7 to answer.
Here’s five questions we want Resident Evil 7 to answer on release day.
1. Who is the little girl in RE7? What she doing there in the Duvley House?
Katherine Baskerville: When Resident Evil 7 first came out, they revealed teaser posters here and there. However, one of their more intriguing posters revealed not just the Duvley Haunted House. This time, it had a little girl included.
So everyone’s in uproar. Some people said that the little girl is Zoe Baker, the one who called during the Demo release. However, nobody really knows who she is. Some people said that the little girl might be Ethan’s daughters. Others say she is the adopted daughter of the Bakers. There’s also a tiny theory that the little girl might be the lingering and remaining consciousness of Mia Winters before she turned. Nobody knows just yet. We’ll only find out in Resident Evil 7.
2. Who is the Figure in the Wheelchair?
Junior Representative: Amongst a sea of speculation, fans immersed in the hype train apparently got derailed by the revelation that the mysterious person sitting on the wheelchair was neither a recurrent or prominent character, nor was the person male.
To refresh our memories, let’s take a look at the best guesses the fans gave us.
Exhibit A
Reddit threads flooded with responses from several fans of the franchise an month before the game’s release. Some people think that the person in the wheelchair is the enigmatic octogenarian, Oswell E. Spencer. He used a wheelchair, of course.
Due to his uncanny resemblance to the shadowy-looking figure shown in the trailer, he seemed like a good contender.
Exhibit B
However, with the rise of datamined leaks stemming from the Resident Evil 7 teaser: beginning hour, the name “Albert” became a focal point in fan theorizing. Most fans connected the name “Albert” with the last name, “Wesker.” We can surmise that this mysterious figure might be Wesker, since by this time he would be old and mangled (after all, two rocket propelled grenades would do that to you).
Who won?
However, Capcom might have just thrown us red herrings. To make matters worse, a reddit user claimed to have gotten information from an unnamed Capcom employee, identified the woman as “Camille.” She does look similar to the FAMITSU scan of the old woman sitting on the far end that people barely have taken notice of. Was this unknown figure’s appearance on the Desolation trailer just a flashback of when she was still alive? If it was, why does Camille appear motionless on the photo scan? If not, is “Camille” just on a dormant state, like a seed just waiting for the favorable conditions to trigger her back to her consciousness or rather, the Virus turning her “back to life”? All these questions continue to haunt us.
Here’s to hoping that more information would indicate what happened to “Camille” or “Camille Baker.” Since the game focus is now uncovering information from VHS tape segments, hopefully we would be able to catch her in the story of the Bakers (if she is really a part of it).
3. What virus infected the Baker family?
Lone Soldier: While the release of Resident Evil 7 is nearing, there is still not a lot of official information that Capcom has released to the public. Most of the information that got out was about the villains, the Baker family, but what happened to them and how they got infected by the “virus” in RE7 is still a mystery. What infected the Baker family and turned them into murderous monsters?
If the Umbrella Corporation is somehow involved to what happened to the Bakers, then we can narrow down the types of viruses that the corporation developed, namely the Progenitor, the t-Virus, and the G-Virus.
We can rule out the G-virus since it heavily mutates infected organisms to the point of growing huge, malformed eyes and limbs. In contrast, the family retains most of their physical features and intelligence.
The Progenitor Virus is the basis for the t-Virus. While the Progenitor virus merely enhanced human strength in a limited location, due to enhancements via Umbrella’s experimentation, it managed to reanimate the dead in most hosts, and give a special number of infected superhuman strength.
Series baddie, Albert Wesker was one of a handful of children experimented on using the Progenitor virus. Albert Wesker used this strain as well to develop the world-ending virus, Uroboros.
Is it possible that a strain of Uroboros could be one of the viruses that made Bakers into such violent beings? We surmise that the strain allows infected to retain human form, while enhancing speed, strength, durability, and vitality, allowing them near-invulnerability. Aside from the increased physical capabilities, they also have regenerative abilities.
4. How will Ethan and Mia’s interactions shape the events of Resident Evil 7?
Wolf Knight: Prior to Resident Evil 7, Ethan Winters receives one disturbing phone call. It’s Mia, his wife. This phonecall is what plunges Ethan into the depths of the Dulvey Haunted House. After all, who would pass up the chance to be reunited with a dearly departed, no matter how disturbing it sounds? Therefore, it begs the question: how will Resident Evil 7 play out this husband-wife relationship in shaping the events of the game?
We should first consider the circumstances surrounding both character on the table in relation to what we know so far from the trailers and demo.
It’s easy to think that Resident Evil 7 will become a dude-saves-the-damsel plot, a typical video game framework. However, the promotional material does say otherwise. Ethan heads to Dulvey Haunted House and is plunged into an inescapable nightmare, fending for his life as the deranged Jack Baker pursues him.
What about Mia? She doesn’t apepar to be herself, having been transformed by the unknown evil that also transformed the Bakers.
Furthermore, rather than controlling a gung-ho soldier like Chris or Leon, we have Ethan. Through his eyes, we’ll be living out the frailties of an everyman throughout the course of the game. What could be more human than wanting to see the end of this living hell while clinging to the memory of a loved one?
This is why I think that Ethan and Mia’s relationship will have a big hand in the development of RE7’s cryptic narrative. Still, the question remains: how?
5. Just what happened to the Bakers?
Nicholas Archer: The promotional materials provide us a glance at such a malevolent foe in the Bakers. These people are dead-set on killing you (or driving you off their property), and will not stop until you are dead. More than that, they have a horde of creatures called the Molded. These things can turn into liquid at will, liquifying and moving to another area to gain the upper hand.
However, the teaser shows that just a few years ago, they were a normal–if quiet–family. So what happened to them? All we know is that for some reason, an organization with an Umbrella insignia is involved, possibly observing their every move. In fact, theorized that this is the case in another article.
To ramp up the mystery, the questionable datamine leak that happened a month ago shows little about the Bakers’ origins, only showing that they’re going to mutate. It goes to show that the biggest mysteries in Resident Evil 7 are still tightly sealed in spite of such large data leaks.
So who could be the culprit for the Bakers’ anomalous abilities? Could it be Wesker, Umbrella (which I theorized about in this article) , Tricell, FBC, Neo-Umbrella, or some one else entirely?
There’s little certainty for any of these choices. We’ll eventually find out when RE7 slithers into stores this January 24.
Conclusion
With that in mind, we are more than psyched to go through the whole game this January 24, so that we can find out the heart of this mystery. Resident Evil 7 arrives after one more week, and it will be a terrifying romp indeed.
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