A DETAILED PLOT ANALYSIS OF THE
---------------------------------------
---- RESIDENT EVIL ----
---------------------------------------
VIDEOGAME SERIES BY CAPCOM ENTERTAINMENT
Begun by Dan Birlew, 1998
Updated by Thomas Wilde with permission, 2000
*****************************CONTAINS SPOILERS**************************
This thesis contains spoilers. If you have not already played the games,
the authors strongly suggest that you do so before reading the document.
The best introduction to the games is to play them.
************************************************************************
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction and Legal Stuff
2. The Realm of the Dead: RESIDENT EVIL
3. Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2
i. The Plot Thickens
ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3
iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2
iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2
v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B
vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame
vii. Conclusions About The Conclusion
4. The Last Woman Standing: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
i. The Death of Raccoon City
ii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
iv. Different Paths
v. Different Endings
vi. The Epilogue Files
vii. Conclusions About The Conclusion
viii. Random Musings
5. Ten Thousand Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
i. Coming Soon
6. Sibling Rivalries: RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
i. A Lovely Island Hideaway: CODE VERONICA, Part One
ii. The Return of Chris Redfield: CODE VERONICA, Part Two
iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE
VERONICA
iv. Conclusions About The Conclusion
v. The Ashford Family Diaries
vi. Random Musings
7. Becky's Big Adventure: RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
i. Coming Soon
8. Unanswered Questions
i. RESIDENT EVIL 2
ii. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
iii. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
iv. The Resurrection of Ada Wong
9. Frequently Asked Questions
i. Miscelleanous
ii. RESIDENT EVIL
iii. RESIDENT EVIL 2
iv. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
v. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
vi. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
vii. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
10. Say What?!
i. The Weirdest of the Lot
11. Conclusion
===============================
1. Introduction and Legal Stuff
===============================
This ain't livin'
It's just survivin', you know
-- Luscious Jackson, "One Thing"
Dan Birlew wrote this thesis in 1998. I lucked across it in
1999, just when I was starting to get good and obsessed with
Resident Evil, and found it to be a useful resource.
After the release of Resident Evil 2 for the N64, I wrote a
transcription of the EX Files from that game, combined with
some notes on the RE storyline for the sake of the N64 crowd.
That transcription is currently hosted by gameFAQs (among
others), and after I wrote it, I got a lot of e-mail from N64
owners asking about the finer points of the storyline.
After about the twelfth e-mail I got, I went back to look
at Birlew's analysis for help, and wound up deciding that it
needed an update; rather than answering a flood tide of
e-mail, I could just point at this document and say, "Lo!
I have come down from the mount with answers!"
Birlew had already told me earlier that he wasn't planning on
updating this document and, in fact, was legally prohibited
from doing so. I asked him if I could do it. Please note the
following, which was not extracted under duress of any sort:
> Thomas Wilde has my full permission to continue the
> Resident Evil Thesis in my place. He has full permission
> from me to use any materials from my former versions that he
> sees fit. I relinquish these materials to him, since I am unable
> to continue or update the Thesis due to certain agreements I have
> made with certain companies.
>
> Sincerely,
> Dan Birlew
> formerly known as "President Evil"
Every time I say "me" or "I" in this document, it's Thomas
talking; every time I say "we", I refer to the audience of RE as a
whole. This document is copyright 2000, Thomas Wilde, except for
those parts that are copyright 1998, Dan Birlew. All recognizable
concepts from the Resident Evil series are copyright Capcom, and
their usage in this document does not constitute a challenge to
that copyright. And so on. And so forth. All rights reserved;
violators will be punished, once again, with JR Kerr's "powerful
Internet voodoo" (TM; used without permission, but I'm sure he
doesn't mind).
+-------------READING THIS DISCLAIMER *COULD* SAVE YOUR LIFE------------+
| |
| Before we begin, I'd like to issue a general disclaimer. I don't |
| mind people e-mailing me to ask questions that aren't covered in |
| this FAQ, but: |
| |
| I'M NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR "THEORIES". |
| I'M NOT INTERESTED IN "ANONYMOUS SOURCES". |
| I'M NOT INTERESTED IN INFORMATION "FROM THE RE STAFF". |
| |
| This document deals in actual, documented, in-game plotline |
| information. Don't send me your dissertation on why Rebecca is a |
| spy, don't tell me anything that you got out of one of S.D. Perry's |
| novels, don't tell me anything that a friend of a friend was told by |
| a friend who had a friend who delivered pizza to the RE staff, and |
| don't e-mail me naked pictures of your sister because "she looks |
| just like Jill" (wait... actually, go ahead and send those). |
| I don't mind questions, but I do mind having my time wasted. |
| If you *do* send me a theory, don't expect me to reply. |
| If I don't reply, don't get upset. I warned you. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+-------- NOT READING THIS DISCLAIMER CAUSES CANCER IN LAB RATS --------+
| |
| This is a *storyline* FAQ. It deals strictly with plot |
| elements of the Resident Evil series. It is not a gameplay |
| FAQ. If you're having trouble getting through the game, I |
| encourage you to seek out the various online FAQs written |
| for the Resident Evil games (particularly those by Dan |
| "President Evil" Birlew, Brett "Nemesis" Franklin, Vincent |
| Merken, Henry LaPierre, Vesther Fauransy [although I recommend |
| him with slight reservations; his FAQs are a little weird], |
| and "Stinger 3:16"). They are all available on www.gameFAQs.com, |
| among other places, and can probably be found in the same place |
| you found this document. |
| |
| In short, send the gameplay questions to one of those |
| talented gentlemen, and/or check out their FAQs. They're |
| very well-written, and have helped me with my own |
| gameplay problems in the past. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+-- IF YOU DON'T READ THIS DISCLAIMER, I GET TO HIT YOU WITH A PICKAX --+
| |
| No, you are *not* Shinji Mikami. Don't you even *try* that. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
=======================================
2. The Realm of the Dead: RESIDENT EVIL
by Dan Birlew
=======================================
In 1996, Capcom Entertainment released a video game for the
Sony Playstation game console entitled Resident Evil. The game
was received by the growing console gaming community with
seemingly mixed reviews and marginal opening sales. However, the
game quickly caught on with game players of all ages. Soon named
"Videogame of the Year" by the Consumer Choice Awards, Resident
Evil's sales soared.
The game begins in the forest outside Raccoon City, in the
Midwestern United States. A series of bizarre murders have
the citizens of the city up in arms. Players were cast as
either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield, two members of the
Alpha Team of the local Raccoon City Police Department's
Special Tactics And Rescue Squad (S.T.A.R.S.). The S.T.A.R.S.
have been assigned to the murders. Unfortunately, while the
S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team was investigating the forest in search
of clues, their helicopter malfunctioned and crashed. The
Alpha Team immediately scrambles to investigate, only to
find the helicopter abandoned and the Bravo Team nowhere
in sight.
As the Alpha Team searches the area for any clues, they are
being watched by something else. Joseph Frost, the Alpha
Team's mechanic, discovers a severed hand, still holding
a pistol. He screams and drops it, just before something
jumps out of the forest and onto him. The rest of the Alpha
Team is helpless as the creature tears out his throat.
It becomes apparent that the creature that killed Joseph
wasn't alone. The survivors of the Alpha Team run for
their own helicopter, but their pilot, Brad "Chickenheart"
Vickers, panics and takes off without them. Stranded in
the middle of the woods, the Alpha Team runs from the
pack of monsters -- vicious, undead dogs -- and takes
shelter inside a nearby mansion. Unfortunately, they soon
discover that the mansion is by no means abandoned.
Depending upon which character is chosen, the player will
experience a different adventure depending on how the game
is played, what decisions are made, and which characters
survive with the player-character. Chris contacts Rebecca
Chambers, the medic of the Bravo Team, while Jill is aided
in her quest by Barry Burton, a fellow member of the Alpha
Team. Each rescues and is saved by their partner.
The character soon finds the residents of the mansion. The
place is infested with flesh-hungry zombies, more undead dogs,
and a vicious giant snake. One bullet is never enough for these
hideous creatures, but with some cunning the character can locate
weapons of greater power and more ammunition.
One by one, the player-character finds the unfortunate
members of the Bravo Team. Unfortunately most of them are dead,
half-eaten. Some of them come back to life and attack the
player-character, and others live just long enough to reveal
the mansion's secrets. Documents uncovered along the way also
inform the hero of what is going on.
An evil corporation called Umbrella has been conducting secret
experiments in a lab somewhere on the property. An accident
occurred, a mutating virus escaped, and the researchers and
guards have all become the living dead. The hero must find any
survivors and escape as quickly as possible to avoid contracting
the virus and becoming one of...them.
Each room of the mysterious mansion contains a mysterious
puzzle to be solved. Each puzzle equips the character with
one of the keys needed to escape. After facing the fearsome
giant snake, the player gets the final key, but the game
isn't over.
The game proceeds to a guardhouse at the rear of the
property, where new creatures rear their ugly heads. The
hero must survive encounters with a mutant shark and a fauna
experiment grown wildly out of control. Wesker makes another
appearance, ordering the character back to the mansion to
uncover more secrets.
However, the residence of evil is a more dangerous place
than ever. A horde of strange and deadly frog mutants with
sharp claws has overrun the main house, and the character
must now fight to save the other survivors still left there.
New areas of the house can now be accessed with items found
in the guardhouse, and a battle-scarred giant snake is back
for revenge. New horrors await in the basement, but hope is
regained when the player spots a helicopter landing pad on
the premises. Perhaps "Chickenheart" can be convinced to
make an emergency landing.
Gaining access to a cavernous underground, the player finds
Bravo Team leader Enrico Marini, wounded and half dead. He
insinuates treachery from within the S.T.A.R.S., but is killed
by an unknown assassin's bullet before he can reveal the
traitor's identity.
Avoiding rolling boulder traps and tangling with a gigantic
spider, the exhausted player makes it to the secret
underground lab. The hero fights through yet another
frightening species of experimental bioweapons generated
here, searching for a way to unlock the emergency exit
leading up to the helipad.
On the bottom level of the hellish laboratory, the traitor
reveals himself. Albert Wesker has manipulated Barry into
aiding him, and used the S.T.A.R.S. Team as test subjects in
combat situations against the bioweapons he himself
developed for Umbrella. He has made arrangements to destroy
the lab, the monsters, the heroes, and all the evidence so
that he may abscond with the "T-Virus" and sell it to the
highest bidder. But first, he invites the player to witness
the birth of his greatest creation, the ultimate bioweapon.
Named for the virus that created it, the "Tyrant" is a
monstrous undead giant. Upon its release, the horror turns
on its own creator. Wesker is impaled and held aloft on its
oversized claw. Now the abomination slowly turns on the
hero. The player blasts away at the creature, which is
easily killed. The ultimate bioweapon is the ultimate
failure, it seems.
Wesker's destruct system activates, and the player must race
to the helicopter landing pad to escape. Pursued by all the
lab's horrible creatures, one player must rescue the other
playable character, and then it's a free-for-all fight to
the exit.
Near the end, the monsters catch up to the survivors. The
two rescued characters repay their debt to the player by
making a stand against the onslaught. Now it's up to the
lone player to ascend to the helipad and signal the circling
pilot, in the hopes that Brad will regain his courage and
make an emergency landing.
After signaling with a handy flare, the character waits for
a response from Brad for an unbearably suspenseful moment.
The chopper finally swoops in and hovers overhead. In the
biggest surprise of the game, the Tyrant bursts out of the
ground and charges at the player. The player has to avoid
the monstrosity until Brad drops a rocket launcher onto the
battlefield. Quickly scooping up the weapon and turning on
the advancing enemy, the player blasts the thing into a
hundred squirming pieces.
In the ending movie sequence, Brad lands and quickly lifts
off with the survivors. The player watches as explosions
rock the Umbrella compound. Safely away, the exhausted team
members catch up on some much needed rest, commiserate on
the fate of the missing, or reload their weapons in
preparation ... for the next encounter.
============================================================
3. Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2
============================================================
=====================
3i. The Plot Thickens
=====================
The original Resident Evil is a relatively straightforward
horror game. Its sequels have been entirely different,
mixing horror with equal parts of action, mystery, and
conspiracy. Each RE game since the second has had an
intricate series of subplots, as well as at least a few
independent mysteries to solve. Furthermore, each game
has left a lot of questions unanswered at the end. In other
words, things get a lot more complicated from here on out.
One of the stranger wrinkles in the RE storyline is the
weird way that RE2 and RE3 relate to each other. I have the
two games listed separately here for the sake of maintaining
some kind of order, but in actuality, half of RE3 takes
place before RE2, and the other half takes place well
afterwards. This is noted in RE3's plot summary, below.
==================================
3ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3
==================================
After the "mansion incident" in July of 1998, Chris Redfield
attempts to start an official police investigation of
Umbrella, but Chief Brian Irons sabotages it. Suspecting that
Irons might be on the take, Chris requests an investigation
of Irons' background and a federal probe into Umbrella.
With typical government efficiency, the FBI doesn't respond
to Chris's requests until the night of September 29th, when
Claire gets their fax in Chris's old office.
Chris begins investigating Umbrella alone. He manages to
uncover a great deal about Umbrella's operations inside
Raccoon City, including the work on the G-Virus and the
location of the labs underneath the city. He's apparently so
intent upon his work that, to his sister Claire, it looks
as though he's dropped off of the face of the Earth.
In August of 1998, Chris finally tells Jill Valentine about
what he's been doing. In mid-September, without telling Claire,
he and Barry Burton leave for Europe to further investigate
Umbrella. Jill elects to stay in Raccoon City for a while,
intending to investigate Umbrella's underground labs.
At some point, Jill resigns from the S.T.A.R.S. and the Raccoon
City police department for unknown reasons. (We can make all
sorts of guesses, though, most of which involve Brian Irons.)
====================================================
3iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2
by Dan Birlew
====================================================
On the night of September 29th, 1998, Claire Redfield
motorbikes into Raccoon City. She is a college student, and
is searching for clues in the disappearance of her older
brother Chris. On the other side of town, Raccoon Police
Department recruit Leon Kennedy is making his way to the
Precinct for his first day of duty. Stopping to investigate
a mysterious corpse in the middle of the street, he fails to
notice the figures closing in behind him. Claire pulls up to
a diner for a late meal, but finds that she is intended to
be the next course.
Both characters are surrounded by zombies. They collide in
the alley behind the diner, where Leon saves Claire. Finding
an abandoned police cruiser, they make a run for it.
In the car they get acquainted, while Claire finds a gun in
the glove compartment. But they are not alone. In an amazing
sequence, a zombie leaps out of the backseat and struggles with
Leon. The rookie loses control of the vehicle and they crash into
a wall. The zombie flies through the windshield. Before they can
catch a breath, a dying trucker bears down on them in a massive
gas tanker. The two leap out of the wreck as the tanker collides
and flips over, exploding in a huge ball of flame. The characters
are separated by the blaze, and each must make their individual
way through the game.
This is the point at which the player begins, choosing which
character to assume based on which of the 2 game disks are
loaded. When the player finishes with one character's adventure,
the save file enables the player to approach the same game from
the other character's perspective, in a reverse game. Thus, the
scenarios progress as either Claire A & Leon B, or Leon A &
Claire B. There are differences in each game, and there are
differences in each combination. In addition, whatever the
first character does in their scenario affects the second
character's game.
For the purpose of brevity, this synopsis will follow the
plot as it occurs in the Claire A & Leon B combination, by
far the more structurally sound of the two scenario
combinations.
Claire begins on the Raccoon City streets, now overrun by the
zombies who have come out due to the crash. By baiting them
in a certain direction, she figures out that she can create
openings in their ranks and slip past them. She ducks into a
gun shop, hoping to find ammo for her weapon.
Inside, the clerk points a crossbow at her. After she
convinces him that she's not a zombie, he locks his door.
With a slightly sexist attitude, he admits he doesn't know
what is happening in Raccoon City or where the zombies have
come from. Claire finds some ammunition for her gun and
starts to move on just as the undead lay siege to the store.
Crashing through the display window, they tackle the shop's
employee and chew him to pieces on the floor. Unable to save
the man, Claire's only hope is to run through the back door.
Weaving her way through the slow moving ghouls, she makes
her way to the police station. S.T.A.R.S. helicopter pilot Brad
Vickers is encountered near the precinct, recently deceased
and come back by diabolic means. Executing this former hero,
Claire enters the Raccoon Police Department. She finds that
the place has been electronically locked and barricaded
against an apparent siege by the undead.
Leon finds himself directly behind the Police Department. He
has a shorter run than Claire, but must find the key to get
into the maintenance shed at the back of the Precinct. All
the while, flesh eaters converge on him. He gets lucky and
finds a back stairway to the roof of the station, but he
witnesses a rescue attempt fail.
A helicopter appears overhead. There is a lone precinct
survivor on the roof, signaling to it. Zombies attack the
unfortunate wretch. He sprays random machine gun fire
everywhere, accidentally killing the helicopter's pilot.
The helicopter crashes into the station and explodes into
flames. There's a water tank near the wreckage that can be
used to put out the fire, but Leon will need a valve handle.
Claire finds a cop lying on the floor of an office, seriously
wounded and dying. (In RE3, we learn that the cop's name is
Marvin Branagh.) In a brief speech, he tells Claire that her
brother Chris, and the other S.T.A.R.S., tried to get them to
believe that they'd encountered zombies in the woods outside
Raccoon, but no one would listen to them. He gives her the card
key that will open the electronic locks in the Precinct. He tells
her to rescue the other survivors in the police station and get out.
When she starts to protest, the half-disemboweled officer sticks
a gun in herface and rudely orders her out. He locks the door
behind her. Claire accesses the computer in the main hall, unlocks
the doors and continues on.
In the zombie-infested office on the first floor, Leon finds
the necessary tool to put out the fire. When he opens the
water tank and douses the blaze, another helicopter appears
overhead. This one is towing a rack of huge cylinders. One
of them detaches and drops. The bomb-like container blows
apart, revealing a huge humanoid creature.The giant crashes
through the roof of the precinct. The trenchcoated menace
heads right for Leon, who empties his weapon into the
stalking monstrosity before it falls. When Leon leaves the
room, the sinister intruder rises... and follows. Little
does Leon know, but anyone who had survived the mansion
incident might recognize this creature as a new and improved
version of the Tyrant.
At the same time on different sides of the station, Claire
and Leon both encounter a new and deadly lifeform.
Amphibious and spider-like, these creatures look like
crawling people turned inside out. They lash out with claws
and an incredibly long and sharp tongue. Police documents
refer to these creatures as "lickers", and no one knows
where they came from.
On the second floor of the west wing of the precinct house,
Claire finds the S.T.A.R.S. office and the log kept by her big
brother Chris. This document explains that he and the other
S.T.A.R.S. members had no luck investigating the involvement
of the Umbrella Corporation in the mansion lab incident. They
departed for Europe to search for Umbrella's main
headquarters. Suddenly a fax comes in, addressed to Chris. A
federal investigation on Umbrella has yielded naught for
clues, but an inquiry posted to the internal affairs
division by Chris regarding Raccoon Police Chief Brian Irons
has been answered. By his record, the Chief would appear to
be a deranged genius and former rapist.
Back outside the office, Claire catches sight of a young
girl being pursued by a zombie. While Claire dispatches this
thing, the fleeing little girl bumps into Leon. Frightened
out of her mind, she ducks into a small opening in a broken
door before he can stop her. Leon and Claire reunite. Leon
admits that this place is dangerous, and Claire suggests
that they split up and look for the girl and a safe exit. The
rookie cop gives her a radio so they can keep in contact.
Leon finds the two parts of a police operation report,
detailing the events of the past few days. The courageous
citizens of Raccoon made a grim standoff in the precinct
house against the flesh-eating undead. But some escaped the
precinct through the exit to the basement in the east wing.
He also finds a note addressed to him from the RPD, and the
party favors for a surprise welcome party they were planning
to throw for him. It seems his party has been cancelled.
He heads for the basement while Claire is startled by a
woman's screaming on the second floor. In order to save
whoever's in trouble, she needs a bomb to clear the helicopter
wreckage. Nearby,she finds the key to unlock the door
downstairs and save the wounded cop. When she returns to
him, he has been fighting off zombies unsuccessfully. Claire
now learns why he rudely forced her to leave him. He
rises, transforms into a zombie, and attacks her. With a
quick reaction, Claire incinerates him. She locates the
parts of a timer bomb and heads back upstairs.
In the basement, Leon is fired upon by a beautiful woman
named Ada Wong. She's looking for a reporter named Ben
Bertolucci in one of the basement jail cells. After Leon
graciously helps her clear some wreckage out of the way, she
ditches him. He tries to catch up to her, but instead finds
the incarcerated reporter in one of the jail cells. Ada
catches up to them now, but where she went first is a
mystery. Questioning Ben, Ada reveals that she's looking for
her boyfriend John, who works out of an Umbrella branch
office in Chicago. He disappeared in this area some months
ago. Ben refuses to tell her what he knows about what's
happening in Raccoon City. Just then, a monstrous roar fills
the air. Ben has locked himself in his cell for protection
and refuses to leave, but directs the others how to get out
of the Precinct. Ada takes off, and Leon runs after her.
Claire detonates the plastique near the helicopter wreckage
upstairs. She finds an office full of stuffed trophy
animals... and a more gruesome trophy on the desk. The
Mayor's daughter lies sprawled out, a medium-sized wound at
her abdomen. Behind the desk sits Police Chief Brian Irons.
He has completely lost his mind. Although the girl's wound
looks like a bullet hole, he claims that she was attacked by
a zombie, and that she will resurrect within an hour. The
only way to stop the zombification is to decapitate the
victim or put a bullet through the brain. He admits that
taxidermy used to be his hobby (which links him to the
Umbrella mansion, because of all the stuffed trophies found
by the S.T.A.R.S. team there). He asks to be left alone,
and Claire is only too willing to get away from him.
In the room next to the Chief's office, Claire hears the quick
footsteps of someone fleeing from her. She finds the little
girl crouched in the dark. She radios Leon to let him know
that she cleared the helicopter wreckage and found the
little girl. The little girl says her name is Sherry Birkin,
and her parents work at the Umbrella plant. Her mother
called her during the T-virus outbreak and instructed her to
go to the police station for safety. She has heard her
father's voice in the station, but can't find him. Also, a
creature is stalking her. A mighty roar emanates from
nearby. Sherry runs off, and Claire tries to pursue her. In
the office, the Chief and the dead woman's body have
disappeared. However, he has left behind his diary detailing
the extents of his depravity. Thanks to Irons, there are
no survivors of the RPD's siege besides himself.
Leon has found the sewer system that runs under the city. In
the processing plant, he comes across what appears to be the
exit door but doesn't have all the necessary keys to get
through. Going back, he finds Ada also investigating the
sewage plant. She has found an open vent shaft that she can
get through with a boost. She hits the ground on the other
side, startling the same little girl Leon and Claire
encountered previously. As she runs off, Ada notices that
the little girl dropped her pendant. Amused, she decides to
keep it in case they meet again. After a quick search, she
finds a precinct key and returns to where Leon waits. She
throws the key back through the vent, but she can't get back
herself because the vent is too high. Once again, Ada runs
off on her own against Leon's orders.
Leon returns to the precinct house, searching for the last
few keys he needs to get out. While looking for clues on the
first floor, the horrible Tyrant bursts through the wall, and
only falls after Leon empties his shotgun into it. Leon races
upstairs and finds more items he needs. The Tyrant follows.
Again, Leon is forced to shoot it out with this brute. The
thing is finally subdued, even if only for the moment.
After gathering several keys of her own, Claire finally
catches up to Sherry in the Chief's office. Behind the desk
is a secret elevator, and Claire makes Sherry stay behind
while she goes to investigate. The elevator lowers her into some
kind of custom dungeon beneath the precinct, lit by flickering
torches. As Claire cautiously creeps down the hall, she hears
the Chief scream.
In his private chamber, Chief Irons is backed into a corner
by a hideous mutating creature. Something shoots out of this
thing's hand and down Irons' throat.
In a hideous torture room, Claire finds the Chief, ranting,
raving, and armed. He explains to Claire that his town has
been torn apart by the experimental monsters of the Umbrella
corporation. He tells her that a man named William Birkin is
to blame. Claire recognizes the name. Irons states that
Sherry is Birkin's daughter. Completely paranoid, the Chief
is ready to kill Claire. Before he can execute her, something
bursts through his upper torso from within. A small creature
leaps out of Irons and falls down an open chute nearby. Claire
follows this thing, only to see it quickly grow into some kind
of horrible infant. The thing attacks her, but she destroys it
fairly easily. She runs back to the second floor to get Sherry;
their escape route is now clear.
Leon makes his way to the precinct's clock tower where he
finds the final piece in the Chief's bizarre architectural
puzzle. Now able to exit the police station, he finds an
open dust chute and slides back down to the basement. Upon
landing, he hears Ben screaming in the jail cell nearby.
Leon runs to the reporter's aid, but is too late. The same
thing that impregnated Irons has gutted Ben. The dying
reporter gives Leon a document which entangles Raccoon
City's chief of police in a government conspiracy. In terrible
pain, Ben dies. Ada finally catches up to Leon, and they
read this document together. It is a series of letters from
William Birkin to the police chief, describing in detail how
Umbrella was bribing the chief to keep secret their actions
in the town. Birkin had learned that Umbrella sent spies to
steal his research. Ada then rushes off, explaining only
that she has to find John. She thinks he's in the chemical
plant. Leon is prevented from following by another call from
Claire. She has found a different exit from the precinct and
will join him in the sewers.
Leon runs after Ada, but in the sewage plant, he is
confronted by the mutating Dr. Birkin. The scientist attacks
him with incredible strength, takes a full clip full of
Magnum bullets at point blank range, and dives into the
muck. Leon opens the exit door.
In the sewer beneath the station, Sherry is separated from
Claire when a drainage chute opens and sucks her into a
lower level. Sherry runs for safety, finding herself in a
garbage room. Just when she finds a nice shiny trinket, the
floor springs open and dumps her into the garbage hold.
Knocked unconscious, she fails to see a monster slouch out
of the darkness. Birkin has found his daughter at last.
Ada abruptly rejoins Leon, and he admonishes her for
running off. She agrees to stick with him, for now.
Searching everywhere to find Sherry, Claire runs into her
mother, Annette. The suspicious woman worked with her
husband William on a bioweapon called the G-Virus, a
mutagenic substance that turns whatever it infects into
a giant monster. Birkin injected himself with the virus when
armed Umbrella agents seized the virus from him. When Birkin
was accidentally shot, he used the virus to keep himself
alive. The G-Virus rejuvenates dead cells, but it also
mutates them. He became a monster, a "G-Type", and hunted
his killers down. The T-Virus leaked from his laboratory
after the attack, and was carried into Raccoon City by the
rats in the sewers.
The G-Virus seeks to spread by finding other host bodies.
When Annette learns that Sherry is in the chemical plant,
she becomes upset. The virus can only be spread through a
complimentary genetic host. Birkin will try to find and
impregnate Sherry with a virus embryo. From somewhere close,
they hear the little girl scream. Claire sends Annette
searching in the opposite direction and continues on.
Leon and Ada search the chemical plant for weapons and
ammunition. They bump into the frantic Annette. Ada chases
the armed scientist. Annette turns and fires on her pursuer,
but Leon jumps in front of Ada and takes the bullet. While
Leon lays unconscious and seriously wounded, Ada chooses to
run after Annette.
Claire finds the garbage dump and spots Sherry, lying
unconscious on a heap of rubble. She calls out to the little
girl, but a gigantic alligator hears her and attacks. Claire
runs back down the corridor and finds a switch to release a
gas canister. When the alligator grabs the canister in its
huge maw, Claire shoots the cylinder. The resulting
explosion flings chunks of the sewer beast's head
everywhere. Moving to Sherry, Claire spots some sort of red
worm slithering away; one of William's embryos. Stirring,
Sherry complains of stomach pains. Claire assures her that
everything will be all right. She leads Sherry out of the
spider-infested sewers, past the bodies of several soldiers
wearing gas masks...
Ada hounds the scientist through the sewers to the central
control area. Annette blasts Ada's gun out of her hand, an
adept shot for a scientist. She advances on Ada,
interrogating her. Learning that Ada is looking for her
boyfriend John, Annette realizes that she's talking about
one of the researchers at the mansion lab. She knows that
John turned into a zombie, and then died when the lab was
destroyed. She makes it seem that William was working at the
mansion as well, and that he developed the G-Virus there.
Annette starts to explain the new G-Virus to Ada when she
spots her daughter's pendant around the woman's neck. In a
suddenly aggressive manner, she demands to have it. A cat
fight ensues, ending with Ada punching Annette and sending
her flying over the rail. Inside Sherry's pendant, Ada finds
a secret compartment containing a sample of the G-Virus.
Claire and Sherry discover an underground tramcar. After
powering it up, they ride for some distance to an unknown dock.
Apparently they aren't out of danger yet, as the grunts of
the undead are heard nearby. Claire blasts through corridors
full of zombies. They arrive at a train turntable platform.
Inside the engine car, Claire finds the key to the control
panel outside. An alarm sounds upon activation, and the
girls run back inside the car. The entire platform
disengages and drops. It seems they have found some sort of
large secret elevator. Sherry is overcome by her stomach
pains and passes out. Her monstrous father shows up,
threatening to smash the traincar to pieces. Claire runs
outside and ducks a steel rod flung at her by William. The
screaming madman mutates, growing a new head and a
vicious-looking claw. Claire quickly pelts the thing with
enough flame grenades to burn down a forest. When the G-Type
is finally face down in a pool of its own blood, Claire runs
back into the train car. The elevator finishes its descent,
and she carries the unconscious girl into an Umbrella
loading dock. It would seem she has discovered a large
underground laboratory.
A slightly delirious Leon awakens and hunts for Ada. He
finds her in the subterranean garbage dump. After bandaging
his bullet wound, she lets him know that John is dead. She
doesn't seem terribly upset though, and insists they get out
of the sewage plant. At the tram platform, Leon recalls the
car. They board and head for the train elevator. On route,
they are attacked by the G-Type, which isn't dead yet. It
stabs one gigantic claw through the ceiling over and over,
seeking the passengers. Ada fires at the hand, blowing off
one of the fingers. The monster retreats. The two slip out
of the tram and make for the train platform.
Claire sets Sherry on a cot in the security office. She
gives Sherry her vest to keep her warm. The girl stirs, and
lets Claire know that she trusts her and depends on her.
Claire assures her that she will find something to cure her.
Leon has to recall the train elevator platform. Leaving Ada
in the control room, he descends to a secret security room
and there finds the necessary key. When he flips on the
surveillance camera aimed at the door he just entered, he
sees Umbrella's ugliest and most fearsome agent hot on his
trail. After one more battle with this 'Mr. X', Leon returns
to the upper control room to find Ada unharmed. He recalls
the elevator from there and they descend to the lab. But
their moment alone is not to be enjoyed. William is back,
and he exacts a terrible revenge against Ada. His claw
shoots through the wall, stabbing her in the back. She
passes out, and Leon goes out to fight William. The
G-Virulent has grown two new arms and doubled in size. Leon
pumps the thing full of shotgun blasts before it does any
good. Bleeding heavily, William leaps onto the elevator
shaft wall and leaves Leon alone.
In the lab, Claire figures out that the main power conduit
has been shut down. She finds a fuse for power connection,
and then she is free to explore the lab. Umbrella has
conducted further experiments with plant vegetation, as a
titanic vine grows up from the bottom of one shaft. Its
offspring slide along the ground, spitting acid at her. Worse,
there is an even stronger variety of the "lickers" here than
those encountered before.
The elevator platform's engine overheats, and it stops on an
upper floor of the lab. Leon leaves the wounded Ada in the
train car while he goes searching for something to patch her
wound. He crawls through a vent duct and drops into a
corridor. The elevator platform restarts and continues to
descend. Leon has lost Ada again. He finds an emergency
elevator that will take him down to where Ada has gone, but
it needs power. He finds a door to a "Power Room", but it is
locked. In a room with a huge smelting pit, he fights his
way through the tougher new breed of "lickers". He connects
the emergency elevator's power and goes up to the lab. In
what is obviously William Birkin's former experiment room,
he finds the power room key and goes back to the first level.
Leon runs off the elevator, but not very far. Now Annette is
shooting at him. She calls him a fool for believing Ada,
saying that the woman he is falling in love with is a spy
working for Umbrella, using him only to help her steal the
G-Virus. Leon refuses to believe it. Annette doesn't care
and prepares to shoot him. Mr. X suddenly crashes through
the ceiling behind Leon. Annette flees. Evading the powerful
giant, Leon gets to the power room and unlocks it. The
monster has followed him, and now the rookie cop is
cornered. Shots ring out. Ada is back, blasting away at the
unholy behemoth. Unfortunately, she runs out of bullets.
As she reloads, the Tyrant seizes her and lifts her into
the air. Ada fires several rounds point blank into his face.
Temporarily blinded, the giant swings Ada into a control
panel, denting the panel and probably breaking every bone in
her body. Blood gushing from his face, Mr. X falls off the
platform into the smelting pit. Leon runs to Ada's side. In
her last moments, she wishes she could stay with him. Leon
kisses her passionately. Ada goes limp and dies. Leon screams
in grief. Near Ada's body, Leon finds a master key that the
monster dropped before falling into the pit.
After Claire finds a keycard in the research room, Annette
pops up again. She's still armed and dangerous, and somehow
knows that Claire tried to kill William. After Claire tells
Annette that Sherry has been infected by the G-Type, the
monster growls nearby. Excited, Annette runs after him.
William crashes out of the ceiling, still alive. More
monster than human now, he cuts his own wife down with one
terrible claw swipe. When Claire rounds the corner he leaps
back up into the ceiling. A dying Annette begs Claire to
save her daughter, giving her detailed instructions on how
to create an antidote to the G-Virus, using materials that
can be found somewhere in the lab.
The damaged central unit in the power room is wracked by
explosions. Lightning bolts course up and down the huge
column. A computer voice comes online to announce that the
self-destruct sequence has been activated, and all personnel
should evacuate to the cargo train platform at the lowest
floor of the lab.
At the edge of the iron smelting pit, a gigantic clawed hand
emerges from the red hot pool. Mr. X isn't down for good
yet, and he may be more dangerous than ever.
Claire runs out to the monitor room. A motion detector
alerts her that someone else is in the lab. Leon is
onscreen, emerging from the power room. Claire tells him to
go back to the security office to rescue Sherry while she
creates the G-virus antidote.
Leon rides the elevator back down into the lab, and retrieves
the barely conscious girl. He uses the master key in the
elevator to take the emergency access tube and reach the
lab's escape route, a high-speed train.
Following the instructions for the G-Virus vaccine, Claire
rushes to the VAM room on the Lab's 4th floor. Killing
several last zombies, she finds a vaccine cartridge. Reading
the instructions for the "Devil" vaccine, she inserts the
cartridge into the machine and starts it up, allowing the
base vaccine to be synthesized. She takes the cartridge and
heads back down to Birkin's lab.
Leon finds the train without power. Laying Sherry on the cot
inside, he finds a platform key at the back of the train and
hurries to power up their escape transport.
Claire inserts the base vaccine into the virus antidote
synthesizer in Birkin's lab, and the machine creates the
"Devil" automatically. On her way back out, she accesses a
corridor to the experimental containment room, where she
finds a huge cargo elevator that will take her down to the
train platform.
An explosion rocks the entire lab. The computer announces
that the self-destruct sequence has begun. There are only 5
minutes remaining until total detonation.
Leon races across a bridge over the train to the opposite
platform. There he unlocks the containment chamber for the
power plugs for the train's generator. He takes the plugs
into the next room and inserts them into the power grid. The
computer warns him that the power will be completely shut
down momentarily in order to power up the train. In the
blackout, a huge creature lands behind him. A transformed
Mr. X is ablaze from his dip in the molten vat. With two
huge claws, he charges at Leon, knocking the poor guy from
one end of the room to the other. Suddenly another familiar
shape appears, at the top of the gantry over them. Still
wearing Sherry's pendant, Ada drops Leon a rocket launcher.
The cop recognizes her, but doesn't have a moment to spare.
He dives for the launcher, scoops it up, and fires at his
vicious adversary. The creature explodes into a dozen body
parts. The power comes back on and so do the lights. With
two minutes until detonation, Leon runs back to the train.
Waiting patiently for the elevator to reach her floor,
Claire's thoughts are suddenly interrupted as something
smashes through the ceiling right above her. She backs up
just in time to avoid being squashed as the G-Type drops
into the room. She fires several grenades into the genetic
monstrosity, but all she does is trigger yet another mutation.
The creature's newest form is doglike, pursuing Claire on
four legs and slashing at her with a mouthful of jagged
fangs. Claire runs around the room, playing matador as it
charges at her. Finally, her weapons have an impact on the
thing, and it dissolves into a puddle of genetic jelly.
Claire's elevator arrives, right on cue, and she descends
to the train loading platform.
Leon finds the train platform crawling with naked zombies.
Blowing their heads off left and right, he fights his way
to the switch that opens the gate blocking the train's path,
and throws it. As the gates open, he returns to the train
and starts it up. Slowly, the train comes to life.
Claire gets to the platform just as the train is taking off.
She sees Leon, leaning out an open door, yelling for her to
get on. She misses that opportunity, but luckily there is
another open door.
Once she's inside, the Umbrella lab completes its detonation
sequence in a huge explosion. The train rocks, throwing a
still-unconscious Sherry to the floor. Claire quickly
administers the vaccine to her and they wait. Finally, Sherry
comes to and thanks Claire for saving her. Leon thinks that
the danger is over, but Claire disagrees. She still has to
find her brother. Leon moves up into the cockpit. Still upset,
he says goodbye to Ada.
The train suddenly lurches. Leon moves back into the cabin
with the girls. No one can figure out what the disturbance
was. Leon runs toward the back of the train. The train is
equipped with the same computer system as the lab. The
computer warns them that a bio-hazardous material has been
detected on board. The train will detonate in just two
minutes. The cabin is locked, and Leon is unable to get back
to Sherry and Claire. He runs to the back of the train to
search the cargo compartments.
At the rear, giant tentacles smash through the ceiling. Leon
races back to the front as the G-Type makes an encore
appearance. Birkin is now nothing more than a gigantic black
blob, pulling itself forward with four huge tentacles. Leon
blasts the thing until it loses solidity once more. Then he
heads back toward the cabin.
===================================================
3iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2
===================================================
Leon, standing on the gap between the train's two cars,
tries to get back inside and discovers the door has locked.
Claire can't open it from the other side. The biohazard
is still present, apparently... and still after Sherry.
The G-Type has reformed, and attempts to smash into the
cabin. Claire, not knowing where Leon is, tells Sherry to
hide. Sherry opens a vent to the cockpit and crawls through.
She promises Claire that she can stop the train.
Leon is on top of the engine car, climbing up to the
cockpit. He looks behind him to see the G-Type's tentacles
searching for him.
The main body of the G-Type smashes into the cabin. In order
to hide, Claire climbs down through a hatch and hangs onto
the bottom of the train while it's still moving.
Leon rips open an escape hatch on the roof of the cockpit.
Sherry hasn't had so much luck figuring out which button to
push. Leon spots the emergency stop switch immediately and
points it out to her. Sherry slams her fist on the button.
The train brakes. Sparks shoot out from behind the wheels as
the transport slows, dousing Claire in a shower of yellow
fire. She fights to hold on.
The train stops. The computer warns that the train will
detonate in thirty seconds. Claire crawls out of her hiding
spot and with a sigh of relief, spots daylight at the exit
of the train tunnel. Leon and Sherry are out, looking for
Claire at the front of the train. She joins them just as the
G-Type smashes into the cockpit. The heroes dash for the
mouth of the tunnel, through which they can see the rising
sun. They've lived to see the morning of September 30th.
The monster's tentacles smash through the cockpit
windshield, searching for its enemies. The computer counts
down, 5, 4, 3, 2...
At the last second, the G-Type realizes what is about to
happen.
The heroes leap clear of the tunnel.
The transport train detonates quickly car by car, from the
rear to the front. A vicious geyser of fire blasts out of
the tunnel.
Claire and Sherry get up, commenting that each of them look
pretty awful. Leon rises, but is already moving off, saying
they don't have time to waste. Claire wonders why. Leon
turns and tells them, "Hey, it's up to us to take out Umbrella."
Blackout. Heavy metal theme music and the credits roll.
===========================================================
3v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B
===========================================================
If you play the game in the opposite order, starting with
Leon first, the plot is different in several respects:
1. Sherry keeps her pendant throughout the game. This means
that Ada never obtains the pendant or the G-Virus sample it
contains. Also, Mr. X wants the G-Virus, so he goes after
Sherry and Claire and not Leon and Ada.
2. Annette explains William's mutations to Ada, rather than
to Claire. Claire finds Annette after Ada knocks her over
the rail, and Annette falls unconscious soon afterwards.
3. Sherry is never impregnated with a G-Type embryo, so
Claire doesn't have to create a G-Virus antidote. Thus, no
mention of an antidote is heard.
4. Ben Bertolucci is impregnated by Birkin with a G-Type
embryo that later bursts out of him. Why Birkin would
implant him with this is never discussed or explained.
5. Chief Irons is ripped in half by Birkin instead of
implanted.
6. Annette is fatally wounded when the G-Type pounds on the
ceiling in the lab and drops a pipe on her head. Leon takes
the G-Virus sample that she is holding.
7. Leon confronts Ada about being a spy. Annette, barely
alive, shoots Ada. Leon's love falls over the rail into a
deep chasm. Enraged, Leon tosses the G-Virus into the abyss.
8. In the game finales, Leon confronts the G-Type while
Claire battles Mr. X.
9. In Claire's final confrontations with Mr. X, she lures
him into the smelt pool by tossing Sherry's pendant with the
G-Virus over the side. On the trainpower platform, Claire is
aided in her battle against the mutated Mr. X by Ada. This
provides a larger mystery than the previously explored
scenario. How did Ada survive such a fall?
10. At the end of the closing movie, it is Claire instead of
Leon who leads them off, stating "We have to find my brother."
Perhaps the reasons why the previous plot summary focused on
Claire A/ Leon B are now clear. The focus scenario is much
richer in plot and explanations. There is not as great a
leap of faith required to believe that Ada still lives. An
exploration of how Ada might have survived her brutal death
in order to aid in the final battle with Mr. X are explored
in "The Resurrection of Ada Wong", below.
Resident Evil 2 is a game much richer in story than its
predecessor, as is evidenced by the number of pages needed
to summarize the plot versus that of the original Resident
Evil. In this chapter of the story, questions are raised.
Some are answered, while others may never be solved.
==============================
3vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame
==============================
A couple of secret games are available to the most capable
of Resident Evil survivors. With the right timing, skill,
and stamina, players will receive an A ranking in Resident
Evil 2. While the secret weapons gained make for a fun
replay, the most interesting aspect of this ranking is a new
playable character named "Hunk". The players are asked to
create a new save file for a minigame called The 4th
Survivor, the special mission suitable only for this
seasoned Umbrella agent. The 4th Survivor is a "battle
game." The player is given a limited amount of ammunition, a
simple goal, and an enormous army of evil monsters to outwit
in order to survive. This side-adventure is a true test of a
player's survival skills.
Whether it is his real name or a codename is uncertain, but
Hunk is certainly a buff character. Dressed in militaristic
biohazard containment gear, Hunk's eyes glow with the power
of his infrared goggles. He runs much faster than the usual
Resident Evil playable character, even when seriously wounded.
Playing as Hunk requires a good amount of quick thinking and
strategy on the part of the player. While some strategies
can be useful every time, the game's enemies sometimes react
differently to Hunk. This means that The 4th Survivor is
always a challenge, even to seasoned Resident Evil veterans.
==========================================
3vii. A Brief Summary of The 4th Survivor
==========================================
The game begins in a total blackout. Someone is thinking,
"G-...G-Virus... I have to deliver it to Umbrella..." The
scene opens at the end of the sewer station, sometime after
Ada and Leon have made their way to the Lab, but before the
end of the regular game. A body floats face down in the
muck, one of the Umbrella infiltrators sent to steal the
G-Virus from renegade scientist William Birkin. The body
stirs, shifts, and shows signs of life. Slowly, Hunk regains
consciousness and rises.
After a quick look around, Hunk pulls out his radio. "Alpha
team here," he says through his gas mask, "Mission
accomplished." "Roger," confirms another agent on the radio.
"We'll meet at the rendezvous point."
A map cuts in. A blinking beacon light shows Hunk that he
has to get to the second floor roof of the RPD precinct house
in order to be airlifted out. Hunk takes off up the stairs.
Between this stealthy agent and his goal is a small army of
the evil dead. Zombies plague his flight, along with giant
spiders, killer dogs, and slithering botanical experiments.
He has only a limited amount of ammunition, and must balance
his present needs against what he may encounter in the future.
Luckily he has some herbs to heal himself and treat poisons,
but it's not a lot. Leon and Claire have already taken all of
the ammunition from the RPD, so Hunk is stuck with what he has.
The zombies have retaken the Precinct in greater numbers
than ever before, and have laid several traps for the
unfortunate Umbrella agent. With some skill, he just barely
avoids these. But as he nears his goal, the insanity grows.
Each room bears an ever-greater horde of ghouls, quickly
converging on the lone survivalist. Shaking off his
attackers, he clears a pathway out with the barrel of his
gore-splattered gun.
After several close calls, Hunk tops a staircase to the
second floor of the RPD. He's halfway home, but the
nightmare is not yet over. Stomping toward him is a
monstrosity he has only heard rumors about at his agency. At
long last, Umbrella has perfected the Tyrant, and they've
sent it after the G-Virus. Somehow able to sense that Hunk
possesses a sample, the monster attacks him. Reasoning with
the beast would be no use, so Hunk evades the slowly
advancing thing and moves on.
In the final hallway, Hunk meets the Tyrant once again. How
it got over here so quickly is a real mystery, one Hunk
doesn't have time to solve. Evading the hulk yet again, the
agent reaches the roof and lights his last flare to signal
for a rescue.
The pick-up chopper swoops overhead immediately, as if it
has only been a block away this entire time. It hovers over
the precinct for an unbearably long moomising that this is the end of one nightmare,
but only the beginning of another.
=======================================
3viii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
=======================================
Resident Evil 2 leaves us with the following resolutions:
1. William Birkin's laboratory and research have been
destroyed.
2. Somehow Umbrella has almost perfected a Tyrant, and has
more at their disposal. Their research continues elsewhere.
3. Leon, Claire, and Sherry have all survived.
4. Ada may have also survived.
5. Raccoon City is in ruins.
6. Leon has a new mission in life, while Claire continues hers.
7. The rest of the S.T.A.R.S. team may be somewhere in Europe.
===================
3iv. Random Musings
===================
1. As pointed out by Dan Birlew in the original version of
this document, Tofu, another hidden character, is also
accessible in RE2. However, his scenario is so incredibly
silly that it doesn't really apply to the storyline. He is,
after all, a block of bean curd with a knife.
2. Mr. X isn't really very committed to his mission. He seems
to deliberately put it on hold a couple of times to go after
the player. This is most obvious in either B scenario, where
although the person carrying the G-Virus is up in the control
room, the player's character is on the elevator shaft. Guess
who Mr. X goes after?
3. So why, exactly, didn't anyone clean out Wesker's desk?
They thought he was dead.
====================================================
4. The Last Woman Standing: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
====================================================
RE3 has more replay value than any other RE game to date,
with three endings and plenty of secrets to unlock, as well
as the incredibly fun (read: addictive and frustrating)
Mercenaries minigame. It also introduced the Dodge feature,
which let players duck or roll out of the way of incoming
attacks with the push of a button, and featured the return
of RE's Hunters.
=============================
4i. The Death of Raccoon City
=============================
Even though the mansion was destroyed, the threat isn't over.
There are still monsters loose in the Raccoon Forest, some of
which actually wander inside the Raccoon City limits. Umbrella's
experiments continue, despite the loss of their mansion laboratory.
Everything changes in late September of 1998. After Umbrella's
attack on William Birkin, as shown in RE2, sewer rats carry
the T-Virus into Raccoon City. While the epidemic is somewhat
slow to start, it spreads very, very quickly. Soon, zombies
are roaming the streets. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people
are killed by both the zombies, and by the mutants the T-Virus
creates. Things degenerate quickly, and martial law is declared.
The Raccoon police force tries to fight back the zombie
invasion, but their efforts are sabotaged from within by
their police chief, Brian Irons. Not only does the
steadily-getting-crazier Irons somehow prevent the RPD from
calling in backup from outside Raccoon, but he deliberately
spreads confusion among the policemen. As a result, the police's
first major battle against the zombies, on September 27th, is a
near-total disaster. The few surviving policemen withdraw to the RPD
building and reinforce it to withstand a seige by the undead. Over
the next three days, the policemen and surviving civilians die
one by one, cut down by either mutants, zombies, or Irons himself.
By the time Claire and Leon arrive at the RPD on September 30th,
the RPD has been reduced to Irons and the dying Marvin Branagh.
As the police battle the zombies, two helicopters marked with
Umbrella logos land in the city and drop off a small number of
armed men, also wearing Umbrella logos. These men lose
several comrades in their first encounter with the zombies,
and are soon on the run.
By September 28th, Raccoon City is a ghost town, populated
mostly by zombies and other creatures created by the
T-Virus. A military blockade surrounds Raccoon City, enforcing
a quarantine; no help is coming. Thousands are dead.
Jill Valentine is not one of them.
=======================================================
4iii. A Summary of the Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=======================================================
On the morning of September 28th, Jill Valentine makes her
last attempt to escape from Raccoon City. After literally
blowing her way out of her apartment complex, Jill takes
shelter inside a nearby warehouse and meets another survivor.
She tries to get him to come with her, but he refuses to leave
the warehouse, as his daughter was just killed by zombies. Jill
tells him that their only hope is to get out of town, but he
shuts himself inside a nearby trailer rather than listen to her.
Alone, Jill leaves the warehouse. The streets are disturbingly
quiet, with only the occasional zombie wandering around. On
her way through a back alley, Jill is surprised when a man
suddenly bursts out of a nearby alleyway, pursued by a mob
of zombies. She's doubly surprised when she recognizes him
as Brad Vickers. She runs after him.
After chasing him through the streets and back alleys of
Raccoon, Jill finds Brad inside a local bar. They briefly
talk about what's happened to the city. Brad, although he's
wounded, gets up, telling Jill that "he's comin' for us.
We're all gonna die! He's after S.T.A.R.S. members. There's
no escape!" With that enigmatic comment, he leaves the bar.
Outside, Brad's nowhere to be found, so Jill sets out on her
own. She emerges onto the street in front of the RPD building.
Both ends of the street are blocked by car crashes, but a nearby
alleyway leads further uptown. The door to it is locked, but Jill
left a set of lockpicks in her desk at the RPD, so she heads there.
In front of the RPD building, Brad Vickers finds Jill again.
He looks like someone dropped a truck on him. He starts to
say something, but is cut off by the arrival of a new monster,
a humanoid creature dressed in black. Its face is permanently
stuck in a lipless grimace. (Two days from now, Leon will meet
Mr. X, who looks a lot like this thing.) Jill is frozen in
horror as the creature grabs Brad by the face and lifts him
into the air. It kills Brad by shoving a tentacle through his
head, throws away his body, and advances on Jill, muttering
a single word: "...S.T.A.R.S...."
Jill's weapons seem to have no effect on the creature. She
ducks inside the RPD building and slams the doors behind
her. Although the doors buckle under the creature's attack,
they don't give. Safe for the moment, Jill searches the
building for equipment and ammunition. More than half of the
building has been sealed off by the surviving police, but
fortunately, she can still get to her old office.
The S.T.A.R.S. office is wrecked. Someone has deliberately broken
the radio, and the desks have been ransacked. As Jill leaves
with her lockpicks, the radio plays an incoming transmission
from a man named Carlos. His unit has been cut off and no
survivors have been found. He asks for anyone who can
hear him to respond, but the broken radio can only receive
transmissions. All Jill can do is wish him luck as she leaves.
The only warning Jill gets before the creature returns is the
sound of shattering glass. It jumps through a window on the
first floor of the RPD, toting an oversized cannon in one hand.
Dodging a barrage of missiles, Jill barely manages to get out
of the RPD building alive. She picks the lock on the alleyway
door and keeps running. She seems to have lost the creature.
As Jill makes her way uptown, she finds a dead man wearing
the Umbrella logo. According to his diary, the dead man was a
member of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service, an
in-house paramilitary unit maintained by Umbrella. For some
reason, Umbrella's hired and sent mercenaries into the city.
More dead UBCS soldiers turn up elsewhere. One is lying in
front of a nearby parking garage, killed by a pack of zombie
dogs, and another has fallen victim to a new creature, some
kind of giant, mutated insect. These "Stingers" attack Jill
as she passes through a construction site, and they don't
live long enough to regret it.
Jill steps back onto the street outside the construction
site, and sees a man run into a restaurant. Jill follows him
inside, and the man introduces himself as Carlos Oliviera, a
corporal in the UBCS. His squad was told to rescue Raccoon's
civilians, but the mission went wrong the moment they landed.
Before he can continue, the creature stalking Jill appears
again, entering through the restaurant's back door.
As the creature charges, Jill notices a gas leak in the
restaurant's kitchen. She and Carlos hide behind the
restaurant counter. As the creature stops next to the
leaking pipes, Jill throws a lit oil lamp at it. The ensuing
explosion nearly kills both Jill and Carlos, but also knocks
the creature unconscious.
As they leave the restaurant, Jill asks Carlos why his squad
was sent to Raccoon. Carlos' answer -- that they're rescuing
civilians -- isn't good enough for Jill, since the
destruction of Raccoon is largely Umbrella's fault.
Carlos replies that he and his fellow mercenaries are just
hired hands, and if Umbrella had some kind of ulterior
motive for sending them in, he doesn't know what it is. If
Jill wants answers, she's asking the wrong guy. A sudden
sound of shattering glass inside the restaurant cuts him
off. Carlos invites Jill to join his squad, and runs off.
Jill follows him, but the creature walks out of the
restaurant, seemingly unhurt, and resumes its pursuit.
After losing the creature in Raccoon's shopping district,
Jill hides inside the offices of the Raccoon Press. Inside,
she finds another gemstone that matches one she found in
the RPD building. They turn out to be missing parts to a
time lock on the gates to Raccoon's city hall. Jill repairs
the lock and opens the gates.
The city hall is boarded up, and looks as though it's been
undergoing the same kind of siege as the RPD. Past it is a
trainyard, where one of Raccoon City's cable cars is parked.
Inside the cable car, Jill meets a gray-haired man wearing
the same logos as Carlos. Jill greets him, assuming he's one
of Carlos's teammates. The man asks her insultingly how she
managed to survive. Jill replies that she's a S.T.A.R.S. member,
which seems to satisfy him. He walks into the next car,
leaving Jill alone with a badly wounded and delirious UBCS
officer. Jill tends the man's wounds as best she can, then
follows the grey-haired man.
Carlos is in the next cable car, and renews his invitation
from earlier. The gray-haired man, who is apparently Carlos'
commander, says that they can't trust Jill. Before Jill can
respond, Carlos says that they need her help, as their unit
has been reduced to Carlos, the gray-haired man, and Lieutenant
Mikhail, the injured man in the last cable car. His commander,
Nicholai, grudgingly agrees, and tells them about his plan.
An extraction helicopter is waiting for a signal from their
team. The designated landing zone is by the St. Michael Clock
Tower, a Raccoon City landmark. Nicholai intends to use the
cable car as a mobile shield to get them through Raccoon City,
although the car will require repairs first. Carlos and Jill
agree to this plan, and the three of them split up to look for
parts for the cable car.
Jill heads to a nearby gas station first, to get motor oil.
Carlos enters the station behind her, but a mob of zombies
sniffs them out. As Carlos keeps watch, Jill finds a locked
cabinet with oil in it. Carlos steps outside to fight off the
zombies. Jill hurriedly opens the lock and grabs the oil.
Before she can get outside, a live wire falls into a pool of
motor oil in the gas station's garage, starting a fire. Jill
sprints out the front door before the place burns down.
Outside, Jill finds Carlos slumped against the wall, next to
a pile of dead zombies. Jill briefly thinks he's dead, but
Carlos shakily gets to his feet. The fire suddenly spreads
outside, to the pools of gasoline leaking from wrecked cars,
and then to the gas station's pumps. Jill and Carlos barely
escape an explosion that completely destroys both the gas
station and most of the block that it's on. As they pull
themselves to their feet, Carlos tells Jill that he's going
to look for extra equipment, and leaves.
Jill manages to find some engine parts and returns to the
cable car to see if she can fix it. Outside the cable car,
Mikhail, despite his wounds, massacres a horde of zombies
and collapses. Jill runs up to him and demands to know if he
has a death wish. Mikhail insists that he cannot stop
fighting just because he's wounded. Even though the zombies
are innocent victims as well, as Jill says, there's no
reason for him to take responsibility for anything that's
happened to Raccoon. After all, none of the UBCS soldiers
are really involved with the company. Jill agrees, and says
that that's the only reason she's trusting the UBCS at all.
Jill helps Mikhail back into the cable car and tells him to
rest. She also tries to repair the cable car's engine.
While the power cable and fuse she's found will work, she
needs a special additive for the motor oil. She heads back
into Raccoon, towards an Umbrella-owned sales office and
chemical warehouse.
Before going to the office, Jill stops by the warehouse in
downtown Raccoon where she left the survivor earlier.
Inside, she finds a group of zombies greedily devouring his
dead body. In the trailer that the man was hiding in, Jill
finds a book where the man has written his final words. His
name was Dario Rosso, and he had always meant to be a novelist.
When Jill reaches the office, Nicholai is already there. He
has just killed another UBCS trooper who was infected with
the T-Virus. Jill demands that Nicholai explain why he shot the
man, who was still conscious. Nicholai explains to Jill, as
if it's obvious, that it took fewer bullets to kill the man
now, before he became a zombie. His callousness horrifies Jill.
Jill lets herself into the office's storage locker, where she
finds the additive she needs. At the same time, though, another
horde of zombies finds the sales office. Jill hears Nicholai
scream in agony, and when she fights her way back into the
office, both Nicholai and the UBCS mercenary's body are gone.
On her way back to the cable car, Jill has another encounter
with her stalker outside City Hall. Once again, Jill runs
for her life. The creature doesn't follow her to the next
street, and before Jill can wonder why, the ground crumbles
under her feet. She's dumped into part of the Raccoon sewer
system, which a large, mutated worm has claimed as its own.
Jill fights it off and escapes from the sewers via a
conveniently located emergency ladder.
Jill finishes her repair work on the cable car. Carlos walks
in, and Jill tells him that Nicholai won't be joining them.
Carlos grimly accepts the news, and offers to drive the
cable car. The car begins to glide smoothly away from the
station, but suddenly, it shakes with a tremendous impact.
Jill cautiously investigates, to find that the creature
stalking her has somehow broken in. With nowhere to run,
Jill knocks it to the ground with a barrage of grenades.
The creature gets right back up again, seemingly unhurt
by an attack that would have killed anything else.
Suddenly, Mikhail opens fire on the creature with his
assault rifle, commanding Jill to get out of the cable car.
The creature advances on Mikhail, whose rifle jams at
exactly the wrong moment. The creature backhands him against
the wall, then throws him across the cable car. A tentacle
emerges from the creature's hand, coiling around its wrist
like a striking snake, and it walks towards Mikhail to
finish him off. Just before it reaches him, Mikhail rolls
over, pulls a grenade from his vest, and pulls the pin. The
resulting explosion knocks the creature out of the back of
the cable car, kills Mikhail, and destroys the cable car's
brakes. Jill pulls the emergency brake, but the car still
doesn't stop until it hits a wall. Jill blacks out.
Jill regains consciousness alone in the courtyard of the St.
Michael Clock Tower, next to the twisted ruin of the cable
car. She finds Carlos inside, who is now convinced for some
reason that Umbrella isn't going to let the two of them out
of town. Before he can get hysterical, Jill slaps him, asking
him if he's just going to give up. Carlos says that he just
can't handle what's happening, and runs off.
The clock tower is nearly deserted, except, as usual, by the
occasional zombie or giant spider. Jill finds several more
dead mercenaries within it, one of whom is carrying a copy of
the UBCS's mission plan; sure enough, they were here to rescue
civilians, but were specifically after Umbrella's employees.
The UBCS's extraction chopper is in the suburbs of Raccoon,
waiting for someone to signal it by ringing the clock tower's
bell. Jill runs up to the bell tower, to find the bell's
mechanical ringer has been dismantled. Solving another of the
puzzles that seem to be everywhere in Raccoon City, she finds
a key to unlock a storeroom downstairs.
On the balcony of the clock tower, the creature returns,
seemingly unhurt. Jill rips the wiring out of one of the
clock tower's searchlights and electrocutes the creature. As
it lies twitching, Jill makes her escape, but once again, it
gets up and gives chase. For some reason, though, it doesn't
follow her downstairs.
In the storeroom, Jill finds an ornate gear that'll fit in
the bell's ringer. She runs back upstairs and installs it.
The bell starts to ring, and as Jill rushes outside, the
extraction chopper comes flying in. Jill waves it down, and
for a moment, thinks that she's finally safe.
She is, of course, wrong.
Someone fires a missile at the helicopter. As it explodes,
the helicopter plows into the clock tower. Burning wreckage
showers the courtyard. Jill looks up to see the creature
standing on top of the clock tower, its missile launcher
in its hand. It jumps down in front of her, intent upon
finishing her off once and for all. Before Jill can react,
the creature stabs her with one of its tentacles, and Jill
immediately begins to feel shaky and ill. She's been
infected with the T-Virus.
Suddenly, Carlos arrives and attacks the creature. The
creature, more annoyed than hurt, returns fire. Carlos is
knocked silly by a near-hit, but manages to blow up the
missile launcher. As he passes out, Jill opens fire on the
creature, hitting it with everything she has. The creature,
after taking enough damage to kill an army, finally staggers,
then falls face-down into the flames from the burning helicopter.
Jill limps over to Carlos and passes out. Carlos wakes up
and cradles Jill in his arms, desperately trying to wake her up.
Jill is unconscious for two days, during which Leon Kennedy
and Claire Redfield make their own escape from Raccoon City.
She wakes up in the chapel of the clock tower on the night of
October 1st. Carlos has been watching over her. She doesn't
feel any pain from her infection, but that in itself worries
her. Jill makes Carlos promise that if she turns into a zombie,
he'll kill her. Carlos says that he'll find something to help
her, and that she'll be safe in the chapel until he returns.
Carlos leaves the clock tower through a door in the
storeroom, and discovers that he's right next to a hospital.
He goes there, hoping to find something to combat the
T-Virus infection.
The hospital lobby is strewn with dead men and partially
locked down with a steel shutter. As Carlos enters, a zombie
slowly shuffles towards him from the back of the room.
Before Carlos can shoot it, something decapitates the zombie
from behind. A new creature, some kind of viciously clawed
reptile, screams at Carlos. Jill would recognize it as a
Hunter, one of the deadlier things she fought in the
Spencer mansion. After a vicious, albeit brief, fight, Carlos
kills the thing and enters the head doctor's office.
Carlos takes the head doctor's private elevator to the fourth
floor. The hospital is crawling with Hunters and the occasional
zombie. There, in the hospital's file room, he finds Nicholai,
who is holding a smoking gun and standing over the body of
another UBCS member. Carlos has a lot of questions for Nicholai,
but the only answer Nicholai has is that he -- Nicholai -- is
"one of the supervisors". That's all Carlos needs to know.
Nicholai points his gun at Carlos, but before he can fire,
the man on the floor pulls the pin on a grenade. Both Carlos
and Nicholai run for cover, and Nicholai winds up going out the
fourth-floor window.
Carlos is confused about what just happened, but he continues
his search. To his surprise, he finds another of Umbrella's
laboratories in the hospital's basement, where two creatures
are floating in incubation tanks. They look like Hunters, but
where the Hunters Carlos has been fighting are sort of generically
reptilian, these appear to be deliberately patterned after frogs.
(These are probably the MA-121 Hunters mentioned in RE2's EX Files.
See Frequently Asked Questions, below.)
Carlos finds a set of instructions in the lab. Using them as
well as the laboratory's machines, he creates a vaccine that'll
be effective against the T-Virus. Running back to the clock tower,
he finds a surprise waiting for him in the hospital lobby. Someone
has set explosives to demolish the hospital. Carlos leaves the
hospital at a dead run, taking cover from the explosion inside
the alley leading to the clock tower. The hospital is completely
destroyed, crumbling inward on itself.
In the clock tower, the ceilings are buckling and groaning,
as if the tower is planning on following the hospital's
lead. As Carlos crosses the clock tower's front hall, the
creaking intensifies into a pounding. With a sudden
crash, the creature that has chased Jill throughout Raccoon
City breaks through the wall. The creature's heavy coat has
burned away, revealing that it's covered in writhing tentacles.
Either the fire has forced it to mutate, or it just burned
off its clothes and this is how it's looked all along.
Carlos tries to fight the thing, but it's only interested in
getting to Jill. Fortunately, Carlos beats it to the chapel.
Carlos gives Jill the vaccine. The drug takes effect almost
immediately, and Jill wakes up. She asks Carlos what
happened to him, and Carlos says that he just had another
fight with the monster. Jill starts to wonder aloud whether
the creature can be stopped at all, and Carlos says that
he's sure it can; he doesn't sound real convincing, and
sounds less convincing when the creature roars at them from
outside the room. Jill realizes that the creature is toying
with them. Carlos then tells her about Nicholai's survival,
and warns her that although he doesn't know what Nicholai
has planned, he's sure that Nicholai is their enemy. Claiming
that he has to "take care of some things", Carlos leaves.
Jill runs into the creature as she leaves the chapel. She
leads it a merry chase through the clock tower, losing it
along the way, and ducks into Raccoon's city park.
The park is infested with monsters, but Jill easily takes
care of them. Inside the tool shed in a local graveyard, Jill
breaks through a bricked-up doorway and discovers an abandoned
Umbrella command center. Several documents are scattered
throughout the room. One of them, a report from one of the
supervisors, finally gives her a name for the creature that's
been chasing her; Umbrella calls it "Nemesis".
Nicholai is waiting for Jill when she leaves the command
center. He's impressed at her survival, but refuses to help
Jill in any way. When Jill asks him, he admits that the true
mission of the UBCS was to gather data on Umbrella's
bioweapons in a combat situation, but no one ever expected
the UBCS units to be completely wiped out. After a sudden
tremor shakes the ground, Nicholai runs off.
As Jill follows Nicholai, the earth falls out from under
her. The giant worm that Jill fought in the Raccoon sewer
system is back, but not for long. The worm destroys the
graveyard trying to kill Jill, and she responds in kind with
a barrage of grenades. The worm crumples up and dies, its
body dissolving, and Jill climbs out of the graveyard.
The park has been overrun by a fresh wave of zombies while
Jill fought the worm, but they're little more than
annoyances at this point. On one of the park's isolated
footpaths, Jill finds two more dead UBCS soldiers, one of
whom is clutching a set of orders from Umbrella. The orders
confirm what Nicholai said earlier. The supervisors were
also instructed to destroy the hospital and all the data
stored inside it. Umbrella is covering its tracks, and, for
some reason, a lot of their supervisors are winding up dead.
The footpath leads to a rickety bridge, which in turn leads
to an abandoned factory. As Jill walks across the bridge
towards it, the Nemesis jumps onto the bridge in front of
her. Jill throws herself off of the bridge and into the
river below it. The Nemesis, after she's gone, turns and
walks towards the factory.
Underneath the bridge, Jill finds an entrance to an old
sewer duct, and from there finds her way into the factory. A
quintet of zombies spring a crude ambush on her, but Carlos
arrives and saves Jill a second time. Jill thanks him, and
he tells her that a nuclear missile is going to be launched
into the center of the city at dawn, which is coming soon.
The two of them have to split up and find some way to
escape, or they'll be caught in the blast. Carlos puts a
hand on Jill's cheek and tells her to watch out for Nicholai.
The factory is obviously nowhere near as abandoned as it was
supposed to be. Umbrella has been conducting experiments
with the T-Virus here and using the facility to dispose of
toxic waste; as a result, the factory is crawling with Stingers,
Hunters, and powerful, mutated zombies. As Jill explores, a
sudden burst of gunfire sends her running for cover. Chortling,
Nicholai walks through a door and seals it shut behind him with
a keycard.
Jill accidentally stumbles into the facility's trash
room. Not only does the door lock behind her, but the room's
automated systems come online; in five minutes, the room
will automatically dump everything in it into the factory's
waste area. Given what's *in* the waste area, that might be
a fate worse than death. Just as Jill thinks things can't
get any worse, the trash room's lights come on, revealing an
old friend. The Nemesis has been waiting for her.
For the first time in four days, Jill gets lucky. She ducks
underneath one of the Nemesis's wild swings, and it tears
open a pipe on the wall. Whatever is flowing through the
pipe is corrosive enough to burn off half of the Nemesis's
tentacles almost instantly. As the Nemesis recovers, Jill
shoots out another pipe, drenching it in acid a second time,
and then a third. The Nemesis screams, covered in horrible
burns. As it falls dead for a second time, Jill notices
the body of an Umbrella scientist in one of the trash heaps.
Searching his pockets, she finds a keycard which unlocks the
trash room doors. As she gets out, the Nemesis's body is
dumped into the waste pool.
The factory's speakers crackle to life, and a woman's voice
reports that a missile attack has been detected.
Jill runs towards the door Nicholai went through and unlocks
it with her new keycard. The door leads to a communications
tower. As Jill picks up a portable radar receiver, the radio
suddenly comes to life. Outside, Nicholai taunts Jill from a
helicopter, and rakes the tower with a burst of machine-gun fire.
Apparently, since he's killed all the other supervisors,
Nicholai can demand a bigger bonus from Umbrella. He had
also intended to collect the bounty that Umbrella has placed
on Jill's head. Jill negotiates with him over the tower's
radio, and an amused Nicholai decides to fly away. Jill,
he says, is doomed anyway.
Carlos runs in. He hasn't had any luck in finding an escape
route, but he refuses to give up. He frantically uses the radio
to scan all frequencies. A familiar voice comes over the
radio. Someone else is coming in a helicopter, specifically
for Jill. All the two of them have to do is meet it at the
factory's helipad. The factory's systems alert Jill and
Carlos that the missile has been launched, and unlock
the door to the helipad. Jill heads there, and Carlos runs
back into the factory to make last-minute preparations.
Apparently, the factory used a scrapyard as their landing
zone. Jill runs through a maze of crushed and stripped cars,
and finds that a small war was fought here recently. Several
dead U.S. Special Forces soldiers are lying outside of the
factory's power room, as well as the burning corpse of a
mutant (actually a Mr. X unit, like the one that attacked
Leon the day before). An official report is on the ground
near one of them, accompanied by a photograph of an
experimental new weapon code-named "Paracelsus' Sword". The
report specifically mentions using it to fight Umbrella's
bioweapons. The Sword is an enormous rail cannon, and looks
like just the thing to take out a Tyrant, but it's far too
big to sneak it onto hostile territory. There's a mystery or
two here, but unfortunately, Jill doesn't have time to figure
it out.
Jill enters the power room, and an explosion from outside
seals the door shut behind her. Dead bioweapons are lying
everywhere, including several Mr. X units and an older model
of the Tyrant, with several dead soldiers lying among them.
On the other side of the room, Jill finds the Paracelsus'
Sword cannon, still hooked up to the factory's power plant
and aimed directly at the dead Tyrant. Jill tries to turn
it on. The cannon's computer tells her to hook up several
oversized batteries strewn around the room.
As Jill shoves the first battery into place, she hears the
sound of dripping water behind her. Chemicals slowly begin
to leak into the room. Jill turns around, and the Nemesis's
"corpse" falls through a hole in the ceiling. All the bath
in the factory's waste pool did was mutate it enough that it
survived. Jill draws back in horror as the Nemesis twists
into a new four-legged shape, growing a tail and a set of
vicious spikes along its back. The Nemesis is now saturated
with biohazards, and sprays them from its body with every
step it takes.
Jill frantically hooks up the last two batteries to the rail
cannon. As the Nemesis showers the room with lethal toxins,
Paracelsus' Sword begins to charge up. Left with no other
choice, Jill has to turn and fight back. The Nemesis is
still a vicious opponent, but it's nowhere near as durable
as it was in the past, and Jill's assault drives it away.
The Nemesis limps to the other side of the room and begins
to chew on the Tyrant's corpse. Why it's doing that is soon
made a moot point, as Paracelsus' Sword fires.
The rail cannon's blast shakes the room, tears through a
four-foot block of scrap metal, vaporizes the Tyrant's
corpse, and doesn't really look like it hurts the Nemesis
much at all. A second blast finally sends the Nemesis
screaming to the ground. Jill checks the radar receiver, which
tells her that she has less than five minutes before the nuclear
strike hits. Before she can leave, the Nemesis gets back up
for one last attempt to kill her. Jill dodges a blast of
venom and grabs a Magnum from one of the dead soldiers. Jill
stands over the the Nemesis and empties the gun into its head.
Finally, bleeding from its every pore, it stops moving.
Jill leaves the power room and takes an elevator up to the
helipad. Carlos takes the elevator up just after she does
and runs forward, lighting a signal flare. A blue-and-white
helicopter slowly descends to the ground in front of Carlos,
and both he and Jill climb aboard with only a few minutes to
spare.
=============================================================
4iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=============================================================
Jill thanks the helicopter's pilot, who says that he couldn't
just let her die. Jill seems to recognize him and leans forward.
The pilot turns to her and asks her, "Are you ready to finish
this?" (The pilot's apparently supposed to be Barry Burton,
although it's never said out loud.)
A flash of light outside the window draws Jill's attention.
The nuclear missile flies past the helicopter and hits the
center of Raccoon City. The surviving zombies look up at
confusion at the bright light, just before they're
destroyed. A wave of fire rolls across the entire city,
utterly destroying it. All that remains is a smoking crater.
As the helicopter flies east, Jill, looking out the window
at what used to be Raccoon, vows that Umbrella is going down.
We're then treated to a news broadcast. The morning's top
news story is, of course, the nuclear strike on Raccoon. The
President and Congress planned and executed the destruction
of Raccoon City, which has been "literally wiped off the
map". More than a hundred thousand casualties are expected.
"Our hearts go out to the citizens... of Raccoon City."
====================
4iv. Different Paths
====================
The game's basic plotline can vary each time you play
through it. However, while the details change, the
fundamental events are always the same, so they aren't
worth listing in full here. For most of the choices,
I've just kinda picked the one that I liked more and
used it for the summary.
The exception is that I deliberately placed Carlos in the
gas station. Nicholai is a huge badass, but I'm not willing
to believe that he's enough of a badass to survive an
explosion that levels a city block (unless the explosion, as
Vincent Merken and I have theorized, knocked him through a
plot hole). I can accept a lot, but that's just crazy.
=====================
4v. Different Endings
=====================
The ending I've used for the summary is apparently the
official one, as one of the files in Resident Evil: Survivor
is written by Nicholai on October 5th. The other two possible
endings are detailed below, and both of 'em wind up with
Nicholai being real dead.
Ending #2:
Instead of negotiating with Nicholai, Jill blows him out of
the sky. Aside from that small, yet satisfying, detail, this
is the same as Ending #1.
Ending #3:
Instead of jumping off the bridge, Jill shoves the Nemesis
off and walks into the abandoned factory via the front door.
She and Carlos meet up in the second-floor break room, where
a visibly exhausted Carlos tells her about the incoming
missiles. Things proceed as above after that, but when Jill
reaches the trash room, she's ambushed by Nicholai. From
cover in front of the trash room, Nicholai explains that
there's a "modest" bounty offered by Umbrella for whoever
kills Jill, which he intends to collect. Jill tells him,
basically, to stick it.
Nicholai replies by firing a couple more shots at Jill.
Something, probably the Nemesis, grabs Nicholai from behind.
Jill hears him scream, followed by some wet crunching
sounds. When she rounds the corner, she finds Nicholai's
dead body, hanging off of the pipes in the ceiling.
When Jill reaches the communications tower, she hears an
incoming transmission from Carlos. Carlos tells her to take
the nearby radar receiver and meet him elsewhere; he's found
a helicopter.
After Jill's showdown with the Nemesis, she rides the
elevator up to find Carlos waiting for her in Nicholai's
helicopter. Jill watches Raccoon explode as they fly off,
saying that this time, "they've gone too far."
=======================
4vi. The Epilogue Files
=======================
Every time the game is beaten on Hard Mode, an Epilogue is
shown after the credits and ranking screen. There are eight
Epilogues, each dealing with a major character from RE; in
order, the files are about Jill, Chris, Barry, Leon, Claire,
Sherry, Ada, and Hunk. Each file is about a paragraph long,
and is accompanied by original character art.
>From the Epilogue Files, we know the following:
-- after escaping Raccoon, Jill Valentine found one of
Chris's hideouts. It was trashed, but Chris wasn't there.
She plans to keep looking for Chris so the two of them can
finally take down Umbrella. Carlos and Barry may or may not
be with her.
-- Barry has left his family. He doesn't intend to
return to them until he's paid his friends back for
betraying them at the mansion. (He is *so* dead.)
-- after they escaped the lab at the end of RE2, Leon angrily
told Claire to leave him and Sherry alone. She promised to
return, and disappeared into the woods near Raccoon alone.
She may or may not have kept that promise.
-- Leon has been made some kind of unspecified offer by
either the U.S. government or someone claiming to represent
them. He attempted to get them to leave Sherry out of this
offer, but she "knows too much". We do not know what Leon's
response to the offer was.
-- the woman who had called herself Ada Wong survived. She
is leaving that identity behind, although not without tears,
and preparing for another mission.
-- Hunk is a little crazy, and has a tendency to be the
only one to survive the missions he's sent on. He's seen
without his mask in his file.
======================================
4vii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
======================================
Resident Evil 3 leaves us with the following information:
1. Raccoon City has been completely destroyed. Thousands are dead.
2. Jill and Carlos have survived, thanks to Barry Burton.
3. Nicholai Ginovaef has also survived.
4. A vaccine exists for the T-Virus, and it's been given to
Jill. In theory, she's now immune to it.
4. Ada and Hunk are both still alive. This brings the known
total of Raccoon survivors to eight, out of more than a
hundred thousand.
5. Jill is newly dedicated to the destruction of Umbrella.
She's looking for Chris.
6. Umbrella is actively seeking the deaths of the remaining
members of S.T.A.R.S.. They have a "modest" price on Jill's head.
7. Claire Redfield is somewhere in America, continuing her
search for her brother.
8. Leon Kennedy and Sherry Birkin are in government custody.
9. Leon has gotten an unspecified "offer" from someone claiming
to be a government agent. While we know that he's still alive by
the time of Code Veronica, we don't know what his reaction to the
offer was or if the man making it was actually with the government.
10. The U.S. government has attacked at least one Umbrella
facility with very little, if any, success.
11. Umbrella actually tried to *stop* the government from
nuking Raccoon. Apparently, there's something else going on
here that we don't know about.
12. Hunk survived. Umbrella has a sample of the G-Virus.
13. Someone on the Capcom development team *really* hated
Brad Vickers' guts.
=====================
4viii. Random Musings
=====================
1. In the power room, scattered amidst the dead Tyrants, are shards
of red containment capsules, similar to the one that Umbrella used
to transport Mr. X in RE2. If anyone was wondering where that
helicopter might have gone after it visited the RPD, it probably
went straight to the Dead Factory.
2. As I've mentioned below under Unanswered Questions, the
military blockade around Raccoon is apparently manned by spider
monkeys. Neither Leon or Claire so much as see a blockade,
and we've seen no fewer than six helicopters, some unmarked, enter
and leave Raccoon's airspace without any problems. (Count 'em.
You might even come up with a few that I missed.)
3. The Mercenaries minigame, while horrifyingly addictive,
doesn't really apply to the storyline. I would've thought
that this was obvious, but apparently, it isn't.
4. For those who didn't know, RE3 was subtitled Last Escape in
Japan. This is why Jill uses that phrase a lot. (Personally, I
think it's cool and should've stayed the subtitle of the American
version, but that's me.)
5. Although the back of the CD case says Jill quit S.T.A.R.S., she
never says as much in the game. As a matter of fact, she claims
membership several times.
6. In the "Bloopers" section: no one ever tells Jill Nicholai's
name. She just kinda figures it out on her own.
================================================
5. Ten Thousand Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
================================================
Half standard Resident Evil and half first-person
gun-in-hand shooting game, this game has gotten mixed
reviews everywhere I've looked; Vincent Merken, as well
as roughly half of Europe, has written to tell me that
the game's actually pretty lame. We're still waiting for
it here in the States.
===============
5i. Coming Soon
===============
I've yet to play Survivor. When I do, I'll update this FAQ
accordingly. Please don't take this as an invitation to send
me your own summaries; I really would like to play the game
for myself. Fortunately, according to PSM, the game is due to
come out in July 2000.
In the meantime, you can read all of Survivor's files,
courtesy of Rob McGregor and his Resident Evil Timeline, at
http://www.new-blood.com. They're creepy as hell.
==================================================
6. Sibling Rivalries: RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
==================================================
The newest and most elaborate Resident Evil game is for the
Sega Dreamcast. Spanning two discs, it is, as of this
writing, getting a wide selection of rave reviews from every
gaming magazine in existence, and has been called the "best
game for the Dreamcast" more than once. It's easily more
than twice as long as any previous RE game, with a surprisingly
elaborate plot, and as such, is going to require the Plot
Summary From Hell. You might want to go get a drink or something.
Code Veronica, in brief, follows Claire Redfield as she
continues to look for Chris. She's captured while searching
an Umbrella facility in Paris and sent to an Umbrella-run
prison in South America, where she meets and fights against
Alfred Ashford, the insane descendant of one of the original
founders of Umbrella.
The last half of the game features the long-awaited return
of Chris Redfield, as he arrives on the island to try and
save Claire. Unfortunately, he finds out that he has
problems of his own.
=====================================================
6i. A Lovely Island Hideaway: CODE VERONICA, Part One
=====================================================
It's been three months since Claire disappeared into the
woods near Raccoon. In that time, she's found an Umbrella
memo that reads: "CONFIDENTIAL: PHASE I -- RACCOON CITY.
TEST COMPLETE. PHASE II -- PARIS FACILITY. FULLY
OPERATIONAL." In December of 1998, she travels to Paris and
infiltrates that facility, hoping to find clues to the
whereabouts of her brother Chris.
She's discovered, and a chase ensues. As she runs from a pair
of armed guards, a bright light at the end of the hallway blinds
her. When she can see again, the first thing Claire sees is an
attack helicopter hovering outside the window. Its chaingun
begins to warm up. Claire doubles back and ducks into the
nearest hallway, as the chaingun chews the guards that were
chasing her to ribbons.
The helicopter chases Claire the rest of the way down the
hall she's in. Claire barely stays ahead of its constant
stream of gunfire. As it starts to get too close, Claire
jumps through an open door and down a flight of stairs. She
rolls to her feet and finds herself staring down at least
two dozen more of Umbrella's guards, all of whom are
pointing guns at her. As they walk forward, Claire sees that
they're standing in front of a tank full of flammable
chemicals. In a trick worthy of John Woo, Claire puts her
hands up, drops her gun, hits the floor, catches the gun
before it hits the ground, and puts her last three bullets
into the tank. The resulting explosion sends the guards flying.
(You can download a movie of this sequence from dreamcast.ign.com,
or at least you used to be able to. If you still can, as of
this writing, do so. It's well worth watching.)
Claire gets to her feet as another guard comes down the
stairs. Both she and the guard react at the same time,
shoving their guns in each other's faces, but the guard's
gun has bullets in it. Hers doesn't.
Claire is captured, and, ten days later, is taken by
helicopter to an isolated prison. She spends most of the
ride there with a bag over her head. It's taken off as a
guard tells her what her serial number is, and welcomes her
to her new home. Another guard cracks Claire in the face
with the butt of his rifle. Claire blacks out.
She wakes up in a dank cell, somewhere underground. As Claire
stands up, the cell shakes with distant explosions. It sounds
as though a war is being fought aboveground. The lights flicker
and die, leaving Claire alone in the darkness.
Slowly, someone clutching his stomach shambles into the room
and stands outside Claire's cell door. Claire uses her lighter
to see who it is, and is surprised to see the face of the man
who took her prisoner in Paris.
The man unlocks her cell and opens the door. As Claire
hesitantly steps outside her cell, he slumps into a nearby
chair and pulls an empty bottle of medicine out of his
pocket. He throws it against the floor in frustration. Not
looking up, he tells Claire that this place is finished.
They've been attacked by what he thinks is a "special forces
team". Claire's free to leave the prison grounds, but he
warns her that she has no chance of getting off of the island.
Before leaving the cellblock, Claire picks up a knife, and
notes that the man needs hemostatic medicine. A manifest on
the desk tells her that the man's name is Rodrigo Juan Raval,
and that he's a member of Umbrella's medical division.
It's raining gently when Claire gets outside. The cellblock
opens into a small graveyard. A truck has crashed through
the wall, and is burning merrily. Suddenly, it explodes. A
burning man climbs out of the driver's seat. One good look
tells Claire that the man's become a zombie. Somehow, the
T-Virus has been released. As Claire backs away from the
burning zombie, more emerge from open graves all around her.
Claire scrambles to her feet and runs through the nearest door.
Claire gets about two steps out of the door when someone
opens fire on her from a guard tower. Taking cover behind
the crashed truck, she grabs a handgun off of a dead man and
returns fire, shattering the gunman's spotlight and forcing
him to take cover. The man screams. Claire demands that he
tell her who he is. The man -- a boy, really -- is glad to
see that she's not a zombie like he'd thought, and hops down
off of the tower. He introduces himself as Steve, another
prisoner, and says that he's looking for an airport that he'd
heard was on the island. Claire tries to follow him as he
leaves, but Steve claims that she'd only slow him down.
The prison is only lightly populated with zombies, so Claire
doesn't have much trouble as she searches the place. Inside
a nearby mess hall, she finds a map of the facility, as well
as one of the other prisoners' diaries. The prisoner had
managed to figure out that the island is south of the equator.
The prison's file room and computer lab is nearby. Claire
runs into Steve, who's playing with one of the computers.
Steve asks her if she's related to Chris Redfield. When she
says she is, he shows her that Chris is under electronic
surveillance by Umbrella. Claire uses the computer's Internet
connection to forward Chris's location to Leon Kennedy via
e-mail, hoping that Leon can figure out some way to help
her. Steve tells her that the latitude and longitude of the
prison is stored on the computer and, with a snort, suggests
that she have Leon forward that to her brother so he can
come help them out. Claire thinks it's a good idea and does
so, but Steve indignantly claims to have just been kidding;
Chris won't come to help them. Claire denies this. Steve says
angrily that other people will just let you down, and storms
out of the computer lab. Claire is left alone again, wondering
what Steve's problem is.
Using one of the machines in the file room to forge a key,
Claire lets herself out the prison's front gate. A recent
rockfall has blocked the main exit and destroyed the main
bridge, so Claire runs up a nearby staircase instead. To her
surprise, she's now standing in front of a military training
facility on one side, and a mansion on the other. She decides
to investigate the mansion first.
The mansion hasn't escaped damage in the recent assault, but
the interior is more or less intact. Claire finds an ornate,
locked door in a study on the second floor, but instead of
keys, the door is molded so as to accept a pair of guns. In
the same room, she finds a diary kept by one of the servants
that lived here. The servant talks about his master, Alfred,
and how Alfred is incredibly secretive about his relationship
with his sister Alexia. No one is allowed near her, or has
even seen her except at a distance, sitting in the window of
Alfred's house.
Someone's private war museum is on the first floor.
Antique handguns and models of battleships line the walls.
Claire presses a button near a sculpture of a giant ant, and
an old movie begins to play on the room's screen. The movie
features two blond-haired, beautiful children, a boy and a
girl, obviously twins. Slowly, the boy plucks the wings off
of a dragonfly, and sets the helpless insect in an ant farm
to be devoured. As the dragonfly writhes, the boy turns to
the girl, and both share an innocent smile.
The end of the movie coincides with a secret door opening in
the corner of the room. Claire finds a pair of gold-inlaid
Luger handguns inside, but taking them from the wall mount
they're on triggers a deadly trap, closing the secret door
and turning up the heat inside the room. Claire quickly
replaces the guns and tries to leave the mansion, but as she
puts her hand on the doorknob, she hears Steve scream for
help. She returns to the museum to find that he's caught
himself in Alfred's trap, and refuses to put the Lugers back
on the wall. Claire quickly figures out the room's computer
systems and releases the secret door, freeing Steve from the
trap. Steve, happy with his new guns, shows off for Claire.
Claire recognizes the guns as the ones she needs to open the
door in the study, but Steve refuses to give them to her unless
she gives him something fully automatic in return. Once again,
Steve runs off.
In the front hall of the mansion, Claire notices a laser
sight as it focuses on her head. She dives to the side and
hides behind a pillar. The gunman, a blond man dressed in a
blend of preppy fashion and military gear, demands that she
tell him who her friends are. He's convinced that Claire
deliberately let herself be captured so she could lead her
allies to his base to destroy it. Claire says that she
doesn't know what he's talking about, but he doesn't believe
her. His name is Alfred Ashford, he says, commander of the
base. Claire retorts that he must be one of Umbrella's
low-ranking employees if he's in command of such a small,
isolated facility. Alfred angrily tells her that his family,
the Ashfords, is one of the oldest and greatest in the world.
His grandfather was one of the original founders of Umbrella
Incorporated. He leaves, telling Claire that she's just a
rat in a cage.
A strange setup outside the palace, when Claire plays with
it, brings a submarine to the surface. She goes in,
hoping to use it to get away, but instead, winds up in an
underwater port for seaplanes; this must be the "airport"
that Steve was talking about. A cargo plane is docked inside.
If Claire finds a pilot, she could use it to escape. Even
better, she's already found one of the three keys she'll need
to unlock its hatch.
Claire finds a keycard inside an abandoned cargo bay, and heads
back to the military training facility to see what it unlocks.
The training yard is guarded by an enormous worm, which
tunnels under the ground and attempts to devour Claire. She
dodges it and runs into the facility.
Stairs just inside the entrance lead to a lab on the second
floor. The lab's experiment area is locked down due to
environmental pollution. As Claire walks by the lab's
observation window, a man in a biohazard suit desperately
beats against it, trying to get her to open the door. Claire
can't, and helplessly watches as something in the room with
the man grabs him by the head and crushes his skull against
the glass. As he sinks to the floor, a recording on the
overhead speakers alerts Claire that the area has been
contaminated, and will be locked down for ventilation.
Claire barely makes it out of the lab before it seals itself.
Claire finds extra ammunition in the facility's locker room,
then sets out to explore the rest of the first floor. As she
walks down a hallway, a steel gate silently shuts behind her.
In the next room, Alfred Ashford tries to ambush her, and
fails. Claire dodges his badly aimed gunfire and runs up to
the balcony where he's aiming from, but Alfred is already gone.
She chases him in the only direction he could've run in, but
he seals every door behind her from somewhere else in the
complex. As the final door locks, he jeers at her from a
hidden speaker, telling her that he's prepared a special
surprise for her. He hopes that she won't die too quickly.
The only door that Alfred's left unlocked leads to a
storeroom. A discarded pair of Ingram submachine guns lies on
the balcony with Claire. She picks them up, just in time to
watch a door on the other side of the room open. A new
creature makes it way in; it resembles a zombie, except it
only has one long arm. Its upper body is bulging with
muscle. As Claire watches in horror, the creature's arm
stretches to an impossible length, grabbing a pipe in the
ceiling and using it to swing over to her. Claire barely
manages to kill the creature.
As the rubber man falls dead, Alfred opens a door via remote
control. Claire tries to walk through it, but another rubber
man drops from the ceiling and seizes her head with its arm.
Claire struggles vainly against it as it hoists her into the
air, threatening to either crush her skull or suffocate her.
Suddenly, a window above the creature shatters, and Steve
jumps through it, blasting at the rubber man with the
Lugers. Roaring in pain, the rubber man drops Claire. Steve
drives it backward with a barrage of gunfire, kicks it into
the corner, and finishes it off with a final gunshot to the
head. He walks over and greets Claire, claiming to be her
"knight in shining armor". Claire denies that he's any such
thing, but offers him the Ingrams she found as a trade for
his Lugers. Steve accepts the trade. Suddenly, the floor
they're on begins to descend.
When the floor stops moving, Steve runs ahead of Claire
through the nearest door, anxious for an opportunity to try
out his "new toys". Claire catches back up to him on a
bridge overlooking the facility's sewer system, probably by
following the long trail of spent shells and dead zombies
he's left behind him. Steve claims that this is why Claire
needs him around; he'll watch her back. He then contradicts
himself, saying that the Ingrams he's been using are more
reliable than any person. Claire, who's still confused by
him, asks him why he's on this island, and where his family
is. Steve's response is to yell that he doesn't want to talk
about it and to shoot at the wall. He runs into a nearby
elevator, and Claire follows.
The path Alfred has set for them leads to a
balcony overlooking a motor pool. As Claire runs up to
Steve, the balcony collapses underneath them. Steve falls
free of the balcony, but Claire drops her gun and is pinned
underneath a chunk of rubble. A zombie shambles towards
Steve, who raises his Ingrams, but doesn't fire. Claire yells
at him to shoot it, but Steve is seemingly frozen in place.
The zombie turns towards Claire. Claire yells for Steve to
help her as the zombie bends down to attack. Steve hesitates
for a single long moment, then levels both Ingrams at the
zombie and yells, "FATHER!" He empties both guns into the
zombie, trying to fire even when he's out of ammunition.
Slowly, Steve sinks to his knees, sobbing.
Steve explains to Claire that his father used to work for
Umbrella, but had begun stealing information and auctioning
it off to the highest bidder. Umbrella caught him. Steve's
mother was killed, and he and his father were sent to this
prison. He despises his father for being so reckless and
stupid. Claire comforts him, telling him to rest, and leaves
him alone to mourn.
Alfred has apparently given up on his "deathtrap". The only
other problems Claire encounters in the military facility are
zombies and the odd mutated dog. In a storeroom, she finds a
copy of the Ashford family crest, an eagle clutching a
halberd in its claws. The crest is forged of some kind of
blue metal, while the halberd seems to be inlaid gold.
Elsewhere in the facility, the crest opens a compartment
containing a copy of Alfred's personal keycard. Using that
and the keycard she found earlier, Claire is able to unlock
most of the doors inside the base. Among other things, she
finds a grenade launcher and a vial of the kind of medicine
that Rodrigo needs.
Claire unlocks another door to find a monitor room. The
screens are still lit up. Inside, she finds the second key
to the cargo plane's door, as well as data on a creature
called an "Albanoid", the result of injecting the T-Virus
into a salamander. The creature is capable of generating
powerful electric shocks, and reaches adulthood only ten
hours after being "born". One of the monitors tells her what
the password to the lab she had to escape from earlier is,
as well as letting her know that the lab's systems have
finished the ventilation process. Claire heads back there.
Inside the lab, Claire takes a painting she finds on the wall.
As she does so, an infant Albanoid breaks out of one of the
nearby storage vats. Before Claire can do anything, the
insanely quick creature disappears into one of the ventilation
shafts. Claire is forced to escape from the lab a second time,
as the automated systems declare the lab contaminated and
permanently seal the area.
In the storeroom where Claire found the Ashfords' crest, she
uses the painting to solve a puzzle. The wall of the
storeroom slides back, revealing an elaborate diorama of the
facility and a golden key.
Heading back to the mansion, Claire uses the Lugers to
unlock the door in the study. The door leads to what looks
like Alfred's private office. Using his computer, Claire
discovers yet another secret passage, leading through an
abandoned aqueduct to an enormous house, sitting high up the
side of a mountain. Claire heads towards it as lightning and
thunder crash in the distance, and a woman's mocking
laughter echoes over the island...
The house has been hit fairly hard by the assault on the island.
It's guarded by rubber men, but Claire easily avoids them
and gets inside. The interior of the house is like a twisted
parody of childhood; either dolls or books cover every
available surface. A larger-than-life doll dangles from the
chandelier hook in the ceiling; it has been eviscerated.
Most of the furniture is sized for children, or for dolls.
On the house's second floor, Claire walks in on a
conversation between Alfred and his until-now-absent sister,
Alexia. As Claire lurks outside her bedroom window, Alexia
asks an unseen Alfred what's taking so long, when his
opponent is only a little girl. Alfred's success is
necessary, Alexia continues, to restore the honor of the
Ashford family. Alfred insists that he doesn't need to be
reminded. He intends to raise Alexia to the position of
leader of the once-again-glorious Ashford family. Alexia
sees Claire, but chalks it up to her own imagination.
The twins, having finished their conversation, leave.
Cautiously, Claire enters the twins' bedrooms, but no one is
in either of them, and she didn't see either of them in the
hall. A locked secret door above the bed in Alexia's room
tells her why. Both rooms have an ornate, locked music box,
both of which require yet another unique key. Claire finds a
silver key in Alexia's room and heads back to the mansion.
Claire uses the keys she's found to unlock several doors
inside the palace. One door leads to a boardroom, where,
after a frantic battle with a pair of rubber men, she finds
another copy of the Ashfords' crest. Another room, a private
casino, is apparently where Alfred goes for recreation.
The last and largest room in the palace is a shrine to the
past leaders of the Ashford family. An oil painting of a
twelve-year-old Alfred is in the place of highest honor. An
inscription tells the onlooker to find the family's real
master, with a history of the Ashfords lying underneath it.
When Claire solves the puzzle, the picture of Alfred
rotates, revealing a painting of an adult Alexia. Underneath
her picture, Claire finds an ant-shaped key that will fit
the music box in Alexia's bedroom.
With nowhere to go for now, Claire takes the crest back to
the prison, where it unlocks a door she saw earlier. The door
leads to the prison's medical facility, which is guarded by
a mob of zombies. Claire dispatches them handily. Inside the
medical facility, she finds stacked body bags and the journal
of the facility's doctor. The doctor is apparently just as sick
and crazy as everyone else who works for Umbrella, and Alfred
lets him use the base's prisoners to pursue his "studies". If
the base hadn't been attacked, Claire herself might've been one
of the doctor's guinea pigs.
Claire investigates the prison's crematorium, which has
little of interest besides a small chair in the corner,
sized for a child. When she comes back, one of the body bags
is empty, and a zombie in a lab coat is feeding desperately
on the dissected corpse. The doctor has apparently returned.
Claire shoots him dead, and finds a glass eye on his body.
The eye fits in the doctor's anatomical dummy, which opens
a secret passage to the doctor's private torture chamber,
filled with antique but well-used torture devices. Blood
cakes the floor. Claire finds a roll of piano music in this
hellish place, and leaves as soon as she can.
Rodrigo is still in the dark cellblock when Claire gets back
there. She gives him the vial of medicine. A surprised Rodrigo
thanks her, but refuses any further help. Claire lets him keep
her lighter, and mentions that it was a gift from her brother.
In gratitude, Rodrigo gives her a set of lockpicks, and urges
her to leave while she still can.
The piano roll from the torture chamber fits in the piano in
Alfred's recreation room. As the piano plays the same song
that Alfred's music box did, a secret panel in one of the
slot machines swings open. Inside, Claire finds the key to
Alfred's music box.
The music boxes are the disguised keys to a secret door in
Alfred's bedroom. Claire goes through to find herself
standing on a full-sized merry-go-round with only two
horses. The room is filled with toys and keepsakes of the
twins' childhood. A golden dragonfly sits on a child's
chair, across the room from a painting of an ant. The ant's
mouth is a concealed keyhole. Remembering the movie in
Alfred's museum, Claire plucks the dragonfly's wings off and
puts it in the ant's "mouth". Behind her, the merry-go-round
starts up again and turns, orienting itself so Claire can
climb up to yet another level in the room.
The final tier of Alfred's hideaway is a well-cared-for
study. Thick, well-thumbed books on biology, chemistry,
and genetics fill the bookcases on the walls. A newspaper
clipping on a stool is about a 10-year-old girl, maybe
Alexia, who graduated from a university with top honors
and was offered a job as a head researcher by Umbrella
Incorporated. On top of one of the bookcases, Claire finds
Alfred's private diary. He has written of his unwholesome
obsession with his sister; he regards Alexia as his queen,
a woman who the entire world must worship. Claire takes the
diary, and finds that it hides the final key to the cargo
plane. She can finally escape.
As she climbs down into Alexia's bedroom, Alexia herself
somehow sneaks up on Claire. Holding Alfred's rifle, Alexia
tells Claire that for the glory of the Ashfords, she must
die. Claire dodges Alexia's first shot, but she knows the
second won't miss. Alexia moves in for the kill.
Suddenly, Steve kicks in the bedroom door. He sees Alexia at
the same time she sees him, and each points their weapon at
the other. Alexia fires first, grazing Steve. As Steve
falls to the floor, he returns the favor with a wild burst
from one of his Ingrams. Alexia retreats into Alfred's bedroom
through a secret door.
Steve and Claire cautiously follow Alexia. At the end of a
trail of blood, Claire finds a blond wig on Alfred's music
box. As she picks it up, Alfred suddenly jumps from above
his bed, meaning to crush Claire's skull with the butt of
his rifle. Claire dodges, and as Alfred takes a second swing,
Steve kicks him across the room and holds him at gunpoint.
Alfred drags himself shakily to his feet, and accidentally
catches a glimpse of himself in the bedroom window. He's
wearing the same makeup that Alexia was. Screaming insanely,
Alfred runs, and a shocked Steve lets him go.
Steve, confused, asks what just happened. Claire, realizing
that she never did see Alfred during his "conversation" with
Alexia, concludes that there must never have really been
an Alexia. Alfred went to such extremes to hide Alexia from
everyone on the island because he thought he *was* Alexia.
This weirds Steve out, who decides that now they *really*
have to get out of this place (forget about the undead monsters;
it takes a *transvestite* to bother our man Steve). No sooner
does he say that than alarm klaxons start ringing all over the
factory. Alfred has activated the base's self-destruct system by
remote control.
Several cargo planes fly overhead as Claire and Steve leave
the mansion. Steve guesses that the other survivors are on
them. Quickly, they follow their example and run for the
underwater airport. Claire's keys unlock the cargo plane's
door, and Steve sets into the pilot's seat. He begins to
prepare the plane for takeoff, but he realizes that the
airport's maintenance bridge is in the way. Claire volunteers
to raise the bridge while Steve gets ready to take off.
Claire dashes across the airport and throws a switch, raising
the bridge. This forces her to take the long way around to get
back to the plane; Claire uses the airport's cargo elevator to
return to the training facility's courtyard. A female voice,
almost exactly the same as the one she heard in William Birkin's
lab, tells Claire that the facility will explode in five minutes.
As Claire boards the elevator, Alfred has reached the training
facility's monitor room. Speaking in Alexia's voice, he swears
revenge on Claire. He types a series of passwords into a computer
and punches a red button.
A lab elsewhere in the facility suddenly powers up. Automated
systems defrost a storage tank marked T-078. It swings open, and
a new creature steps out. It looks nearly human, save for its
chalk-white skin and lack of gender. Both arms terminate in
clublike, spiked protrusions. The Tyrant has returned.
Claire starts running the moment the elevator opens. As she
turns the corner towards Alfred's palace, the Tyrant breaks
down a fence and steps into her way. Claire frantically fires
at the thing, which endures incredible punishment before it
falls on its face. Claire jumps over its body and takes off
towards the airport.
Steve is anxiously waiting for her when Claire gets back to
the plane. He takes off, just as the base begins to rock
with scattered explosions. They get into the air without a
hitch, and for a moment, Claire dares to think that their
ordeal is over. Steve tells her that he hopes she finds her
brother, because he now knows what it's like to be alone in
the world. After an uncomfortable silence, he changes the
subject, asking her where she wants to go. Claire suggests
Hawaii, and Steve sets a course.
Back on the island, Alfred runs to the antique tank he keeps
outside the military training facility. He opens a hatch on
its back and moves the tank forward, revealing yet another
secret passage. Using a special key, a minature gold halberd
like the one on his family crest, Alfred opens the door at
the passage's end. He maintains a hangar here. As Alfred
climbs into a Harrier jet marked with the Ashfords' crest,
he promises Claire that he will show her what real terror is
all about.
A sudden impact shakes the cargo plane. Steve looks at the
plane's instruments, and somehow, the cargo bay's door has
come open. Claire volunteers to check it out.
Claire finds a stowaway in the cargo bay. The Tyrant turns to
her, one of its arms growing into a vicious claw. Claire's
weapons only seem to slow the creature down, but fortunately,
the cargo catapult is loaded and ready to fire. Claire leads
the Tyrant near the open cargo bay door, dodges one of its
mad lunges, and hits the switch on the catapult. The Tyrant
tries to catch the crate, but to no avail, and both it and
the crate tumble out into the ocean.
As she walks into the cockpit, Steve asks Claire what was
wrong. Claire nonchalantly tells him that it was nothing. As
Steve grins, the plane's autopilot suddenly turns on. Steve
tries to turn manual control back on, with no luck. Alfred's
face appears on a screen above the pilot's seat. Sneering,
he tells Claire and Steve that he's decided on a new
destination for them.
Several hours pass. Steve is slumped against the side of the
cockpit, with Claire asleep on his shoulder. He turns to
look at her, and slowly lowers his face to hers. Just before
he can kiss her, Claire starts to wake up, and |
