Resident Evil Requiem’s Focus on the Past Cuts the Winters Family Down at the Knees

Resident Evil Requiem is a seismic shift for the franchise as it’s finally explicitly reflecting on its lineage, not only within its original trilogy’s mainline roots but also its relatively obscure spin-off installments. Resident Evil Requiem’s Grace Ashcroft has an obvious tether to her mother, Alyssa Ashcroft, from Resident Evil Outbreak, for example, and Raccoon City will be returned to 30 years after it was nuked at the end of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. However, while this premise is exhilarating regarding the storytelling potential it possesses, the ninth mainline entry will seemingly ignore the elephant in the room.

It’s one thing for Resident Evil Requiem to abandon the cliffhanger Resident Evil Village proposed with Chris Redfield supposedly heading to the BSAA headquarters in Europe, but it’s another entirely for the throughline of the last two mainline games to now be a mere footnote in the overall franchise. Indeed, it would appear as if Capcom wasn’t bluffing when it declared that Resident Evil Village and its Shadows of Rose DLC would mark the end of the ‘Winters Saga.’ If so, that’s a big narrative portion of the mainline series that may never be returned to, thus possibly back-burning the importance of both Resident Evil 7 and Village.

Resident Evil 9 announcement gives me new hope that Capcom hasn’t forgotten about 2 of the franchise’s most underrated games

The reveal of Resident Evil Requiem instills new hope that Capcom hasn’t completely forgotten about two of the franchise’s best spin-off games.

Ethan and the Winters Family May Indefinitely Be in Resident Evil’s Rearview

Even if it flung the series back to horror in a profound way and introduced phenomenal villain characters via the Baker family, Resident Evil 7 was quite divisive concerning its choice of a protagonist. Ethan Winters was intended to be somewhat of an everyman—a blank canvas or avatar, so to speak, whom players could project any face onto since Ethan himself lacked an actual face at the time. Ethan’s anonymity and lack of bravado in Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village make for a more generic horror experience than one might otherwise expect from a Resident Evil game, where protagonists are commonly trained combatants exuding unending fearlessness.

It wasn’t until the reveal of Ethan’s death at the beginning of Resident Evil 7 that its story finally became compelling beyond burgeoning Mold lore, which even Village doubles down on. Resident Evil 7 and Village produced some of the series’ best villains and are terrific games in their own right. Unfortunately, they may ultimately turn out to be craters in the franchise’s overarching lore that are rarely if ever referred to again, at least based on the narrative direction that’s being taken with Resident Evil Requiem.

Resident Evil Requiem’s Nostalgia Can Serve the Series Better Than the Winters Ever Could

Resident Evil Requiem is a hard pivot that will be appealing to many players due to the unabashed nostalgia it offers between Resident Evil’s mainline games, spin-offs, and remakes. Of course, Grace Ashcroft isn’t a series veteran or legacy mascot, and neither is her mother, necessarily, but having a brand-new character with even a semblance of a connection to previous installments instills the idea of her becoming a legacy character nonetheless.

It would be more alarming if she was Leon’s daughter, for instance, but a tether to Resident Evil Outbreak instead is a gift for the series as it invites spin-offs into the conversation in a remarkable way.

Resident Evil returning to Raccoon City isn’t a decision that could’ve been made lightly, either, and such a wild swing will hopefully be met with an equally big story. That said, Resident Evil Requiem doesn’t seem to grant a ton of room for Rosemary or Mia Winters’ stories to continue at all unless they somehow reconvene in Raccoon City, and that leaves Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village as misfits in the mainline continuity.