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Resident Evil 9 is coming.
By now it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. It’s also rumoured that remakes of Resident Evil 0 and Code Veronica X are also being developed alongside it. That’s pretty interesting, but then again, everybody expected that considering every other Resident Evil title (barring the original) has been remade for modern platforms.
Nay, it’s Resident Evil 9 that’s we should be focused on.
By now, we’ve gone through 3 different story arcs already. We have the Fall of Umbrella arc (Resident Evil 0 to Resident Evil The Umbrella Chronicles), the Uroboros arc (Resident Evil 4 to Resident Evil 5) and recently, the Mold arc (Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village).
It’s highly likely that Resident Evil 9 will be a whole new story arc, possibly with Ethan Winters’ daughter Rosemary Winters participating in some form or other. Whether Leon will appear like the mockup art from Play Asia’s RE9 listing suggests, is anybody’s guess.
In all of the story arcs, no matter the twist and turns, one thing remains constant.
The main characters never die, Ethan Winters notwithstanding of course. He doesn’t matter because nobody likes him. I sure as hell didn’t and when it was revealed Winters wasn’t even alive in Resident Evil Village, I didn’t care one bit.
No, to make Resident Evil 9 to really have an impact…one of the old guard has to bite it. As in die. Preferably horribly. Super gruesome.
It used to be that you’d wonder if somebody would make it to the end of the game when they showed up in a Resident Evil title. Resident Evil (the original) killed off most of the S.T.A.R.S. without even blinking. Resident Evil 3 killed off Brad Vickers. Code Veronica straight up murdered Steve Burnside right at the end.
It started to form a pattern; it’s only the secondary cast that can die.
Rebecca Chambers is alive. So are Jill, Chris and Barry. Leon, Sherry and Claire are alive too. So is Chris’ partner from RE5, Sheva Alomar and RE6’s Jake Muller.
It’s gotten so bad that I knew that none of the cast would be killed in Resident Evil: Death Island or in Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, no matter how dangerous the situations they were in.
Lo and behold, I was right again and again.
For Resident Evil 9 to have some feeling of high stakes, Capcom has to have the cajones to off one of the old characters.
My vote?
Leon.
Leon has defied monumental odds to survive every single outbreak event. He’s survived Raccoon City. He’s survived being implanted by a plaga. He’s survived pretty much everything you can think of. If there’s a person with an aura of invincibility in Resident Evil, it’s Leon.
He has to die in Resident Evil 9 because no other character death will have as much impact. He’s Capcom’s golden boy, having appeared in all the CGI Resident Evil movies. He’s also runner up in Resident Evil game appearances (7, not counting the non-canon Gaiden). Only Chris Redfield has appeared in more media than Leon (8).
He’s the one that has to die.
That’s the only way Capcom can show us again how high the stakes are in the world of Resident Evil. If main characters continue to survive and thrive, what’s the point? We’ll always know the ending because the hero makes it to the end. Doesn’t matter how, it just matters that they didn’t die.
Resident Evil was brilliant in the sense that the alternate endings could have anybody dying. Until Capcom made Resident Evil 2 and confirmed the canon ending is where everybody survived, most of us assumed either Chris, Rebecca, Jill or Barry (or even all of them) died when the Spencer Mansion and the lab blew up.
We need that sense of mortality back in Resident Evil 9 and while I don’t relish seeing a beloved character die, it certainly has to be done to take the series further and make it feel threatening again.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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