I finished Resident Evil 7 Gold Edition on Thursday night, and I think it’s fair to say that I’ve got some very mixed feelings about it. There will be spoilers ahead.
In the base game, the Baker family are infected by Eveline. Part way through the game there is an almost spiritual moment, when the ‘soul’ of Jack Baker begs you to kill Eveline to free his family. You do so and fly off into the sunset (as is tradition), presumably having saved the souls of the infected, and stopping the outbreak.
Then comes the DLC. First, let’s go for Not a Hero – where you play Chris Redfield just after the end of the core game. Surprise! The infection isn’t stopped, so the climax of the game seems pointless. Also, surprise! It turns out that Lucas Baker was the head scientist creating Eveline in the first place, even though there were absolutely no hints, allusions, or indications for that in the core game.
Next let’s move onto the Banned Footage DLC. This includes some throw-away mini-games, a small section about a character escaping from a bedroom (which was quite good) and Daughters, which shows what happened when Eveline arrived at the Baker household. Lucas, despite being intimately familiar with Eveline, and knowing exactly how dangerous she is, does not react upon seeing her at all. In fact, he seems to be largely a victim in this like the rest of his family.
Finally, let’s look at End Of Zoe – a while (I think it’s a few weeks) after the end of the core game, it turns out the infection is still rampant and expanding. Also, a character who you most definitely seemed to kill for good in the core game is back. It turns out that shooting the character wasn’t the method for killing him – instead you needed to punch him very hard in the face, which is also for some reason more effective than ripping his head off.
I know the games are ludicrous, but at least previous entries seemed consistent in their tone and writing. But in this case it seems like the Alpha team made the core game and banned footage, then moved onto the Resident Evil 2 remake, meanwhile the Bravo team came in, spilled coffee on the design documents, and replaced the wrecked pages with bits from Resident Evil 5 (i.e., a bad one)
DLC is a delicate balance – sometimes it’s throw away wastes of time, sometimes it adds to the story but feels slightly hollow while doing so. This is the first instance I know of where DLC actually detracts from the core experience. Urgh.
By the way, are there any rumours on a Spider-Man Game of the year edition (i.e. one with all the DLC) – I’m waiting before making that particular jump.
Joseph Dowland
GC: Lucas didn’t create Eveline, he was given a role as a researcher after she took over the rest of his family. There is no Game of the Year Edition for Spider-Man, but then its DLC isn’t particularly good.
