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Resident Evil Village isn’t as much of an outright rollercoaster as the action-packed
romps of, say, 6, but you’re still being whisked away on a theme park ride of some
description—a haunted house, perhaps. Village keeps this train barrelling through a bunch
of functionally distinct scenarios, each representing a different slice of the horror experience.
A Lycan-infested village, a gothic castle filled with weird bug ladies, viscera-covered
swamp, industrial body horror, it’s all here and the game, for as much content as
there is, whirs you along it all at a dizzying pace. Village’s overall tone is reminiscent
of the grand guignol—an almost theatrical celebration of all that is gruesome—and
it always retains that distinctly Resident Evil shlock that manages to keep the playful
vibe of proceedings intact. It’s gloriously ostentatious.
Which is why one, much more understated set piece stands out so distinctly from the rest
of the pack. Off the beaten path, away from the circus-like chaos of everything you’ve
seen up to this point is just… a house. As you enter, you find that it’s not so
unlike the home you started the game in. And given the onslaught that protagonist Ethan
has had to endure to get here, you would never guess that this unassuming building would
be home to one of the most genuinely terrifying sequences I’ve experienced in a game—one
that, thanks to a carefully curated mix of visuals, sound design and subversion of its
own mechanics as a game, all topped off with an impeccable sense of timing, is sure to
stick with me for a long time to come. And it all begins with that setting—House
Beneviento, home to the dollmaker of the same name and where Ethan must go to find another
part of his missing baby Rose. All music cuts out, all ambient sound from the waterfall
outside fades away and you’re left with the pure, unadulterated domesticity. And it’s
here that this section’s horror begins to make itself apparent, with its long, stark
hallways very clearly bringing to mind a certain teaser you can’t play anymore.
A few years back I made a video about PT—Hideo Kojima’s ill-fated demo, prequel, eff you
to his Konami overlords for the cancelled Silent Hills—where I pointed out that the
detail afforded to its homely environment shifts the dynamic of your average horror
game somewhat—where you typically start at a place of limited understanding and, over
time, build an arsenal of both weapons and knowledge that gradually grant you more agency
over a situation. Arguably the scariest part of Castle Dimitrescu,
for example, is at the start where you have no idea how any of this stuff works or how
you’re going to get out—there’s an otherworldly quality to this castle with numerous, mysterious
statues poking out of the ground and a bunch of bug ladies you seemingly can’t kill at
this stage. On the other hand, the reason settings like
House Beneviento work so well at unsettling you, despite seeming so relatively normal
compared to everything you’ve come up against up to this point, is precisely that normality.
Coupled with the continually jaw-dropping fidelity of the RE Engine, there’s really
no mistaking this setting—you know this type of place, you’ve probably seen one
or two hallways like it, you understand how this place should function, which makes it
all the more skin-crawling when said understanding is chipped away at over time and you have
no idea where it will end (and as I’m editing this I want to shout out a great video about
House Beneviento I just found by Ben Plays Games who explains that the PT references
go way beyond just the domesticity of the setting, in ways I hadn’t even noticed before).
And as you approach the central hub of the house, where the bulk of its puzzles take
place, the game does play certain visual tricks on you, but it also revels in maintaining
that façade of eery quiet for as long as it possibly can—refusing to show its hand.
I mean, sure, there’s something uncomfortable about the imagery of taking a doll this…
uncanny apart limb from limb; the appendages hanging from the ceiling certainly don’t
exactly evoke cosiness. But in mechanical terms this is actually one of the breezier
parts of the game. The puzzles are so simple as to be unsettling in their own right—these
“find thing to access other thing” affairs not even requiring the massive distances travelled
in other areas where long discovered locked doors could now be opened with a key found
halfway across the map. Here, everything is just a few steps away.
These brainteasers are about as step-by-step as it gets; even with the knowledge that something
is bound to go wrong here, there’s maybe that part of you that gets lulled into a false
sense of security—with the situation going just long enough without event, being close
enough to a typewriter as to give off an air of security, yet simultaneously feeling like
you’re blasting through the challenges presented. Nothing can stop you; you’ll be out of here
in no time. Oh wait. When things obviously take a turn for the
worst, the setup has been so carefully crafted, you’ve been allowed to feel somewhat safe
for just long enough that what follows is as completely shocking as it is. This is the
explosion that all that quiet has been leading to, and even though it’s a relatively tiny
sequence, the appearance of this horrendous goop baby puts prior pursuers to absolute
shame, if only on a visual level. It may not seem as aggressive as those iconic foes, but
I mean, just… look at this thing. A large part of how chilling this encounter
is, is down to the brilliant sound design. The relative silence you hear upon entering
the house has already been broken by the shrill, disturbing cries of a baby as you climb out
of the well. And yet, once the monster appears, harsh distortion takes things one step further,
and a sound that should represent pure happiness—a baby’s laughter—becomes completely sinister.
Keeping with the motif of radio static the designers have established up to this point,
you’re made to question if these sounds are even real, or something broadcast in the
distance—perhaps in your own mind. You are this being’s plaything, and like most babies
do with their toys, this monster will go to great lengths to stick you in its mouth.
Suddenly, as the lights go out, the domestic setting turns against you; these samey hallways
become their own labyrinth as you struggle to get your bearings. The doll puzzle hub
is now lit like a photography darkroom; those hanging wooden limbs feeling all the more
menacing in the limited light. And I cannot tell you how my stomach lurched when I reached
that elevator, found there was no power and realised I had to go back, carefully dodging
the baby along the way. And this is another thing this sequence does
really well—making you take the initiative to lean directly into that fear and danger.
In order to get the fuse, you need to descend to the house’s lowest level, you have to
take the fuse from this bedroom, enveloping yourself in darkness. To get back out past
the baby, you have to lure it in here, corner yourself and let it get terrifyingly close
while you cower under the bed, before running for your goddamn life.
And in such a high-pressure situation as this, it’s the little things getting in your way
that make the escape so much more scary and exhilarating, even if not particularly challenging.
Briefly taking a left turn before remembering that right is the way out; slowing down just
a bit after hitting the awkwardly jutting kitchen table—with the wailing baby stampeding
behind you, these slight errors now feel monumental. On top of the general fear of getting out
unscathed, your head is now playing panicked games with you like “how did you not remember
your way down here? It’s a straight hallway! How did you bang into something as insignificant
as this? Keep going! Keep going!” By playing into the simplicity of its domestic setting,
the developers can create these mind games out of the most minute of details—they don’t
need to go over the top with hazards and obstacles like they might in the game’s more overtly
horror-esque environments. Here, a hallway, a table is enough.
But these kinds of mind games even extended to the way I’d interact with the most basic
of game functions. For example, I’d find solace whenever I’d open the map, I’d
linger on pause menus for way longer than usual—I’d take these breaks just to stop
myself clenching my jaw too much. However, this would always, without fail, give way
to that crushing realisation that I would have to open that game again and, when I did,
it seemed as if Village was punishing my cowardice by slowing Ethan to a complete stop, killing
his momentum and forcing me to hammer on the analogue stick, watching him toddle along
as if there wasn’t this mad baby behind him.
And it’s not just mechanics either—animations now play a central role in sustaining the
horror here. Take the whole “floating key” thing that happens when you unlock doors,
for instance—what was previously a delightfully video game-y animation, consistent with the
series’ shlocky tone, now takes on a completely different meaning, as this monster is rapidly
approaching and yet you decide to slowly get the key out, let it float in the air for a
second, slot it in and daintily turn, adding to the already agonising wait for the elevator
doors themselves to open—all while those wails get louder and louder, and I daren’t
look back for a second. You know, it’s all scripted in a way that
should make repeat playthroughs substantially less terrifying, in the same way that modern
cinematic platformers have their illusion broken when you realise that all of this stuff
is just carefully timed to make you feel like you only just escaped certain death. Similar
to what I’ve discussed in my videos on the remakes, however, the knowledge of this scripting,
hell my ability to cheese it without any trouble… never stopped me, in all my attempts getting
footage of this sequence, from smooshing my face into an elevator grate as hard as I goddamn
could. When even the slightest gap in the door appears, I made sure that Ethan shoved
himself in, hammering on the action button to activate the lift and put an end to this
segment, as this monstrosity’s open mouth briefly makes you wonder if you really are
safe even with those doors closed. And the thing is, that’s kind of… it.
After a simple, if creepy “find the doll” boss puzzle, you’re back out on the trail,
House Beneviento soon to become a foggy memory. And I guess looking back, a large part of
why this level has so stuck with me is because it’s so short-lived. This is a setting so
detailed that it could honestly house an entire indie experience or something—you might
expect it to keep building to something more, but then it just… ends.
Not in a way that I feel let down or anything, but more that this insane thing has just happened
to you over the course of about half an hour, only for the game to unceremoniously spit
you back out and shove you towards the next stop on this ride, as if to say, “you think
you’re done?” And while it’s true that nothing else in the game comes close to the
legitimate terror of House Beneviento, it’s perhaps this overall approach of never letting
you get comfortable in any environment for very long that caused me to feel as truly
unsettled playing Village as it ultimately left me.
And speaking of unsettled, let me unsettle you with this terrible segue—a massive thank
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