Resident Evil Village

is exploring Lady Dimitrescu's castle. Like its predecessor, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil Village uses a first-person perspective, and has the option for a third-person perspective. It is set in a snowy explorable European village, described as "pulled straight from the Victorian era" and much larger and more immersive than its predecessor. Structures and buildings in the central village can be climbed and used to fight enemies. The game's primary enemies, the werewolf-like Lycans, are agile and intelligent and can wield weapons and attack in packs, forcing the player to rethink their strategy on whether to use sparse ammunition, use melee combat, or run away. Similar to Resident Evil 4 (2005), makeshift barricades can be used to fend off enemies. The players can hunt animals in the village and have them cooked into dishes by the Duke. Eating side dishes allows the player to gain certain advantages such as decreasing the damage taken while blocking. Treasures and collectibles can be found around the village, and sold to the Duke for currency. A map of the village can be accessed from the pause menu, as well as a diary with sketches recapping the player's progress in the story so far. The Mercenaries Mode, an arcade-style game mode of past Resident Evil games, returns in Village. In this mode, players fight through timed stages, and purchase items and upgrades from the Duke's Emporium. Players who purchased Village also received Resident Evil Re:Verse, a six-player online multiplayer third-person shooter. After nearly a year and half delay, Re:Verse was activated in October 2022. while GamingBolt stated that Re:Verse is the worst Resident Evil game. Re:Verse was shut down on June 29th, 2025. == Synopsis ==

Setting and characters Resident Evil Village is set four years after the events of Resident Evil 7, largely on February 9, 2021. Ethan has to traverse the village to rescue Rose. The hallucination-inducing and ghostly Donna Beneviento rules from her mansion, House Beneviento, and acts through her puppet Angie. The grotesque "merman" Salvatore Moreau operates from a reservoir in close proximity to the village. Karl Heisenberg, who can manipulate electromagnetic fields, leads an army of Soldat simulacra from a contemporary factory. All houses respond to a supreme leader figure called Mother Miranda, the witch-like ruler of the village who is a "presence worshipped by the villagers." Plot Three years after the events of Resident Evil 7, Ethan and his wife Mia have been relocated to Europe by Chris Redfield to start a new life with their newborn daughter Rose. One night, Chris and his Hound Wolf Squad raid the house, assassinate Mia, and abduct Ethan and Rose. The next morning, an unconscious Ethan awakens beside the crashed transport truck and discovers that Rose is missing. Making his way through a dark forest, he finds a mysterious village being terrorized by werewolf-like creatures called Lycans. Ethan finds surviving villagers holed-up in a house but fails to save them during an attack and is captured by Karl Heisenberg and brought before the village priestess Mother Miranda and her lords: Alcina Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau and Heisenberg himself. Ethan evades a death trap set by Heisenberg and ventures into Dimitrescu's castle in hopes of finding Rose, with help from a mysterious merchant known as the Duke. Ethan eliminates Dimitrescu and her daughters, finding a flask containing Rose's head. The Duke explains that Miranda placed Rose's body parts in four different flasks for a special ritual, and that she can be restored if Ethan recovers the other flasks, held by the remaining lords. While killing Beneviento and Moreau for their flasks, Ethan learns that the Hound Wolf Squad and Chris are also present in the village. Ethan passes a test from Heisenberg for the fourth flask and is invited to the lord's factory, where Heisenberg proposes they defeat Miranda together. Ethan refuses once he learns Heisenberg intends to weaponize Rose, and escapes. Venturing through the factory, Ethan encounters and confronts Chris over Mia's death, and Chris reveals that "Mia" was actually Miranda in disguise. Chris reveals that Miranda possesses the power of mimicry and was attempting to abduct Rose, succeeding when she crashed the transport truck. Chris destroys Heisenberg's factory while Ethan uses a makeshift armored tank to kill Heisenberg. After the battle, Miranda reveals herself and mocks Ethan, revealing her plans to take Rose as her own. She then rips his heart out, killing him. Witnessing Ethan's death, Chris leads Hound Wolf to extract Rose while a Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) assault force distracts Miranda. Chris enters a cave beneath the village and discovers the Megamycete, the source of the mold. He plants a bomb on the Megamycete lair and finds Miranda's lab, learning that she has lived a century since coming into contact with the fungus, and was a mentor to the Umbrella Corporation's founder Oswell E. Spencer; Oswell used her knowledge to develop the T-Virus. Miranda experimented with the fungus in an attempt to revive her deceased daughter, Eva, who had succumbed to the Spanish flu a century ago; the four lords, Lycans, and Eveline were all failed experiments. Rose, however, is a suitable host, due to her special abilities inherited from Ethan and Mia. Chris rescues the imprisoned Mia, who reveals that Ethan should still be alive, due to his "special" nature. Ethan revives after encountering Eveline in limbo, who reveals that he had died in his first encounter with Jack Baker in Dulvey three years ago but was revived by her mold, which gave him regenerative powers. The Duke brings Ethan to the ritual site where Miranda attempts to revive Eva, but ends up reviving Rose instead. Enraged, she battles Ethan, who kills her, before the Megamycete emerges from the ground. Ethan, with his regenerative powers finally having reached their limit, sacrifices himself to detonate the bomb planted on the Megamycete, while Chris transports Mia and Rose to safety. As Mia mourns Ethan's death, Chris learns that the BSAA soldiers sent to investigate the village were organic bioweapons and orders his squad to head for the BSAA's European headquarters to find those responsible. Years later, the teenaged Rose visits Ethan's grave before being called away on a mission for the BSAA. As she and her escort drive off into the distance, an unknown figure approaches the vehicle. Shadows of Rose Rose, now sixteen years old, has been separated from Mia while under Chris's protection. She has become a social outcast due to her abilities gained from the Megamycete, and resents her powers. Canine, a member of the Hound Wolf Squad, informs her that, according to Miranda's research, there is a Purifying Crystal within the realm of the Megamycete that can remove Rose's abilities. He proposes that Rose finds the rest of Miranda's research within the sea of consciousnesses stored within the Megamycete fragment that the team has salvaged. Rose uses her powers for her consciousness to enter the Megamycete, where she discovers herself in a realm similar to Dimitrescu's castle. She finds it covered in spewing mold, with monsters led by a masked version of the Duke hunting and killing clones of herself. She encounters a guiding spirit whom she names Michael. Despite Michael's advice to leave the Megamycete, Rose persists, wanting to rid herself of her powers. With Michael's help, Rose escapes the castle but falls into a deeper stratum within the Megamycete. Rose finds herself in a replica of Beneviento's house, where she relives her traumatic childhood of constant bullying by her schoolmates, and the realm's leader tells her it is her father's fault she received her undesired powers. To comfort Rose, Michael shows her a realm similar to her house as a baby, where she finds a letter for her written by her father, saying that he loves her and will always be by her side. She is immediately pulled out of the realm and brought back to the previous one by the realm's perpetrator who reveals herself to be Eveline, seeking to kill Rose out of jealousy over being a failed and unloved experiment. Michael once again helps Rose escape. Rose finds herself in yet another deeper stratum that resembles the village where she was kidnapped. There, she discovers and uses the Purifying Crystal, which absorbs her powers. Miranda's consciousness appears, who reveals that the man "Canine" Rose spoke with was an illusion to lure her into the Megamycete. Still determined to revive her daughter Eva, Miranda intends to use Rose's consciousness as a vessel now that she is powerless. Michael immediately manifests, revealing himself to be Ethan's consciousness within the Megamycete, and helps Rose escape, but Miranda catches up to them. Ethan encourages Rose to leave and battles Miranda himself. Seeing her father in danger, Rose is reluctant to leave, but when she hears his cries, she breaks the crystal and regains her powers before defeating Miranda. She embraces her father, who apologizes for not being there during her upbringing, but says that he is proud of her. Rose's consciousness then leaves the Megamycete. The post-credits scene from the base game plays out. ==Development==

Resident Evil Village was in development for approximately three and a half years before its announcement in June 2020. Without having RE7 release to judge its success, the team kept the initial designs around the core survival horror gameplay roots that had been in Resident Evil 4 (RE4) and had been a return to form in RE7. Sato said that for the new game, "we're bringing the essence of Resident Evil 4, while Resident Evil 7 functions as the base for the game". RE7 was released in January 2017 and was well received by critics and players, so the team decided to make the next game a direct sequel to RE7, keeping its protagonist Ethan Winters as the main character and retaining the same style of gameplay. Sato also stated that the village's snowy weather was inspired by the team's trip to Europe for research for the game, where they were met by an "unseasonable cold snap, the scenery was covered in snow. This inspired us to implement snowscapes into our game. We use snow not just for visual presentation, but as gameplay elements as well." Development on the game was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, at one point bringing the development process to a halt for a month. According to art director Tomonori Takano, the developmental team drew inspiration from Resident Evil 4 as they wanted memorable characters to populate the village. Takano said the developers wanted to continue the same approach that started with Resident Evil 7 in that they wanted to move away from simply using elements like zombies to scare players but created unique situations and characters that would create fear in new ways. Castle Dimitrescu was also inspired by Peleș Castle in Romania. The other three Houses in the villages drew from other classic gothic horror themes of simulacra, mermen, and ghosts for Heisenberg, Moreau, and Beneviento, respectively. Kanda described Chris's appearance in the game as "a much darker, more sinister role," in contrast to his previous heroic portrayal in the series. Chris's actions serve as a major mystery to the game, which Capcom felt was an opportunity to showcase the character's progression to fans who were already familiar with him. Similar to Resident Evil 3 (2020), Resident Evil Village included a six-player online multiplayer third-person shooter game titled Resident Evil Re:Verse, developed by NeoBards Entertainment. Originally meant to launch on the same day as the main game, the game was delayed until summer 2021, and was delayed again before releasing on October 28, 2022, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions were announced in January 2021. On PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, Village includes optional ray tracing effects while older eighth generation consoles rely on traditional forms of rasterization such as screen-space. Ray traced global illumination (RTGI) is used for indirect lighting. RTGI contributes warmer single bounce lighting in indoor scenes and enables softer shadows with correct falloff properties. When RTGI is enabled, it also replaces screen-space ambient occlusion with ray traced ambient occlusion. The game supports ray traced reflections, allowing materials such as polished floors to accurately reflect their surroundings. However, these reflections are rendered at as low as one eighth of the primary resolution. Volumetric fog and volumetric lighting are used in outdoor scenes to create atmosphere. Ambient animation gently moves trees in the breeze. Resident Evil Village integrates hardware-based Tier 2 variable rate shading. FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) selectively increases the sharpness of pixels in certain areas of a frame, intended to reduce TAA blur. An alternative to the RE Engine's default screen-space ambient occlusion included is AMD's FidelityFX CACAO, an adaptive compute-based form of ambient occlusion that is higher quality than the screen-space solution. On Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, the game runs at 45 frames per second when ray tracing is enabled and 60 frames per second when disabled. On PlayStation 5, loading screens have been entirely eliminated with just a short dip to black due to the console's solid-state drive offering over 5 GB/s sequential read speeds. A high frame-rate mode was added for PlayStation 5 Pro was added targeting 120 frames per second if ray tracing is disabled. This mode was temporarily removed in the February 2, 2026 update 1.320 before being restored in update 1.231. Resident Evil Village was ported to macOS with Apple silicon in 2022. The ray tracing effects featured in the Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC versions are missing. The 2023 port to iOS also forgoes ray tracing in spite of the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro SoC featuring hardware acceleration for ray tracing. Village was one of the first titles to integrate Apple's own MetalFX upscaling solution. MetalFX uses temporal upscaling in quality mode and spatial upscaling in performance mode. MetalFX is able to keep disocclusion artifacting minimal but struggles with aliasing and image stability. The port also suffered from shader compilation issues. In their Metal API, Apple allows shader precompilation to be done when building game projects which was not done with Village. DRM In July 2021, it was discovered that the PC version of Resident Evil Village suffered performance losses such as stuttering due to high CPU overhead from Denuvo DRM. A pirated version of the game without DRM was found to perform better than the official release. A patch on July 20, 2021 addressed DRM-related stuttering issues. In April 2023, Denuvo DRM was removed entirely from Village. ==Release and promotion==

Lady Dimitrescu, a character who rose in popularity prior to the game's release, was featured extensively in promotional material and merchandise prior to the game's launch. To promote the game, Capcom announced that a special lottery event would be held to give away a free Resident Evil Village acrylic jigsaw puzzle which could be entered by tweeting the hashtag #VILLAGE予約. On March 3, AMD announced that the PC version would feature ray tracing and AMD FidelityFX. Resident Evil Village was the featured cover game in the April 2021 issue of Game Informer. On April 30, 2021, a puppet show featuring the four lords was released on YouTube, with each puppet claiming that they are not scary. On May 11, 2021, Capcom released a video that showed a behind-the-scenes on their YouTube channel on working on the game's theme song, "Village of Shadows". Maiden, the first of two demos, was released exclusively for the PlayStation 5 on January 21, 2021. For PS4 and PS5 users, an early access demo Village was released on April 15, 2021. It allowed players 30 minutes to explore the village and was playable only once and live for eight hours. The Castle demo was released for PlayStation early access users on April 24, 2021. It allowed players to explore the castle for 30 minutes, it was also playable once and live for 8 hours. A multi-platform demo released on May 1, 2021, for all platforms. It allowed players to explore both the Village and Castle for 60 minutes and it was live for a seven-day period. Village was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on May 7, 2021. In celebration of the release, Capcom commissioned a large chalk artwork of a Lycan creature to be drawn on a hillside at Somerset. The artwork was 58 meters high and over 100 meters long. In Japan, the game was released in two versions to comply with local regulations, a CERO Z version that is legally restricted to ages 18 and up, and a CERO D version with less violence that is available to ages 17 and up with no legal restrictions. Both versions contain less violence than the international releases. A collector's edition was made available for the console versions, featuring extras such as a Chris Redfield figurine, a hardcover art book, and a village map poster. A macOS version and a cloud version for Nintendo Switch were both released on October 28, 2022. A virtual reality mode for the PlayStation 5 version was released alongside the PlayStation VR2 headset on February 22, 2023 as free DLC. A version of the game for select iPad and iPhone models was released on October 30, 2023. A Nintendo Switch 2 version was released on February 27, 2026, alongside Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Requiem. Downloadable content At E3 2021, Capcom announced that downloadable content for the game was in development. At the Capcom Showcase in June 2022, the ''Winters' Expansion was revealed. It includes a new story expansion titled Shadows of Rose'', featuring Rosemary "Rose" Winters as the playable protagonist, alongside a third-person camera mode for the main story, and two new stages and Chris Redfield, Lady Dimitrescu, and Karl Heisenberg as additional playable characters for the Mercenaries mode. The expansion released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S versions on October 28, 2022, for the Nintendo Switch cloud version on December 2, 2022, and for the macOS version on January 13, 2023. ==Reception==

Critical reception Resident Evil Village received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Leadbetter tested this version against the original release and was able to confirm that the crack improved upon the game's performance, stating that "By stripping out what the hackers call Capcom's entry points for the DRM... the game is absolutely transformed in those areas." A similar problem where Capcom had added additional DRM atop Denuvo had affected Devil May Cry 5 for Windows, and after Capcom's official update that removed Denuvo and its DRM, Devil May Cry 5s performance was improved. Capcom released a patch for Village later that July that, among other changes, altered how the game used Denuvo. Leadbetter found that the patch improved performance, running equivalent to the pirated version. Alleged plagiarism Shortly after release, film director Richard Raaphorst accused Capcom of plagiarism, citing close similarities between a monster that was featured in his film ''Frankenstein's Army and the "Sturm" creature in Resident Evil Village''. Sales Resident Evil Village shipped over three million units in its first four days of release, becoming the third-fastest-selling title in the Resident Evil series, tied with 2019's Resident Evil 2. At the same time, Capcom announced the series had sold a total of 100 million units since its debut in 1996. From May 3 to May 9, 2021, Famitsu rated the PlayStation 4 version at first place in the Japanese gaming charts, selling 111,171 units in a week. The PlayStation 5 version sold 38,713 units, reaching fourth place in the charts. Resident Evil Village was also the best-selling game across the United States and the United Kingdom during the month of May 2021. It went on to become the eighth best-selling game of 2021 in the US. The game sold 6.1 million units worldwide by May 2022, and reached 6.4 million units by June 2022. By January 2023, it had sold 7.4 million units. By June 2023, it had sold 8.3 million units. At the end of 2023, it had sold 9.3 million units. By November 2024, it had sold over 10.5 million units. By January 2026, it had sold 13.589 million copies. Resident Evil Village received a boost in sales leading up to the release of Resident Evil Requiem and the 30th anniversary of the Resident Evil franchise in 2026. Accolades == Notes ==