New Details Emerge About Resident Evil: Village

One of two things has happened concerning Capcom and its forthcoming “Resident Evil 8” (also known as “Resident Evil: Village”) game within the past few days. Either information from the semi-recent Capcom hack has started to be distributed across the internet and turned up in more places, or Capcom has made some information publicly available and then changed its mind about treating it as a press release.

Some people have even speculated that it might have been a combination of the two. Whatever the truth of that matter is, we now have more information about the highly-anticipated new game than we did 24 hours ago, and we’re excited to bring it to you.

In an ideal world, “Resident Evil: Village” would have been released by now already. Sony had high hopes that it might be possible to include it as a launch game with the PlayStation 5, and Microsoft probably had similar aspirations about packaging it with the Xbox Series X. Unfortunately for them, Capcom has decided to take a little while longer and makes sure that it gets everything right.

Even with the latest information, we still don’t know when the game is likely to be released. We know that work began on it in 2017, and we know that it will most likely land in the first quarter of 2021, but it’s unlikely that we’ll get a solid date before January 1st unless there are any further leaks.

While the game might be coming along at a slower rate than most people would like it to, it’s still likely to be a huge success when it lands. “Resident Evil” is always a success no matter what format it comes in. It’s been a success at movie theaters even though critics haven’t loved the films. It’s been a success as an animated series. Somehow, it’s even managed to be a success at online slots websites.

It’s hard to track down the official “Resident Evil 6” slots for UK players these days, but it was one of the top performing slots from the video game genre for a while. With the notable exception of “Street Fighter II,” hardly any video games have been successful when reimagined and repurposed as online slots. “Resident Evil” is an exception to that rule, which is a testament to the quality of the product and the popularity of the brand.

Enough talk of the past and the present, though – let’s look into the future and see what new information we’ve just been furnished with. We’ll start with the material which we know that Capcom published deliberately, which is three brand new screenshots along with a snippet of a development update. The quality of the game’s graphics caused concern among some fans when an early preview was aired in the middle of 2020 during a PlayStation pre-launch event.

People needn’t have worried. It’s evident from the new pictures that an extra layer of (presumably next-gen) polish has been added, and the game looks far more complete. While sharing the screenshots, producer Peter Fabiano confirmed that aspects of the plot would pick up from where the story of Ethan Winters left off at the end of “Resident Evil 7” but that this won’t be a barrier to people who are unfamiliar with the story jumping on. Fabiano sees the game as a celebration of all 25 years of the history of the franchise – which we hope isn’t a suggestion that this is going to be the last installment.

With that out of the way, we’ll now move on to the things we can say about the leaked data. If you don’t want to know anything about the game’s plot, we suggest you stop reading now. We’re not going to reveal any spoilers, but if you’d rather go into the game knowing nothing at all, this is your jumping-off point.

If you’re still here, you read on at your own risk! With that out of the way, we should warn you that other websites haven’t been as cautious as we have. The entire plot of “Resident Evil: Village” is currently available online – including the ending – along with video footage of pretty much every surprise that Capcom has included. It appears that someone got hold of a dev copy and decided to release it online.

We don’t believe in ruining games at this website, and so we’ll avoid the big details other than to say that some of the surprises are bound to please long-term fans of the game. We can also tell you that if you’ve had questions about certain elements of the plot for a while, you might be about to get them answered. A clear reason is given for Chris Redfield’s return.

The parts of Ethan Winters’ life that we don’t know about are going to be brought into the light. Some popular fan theories have been suggested to be correct, whereas others have been forcefully rejected. There doesn’t appear to be much vagueness or uncertainty about what Capcom wants you to understand about the narrative. If the reports are correct and the game hasn’t been changed since the dev copy was finished, you’ll have a much better sense of clarity about the franchise’s canon by the time the game is over.

While a leak of the kind that appears to have happened here can be devastating for a new game in the wrong circumstances, it can also help to build hype for the game’s release. We hope that’s the case in this instance, as it’s clear that Capcom and its developers have put their hearts and souls into the product. If the game is ready for launch, it might even bring that launch date forward.

The game is clearly at or close to the point of being finished, and so Capcom might push it out now to minimize the damage of the leaks. That would be a positive outcome from an unfortunate situation if it were to occur – and if it does, you can rest assured that you’ll hear about it here. Equally, if it doesn’t, we’ll be sure to bring you any more confirmed details as and when Capcom chooses to provide them, including, we hope, the game’s release date.