Resident Evil Village - What We Know So Far

Hello everyone and welcome once again!

The fact that I was gone for such a long time doesn't mean that I haven't been keeping my ears open and my nose pointed towards the wind. The backlog of werewolf-related things to talk about has been building, I'll admit. When I came back, I thought I'd take a look at good old Werewolf Theory's posts section - and the amount of drafts that I left genuinely surprised me. Most of them still require quite a bit of research and work to be ready to publish, though, so I can't say when I'll be able to go through them all. But I sure as heck can try!

In the meantime, however, there is a more pressing matter I'd like to talk about. And that is the upcoming newest instalment in Capcom's Resident Evil series - Resident Evil Village that is scheduled to release on May 7th this year for PC and both the current and the older generation of consoles. It's already way overdue that we talk about this one, so let's get to it!

The official cover artwork for Capcom's upcoming release.
Click on the image to view version for different platforms and to pre-order/purchase the game from Amazon using Werewolf Theory's affiliate link

The image above speaks for itself as to the reason why I am writing about the game here on Werewolf Theory. Ladies and gentlemen, we now have werewolves in Resident Evil. Let's take a look at what we know so far.

Resident Evil Village (also known as Resident Evil 8, since the roman numerals are incorporated into the title), originally titled Biohazard: Village in Japanese, was first announced during Sony's Playstation showcase event in June 2020. I remember being completely taken aback when the announcement trailer showed enemies that looked very much like werewolves. I was shocked at the reveal of the official cover artwork as well, which features one of the characters' face on one side and a (were)wolf's snout on the other. Because Resident Evil has always been predominantly about zombies, mutants and what have you, I was more than surprised to see the newest instalment in the series going in a completely different direction. If someone had told me that the new game was going to replace zombies as primary enemies with something else, I don't think I would have guessed that werewolves and vampires (yes, vampires) would take their place.

But, as it turned out as more of the game was shown, it was a perfect match for the setting of the game's story. Since the announcement last year, two more trailers, a developers' insight video, a gameplay showcase and a playable demo have been released, giving us more details about what's going to happen as well as a better look at the game world itself. The game's director, Morimasa Sato, said in the developer insights video that he thinks of the Resident Evil series "as horror movies with the player in the starring role". By the looks of the upcoming release, I would say they're on the right track.

A look at the village's graveyard, with Castle Dimitrescu in the background

Resident Evil Village takes place a few years after the events of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and continues the story of the previous game's protagonist, Ethan Winters, who is shown living what seems to be a regular, normal life with his wife. At some point, however, he is called on by Chris Redfield (a character that has been part of the series since the original Resident Evil) who, for as of this moment unknown reason, murders Ethan's wife before kidnapping him and transporting him to a remote village somewhere in Europe. We don't get a precise location, but from the way it looks (and the fact that the nearby castle is called Castle Dimitrescu) I would say it's pretty safe to assume it's in Romania, or close. It has a very Van Helsing-esque, gloomy feel to it, with a sinister-looking castle towering over it in the distance. As can be expected, something wicked is going on in the village - as the player-controlled Ethan explores it and solves various puzzles, he is confronted by a woman who seems to be either a witch or a cult member (for yes, there seems to be some sort of cult present) and attacked by what appear to be ghouls, as well as werewolves.

And then there are the vampires, a female coven of whom are the main antagonists of the game. From what has been revealed so far, Lady Dimitrescu, the leader of this coven, is also the lady of the aforementioned castle. Ethan's mission is to brave the dangers in the village and reach the castle, where he is to rescue a girl who is being held captive by the vampires, a plot-line very reminiscent of the earlier Resident Evil 4. And so far that is about it when it comes to what we know of the story. Why did Chris murder Ethan's wife and bring him all the way to a European village full of all kinds of supernatural beings? Is Chris a werewolf, like the cover art would suggest? If so, how did he become a werewolf? Is he part of the village cult? Are the werewolves controlled by the castle's vampires? Who is Lady Dimitrescu and what is her motivation? Who is the girl Ethan's meant to rescue and why was she captured in the first place? It seems that we will have to wait a while longer to get all the answers.

What looks to be a glabro werewolf, as seen in one of the trailers

I can't say I've ever been a fan of the Resident Evil series (hear me out here), because I've never really played through any of the games myself. I've made several attempts over the years to finish the first one, but I never managed to do so. But I've enjoyed seeing other people play them, because their stories were always interesting to me, since I like pretty much everything horror. Maybe this time I'll give it a shot, since the newest part has werewolves in it and I really like the art style.

Anyhow, there's still quite some time before the release. Who knows what new information will be made public before then? If there is anything of interest (read: anything werewolf-related) in whatever is released next, I will make sure to update this post. In the meantime, you can view all of the Resident Evil Village content released thus far on the official Resident Evil YouTube channel. You can also visit the game's website at https://www.residentevil.com/village. And if you happen to be planning on pre-ordering or buying the game when it releases from Amazon, I would be grateful if you used my affiliate link by clicking on the first picture in this post or by using the link provided in the Support Me section at the top 😀

So, what do you think about the newest Resident Evil game? Let me know in the comments below!

Until next time! 

News From the Dark Side of the Moon #4

3:40 A.M.

*KICKS THE DOOR IN*

I'M BACK.

Okay, seriously, though... How do I even start after all this time? I can hardly believe it's been four and a half years since I last posted something here. Although I've been hovering around the place, as well as Facebook and Twitter (though less) like a ghost, posting something or other from time to time, don't think I've forgotten about the blog. I am currently both mentally and physically exhausted from trying to give the website an overhaul, but I just wanted to give you all a quick update about what's what. It's 3:50 a.m. over here, so if I can still count, I spent about eight and half hours grappling with Blogger and its themes in order to give Werewolf Theory a bit of an updated look, at the same time keeping all the features I want and making them do and look the way I want. Which has not been easy, even less so now that I've forgotten most of what I knew of HTML from back in the day. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done, so I foresee another day of work ahead of me tomorrow before I can say I'm content with the changes. I would also like to say a few words about the time when I was away, but I'm afraid I have to leave that until tomorrow - I'm just too tired right now and I can feel my fingers are trying to tell me to give it a rest for today.

Before I crash, I would like to thank all of you who have been visiting both Werewolf Theory and its Facebook page, giving likes and leaving comments. I realise that sometimes it might seem like you're throwing your feedback into a black hole, but know that I read everything. Thank you for all your support. I probably don't deserve it after all this time, but... Thank you.

Okay, I will update this post later on to say what I want to say, but, for now, I need a rest 😆

3:15 P.M.

Yes, I slept that long.

So, first things first. I'll keep this short, because I don't feel like wallowing in self-pity and it won't make for a good read either. A lot has happened in the last 4-5 years, a lot has changed in my life. Most of that time I spent coping with depression and anxiety. The former I was able to overcome thanks to my loved ones' support as well as professional help; the latter doesn't seem like will be leaving me entirely any time soon, but I'd like to think I've got it under control. So that's that. Another thing was that I slowly became burned out on writing articles for Werewolf Theory. Research, preparation and the actual writing were always a long process and at some point I simply couldn't get myself to spend a few hours at a time to publish something. A lot of my creative work, not only writing-related, fell by the wayside over time in favour of other activities. As I thought of the blog every time I would hear something werewolf-related, I felt sad, knowing that I just wasn't in the right mindset to do anything with it. I basically lost my drive. This was exacerbated by the fact that I really wanted to try making the Werewolf Movie Reviews into a video format as well as my indecision as to whether I should go forward with that idea or stick to the written format. I was also terrified of the additional workload that would put on top of what such reviews/analyses already require. And at that point I began wondering if I should start making just video content altogether or divide it between the blog and the YouTube channel. If I decided to divide, then what should go on the YouTube channel and what should stay here? And so my inability to decide and my doubts whether or not I would be able to pull the video reviews off discouraged me from doing anything even more. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into years - and so here we are. So that's pretty much a general overview of what's been going on with me. I'm still kind of undecided about the reviews. What do you think?

The overhaul

Like I posted on Facebook, I decided to finally do some spring cleaning on the blog. I liked the way it looked for the last few years, but I thought it would be a good thing to change some things up a little, you know, give it a bit of a different look for a different time. Honestly, I knew it would be a bit of work, but I didn't expect it to be this much. But it was needed. I still haven't finished, but I'm definitely closer to being done than not. Going through all the elements of the page allowed me to fix some bugs that have appeared over the years due to links changing and so on. Just for clarity's sake (since you probably can see the most obvious changes already), here's what's different:

• Sections into which the posts were divided have been moved to separate pages that can now be accessed on the cross-bar below the header. It was something I had been wanting to implement for a long time, but never really knew how without building the page from scratch. Fortunately, Blogger's Pages feature turned out to be great for this purpose.
• Moving the link lists to the mentioned tabs above allowed me to cut down to only one sidebar, which, I think, is a visual improvement
• I think that at this point I've removed all Amazon affiliate ads from the sidebar. The adds after posts I left for now, because I don't think they're as annoying. I will keep an eye on them and if I don't like them, I'll do away with them as well.
• There is now a dedicated tab called "Support Me", where you can find out how you can, well, support me. I think it's far more organised and less jarring than having stuff all over the place. So check it out, if you'd like to quite literally put food on my table.
• Last but not least, I refreshed the header at the top. It's a bit different than it used to be, but still uses most of the old art.

And I think that's about it for the changes, at least for now. Tell me what you think!

The road ahead

When it comes what's next for Werewolf Theory, we will see how it goes. Coming back and looking through all the content I noticed I've got a lot of posts saved as drafts. The degree to which they are finished varies, some are pretty much outlines, others need just a little more work. I will try to pace myself this time so as not to get burned out again and if I manage that, we should be good. Because I have a veritable mountain of things I want to write about. I will take it one step at a time and see where the road ahead takes me.

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you all again soon. Welcome to what I hope will be a great new era for Werewolf Theory 🐺

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