Nightmare Fuel / Resident Evil 4 (Remake)

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Saluden a los nuevos y mejorados Regeneradores. ^Translation:Say hello to the new and improved Regenerators.

The original Resident Evil 4 may have started the shift to focusing more on action, but this remake is just as terrifying because it is still a horror game at its roots.

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Pre-Release

• Courtesy of the RE Engine, as always. The level of gore and viscera was already disturbing in the original Resident Evil 4, but much like the preceding two remakes, plus Biohazard and Village, the details are ramped up to realistic levels:
  • From the showplay trailer, the first house is seemingly empty at first after leaving the slightly foggy forest, before Leon discovers the first body of one of his police escorts down in the dark basement, and then hearing the panicked screaming of the second officer over the radio before he gets cut off. Leon initially encounters his first Ganado who attempted to ambush him, but as he gets back up, he encounters even more Ganados (who aren't present beforehand), forcing Leon to turn off his flashlight and get around them, which hints at a stealth system. Even with the scrambling action that is the initial fight in the village taking place during the day, the atmosphere of tense horror is far more prevalent than the original.
  • The village itself is familiar mostly in layout, yet tweaked to be different. Worse, the villagers have gotten smarter in the remake - one will actually straight-up ambush Leon in a surprise attack, and in the big village fight, they'll actively coordinate together while attacking Leon, like grabbing him and holding him in place so as to allow Dr. Salvador more time to get to him. Where most buildings are typically indestructible, Dr. Salvador can actually cut down parts of a building's roof if you're on top. Not even the bell tower is safe, where it'll collapse.
  • Enemies are already a bit more horrifying thanks to the RE Engine. From the trailer, there's Dr. Salvador, who had a somewhat human face behind his mask in the original, now clearly has a skinned face with far-apart (or disembodied) eyes peering through the holes now. And, unlike the original, a Ganado's corpse no longer disintegrate upon death, so if they are dismembered, their tendrils will be visible, and still moving from their severed point, a sign on how much the parasite have inhabited the host for so long that it's now part of their body.
• The Chainsaw Demo recreates the opening gameplay sequence of the original game right up to the village fight, giving some extra context to the Showplay trailer. The Ganado whose neck was so broken where tendrils of the Las Plagas is sticking out was the very first villager that Leon meets and then kicked into the wall (resulting in an aforementioned broken neck) when the said Ganado tried to attack him and retaliated in self-defense. The second police officer escort Leon heard over the radio is later burned alive right in front of him. The random Mad Chainsaw difficulty accessed by starting a new play of the demo doesn't just make the villagers far less likely to get stunned, but there's an increase number of them, and Dr. Salvador becomes Super Salvador with a chainsaw that has sparks flying from its blade.
• For fans afraid the gore would be toned down, the demo should alleviate some of those concerns:
  • Head shots can still cause heads to explode, causing a pink mist effect, though this is a random chance just like the original. Similar to the remake of RE2, legs and arms have a random chance of getting blown off if you shoot them. What makes the dismemberment more disturbing in this case, is unlike the zombies who are undead and can withstand the punishment, the mortal Ganados bleed to death if you break off a limb. Leon doesn't just slash his knife at foes, but has animations where he deals brutal stabs into their neck, with a nasty amount of blood splatter coming off the knife. If a Ganado becomes dismembered, the still wriggling tendrils of the Plagas can be seen, showing how integrated they've become with their host bodies.
  • Even Leon himself gets an upgrade in the gore department. In the original, slashes were generic and it looked more like Leon got hit by a baseball bat, but in the remake, the bladed weapons dig into Leon's flesh and you visibly see the villagers struggle to yank the blades out of his wound. Leon's death scenes are no less messy and disturbing either. Among other things, Leon can get blades jammed into his head, his neck can be broken, and villagers can even cut off his head with a disturbing amount of blood spray coming out of his neck stump. Capcom did not lose their nerve with this remake, and in some ways might even be more disturbing than the original.
  • Dr Salvador (and by extension the Chainsaw Sisters) traded in his iconic beheading kill for something equally brutal and terrifyingly sadistic. Get caught by Dr. Salvador, and he will jam the chainsaw right through Leon's chest and out his back, then run the chainsaw through his organs, reducing them to chunky tomato puree.
  • The villaigers have upped their violence too. If a sufficiently-damaged Leon gets grabbed in the front, he'll have his eyes gouged out by the attacking villager's thumbs instead of choking and slamming him through the ground.
  • The remake does a better job of conveying just how badly the Las Plagas has robbed the villagers of their humanity. In the original, their expressions were hostile, like that of an angry predator, which is menacing in its own way. The remake still has some of that angry predator energy, but some of the Ganados just flat out have no expression, there is nothing in their eyes but a hollow, soulless gaze. This is best indicated in the bell scene, where the Ganado that locks the church door stares at Leon with a piercing, hollow gaze as if he were staring right through Leon rather than actually paying attention to him. The Las Plagas parasite obviously views Leon as a threat and would still attack him, but that hollow stare gives off the impression that the human is really just a meat puppet for a monster that has no soul or personality of its own.

Post-Release

General

• If you thought the previous RE Engine games had their Gorn, Leon gets the absolute worst of it here. He can be decapitated and gored like the original, but the deaths are more visceral than ever without any Gory Discretion Shot, which means he can also become Half the Man He Used to Be, get his eyes gouged out, get his head eaten off, outright blown to bits and a variety of other gruesome and horrific deaths.
• Los Illuminados has now been expanded upon. No longer is it potrayed as a generic evil cult hell-bent on world-domination but a genuine neopagan religon with its own bible, rituals, and even past leaders.
• Albert Wesker is back and more menacing than ever. His ruthlessness, Darwinism, and Bad Boss tendencies are on full display here, and he now speaks with a gravely, almost baritone voice as opposed to the narmy hamminess he had in the original 4 and in 5.

Intro

• The very first scene in the game is of a Bound and Gagged young woman in modern clothing, implied to be a lost backpacker who wandered into the village, being sacrificed by Los Illuminados. Later, when you enter the town hall on your way to the church, you find the place piled up with hundreds of skulls and other "mysterious" round objects of varying sizes wrapped up in bloodstained bandaging. They've obviously been at this for a while. You can find the corpse of the young woman, still on the altar, while exploring the lakeside settlement. Another woman's body is found in a house nearby, not far from where the first victim is, kneeling and strung up against the wooden beam. One of the skulls in the town hall is disproportionately huge, having belonged to a previous failed attempt at breeding a Gigante.
• As Leon recounts his time as a government agent, he claims that the experience nearly killed him. It makes sense that the missions could have nearly killed him, but Leon says that that the training almost did too (due to the context, it's likely Leon didn't mean it metaphorically). Knowing how brutal real life military training is, one could only imagine what Leon went through.

Chapter 1

• You’re introduced to your first ‘post-death Plaga’, as your first enemy in this game. The Ganado Desnucado. These Plagas don’t burst out of the head, rather, they burst out of the neck! They're basically a corpse with its head hanging off its body, charging at you in an attempt to kill you while you can see the parasite piloting the body in their neck.
• The village introduction is just as terrifying as the original. You go in to the village, only to be quickly swarmed by Ganados from all angles. You quickly begin to realize how in over your head you are the second a Ganado with a giant chainsaw busts through the door of the house you're desperately hiding in.
• Speaking of, Dr Salvador’s revamp in this is terrifying. While the other ganados have an almost vacant look, Dr Salvador looks outright insane, with bloodshot, parasite ridden eyes forced open into a permanent stare. And just like the original, he is far more durable than the other villagers and can kill you in one hit. And this time around, he doesn’t just decapitate you should you die by his hand. Nope, instead he puts his chainsaw through your chest and grinds your organs into a bloody pulp, all while staring into the camera with those horrible, parasite ridden eyes. But don't worry, the decapitation has been migrated over to the hatchet-wielding Ganados instead. And it takes more than one chop to sever Leon's head should he die this way.
• The new Brute Ganados. While not too scary, essentially being buffed up normal Ganados, their introduction of simply screaming and running at you and wildly swinging their weapon to clobber you to death is rather memorable.
• One detail that's easy to miss is the gate leading into the village square. Something heavy falls from above as you push the doors open, and if you stop to check, you'll see that it's a severed head wrapped in cloth, and there are several more of them impaled on the spikes lining the top of the gate; unlike the piles of them in the town hall, these have just enough neck attached to make it really obvious what they are.
• Another detail that comes with a healthy dose of Fridge Horror: The actual livestock in the ganados farms are a contrast of differences. The cattle are all incredibly emaciated, looking like they're one meal away from just dropping dead of starvation. The pigs on the other hand, are all clearly well fed, and even aggressive, as they will attack Leon if they get agitated. And then you'll notice a giant stack of bones on the farm, and it becomes clear why the pigs are well fed.

Chapter 2

• Bitores Mendez. A hulking, unfeeling monster of a man, who easily overpowers Leon and takes bullets without even flinching. The only reason Leon survives his first encounter with him is because Mendez allows him to live after seeing Leon has been infected by the Plaga. Perhaps the saddest and most horrifying part of Mendez is that his original personality has been absolutely destroyed by the Plagas. Notes around the village paint him as a kind, intelligent man who genuinely cared for his people. It is implied he acted as something as a father figure for Luis, educated the children personally and he would dine with a different family every night to catch up. It was only when the villagers started becoming infected with ‘a madness’ and succumbing to it (the Plagas) that he desperately sought help, which Saddler granted, even though Mendez didn’t trust him. The Plaga that Saddler injected him with completely destroyed any semblance of personality and kindness in Mendez, leaving nothing but a husk, completely subservient to Saddler’s will, behind.

Chapter 3

• The re-imagined fight against Del Lago is just as terrifying as the original, possibly even more so. The creature now appears to be even more massive, sporting a mouth with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, which gapes cavernously wide as it charges towards your boat in an effort to swallow Leon whole. In addition, the creature is just a normal salamander that Los Illuminados injected with Las Plagas as an experiment. It mutates into a giant sea monster capable of swallowing humans in one go. Just what is the Plaga capable of?

Chapter 4

• The Plaga heads in general are far more disgusting and horrifying. The original Plaga heads were no slouch in that department, but now, as soon as they burst out of people's heads, they swing around far more violently, their attack is FAR more dangerous and does more damage, and can even rip Leon's head clean off.
• El Gigante has gotten a clear upgrade from his RE4 incarnation. Gone is the slow, lumbering giant, this El Gigante now moves with surprising speed for its size and strength, straight up busting out through its gates to kill you as soon as it is woken up, and featuring attacks where it will sprint at you in an effort to flatten you like a pancake. The same upgrade applies to the other two el Gigante Leon and Luis later fight.
  • Also, dying to the Gigante's grab attack is significantly more brutal this time around. Instead of trying to crush Leon and slamming him into the ground, he instead bites his head off with Leon screaming the whole time.

Chapter 5

• The house siege is far more frantic this time, with mobs of Ganados charging in, and all the time you can hear the mob's chanting, and it gets increasingly loud as the siege goes on.
  • To expand on this, from the moment Leon rescues Ashley from the Church, Saddler telepathically reaches out to the villagers and orders them to recapture them both. From that moment onward, until you escape from the House Siege, every single Ganado you encounter will be chanting the same line, over and over again: "Aprisa, aprisa, se escapan los corderitos, perseguidles, guiadles hacia el perdon infinito." ^note English: "Hurry, hurry, the little lambs are fleeing, chase them, guide them towards infinite forgiveness." The thing is, they will never stop mindlessly droning out this mantra. They won't stop when they spot you, they won't stop as they attack you, they won't stop as you kill them and they succumb to their wounds... It fully hammers home just how horrifying the Hive Mind of Las Plagas truly is. Ashley herself puts it best:
    "Oh, God! What is wrong with these people!?"
  • The chant itself is intoned in this emotionless monotone at first, but as the House Siege escalates, the chants become louder, and louder, more violent, and more impassioned. By the time you're in the last minute of the siege, the mob is basically screaming for Leon and Ashley, all of them, at the same time. Even for those who don't speak Spanish, it's an incredibly unnerving experience, but for those who actually do speak Spanish, that last minute is downright horrifying. What only adds to this further is that unlike the original, Leon and Luis don't just outlast the Ganados until they decide to retreat. Instead, they have to be bailed out by Ashley finding a secret passage as the Ganados continue to pour in with no end in sight.

Chapter 6

• Just like in the original version, Mendez makes sure you cannot escape him by not just shutting the gate, but by twisting the thick sheet metal handles together without breaking a sweat.
• Just like in the original, Mendez’ mutated form is absolutely horrific. His entire midsection is replaced with a centipede like Plaga, with the addition a huge eye growing from his back. He loses the entire lower half of his body in the middle of the fight, and doesn’t even flinch.

Chapter 7

• The Castle Cultists are even creepier than before. There are female cultists now, their heads shaved bare and many cultists have the Los Illuminados logo and writing tattooed on their faces. The Red Cultist leaders now have the wonderful ability to control not only their Cultists' Plagas, causing their heads to explode into Plagas (causing them very clear discomfort), but also can influence you, fucking with your vision and movement and preventing your ability to counterattack.
• The altar is an unsettling sight to behold, there are three sitting cultists worshipping the one in the middle whose plaga had already burst out of the host's head. All four of these cultists are dead, and the figure in the middle is in a state of decay, but embalmed like a mummy. It highlights the horrifying nature of a religion centered entirely on a parasitic being.
• Ramon Salazar. Thanks to visual upgrades, he is no longer an annoying Bratty Half-Pint exchanging quips with Leon, but an incredibly creepy and sadistic aristocrat whose body is visibly rotting and decaying thanks to Las Plagas.
• The Garradors have new upgrades as well.
  • Their introduction is absolutely pants soiling. You enter a hidden dungeon where you hear horrible screaming. Yes, it's awake this time. You go to explore the dungeon for a way out only to drop through the floor... right in front of the Garrador, getting a close-up of its horrid face, with unnaturally huge teeth and sewn shut eyes. Luckily, it's restrained. Until it breaks free of its restraints in anger as you try to leave.
  • By the way, in this version, there's no conveniently placed bells in the room. You have to fight him in a tight corridor full of chains that make sound when you walk through them. And just like the original, they are incredibly fast and powerful. Also, remember how in the original, the devs planned for the room where you fought two at a time to be darkened, but decided against it? This time, they went ahead and did it for the first Garrador encounter, dotting the area with only a handful of meager light sources. Seeing that hulking monstrosity charge at you from a pitch-dark hallway is the stuff of nightmares.
  • The parasite on its back is far more gruesome this time. Instead of just being a weird crab thing, the Garrador's parasite has clearly burrowed through its back, with visible gore from this process.
  • If a Garrador kills Leon, you are treated to a lovely animation where it uses its blades to visibly chop him in half.
  • Later on in Chapter 10 Leon has to deal with two Garradors with the zealots at the same time. While the room is much larger to move about it, and there are bells to use, the sheer aggressiveness from all the enemies present doesn't mean it's a walk in the park.
• Near the end of the chapter, Ashley begins to feel ill and momentarily passes out in Leon's arms...and suddenly steals his knife and tries to stab him with it. Leon tries to stop Ashley, only for her to hold his knife to her throat and walk backwards until a gate falls and separates the two. During this sequence, she speaks in a low voice and smiles eerily as the Plagas inside her take control.

  Ashley: [while possessed] Instead of worrying about the girl... Worry about your own skin! Foolish little lamb... Temperance, child.

  • Once Ashley regains control of herself, she is horrified by her actions and can only look at Leon in shame before running away in a panic.

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

• Ashley's playable segment when she's separated from Leon, and her section is a bit more cramped at places. The only things she's armed with in the remake is a blue-light lantern that can temporarily freeze the Armaduras (Plagas hiding in suits of armor) in place, unlike the flammable lanterns that she could throw at the zealots chasing after her in the original and quick-time events. She has to go through a library maze in the dark, tight staircases with little room to move about, and then a mausoleum to find the Salazar family crest, all the while having to dodge Armaduras trying to split her in half with massive two-handed swords along the way, menacingly clanging with each heavy metallic footstep in the darkness. Even worse, once she solves the puzzle to get the crest, the lantern goes out, forcing her to sprint for the exit without the lantern with the Armaduras stil out for her blood.
  Ashley: I. Am done. With armor.
  (immediately goes into the mausoleum containing the needed crest, which is filled with Armaduras that aren't activated yet)
  Ashley: Didn't I just say I'm done?!
  • Oh, and lest you forget, due to the way Ashley's health works now, combined with how Leon's unable to help her - all it takes is one hit from an Armadura to kill her... And there are a LOT of Armadura present throughout her segment. No pressure.

Chapter 10

• Unlike in the original game, the "ritual" Ashley undergoes in the throne room does not happen offscreen, and it is very difficult to watch. In this version, Leon is held down and forced to watch as some kind of black liquid is forced down Ashley's throat, causing the Tainted Veins on her arms to expand, signifying the accelerated growth of her Plaga. By the time Leon catches up to her on the Island, she is completely unresponsive. Only Luis' Plaga suppressant medication saves her from a far worse fate.
• The Verdugo, just everything about it.
  • For veteran players, they know what's in store when they come upon a recognizable hallway immediately after the throne room. Except this time it's a lot more tense and foreboding; you're making your way through the area, dimly lit with nitrogen showers set up at regular intervals. There are no enemies, not even one. Yet you can't shake the feeling you're being watched, even followed. As you explore, you hear footsteps running up as if it's coming up behind you, but there's nothing there. Instead, you see something moving inhumanly fast in the ceiling above you. It's only when you go to the end and reactivate the power to the elevator, that it shows itself: the Verdugo, one of Salazar's imposing bodyguards. Perhaps one of the most powerful creations of Las Plagas, the Verdugo absolutely towers over you (even taller than its depiction in the original game, where at best it was a foot taller than Leon himself; here it's easily 7 or 8 feet tall) and is basically bulletproof except for its head, but it makes up for that by being incredibly agile and having a prehensile tail with a lot of range.
  • What's even worse? There's no free Rocket Launcher to cheese this like in the original. Oh no, you need to take it out the old-fashioned way, either having a good aim and hitting consistent headshots, using the liquid nitrogen showers to your advantage, having a lot of ammo or if all of that fails, just simply run. It also shows remarkable intelligence; it will dodge your fire, retreat, and attack from a different angle and if you run from it, will actually taunt you to attack it.

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

• Everything about the Regenerators got amped up in this game:
  • Their introduction on the Island is absolutely nightmarish. Leon arrives in a section of the facility and has to acquire a keycard, with security terminals to rewrite the card and give it higher levels of clearance. The issue is, the terminals to rewrite the card are in different sections and the island's old infrastructure can't supply power to multiple sections simultaneously so Leon has to switch power between either the Dissection or Freezer areas. Either way the hallways are extremely dimly dark and cramped, necessitating the use of a flashlight. As he's moving between the areas shunting power and reenabling security systems, heavy breathing can be heard but the Regenerator is nowhere to be seen. A glimpse of it can be caught in one of the darkened hallways but it quickly disappears around a corner. Yet no matter where Leon goes, the breathing is still there. Only when the Level 1 keycard is acquired in the Dissection room does it make an appearance.
    Leon: (audibly unnerved) ...the fuck are you?
  • Other than looking far more uglier and horrifying than their original incarnation, the Regenerators here are a lot faster, running up to Leon if they catch sight of him. Trying to take out the Plagas inside them after getting the thermal scope isn't as easy either, given their faster mobility and constant leaping after dismembering their legs.
  • The breathing. They kept the horrifying breathing. It sounds almost like it’s laughing at you. Except now this is mixed in with clearly agonized groaning which somehow makes it even creepier.
  • Just like in the original, they are just way too… eager to feed. Not only does it look like their mouths are twisted into a permanent smile, but when they try to eat you, they do so with such horrific fervor, like they are enjoying tearing your throat out. Even the way they wind up before eating you is awful, like they want to savor this.
  • In the original game, Iron Maidens just randomly show up on the island after meeting the first Regenerador. In the remake? You first meet them when you kill a Regenerador... and it regenerates into an Iron Maiden. Oh, and they have a new trick: launching their spikes out like bullets, so you have to get into cover, or it'll kill you. And yes, they also fire spikes everywhere when they explode in death.
  • An X-ray scan of a Regenerator reveals that the monster's skull is mostly hollow space. There are fragmented portions of skull tissue that are haphazardly held together by loose strands of muscle. The emphasis seems to be that the mutation cares less about higher brain function, but purely on the elastic expansion of the Regenerator's facial tissue, allowing it to expand its jaw as wide as possible for maximum bite pressure.
  • The Las Plagas regeneration cores that were previously invisible to the naked eye in the original, can now be exposed by enough gun fire. The thermal scope in both the original and the remake show the Plagas cores glowing at a higher temperature than the rest of the body, and now you learn why: the regeneration cores glow as if they were radioactive power cores, suggesting that the immense energy necessary to regenerate at rapid speeds is burning the Regenerator's insides like a fire.
  • This is why shooting the parasites kills the Regenerator. The parasites regulate its metabolic rate so it can handle the energy needed for its constant regeneration. Once its parasites are destroyed, it cannot regulate this process anymore, causing the Regenerator’s metabolism to keep rising and rising until its body cannot handle the process anymore and literally explodes.
  • One of the cruelest changes is that the game doesn't give you the bioscope (called the infrared scope in the original) until later in the lab section, whereas the original gave it to you after only fighting the first two. This means you'll have to fight or evade nearly half a dozen Regenerators while running back and forth to switch the power. And in the room you do get the bioscope, you'll have Ganados and a potential of four Regenerators being active at once if you're unlucky enough to shoot the tanks containing them...and you have to kill them because you need a wrench stuck inside one of the freakish beasts. Thanks for the nightmares, Capcom.
  • The more realistic shadow and lighting allows the player to get a greater appreciation for how bright the Regenerator's eyes glow. In the darkness of the lab's hallways, you can see the Regenerator's eyes stand out in the darkness, as the rest of its body is barely visible. It makes the predatory nature of the monster's gaze all the more effective. And you'd think making their appearance more flabby and jiggly would make them less unsettling, but it doesn't. At all. Because its body is constantly regenerating, its body is constantly respiring to make up for the insane amount of energy needed to fuel this process. That’s not flab. The regeneration process is literally swelling its body with carbon dioxide.
  • The Regenerators are clearly not a one off, contained experiment. There are rooms full of Regenerators. Some are just roaming around the island freely. What would happen if one somehow left the island?
  • It's mentioned in notes across the game that the Regenerators have a lovely habit of breaking free from their restraints and killing anything trying to contain them. Their creator likely died to them. Just one Regenerator took 20 hours to recapture according to one of the notes. Even low temperatures don’t stop them forever. Every single note talking about the Regenerators regards them in absolute horror; and by the way, the people writing these notes are insane cultists hell bent on making the world a parasite hive mind. Even Leon, after seeing BOW horrors for years before this point, after fighting through horrors like the Garradors, Mendez and the Verdugo, is audibly terrified of the Regenerators.
  • Perhaps the most horrifying thing about the Regenerators isn’t any of the above. It’s that they are victims. These creatures were clearly once people, but were horrifically experimented on until they became these monsters, kept in bags as lab rats, losing any semblance of the person they once were - their body, their voice, their mind. They can’t speak, they can’t think, they can barely even die. All that is left of them is a primal, unquenchable desire to feed. Think about all the notes of the villagers sent to Saddler’s island for experimentation. This is what became of them. Imagine the horrible process that creates the Regenerators, and all the previous attempts at creating something like them.

Chapter 14

• In the original game, Osmund Saddler's head looked like a regular person's, aside from his white-colored eyes and the bags around them. In this game, when he takes off his hood, the back of his head is an ugly assortment of tissue and bone growths looking somewhat like a human spine.

Chapter 15

• As a wounded Leon carries Ashley to Luis' lab to remove their Plagas, his hallucinations start to intensify. He imagines the dark hallway filled with figures in black cloaks chanting ominously, implied to be a representation of the hive mind mentality that the Plagas induce in a person. He only barely makes it to the lab and removes the Plagas from Ashley before passing out from the pain. If she hadn't woken up and run the same process on him while he was unconscious, he'd surely have been lost.

Chapter 16

• The previous three dominant Plaga hosts engaged in a healthy amount of Boss Banter, revealing more of their personality and views throughout the fight and clearly reacting to Leon getting the upper hand. Saddler starts out the same... until the Novistadors show up about a third of the way into the fight. He suddenly gains a stutter and starts screaming about hearing the voices of his flock before sending them after Leon, and soon after he proclaims it is time to "shed the one" and that "his flesh shall give birth to a God everlasting!" What really makes this creepy? These are his last words. For the rest of the fight, he's reduced to roars and incomprehensible muttering, completely ceasing with his banter, even lacking a Game-Over Man quote like the other dominant Plaga holders. There is never any explanation for what happened to Saddler at this point; even with the implications he's merely an extension of the Plagas Hive Mind for the whole game, it doesn't explain why, at this random point in the middle of the fight, Saddler effectively ceases to exist when his three lieutenants never went through anything like this.
• One grisly death that can be obtained during the fight against Saddler is if he grabs Leon with his claw head and he resists being crushed with his limbs. If Leon's health runs out within Saddler's grasp, the claws clamp shut around Leon's limbs, breaking them and his body. Saddler then tosses the limp body away, where the camera shows Leon's utterly broken body bending all sorts of way that a human shouldn't be.
• After you kill Saddler and start making your way to the jet-ski, you come across a whole bunch of ganados writhing on the ground in incredible agony, the black veins looking nastier than ever. This is what happens when a hive mind parasite loses its queen. And if you think that's unpleasant, just imagine what's happening to the more highly-mutated creatures, like the Regenerators!
• The post credits scene of the game reveals the return of Albert Wesker, who coldly explains to Ada his plan to kill billions of innocent people to achieve his goal of world domination. Thankfully, Ada rejects Wesker's plans, but that's not to say his plans are necessarily foiled...

Unsorted

• Ashley's voice is much more natural this time around, rather than the chalkboard on nails screeching like the original was:
  • If Leon dies around her, Ashley screams his name, knowing that all hope is lost for her. Even if he isn't killed, Ashley will still be vocally horrified when he gets injured.
  • Early in the game, if a mook attacks and tries to capture Ashley, she lets out the exact kind of screams you'd expect to hear a desperate girl her age to. This eventually lessens more to borderline irritation towards the end of the game, but it's still distressing to hear her go through this.
  • If a mook carries her away and Leon can't stop her abductor in time, an animation plays. The setting changes depending on where it's taking place, but it always involves Ashley being carried through a door into darkness, and ends with one final desperate reach of her hand, and a bloodcurdling scream of Leon's name.
• One of the side quests involve having to take out a Colmillo, although much of it is just catching glimpses of it in the early chapters.
  • Right before the house siege, Leon can encounter the infected wolf so as long he's investigated sightings of it, but this Colmillo isn't like the other Colmillos. This wolf is about twice the size of the regular Colmillos, faster and much more aggressive, and it can also extend out four Plagas tentacles. Flash grenades can do a good deal of damage against it, but only if timed right where the wolf didn't dodge or is out of range.
  • Once you take on the mission to kill the Colmillo, you head to the Chief's house, but see it isn't there. Once you exit, you see the Colmillo just outside the gate, staring at you with its blood red eyes. It then runs towards the Village Square so you'll have enough room for a good fight. This demon dog stared you in the face and pretty much said Bring It.
• Plaga Arañas can now crawl into Ganados to hijack their body, turning them into something like Lightning Bruisers and causing them to barrel towards you while ignoring any gunfire or damage. And that's not the worst part. When an Araña hijacks a Ganado, it is not a smooth process, as the Ganado will scream in agony as the many arms sink into the body and skull. When you see Arañas near Ganados, you may be tempted to throw a grenade just to prevent that sound.
• The Novistadors now camouflage themselves into the environment and will ambush you. What's most horrifying about this is that they are clearly fairly intelligent. Far from blind aggression, they do not reveal themselves until they are within killing range of you. Their origins are clearly spelled out in one of the files found in-game; they're literally created from the secretions of the Las Plagas injected directly into a woman's womb. One can only hope they weren't injected until after the women became mindless puppets.

Separate Ways

Unsorted

• Sharp-eyed players will notice that the U-III Verdugo - Pesanta - Ada fights at the beginning threw a spike that had several pustules, which explodes and some of high-speed ooze scratches Ada.
  • While she does react to it, she quickly brushes it off, but she immediately hallucinates multiple Pesantas and the mood of the area shifts to something a bit more psychedelic with purplish lighting. She later encounters Pesanta again in the village (before the Cabin standoff in Leon's section), but the sky changes colors, there's blue flames that locks her in the central area, and she has to fight not just Pesanta itself, but its copies that can also hurt her. Ada in all of her appearances has never been shown to be infected with anything onscreen - Separate Ways Remake is the first to show her going through an infection, even though she keeps most of her reactions hidden behind a mask of stoic professionalism. And that's not even factoring Pesanta's continual pursuit of her throughout her campaign, tracking her due to the parasite it had infected her with.
  • Pesanta’s true form is absolutely horrific. An unholy matrimony of insect and human, with visible brain showing, fleshy tendrils in place of a mouth, a scorpion’s tail, complete with evil yellow eyes. It doesn’t even die when you kill its body, the parasite controlling this thing comes off and starts trying to kill Ada.
  • Pesanta's backstory. Once just an innocent housekeeper, trying to keep Salazar in line, she was taken away by one of Salazar’s scientists and continually and agonisingly experimented on until the aforementioned scientist threw caution to the wind, implanted her with insect DNA and a new type of parasite and miraculously it worked, transforming her into the abomination we see, forced into serving Ramon Salazar.

Chapter 2

• Ada won't just face off several regular Ganados or one Chainsaw Ganadao, but two, one male and one female, in the same area of the factory where Leon and Luis were held captive the first time. What can make this a challenge is how small the area is, as well being mostly dark sections with a few lit up spots from the broken ceiling, and then there's factoring if Ada has enough ammo and upgraded weaponry.

Chapter 6

• The Laser Hallway room from the original game returns — and if you fail to respond to them, Ada stops in her tracks as they go right through her and a brief burn of smoke rises from the side of her head, before blood starts to leak from her face. The game then has a Smash to Black right after, implying she just became a gory mess of being cleanly sliced into cubes like a certain death in the first movie.
• Martinico. An incredibly strong B.O.W., able to destroy concrete like glass. It's also immune to conventional firearms, with the lasers being the only thing capable of harming it. It escaped confinement and wreaked havoc in the facility it was contained, killing anyone in its path, and if it as much as breathes on Ada, she's done for. Now imagine such creature escaping the island and free on the world, killing God-knows-how-many. Hence why the laser hallway has been built: to contain this monster.

Epilogue

• Ada's betrayal does nothing to derail Wesker's Evil Plan, since he salvaged Krauser's corpse off-screen. The DLC ends with a ramping shot of him smiling ominously at the camera, with his leitmotif from Resident Evil 5 playing just for good measure.
  Wesker: Soon, the sun will set on the age of man.