As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
"S.T.A.R.S..."
Thought the original game was terrifying? The RE Engine amped the Nightmare Fuel up with the highly rendered details and some of the various changes made.- The opening moments of the game set the mood for the absolute nightmare to come...
- First is a nightmare sequence wherein Jill dreams of seeing herself transforming into a zombie, desperately reaching for a gun so she won't succumb to her zombification.
- A single line from Jill cements this nightmare as something utterly horrifying: "It gets worse every night". Ever since the Arklay Incident at the Spencer Estate, she's apparently been having PTSD-induced nightmares...and they've yet to stop. She's been having nightmares since July...
- It doesn't get better after she wakes up. After confirming that, yes, she's still human, she gets a phone call from Brad telling her she needs to get the hell out of Dodge. Then Nemesis comes busting through the goddamn wall!
- What follows is a frantic chase through the collapsing apartment building. Jill barely escapes by the skin of her teeth and meets up with Brad as Raccoon descends into chaos around them, before he gets bitten by a zombie buying enough time for her to get away. A helicopter flying overhead spots Jill, and the pilot tells her to get to a nearby parking garage... And just as she's about to escape, Nemesis destroys the copter, leaving Jill no choice but to plow into him with a car, sending both him and herself over the roof. It does absolutely nothing to him and Jill barely makes it out of the car before it explodes, leaving her only able to weakly crawl away in stunned fear as Nemesis slowly strides towards her while on fire like a monster right out of her blackest nightmares. If Carlos hadn't shown up when he had...
- There's also a brief moment right before Carlos's Big Damn Heroes moment, pictured above, where the camera is zoomed in on Nemesis's face and it looks like he's staring at you. Not Jill. YOU.
- The first half-hour or so after this sequence is completely nerve-wracking, since you know Carlos didn't kill Nemesis, and you're gonna run into him again at some point. You keep expecting him to pop up every time you turn a corner or go through a door... Then when you turn the substation power back on and think you can start to relax, Nemesis bursts through another wall like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man!
- Even the title screen after the first time you start up the game is nightmare fuel, depicting Nemesis standing near a fire like he climbed out of Hell itself while an oppressive Drone of Dread plays.
- Remember the T-00 AKA Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and how he was a careful, methodical, and intelligent pursuer? Then good news! Nemesis is even worse! Take Mr. X's sheer endurance, increase its intelligence, add some Combat Tentacles to catch and drag in its prey and weapons (including a goddamn flamethrower), and you have a predator who is dangerous at any range and difficult to evade for long. Good luck...you'll need it.
- Oh, and if that's not enough, Nemesis has a new trick: a leaping charge that he can use to cut off your escape route from a surprising distance!
- Think you can run away from him like you did with Mr. X in the remake? Think again! Nemesis can and will charge towards you at full speed in order to close the gap and he will catch you! Unlike Mr. X, who you could easily run away from, Nemesis knows how to think ahead and might let you get a decent head start, only for you to run into him again thinking you already lost him! You pretty much have to use your bullets in order to bring him down into his knees and then pray you’re gone by the time he gets back up.
- While Mr. X's footsteps in the Remake boomed through the hallways of the RPD and you could hear him coming from a mile away, Nemesis has less audible footsteps. So when you hear the sound of his boots clanking and him bellowing "S.T.A.R.S.!", he's already less than a few feet away from you!
- In the original game, Nemesis crashing through walls or smashing through windows was intense, but only insofar as nothing else you fought had done that thus far in the series. But now, with the higher definition and grotesque detail that has come with contemporary realism in graphics, the visual of this hulking behemoth annihilating a solid brick wall with zero effort is horrifying, because you have a more grounded frame in the setting to much better establish just how much more powerful this thing is than everything else.note
- In the gameplay trailer, he makes his debut busting out of a building without warning and quickly engaging in a fight. Now remember in the original, Nemesis could pop up anywhere through the city but at least you were given a musical cue and his grunting "S.T.A.R.S" if he was nearby. But this time with the new Always Over the Shoulder camera, more than likely, he'll pop up before you even know it until he's right on top of you. Heck, in the demo alone, when Jill runs into him infecting a zombie with a parasite, he makes a beeline directly for her, giving you a split second to react.
- And let's talk more about that new ability of his. The Nemesis Alpha parasite in his body can asexually reproduce by latching its tentacles onto a zombie's head and take over its body! Great! Nemesis has become Las Plagas! And if these zombies catch Jill when she's low on health? The parasite devours her head and takes over her body, just like the headcrabs in Half-Life. One has to wonder if a part of Jill is aware of what is happening to her.
- What’s even more terrifying is that when a Nemesis Alpha attaches itself, you can tell for several seconds that Jill’s still in control of her body as she tries to push it off her head, suggesting that it’s injecting chemicals into her spinal cord overriding signals from her brain to the rest of her body, which ultimately means that through the whole thing she’s conscious but has no control.
- Some of the ways Nemesis can execute Jill are horrifically brutal with one such method involving him throwing Jill to the ground and stomping her head into gory paste while another method is grabbing her by the head and impaling her with his tentacle.
- Oh yeah, and his roar can also stun you now. Jussst peachy.
- Let's take a moment to appreciate just how frightening Nemesis looks in the remake. His updated character design hits the same basic notes as in the original: seven feet and three inches of muscle, long black trench coat, Facial Horror. Advances in graphics technology serves to accentuate and enhance the terror of his appearance. His teeth are as long as daggers, his one visible eye is milky white while the other is covered by skin and stitches, his nose is crooked, and his upper torso looks like it's covered in black tarp.
- Midgame, he gives chase with a rocket launcher through the streets of the city. This time at least, you're given a warning to get out of the way via his laser sight, but only in a split second before he fires. Still not too bad right? Then you hit the shopping district and he fires on the figurehead of the toy store which breaks off and rolls after Jill. And this isn't a cutscene or QTE. If you do not turn around, run down the stairs and get out of the way, Jill will be crushed.
- If you try to approach him while he has the rocket launcher, he'll try to to hit Jill with it. If he succeeds, he hits her in the chest muzzle-first and then lifts her up, leaving her stuck right on top of the rocket launcher. Then he pulls the trigger.
- Nemesis' new second form is something worse than the original who looked like a shirtless T-103 with more tentacles, the new one is an eyeless tank-sized Xenomorph-esque abomination, who walks on all fours like a beast.
- Its introduction? After Jill barely survives the subway, Nemesis comes out aflame and falls into the nearby river. Jill thinks that it can't swim, and is instantly proven wrong when Nemesis jumps out of the water, only MUCH bigger, a gives Jill a brief chase that leads to this game's rendition of the clock tower fight from the original.
- Nemesis' new final form. It's basically the NE Alpha parasite turning into something resembling the Nexus from Dead Space 3 combined with what's left of Nemesis' second form.
- If you hide in the toy shop while Nemesis is after you, he will stand menacingly outside and just stare at you through the window, waiting patiently for you to leave. And you know, there's only one exit...
- It's at this moment that most new players will realize just how smart Nemesis is; he KNOWS Jill has no other way out of the shop and is content to just stand there until she finally decides to leave.
- Remember the Drain Deimos? The mostly unremarkable hopping Chimera reskin from the original? Not only have they got an atmospheric new nest in the infested power station, but they've got two new tricks. Firstly, they've gained their Chimera counterparts' ability to swing down from the ceiling to make surprise attacks. Secondly, if they grab hold of Jill, they can forcibly implant Deimos eggs into her gullet; this leaves her slower and with a minor Interface Screw of the "visual impediment" variety, making Jill that much more vulnerable until she uses a precious Green Herb to purge the parasites from her system. Oh, and if she doesn't purge the parasites quickly? Then she'll die horribly as they reach maturity and rip her open from the inside out! And you're treated to a lovely image of the larvae crawling all over her (thankfully the camera's panned up to not show the details, but yeesh.)
- The whole electric station in general really. For one, once you get there, it's covered in some gooey mass which Jill comments on the smell of. Then you meet an unfortunate victim slumped over in a corner holding a box. When you approach him, the larvae burst out right then and there to Jill's confusion and horror, a sign of what you're in for. After which you enter the station and no sooner then Jill does, she's caught by one and instantly impregnated, with her yelling to get it out of her body. Luckily there's a herb not too far to purge the egg, but just seeing her violently vomit it out isn't pleasant looking to say the least. This is pretty much your tutorial on these things and you got a whole maze to get through to turn on the power. Have fun.
- The frog-based Hunter Type-Gamma has gotten a horrific new makeover, with repulsive pallid skin, tumorous-looking hide, no eyes and stumpy legs and tails. They've also picked up a new trick; they can disgorge a cluster of four enormous teeth-lined tongues from their oversized mouths, in a grotesque Nested Mouths/Combat Tentacles hybrid, and if Jill gets in range of this repugnant morass, they'll snare her in the cluster and then swallow her whole for a One-Hit Kill, visibly breaking her in half in order to make her fit!
- It's not fast either. It takes three sickening motions for it to crush her down small enough to be swallowed and the game makes sure you can hear her spine splintering as she lets out short screams of horror and pain that get cut off by the Type-Gamma's mouth snapping shut, presumably crushing her to death. The upside is that it's very slow and can be taken out in one shot with a fire grenade. Still doesn't make it any more fun facing them though.
- There's a nasty trap section during the Dead Factory portion that involves one. As you're making your way through the dark getting the fuses, one of the containers opens in front of you and releases some zombies. Okay, nothing you aren't able to deal with. Thing is though there's a container behind you you likely didn't see that'll release a Gamma. And since your attention is on the zombies, good chance you won't notice it sneaking up on you until it's too late.
- Most of the time, the encounters don't change from one difficulty setting to another, but on the higher ones, they are changed in subtle ways. As a result, it's very easy to miss the Gamma now placed in the side room behind the sewage waterfall until it's already eating Jill.
- Speaking of Hunters, the oft-forgotten Betas from the original RE3 are back too. Except instead of being covered in tumors like the original, they look almost like the Alphas from RE1, but with a Lamprey Mouth that would make a Predator blush.
- The remade Betas are arguably even worse than the remade Gammas, as although they're smaller and weaker, they're even faster than their amphibious cousins, enough so that they leave almost no room to breathe when attacking; they can even rapidly sidestep gunfire. Oh, and they're smart enough to open doors. Good luck running away or killing them, considering you encounter them in rather narrow rooms.
- The Betas are found during Carlos's portion inside a hospital, which is scary enough when you think about it. What's worse is at one point you see two of them in a room together, and one of them is savagely tearing and biting on a corpse of a doctor.
- The build-up to their reveal is a perfect exercise in Nothing Is Scarier: You hear something stomping around and shrieking in a different part of the hospital... Then you see a dead body fall from the top of a staircase... Then you find what's essentially an abattoir, with dead bodies, blood, and claw marks everywhere... Then finally, in a direct nod to the very first game's reveal of the Hunters, you see from the creature's perspective as it gallops towards the door Carlos is right behind and nearly breaks it off its hinges to get at him, with poor Carlos narrowly avoiding getting skewered by its claws. Once he manages to kill it, all Carlos can do is mutter "Jesus Christ!" in a tone of very justified horror.
- Speaking of the hospital, how about that cutscene that happens when you fail to defend Jill and Tyrell? Where the final shot is of a zombie crawling up to Jill's bed and getting ready to take a bite out of her unconscious form?
- Saving tools have been taken out of the game and replaced with Press X to Not Die prompts to get zombies off you. So don't expect to knife or grenade your way out of things this time. You get grabbed, you're taking a hit.
- What's scarier than a zombie? A smart zombie! In Resistance, the Mastermind can assume direct control over a zombie, leveraging their cunning in addition to enhanced speed and strength to further terrorize Survivors.
- Even worse is that it's not just zombies the Mastermind can assume control over. Lickers, Ivies, Cerberus, and even goddamn Tyrants can be controlled by the Mastermind.
- The worst of the worst however? If the Mastermind is Annette, she can take direct control of her G-Infected husband.
- Even worse is that it's not just zombies the Mastermind can assume control over. Lickers, Ivies, Cerberus, and even goddamn Tyrants can be controlled by the Mastermind.
- When Jill is infected by the Nemesis in the original game, she limps and then loses consciousness. In the remake, Jill's infection kicks in immediately after she gets stabbed by the Nemesis where she starts to convulse, collapses, and foams from the mouth as her body twitches. Not a pretty sight.
- Nicholai Zinoviev is back, and more vicious than his original incarnation. In the original, despite being a tenacious and cold mercenary willing to stab his fellow supervisors in the back if he could get a bigger paycheck, he at least had an air of professionalism about him. Here, he dispenses any sense of pragmatism and is openly hostile, mocking and prone to shouting fits at Jill.
- So, how are we introduced to him in the remake? Jill stumbles upon Murphy, a bloodied and injured member of the UBCS. It appears Murphy is talking to Jill when he tells her he's not infected, but then we see he's talking to Nicholai who suddenly appears and puts a bullet between his eyes. Jill is genuinely horrified and shocked by Nicholai's ruthlessness, questioning his action. Nicholai angrily passes it off as Murphy having been infected. Worst part? Murphy could very well have not been infected, but Nicholai only shot him not out of actual malice but because he was being pragmatic.
- Remember those dead police officers Leon and Claire find in the West Wing of the police station in the Resident Evil 2 remake, specifically the one impaled through the head on a broken pipe jutting from the ceiling? Carlos and Tyrell take a side trip to the police station where the former will witness these two officers meeting their ends at the tongue of a Licker. And if Carlos hangs around, the impaled officer's body can be seen twitching, suggesting that he might still yet be alive. One can't help but shudder when wondering how long it took him to die and the amount of agony he suffered in the process.
- After getting the train moving, Jill is in the car with Nicholai and Mikhail. The two soldiers talk, but after Nicholai inquires if the doctor they're supposed to find alive is worth all the trouble (and even alive to begin with), Mikhail asks if Nicholai is worried about losing comrades to save the doctor, or if it's for something else. Mikhail then confronts Nicholai with his suspicions, wondering if the tremendous casualties his platoon suffered were really just bad luck or if Nicholai deliberately sabotaged the entire operation by putting Mikhail's men in a position with no escape and ambushed by BOWS. Nicholai's response? He smiles at Mikhail smugly and chuckles with amusement.
- After Jill's fight with Second-Form Nemesis and getting infected by it with the T-Virus, while she's in throes of agony, Nicholai appears, and revels in her agony with a terrifying smile, stating that she's done him a big favor. This implies he was watching the entire fight, all for the sake of recording the combat data.
- Nicholai destroys the T-Virus vaccine. Worse, while he may have gotten satisfaction from crushing Jill's hope he only did it because that was what his employer paid him to do, and nothing else. Remake Nicholai has a philosophy that everything in life has a price tag and if paid well enough, he'll let the world burn. This essentially means that at the end of the day, Nicholai doesn't have delusions of Godhood like Spencer or some maniac bent on world domination like Wesker, he's only doing what he does because he was paid.
- Worse, Nicholai is apparently a double-agent for Umbrella and was hired by a mysterious client and paid to ensure that Umbrella burned. Considering how he was so sure Jill would be inclined to get him out of the city if he told her who his client was, it's heavily implied that Nicholai was hired by none other than Albert Wesker.
- And to top it all off, despite his ambiguous situation, it's possible he still survives as there is another helicopter nearby.
- If you do not shoot Nicholai in time when prompted by Carlos, Nicholai breaks out of Carlos's arm lock, cuts his throat with a ballistic knife, and then launches the blade impaling Jill right in the face! And to further rub salt in the wound, Nicholai chuckles in delight and mocks Jill with what he'd been telling her throughout the game.
Nicholai: Knew you couldn't pull the trigger. - Some of the notes you find.
- One worker in the electrical station had him worried about his mother and wanting to check on her amid the growing unrest in the city. But his boss wouldn't let him until he turned back on the power despite it clearly being infested by the Drain Deimos. He nearly managed to get out unscathed but on the last station, one of the Drain Deimos caught and impregnated him. As he didn't know about the herb cure, he succumbed to the egg hatching and his final words are thoughts of his mother and stating he loves her. Considering the body you find outside the station, it's very likely the same person.
- You find one body in the sewer of a worker trying to find his friend. He figured something was up in the sewers and went to the police. But, naturally since they were on Umbrella's payroll, they dismissed his claim stating said friend just left town. Which the friend vehemently denies as he had a baby on the way. Said friend ventured back into the sewers to look for clues but got cornered and killed by the Gamma. Though from his last words, he wasn't going down without a fight at least.
- Another in a sewer lab comes from a doctor who has written a love letter... to the Gammas he and some others were creating. Seems he was an Umbrella employee that helped create and was researching their development but the company scrapped the project. Refusing to let it be completely terminated, he saved what he could and moved operations into the sewers which resulted in the creatures being down there and continued his unhealthy fascination with them. It even mentions the Gammas having eliminated one of the sewer workers mentioned above.
- In the hospital, Carlos comes across a room with doctors massacred, bodies strewn left and right and claw marks on the walls and floors. A note detailing the hospital was unable to control the incoming infection and influx of patients, while thinking rescue was coming when they heard a helicopter fly by (likely the one Jill encountered at the beginning). However it never came back for them and the staff was soon left in the building with nothing but zombies and Hunters (likely having escaped from the lab below) roaming the halls. Then the note just ends mid-sentence.
- One in the Dead Factory that you find on a scientist details that he was hired on with Umbrella thinking it was just a good job opportunity and had his family move to the city. Unfortunately he found out too late how utterly evil they were and even seeing one employee fed to Hunter Betas for trying to smuggle out company secrets. While he wished to try and blow the whistle on the company, he couldn't bring himself to do so out of concern for his family and found himself Trapped in Villainy. Quite a bad predicament.
- NEST 2, the new final stage of the game. It's arguably far more creepy than NEST itself. Playing the previous game's remake, the player will arrive at NEST long after what occurred there happened and will know why it is in derelict (because William Birkin was rightfully paranoid Umbrella would come after the G-Virus and allowed the T-Virus to leak and of course his stand-off against HUNK and the USS). In this game, you never learn why NEST 2 is in the state that its in. And whatever happened occurred recently.
- In the room with the vacuum-packed tarp packages, one can assume that they contain Tyrants by the shape of them. However, you can find a file here which details shipment of a package. Specifically, a package containing a prototype from Umbrella's East European Branch - the same branch which is responsible for the Nemesis hunting you down. These prototypes could in actuality be unactivated Nemesis-T Types. And they were being kept right beneath a hospital, the very same one where Carlos saves Jill's life with the T-Virus vaccine. If Umbrella could hide those under a hospital along with a hidden lab under an orphanage, it makes you wonder what other hidden facilities have been placed all around Raccoon City.
- In one of the chambers, Jill finds People Jars containing heavily deformed Tyrants opposite tubes containing Hunter Betas, with one in the centre holding something between a withered, deformed fetus and a snake. Aside from the inherent Paranoia Fuel of them breaking out to attack you (they don't, by the way,) absolutely nothing is explained for certain as to what the hell deformed those Tyrants in such a way or what the central tank holds. (Unless one subscribes to the theory that they're failed Nemesis-T subjects, in which case the nightmare fuel ratchets up several degrees.)
