Resident Evil

Though Damnation also showed us how that conflict can easily be ended by carpet bombing the hell out of those Zombies.

In the end we see both the benefits and flaws of BO Ws. Absolutely devastating at ground level unless you have a Rocket Launcher or a Tank (and the fight with the Tyrant shows even that's not guaranteed), but once you can take them out with missiles from the air, that's it.

Like all weapons, B.O.W. monsters are not a one-size-fits-all solution to war and instead need to be deployed tactically.

...they're probably also prohibitively expensive but it's not like that's ever stopped people before. Especially the U.S.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 15th 2024 at 3:32:37 AM

Yeah honestly B.O.W.s are a ridiculous money sink for what you get. You want effective bio-ware, an engineered airborne virus like smallpox or similar gives way more bang for the buck than a cloned supersoldier or big lizards.

Or go the Syphon Filter route and engineer a virus that can target specific people and/or peoples.

I mean, I can kinda see their advantages.

Just slip in a tiny bit of virus, or drop a few infected into an area full of your enemies (maybe while they're sleeping) then left them wreak havoc on your foes. Their numbers grow with every person they infect, there's a psychological advantage as many might hesitate to shoot their former friends, or they don't immediately think to aim for the head, meaning their wasting ammunition and resources as well. And if you're lucky (and they're unlucky) they can cut a bloody swath through the opposing force without your having to risk even one single soldier of your own.

Then you just drop a few bombs to clean things up before it can spread too far. And this is without even bothering with creating shit like Tyrants and the like

Of course, this is a highly ideal scenario. We've seen how easily things can go pear-shaped when you lose control of the main BOW producing viruses.

The Bioweapon that canonically saw the most use (At least when they first started hitting the market) was the Hunter series, especially the Alpha Hunter. And it's easy to see why they'd be effective in urban warfare or otherwise dense terrain.

They're fast, capable of tearing people apart, terrifying and while not quite Immune to Bullets they can certainly take a pounding (At least in the games I played, I hear in OG RE they go down with one well-placed shotgun blast.)

Like imagine a horrible lizard monster capable of decapitating you darting in and out of the shadows of a war-torn city. Yeah, it dies if you shoot it. If you place your burst in the right spot. If you see it first. If it doesn't get the jump on you. If it doesn't pick off your squad one by one.

And sure, they're expensive. But so's training and equipping a modern soldier.

Resident Evil: Revelations showed them overrunning a whole damn city.

Wesker: A cunning mastermind, has meticulously planned to screw over everyone he meets to get maximum benefits from his bio-weapons obsessions. Versatile enough to plan around unexpected screw ups (AKA grab the body of someone that has the sample you are looking for)

Also Wesker: Goes out of his way to torture a subordinate he personally hates.

I dunno man, i think Wesker's biggest weakness is his pettiness. He might have won if he didn't have his silly grudge against Chris. Guess Chris really saved everyone by laughing at Wesker's tyrant.

It's symptomatic of the games deciding that Chris is the Official Main Character of the Myth Arc.

Even though I'm pretty sure more people played Jill in the original game than Chris.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 16th 2024 at 6:33:11 AM

More people certainly beat it with Jill...

Wesker even admits right before the final battle in RE 5 that he should have just killed Chris years ago.

I still find it funny that Umbrella and derivatives tried really hard to make Hunters the primary product of their bioweapons divisions (Tyrants being more of the "premium" product) but it was Lickers that really took off.

I always find it weird how Wesker is kept solely as Chris' enemy, like the dude never truly faced against anyone else (at least not without Chris being heavily involved). That is despite Wesker being one of the most popular villains of the franchise, while Chris is one of the least popular protagonists in the series (he is very commonly described by most fans as far more boring and bland "G.I. Joe dude" compared to most other protagonists, aside from Ethan).

Then Tricell got the brilliant idea of giving the lickers the ability of reproduction.

Meaning that if anyone ever lose track of a group of lickers in the field, they might start growing alarmingly in numbers outside of the warzone.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Mar 16th 2024 at 5:04:17 PM

At one point, you just believe that everyone in the bioweapon business is either incredibly bloodthirsty or suicidal, really.

It boils down to the higher-ups being motivated by god complexes while the people they hire are short-sighted and greedy.

Also note that the virus causing an epidemic wasn't the thing they wanted to do. They want the mutants produced by the virus (e.g. hunters).

Reminds me of the Resident Evil meme going around, spoofing the majority of the Apocalyptic Log you find.

Page 1: I cross-bred a silverback gorilla with a preying mantis and gave it AK-47s for arms. Bob has been poking it with a stick non-stop for 80 hours now. Hopefully it doesn't escape.

Page 2: It escaped.

Edited by Resileafs on Mar 16th 2024 at 12:43:53 PM

Bioweapons seem like something that people should probably not investigate too seriously since they are ten different kinds of war crimes and about as impractical as humanoid mecha. But they sure do look cool.

As for Wesker? His biggest weakness is he's a comic book supervillain.

[1]

Cause Chris hurt Wesker's pride more then anything

Wesker your pitiful

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Mar 16th 2024 at 1:19:39 PM

I suffered that embedding problem too. I suggest you do a proper linking (like I did here) until the embedding issue is resolved.

Edited by HallowHawk on Mar 16th 2024 at 11:15:05 AM

Wesker being petty kinda feels very in character, I mean he may hide it well but just like everyone else who wants to use BO Ws for warfare or to take over the world, he has a major god complex. I mean if you have a god complex villain, pettiness kind of comes with the package.

Wesker is a guy so bored with being a genius scientist, who formed his own SWAT team to play live action cop games.

Of course, what really set Albert off the deep end was Spencer revealing his origins.

"Are you saying I was manufactured?"

His Evil Plan in RE 5 is very much an attempt to prove he's his own man and not, as Chris so bluntly put it, "just another one of Umbrella's leftovers".

His theme song's title is "Winds of Madness" for good reason.

Edited by M84 on Mar 17th 2024 at 5:49:36 PM

I wonder if this played into Alex wanting to commit suicide and reincarnate (effectively)?

Their hatred of Papa Umbrella/Spencer so great that their own existence became a torment to them. Realizing they were just another bioweapon.

In both cases, they also FAIL at proving their own Social Darwinist existence.

• Alex can't bring herself to pull the trigger without fear, becoming a monster.
• Albert takes the Ouroboros but discovers he's no more immune to it than his girlfriend. He fails by his own standards.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 17th 2024 at 3:06:51 AM

Their failures were the final nails in the coffin for Spencer's own failed magnum opus Project W.

While no evidence to support it, just for the "these people are fucked up"-edness of it all, I choose to believe that Alex and Albert are also Spencer's clones.