Resident Evil VII is a nice return to the series horror roots. In addition, it’s always nice enough to let long time players find some pretty well tucked away lore or Easter Eggs while playing. I had to keep my eye open and my past campaigns at the top of my mind to find some of these. They were not easy to find or recognize, but when I did catch some of them I felt a tinge of nostalgia for the journey that I’ve been on throughout the life of the franchise.
Alyssa Ashcroft
Now, some Resident Evil fans never really got the chance to enjoy the Outbreak series that came out in 2003. This little side project focused heavily on teamwork with your buddies over the just-born PlayStation Network. I never had a chance to play with my buddies, but I did enjoy the game solo. When I read a little newspaper article in the Baker house, Alyssa’s name triggered some fond memories of me surviving Raccoon City with four other survivors. It is nice to see that Capcom left this hint for us, seeing as we really don’t know what happened to some of these survivors. This survivor happened to land a writing gig for the local paper in Louisiana. Good for her! I hope on other playthroughs I can find more and more traces of this world and where some of my favorite one-shot characters landed. While not a huge spoiler or giant plot point, I felt that this was a nice throwback to a series that could have been huge. Even now I hope that Capcom will bring this series back with the amazing online capabilities of today.
Clive R. O’Brian
If you were a die hard fan of the Revelations spinoff then this little throwback should have been pretty easy to spot. As you quickly look for supplies in the Baker’s living room you’ll come across some cardboard boxes. In those boxes just so happens to be a little novel called “The Unveiled Abyss” by Clive R. O’Brian. Now if you paid real close attention to Revelations you will remember that O’Brian was the head of the BSAA and Chris and Jill worked for him. After being arrested then exonerated for bio-terrorism, O’Brian decided to step down as the head of BSAA and pen himself a detective novel. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume the novel did quite well if the Bakers have a copy. They really didn’t seem like the reading type to me.
Arklay Mountains
It was nice to see a throwback to the mansion incident, seeing as the Resident Evil Remake is in my top 5 of my Resident Evil games. You can find this photograph in the mail hall of the Baker House. As we all know the Arklay Laboratory was constructed in the Arklay Mountains in the 1960’s. The vision for this laboratory came from Oswell E. Spencer, who was one of the founders of Umbrella. The Spencer Mansion above however was the brainchild of George Trevor and a hellish landscape for S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team. This laboratory was also home to Albert Wesker and William Birkin in the 1970’s when they began to design the T-001 and T-002 viruses. There is a lot of history in this photo and it makes one shudder when you realize it was taken 7 years before the Spencer Mansion incident and eventual destruction of the nice Midwestern town of Raccoon City.
Raccoon City
As you attempt to remain alive on the luxury liner you come across a magazine that hasn’t forgotten about the survivors of Raccoon City. It is hard to believe that after watching the carnage that takes place at the end of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis that anyone survived the atomic blasts that ended the outbreak. This lone magazine however has tracked some of the survivors down and asked them how their lives have been since the mushroom cloud sixteen years ago. I’m going to go out on a real world limb here and say that most of them must be riddled with Cancer or are still completely broke because I’ve never heard of an insurance company covering atomic blasts. I do hope they get back on their feet, but I somehow doubt they ever will.