I want to start off by saying that this article may contain content for the upcoming Resident Evil 7 game coming out January 24th of this year. If you don’t want the game somewhat spoiled for you I suggest not reading beyond this point. I want to state that most of these details are rumor driven and have not yet been confirmed yet by Capcom as actual facts. But since this data leak came from the demo itself, it’s safe to assume that some of these leaks and rumors could be true. Therefore as a caution I am saying that there could be potential spoilers within this article. If you don’t mind certain details being leaked feel free to read on from this point.
Recently during the data leak via demo for Resident 7 on the PC, many important details were leaked including the main character Ethan Winters along with Mia being the possible “Kitchen Killer” from the original “Kitchen” VR demo that was advertised before Resident Evil 7 was confirmed by Capcom. This along with another shocking detail that was somewhat proven before the data leak that Chris Redfield may or may not make an appearance in this current installment in the Resident Evil franchise. Which brings me to the point of this article. There have been some rumors circulating that Chris Redfield may die before the ending of the game for the main protagonist.
This has caused somewhat of an unsettling taste in people’s mouths as Chris is one of the major characters within the Resident Evil franchise. He is also connected to many characters in the series. For example being TerraSave member Clair Redfield’s brother, the partner of Jill Valentine. He is also the Special Operations Unit Captain of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance or the BSAA, of which he is a founding member, along with Jill Valentine. His team was also responsible for stopping the mansion incident in 1998 up in the Arklay Mountains on the outskirts of Raccoon City, the incident that started up the whole series in the first place. He has also played a major part in the killing Albert Wesker in Resident Evil 5, a major villain within the Resident Evil cannon. So needless to say he is a very important character in this franchise. With this being said it doesn’t make sense for Chris to die for Ethan Winters, the new major protagonist in Resident Evil 7. First, he has not had any part in the Resident Evil cannon up until this game. I want to state that this isn’t a good idea. Unless Capcom does a fantastic job of character building between Chris Redfield and Ethan Winters, I fail to see how dying for a substandard character as a good idea.
Secondly, we don’t even have clear set reasons for why Ethan is here in the first place, aside from trying to save his wife Mia who seems to be or not be held captive in the Bakers home. With this being known and her may or may not being the “Kitchen Killer”, why would it make sense for Chris to suddenly appear within the middle of the game to help Ethan? With his connection to his wife being the “Kitchen Killer”, it seems to be a lot more trouble than it is worth to save Ethan under these circumstances when there is a lot more going on than just Ethan’s wife problems. I may just be speaking from lack of evidence myself as I don’t want the game to be spoiled for me either, but coming all this way for someone he doesn’t have any ties to any content manga, movie, or game wise seems highly questionable to say the least. On top of all of this Ethan doesn’t seem to have any ties to the BSAA or the government. Why care about this new character if there are no known ties within the series to make us do so? Most importantly, how would Chris have known that Ethan was there unless notified somehow by some other intelligence that he was in trouble? Again Capcom really needs to answer all of these questions within the time span of a 15 hour game to make this a justifiable decision to kill such an important character off in this fashion. As a writer myself, these are just basic rules of storytelling. We need to care about the said characters in question, if a well-seasoned character is going to do so.
Third, I want to look at Chris Redfield’s partner in Resident Evil 6 to what I know about 7. In Chris’s story in Resident Evil 6 , during the Edonian Civil War, Ada Wong had tricked Chris into helping her and then cut Chris and his newest partner Piers away from the other members of his team and infecting the remaining members with the C- Virus via needle bomb. They could do nothing but sit and watch their members become infected. Chris and Piers were then saved by other BSAA support troops. Unconscious Chris was taken to a hospital but because of his overwhelming guilt, Chris ran away from the hospital before anyone could come to check on him after those events.
I’m not going to get into any more detail on these events as this is about comparing Piers and Ethan as characters, but it was because of Piers that Chris was able to overcome those events in 6 only for Piers to sacrifice himself by injecting himself with the C-virus to help his partner, trapping him into an escape pod so that Chris could be saved. The reason that I am bringing up such events is that Capcom has even said themselves that this was the game that Chris was supposed to die, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to kill off such a character of this magnitude. However, despite the fact that this wasn’t the greatest game or side story for Chris Redfield, I would have preferred Chris to have died in this game. Aside from the overall terrible ending result of this game, the connection between Piers and Chris was not only great writing , Capcom did a great job of molding these characters together as a great team with great dialogue and chemistry. The build-up to what would have been the eventual death Chris would have come as quite the shock, but I would have felt better with someone like Piers replacing Chris, as he was almost a slight callback to what Chris was in his youth in the first Resident Evil game. Also the question of who would inherit the Samurai Edge has become a topic as well. Piers would have been the perfect candidate for such an honor.
As far as Ethan Winters is concerned, he has done nothing and has no connections to Chris unlike Piers who laid his life out on the line so that Chris would live, also having prior history together actually would have helped with fans getting over Chris’s death. We would have had a great character to start another chapter within the Resident Evil franchise. I do not see Ethan Winters at this point a good replacement for Chris Redfield or as the right character to inherit the Samurai Edge as this was the gun that was used by the original team of BSAA agents in the first Resident Evil game. He would need to do some serious character building within the 15 hours of the game for anyone to really accept the death of a well-known and huge fan based character. Only time will tell if these rumors hold any merit to the actual game within the next coming weeks. Until then I would like to hear what the rest of you Resident Evil fans think of such a decision. Happy Gaming!
