Resident Evil Requiem has a complicated history, although that shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed the series for over 30 years. Capcom’s survival horror games are full of evil organizations and viruses with similar names that can be difficult to control. First of all, Requiem She seems to be moving away from all that with her new character, Grace Ashcroft, but it soon becomes clear that’s not the case. In fact, Requiem It could be the game with the most story in Resident Evil history, thanks to the number of loose threads it tries to tie up in its ending.
Even if you’ve played every game in the series, the ending may still leave you scratching your head with its mess of proper nouns. To help you unravel it all, here’s a breakdown of what exactly happens at the end of Resident Evil Requiem and how it relates to the series’ past.
This article contains spoilers for Resident Evil Requiem.
A bit of setup is required, because there are some mysteries hanging around Requiem before its end. The first is that Leon S. Kennedy is investigating what has been called Raccoon City syndrome. Those who survived the 1998 Raccoon City bombing Resident Evil 3: Nemesis They are suffering long-term side effects. They have developed black rashes on their skin and are slowly dying from the infection. Leon also has such a case, so he is especially interested in finding out what has happened.
Meanwhile, Grace Ashcroft is kidnapped by Dr. Victor Gideon. It’s unclear why for most of the game; All Grace knows is that it has to do with something called “Elpis.” Through historical documents collected throughout the game, Grace begins to piece together what exactly Elpis is. At first glance, it looks like another variant of the T virus that will turn the world into zombies. Classic. But the deeper the story, the more it is questioned.
There’s also Zeno, a secondary villain who surely looks a lot like the late Albert Wesker. All we really know about him is that he wants to use Elpis for evil. We also learn that he is part of The Connections, an obscure group mentioned in Resident of the bad town.
This all comes to a climax when Leon and Grace enter ARK, an Umbrella Corporation research facility beneath Raccoon City. There, Grace finds some long-hidden secrets related to the company’s origins, how its work was covered up by the United States government, and what really happened to its enigmatic co-founder, Ozwell E. Spencer. It all culminates in a tense moment when Leon and Grace find the room containing samples of Elpis. Leon is too weak to resist when Zeno arrives to stop the two from destroying Elpis. Grace has one last choice as she stands in front of the machine containing Elpis: save it or destroy it. From that choice two endings emerge.
The very bad ending
If you choose to destroy Elpis, an extremely grim ending awaits you. ARK begins to fall apart as Zeno gets scared. Grace manages to get away from him, but Leon is too weak to fight him. As the platform Leon and Zeno are on collapses into the abyss, Leon looks at Grace and says, “At least I could save you.” It’s the culmination of his character arc throughout. Requiem. Leon’s entire story revolves around survivor’s guilt from the destruction of Raccoon City. After all, he was a rookie cop when it happened. He escaped the city with Claire Redfield, but left tens of thousands to die when the United States government bombed the city to contain the zombie outbreak occurring there. He manages to redeem himself by saving Grace.
That victory is short-lived. Zenón shoots León in the head at point-blank range and kills him. Grace watches in horror as both Leon’s body and the still-living Zeno fall into darkness. She survives and Elpis is gone, but at what cost? The story ends there, without a final boss fight.
the true ending
That’s the miserable version. The canon ending occurs if Grace decides not to destroy Elpis. It sounds counterintuitive, but Elpis is actually an antidote, not a virus. In the lead-up to the encounter, we get a pretty big reveal about Ozwell E. Spencer. Turns out he felt immense guilt for all those mutagenic viruses he created. At the end of his life, he created Elpis as a final act of repentance. It won’t bring back the dead, but at least it can destroy all the zombies’ bioweapons and heal the survivors of Raccoon City.
So that’s what Grace does. She injects Leon with Elpis and quickly reverses his condition. Everything is fine until Gideon enters the scene. His assumptions about Elpis being a superweapon were wrong, yes, but he still has a vision. Since Elpis has the potential to eliminate all virus-based weapons, he believes this will throw a world order built around war into chaos. That doesn’t really make much sense, as Zeno angrily points out. Gideon responds by killing him, calling him a “cheap imitation” (implying that he does indeed look like Wesker on purpose) and then turns into a giant monster. A big boss fight ensues, and Leon is restored to full health. Our heroes kill him, but are trapped inside the ARK. They accept their imminent death when the lights go out.
And then, a deus ex machina! The BSAA, an anti-bioweapons group that has appeared in recent games, swoops in to save them. A soldier passes Leon a message from “Captain Redfield”, as in Chris Redfield. We don’t hear what that message is, but we soon move forward and find Leon and Grace safe and sound. A news report ties up some loose ends: Umbrella’s secrets are exposed and the Justice Department opens an investigation into the US government’s cover-up. (It is suggested that the government deliberately bankrupted Umbrella to cover its involvement.)
A final post-credits scene shows us two things. One is that Grace continues working with the FBI after the story concludes. The other is a bit of sequel bait. Back on ARK, the BSAA soldiers are dead. They have been killed by another group of soldiers from a mysterious organization, who recover something off-screen. The game ends, setting up a sequel to what happened there.
The extra story
If you’re still confused about all this, don’t worry: your reward for finishing the game is a 60-page historical document that fills in all the blanks. This contains crucial information. For starters, he reveals that Spencer began his research in the middle of the Cold War, fearing a return to the “horrors of World War II.” His fear that humanity would repeat its worst crimes led him to seek an evolution of the human race. That vision was mutated by its co-founder, James Marcus, who instead used that idea to turn people into living biological weapons. Internal politics followed. Marcus was expelled and Spencer began developing Elpis within ARK.
What was the deal with Marcus? Turns out he had ties to The Connections, the group Zeno was a part of. Here we get a lot more details about what that organization is, but it’s still very mysterious. They were involved in criminal activities in the 1980s and have been pulling many strings behind the scenes ever since. In fact, they were somehow responsible for the Raccoon City bombing in 1998. They are the ones who pressured the US government to launch a missile into the city, not to stop the infection, but to stop Spencer, destroy Umbrella, and seize its assets. That plan worked and The Connections gained control of ARK and Elpis, assuming it was a new weapon.
The rabbit hole goes deeper. We learn that Tricell, the evil military group Wesker worked for in resident evil 5, He was also linked to The Connections. And we also learn that President Benford was assassinated in Resident Evil 6 because I was going to expose all this.
As for Grace? Turns out she was Spencer’s adopted daughter. He welcomed it as another way to make amends for his crimes. After her death, Spencer left Grace in the care of Alyssa Ashcroft, the journalist who conducted her final interviews.
There are some finer details, but that’s the gist. Spencer was looking for redemption and The Connections were the real bad guys. Umbrella Corporation was always just a cog in a much larger machine. There are a lot of retcons in there, so don’t get too hung up on the plot holes. This is where the series stands as it stands, and we’ll certainly see more of it, judging by RequiemThe post-credits scene.
Soruce: polygon.com