RE7 – Heroes, Tapes, and Swamp Men

I’m back! After writing last month’s music post, I decided to take a break from blogging to catch up on some gaming and some other writing I was doing on Wattpad. I recently finished a story I started writing a year ago, which was an extended version of a dream that I remember utterly every part of and I finally finished the last two chapters!

Now, it’s time for me to ramble about the RE7 DLCs which I was playing when I didn’t always feel like writing.

Not a Hero

Beginning directly after the events of the main game, Chris Redfield who rescued Ethan and Mia sets off into the salt mine to pursue Lucas Baker who is still alive and up to no good. Chris is part of the Blue Umbrella hoping to find intel on the Connections that create bio-weapons, including Eveline.

This DLC was quite the challenge with tougher Molded creatures, including ones that could only be killed by using a specific type of ammo. But it felt like the horror wasn’t as intense now that I was playing as a soldier armed to the teeth. (well to be fair, F.E.A.R, was like that too) I still got startled by a few enemies in dark corners though so it’s not like it was completely devoid of horror. But, I will tell you it was pretty stressful racing against time to kill a giant Molded just before using the liquid nitrogen to freeze and remove a bomb from Chris’s wrist.

I always thought Lucas wasn’t infected but turns out I was wrong, and there’s something about the Mold that triggers mutation when the victim is critically wounded. It took two attempts for me to defeat Lucas’s mutated form but it was pretty brutal. Play enough video games and you’ll learn to recognize weak points in boss fights immediately! If Lucas was planning to betray the Connections, what was he going to do next I wonder? And what was that call Chris received about? I guess we’ll never know. It seems to close the chapter of the Baker incident and it still makes me wish they could have been saved, oh well.

Banned Footage / Jack’s 55th Birthday

So, these DLCs are like pregame events and play out just like the videotapes you find in the main game. Three of them center around the cameraman Clancy as he gets caught in the Baker house. Nightmare is about crafting weapons and traps using scrap to get through the night until dawn in the basement. To me, it’s like playing COD zombies like my brother used to, or even 5 Nights At Freddy’s but with weapons since you have to survive from midnight until, presumably, 6am. I got through the first hour before kind of rage quitting because once Jack arrived I just wasn’t up for figuring out how to take him down after dealing him chasing me around the house in the main game. Like oh no not this again!

Then there was Bedroom which I enjoyed as it focused on puzzle-solving but the puzzles in RE are not complex, but it was stressful to hurry and put everything back the way it was before Marguerite returned! Sometimes I have to use guides to get through games like these (not just with horror) in one piece with minimal stress. I never bothered with Ethan Must Die because I’m just a gamer who is never in the mood to deal with something that is supposed to be really difficult!

21, yeah definitely my least favorite! I know how to play Blackjack, but one where if you lose a round results in losing fingers, electrocution, or a saw-blade to the face, yeah no. I found myself repeatedly reloading just to win because I was paranoid. I asked myself why did I even bother wasting my time with this? Maybe I thought it added some more to the story before Ethan’s arrival, in reality it was just Clancy going through more torture before his fatal trap in the party room. More evidence that Lucas is literally Jigsaw.

Daughters was a rather interesting one as it starts off on the night of the hurricane where the Bakers find Eveline shipwrecked. I was playing as Zoe and got a glimpse of what they were like before the Mold made them all psychotic! There was a lot of emphasis on stealth and I found it stressful at first to sneak past Marguerite during my two runs of this content (since there were two different endings) but it turns out it wasn’t so difficult as I thought. I’ve always hated stealth in video games, but when I succeed at it, I realize that I can do anything. After all this stalking, I’m definitely ready for Lady D, her daughters, and whatever the other three Lords have in store for me. Now that I’ve seen how it all starts with Eveline’s infection, this makes this part of the banned footage one of my favorites as it reveals more story behind them, making each of their downfalls in the main game feel less like obstacles to shelve away.

Finally, there’s a minigame where you play as Mia and have to feed Jack as fast as you can on his 55th birthday celebration. You can combine food with spices and stuff to satisfy his hunger faster, and kill Molded to temporarily slow down or stop the time limit. The less it takes you to fill him up, the higher your grade will be. I only bothered with this for two stages, it’s really nothing exciting and I didn’t feel like grinding at it.

So, Daughters and Bedroom are the ones I enjoyed the most, but other than that, I was glad to be over with the rest that I finished or gave up on.

End of Zoe

This DLC I saved for last since it is once again post-game content and takes place after the events of Not a Hero. So yeah it is canon for Ethan to cure Mia in the base game in order to lead to the events of this DLC. Before Eveline is killed by Ethan, she calcifies Zoe as she tries to escape but the latter survives the ordeal in a crystalized form. Fast forward to when Eveline is dead, the Mold is still spreading and Blue Umbrella returns on Ethan’s request to retrieve Zoe while they quarantine the area.

Now I found out that Jack Baker has a brother, Joe who finds Zoe and takes her from the soldiers so that he can cure her himself. He’s the only one who never was infected by the Mold and really cares about saving his niece. He also excels in hand-to-hand combat from serving in the military.

I always thought he was just a pro-boxer in his youth but hey, close enough. He chooses to live as a hermit in the swamps so it’s no wonder I can pick up caterpillars and centipedes and use them to craft first aid kits. It’s pretty fun to kill Molded with my bare hands for a change, but it was the gators that annoyed me the most. I would constantly craft spears to kill them and I actually found the two boss fights to be more fun in this DLC since they are melee, especially once I got that bionic arm! Jack regenerated himself again!? I thought I was done with that bastard, apparently not, but maybe he’ll stay dead after this, and when Zoe was finally cured and she thanked Ethan for sending help, I think that’s what call Chris got was about at the end of Not a Hero!

So yeah, those are all the DLCs for RE7; well the ones that I chose to play! Some were challenging and frustrating while others I enjoyed more because of how they added to the story.

I remember I gave the base game a great score and I would have made it a perfect one if the Bakers weren’t treated like one and done obstacles but after playing these DLCs, I realized that they expand the character development of them and their roles in overall plot. Hopefully Village will do the same for the DLC(s) it gets since I’m already really interested in the Four Lords given what I know about them so far.

In the meantime, I’m really looking forward to playing it, I never thought I would since RE is a franchise that never grabbed my interest until Village was announced.

So yeah, RE7 is a great game, I’m glad I started with it.

👽Emily