Back To The Village

I was trying to watch Van Helsing last night but I should have known better since the Capcom show was occurring at that time and soon I got pelted with texts from friends that the company finally announced some DLC content for Village.

I love the game, so I was going to go back to it at some point because it’s completely replayable for its characters. But now I have a reason to return to it sooner! So what do I think? Well, I already knew we were going to get some expansion about Rose because we know nothing about her or her powers.

It does seem cliche at first, her growing up shunned by other kids because of her unknown abilities and not having a father, her desire to live a normal life, etc. Then all of a sudden we see her wandering Lady Dimitrescu’s castle, like in a dream or something unless the village is still intact after all. Perhaps she will go there for answers but since this is a DLC it’ll likely just be in one place. As soon as I saw what looked like the Duke with a mask and the Mold rising out of the floor I was shocked like wait has he gone bad? I mean, he’s another character of mystery so we shall see.

On a positive note, now I have a legit excuse to play the game’s Mercenaries mode more because we can now play as Chris Redfield, Karl Heisenberg, and Lady Dimitrescu. I’m looking forward to playing as Karl and hurling metal at lycans or pounding them with his hammer! Then I can be Lady D and slice them to ribbons or choke slam them into the ground! I’m sure a lot of people wanted to do the latter.

So is that what I wanted, well yes because I love being given the option to play as a character I love, but also, no, because what I really wanted was a DLC that further explores the story arcs of the Four Lords.

I wrote a couple of lengthy posts about how I felt like Lady D was a richly developed character with a story arc that was thrown out too soon as she and her daughters were the first villains to go. Then when I fell in love with Karl I saw he had so much potential to be utilized further, he was such a tragic and memorable character who wanted nothing more but to bring down Miranda and be free of her control. We also don’t know anything about his past before the Cadou and he could have been the franchise’s next iconic reoccurring villain but no, the company swept it under the bus.

Why is it that every video game villain that I fall in love with ends up being a missed opportunity for the devs to expand that character’s backstory and overall growth? Then again, I guess it could be worse right? I mean, Daenerys Targaryen the writers utilized her to full potential that we fans loved her for it….. only for them to butcher and bring her down within six remaining episodes into madness that broke the hearts of many fans, including myself. On the bright side, not making a lot of canon content for Karl gives me the freedom to construct my own story with him in my fanfiction!

There are two ways to waste a good character as I say, kill them off too quickly before fans even get a chance to truly know them, or build them up until they are near perfect and then tear them down in a very short period of time that will certainly end in death.

What would have been really cool is if we got maybe, four short DLC stories of each of the lords where we play as them in their time before the Cadou, or when after they are exposed to the Cadou and their powers are beginning to develop. Imagine Karl going insane in his factory and trying to run away before deciding to ultimately go to war against Miranda. Donna walking through her house and hallucinating constantly before learning to harness the power of illusion. Salvatore warping into his distorted figure and swimming and devouring trespassers. Then of course, Lady D growing in size, creating her daughters and maybe even facing her own inner demons just like the way Rose’s DLC will play out since the former is the most insecure of the lords.

Now imagine that for a second, especially with Karl, he could be more than just a playable character in this game’s Mercenaries mode don’t you think? When the game was first released, everyone was crazy about the Four Lords, most of us didn’t really give much of a damn about Ethan Winters and his family. The lords were always the stars of the game and deserved more attention from the devs themselves. However, even if Capcom does give us that, they likely won’t be very long story DLCs. They seem to be notorious for not always listening to their fans or giving us something that the fans want but being very cheap with it.

I mean, in RE7 we did get a couple of DLCs that gave us a little more to the character arcs of the Bakers so maybe we will get something for the lords later on. Here’s to hoping. I’ve rambled a little too much on this matter!

Finally the DLC will enable us to play the main story in third-person mode which some long-time RE fans prefer. Personally, I will stick to first-person whenever I replay the main story because it’s just a lot more intense that way so hopefully there will be a way to switch between modes and not have it permanently replace first-person.

I know I’m being a little too critical here and most of the time I try to be as optimistic as possible but even if it isn’t everything that I wanted. I am still looking forward to playing the contents of this DLC and learning more about Rose as well as playing as Karl and Lady D in the Mercenaries mode. I’m sure it’ll be fun regardless.

Let us hope that this will be worth it in October and maybe later we’ll get some more extra content that we hoped for even more.

👽Emily