Two profound parts of what makesResident Evilso fascinating as a survival-horror series are its enduring nature and ability to remain malleable for nearly 30 years. Sticking fairly firmly toUmbrella’s shady pharmaceutical corporationfor quite some time,Resident Evilproved recently with its latest installment,Resident Evil Village, that its well of creativity is nowhere near dry.
Players are bound to enjoy one entry or stretch of games more than others, too, and that’s an inevitability due to how much the franchise has evolved and subverted its status quo since 1996.
Not completely unrelated,Star Wars’ enormous IP uses the theatrical Skywalker saga as its bedrock, with all other canonicalStar Warsprojects landing somewhere on the timeline that three trilogies of movies have established. These trilogies are the originals, prequels, and sequels, spanning quite lengthy periods and stretching across a galaxy far, far away betweenEpisode 1: The Phantom MenaceandEpisode 9: The Rise of Skywalker, chronologically.Star Warsis defined by its eras, and so too willResident Evilbe once its own ninth mainline installment is released. Therefore,Resident Evil 9may not want to rock the boat as contentiously asRise of Skywalkerdid, lest it tarnish the trilogy it belongs to and concludes.
Resident Evil’s Eras Illustrate the Franchise’s Adaptability
TheResident Evilfranchise can’t be shoved in a box and labeled so cleanly. But, macrocosmically, it’s stretched across soon-to-be three ‘trilogy eras’ and littered within these eras’ timelines are extraneous and significant spin-offs, such asResident Evil Survivor,Resident Evil Outbreak, andResident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
UntilResident Evil 9is released,Resident Evilpresently has two concrete trilogy eras: aclassic trilogy of retro games with tank controlsand static camera angles, and an action-leaning trilogy with an emphasis on campy characters/dialogue and cinematic spectacle.
These aren’t conventional trilogies, either, but they happen to sustain throughlines between them, even if those throughlines are purely related to the three installments’ shared tone or gameplay design ethos. Depending on what conventionsResident Evil 9follows, the franchise’s third mainline era could be defined as a horror-leaning trilogy that’s brought modern sensibilities to theResident Evilfranchise’s puzzle-laden survival-horror roots.
Resident Evil 9 Has the Honor of Crowning Three Trilogy Eras
Ending the Winters saga withResident Evil Villageand its Shadows of Rose DLC, there’s practically no telling precisely what players will be up to inResident Evil 9or if the ninth entry will be anything like the two games preceding it.Resident Evil 9doesn’t need to connect toResident Evil 7orVillagewholly as the leap fromResident EviltoResident Evil 2was decidedly stark, as well, but it potentially following Chris Redfield to the BSAA headquarters in Europe would tether a throughline with high tensile strength between the seventh, eighth, and ninth entries.
Star Warsis defined by its eras, and so too willResident Evilbe once its own ninth mainline installment is released.
Plus, Capcom hopefully wouldn’t have endedVillagewith a painfully explicit cliffhanger if that’s not whereResident Evil 9was headed. Of course, this ‘trilogy’ theory would be null and void ifResident Evil 9neglects horror or eschews the shared tone ofResident Evil 7andResident Evil Village.Resident Evil 9may or may not perpetuateResident Evil Village’s dark fantasyindulgence, and only time will tell if it’s doubling down on that atmosphere.
After its ninth mainline installment, for better or worse,Resident Evilwill be defined by three trilogy eras that act as a framework from which all otherResident Evilgames depend on like a backbone of lore. Considering how bombastic and absurd the stories ofResident Evilgames are, that backbone does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of comprehending what the state of the world is and what characters have already endured.
