Man becomes a father, what comes next may shock you! (Resident Evil 8 Story recapped)

     Welcome back, my friends and fiends alike... I see you're here for another tale of horrors and woes. As I recall, I was telling the tale of Ethan Winters, a truly remarkable and unconventional hero who had to deal with some remarkably dark and wicked horrors while trying to save his wife. We last left our reunited couple safe and happy, save for some unfortunate unavoidable PTSD after the events which occurred in Dulvey, Louisiana at the Baker House. Surely nothing too terrible is in the cards for Ethan and Mia Winters from now on, right? I wish I could tell you that they went on to live long and happy lives, that they enjoyed long peaceful days, but today's story is unfortunately not like that at all. Please beware of the spoilers ahead, as I'll be doing my best to recount the horrors that await Ethan this time around, and since I do love Resident Evil 8, I hope you'll go try it out for yourself if you have the means. I need to mention that I haven't played the DLC yet, so I obviously can't cover that, but I'll do my best other than that! Without further ado, let us continue the tale of Ethan Winters, now a new father.

A New Tale...

    The story begins this time around with Mia reading a creepy bedtime story to their newly born daughter, Rosemary. It has been three years since the events of Resident Evil 7, and Mia is trying to move on with life and blend into the cultures of this new area that the family has been moved into. Chris Redfield and New Umbrella have been keeping a close eye on the Winters residence for some time and put them into a witness protection program, which is why they are now living in the woods of Europe. Ethan has received some actual training from the organization, ensuring that he'll actually be able to do something if a situation like the one he was placed in ever happens again. The story tonight is just a little too intense for Rose, Ethan thinks, considering the animation during this section of the intro looks like a Tim Burton-Esque creepy stop motion animation. He puts Rose to sleep and comes back down to have dinner with Mia, a nice dinner, though with some less than pleasant conversation, as Ethan brings up Dulvey and Mia urges him to drop it. Speaking of dropping it... Mia is suddenly shot through the window of their home, dropping the pasta that she made for dinner. Ethan gets down on the ground and flips the table to take cover. The door is kicked in, and the table is pushed aside to reveal one of the main heroes of the whole series, Chris Redfield. "Sorry, Ethan," Chris remarks, then shoots Mia several more times and someone else in Chris's team incapacitates Ethan. He comes to and sees the men holding Rose, his daughter, and begs them to stop. He is then abruptly knocked out once again. When he wakes up again, he's laying in the snow next to a wrecked Jeep convoy, and clearly many things are very wrong with the situation he's currently in. He walks forward, stumbling around in the dark, and eventually finds his way to a cottage, and finally, a village. Unfortunately, this village has a major problem with what appear to be werewolves. 

    Ethan is completely outmatched with tons and tons of creatures all over the place, but they eventually disperse right before they're able to defeat the hero. He finds his way and runs into an old witch who mutters out a prayer to Mother Miranda, whoever that is. He hears a radio transmission inside a house that any survivors should meet up at Luiza's house, so he heads there and meets a girl and her injured father, then helps them to get inside. Once inside, Ethan is met with the only survivors from the apparently sudden onslaught of these evil creatures. They say a prayer to Mother Miranda, but the girl's father then snaps and kills everyone in the room except for Ethan and his daughter who are able to escape. They still need to get out of the house, which is now in the process of burning down, thanks to the father's attack. Long story short here, Ethan is able to escape the wreckage of this house, but the girl unfortunately doesn't make it. He exclaims that he can't believe that this sort of thing is happening to him again, which makes him the most realistic Resident Evil character ever, and then he jumps out of a third story window completely unscathed, removing the realistic nature of his character that was established moments before.

A Monstrous Family...

    Ethan obviously wants nothing more right now than to save Rose and get out of this place, wherever it is, and so he charges towards a castle, which seems likely to at least give him some idea of where he can find his missing daughter. As he's trying to get there, however, he's cut off by a strange man with a giant hammer and an apparent ability to control metal. He encompasses Ethan in random bits of scrap metal and drags him to a spooky monster family meeting. It is here where we, the player, meet our main threats of this game. Lady Dimitrescu, a 9-foot-tall vampire woman, Donna Beneviento, the tortured doll-maker who speaks through living puppets, Moreau, a grotesque fish-man hybrid, and Karl Heisenburg, the aforementioned man with a hammer are all present and look every bit as amazing and weird as you could imagine. Presiding over this "family" meeting is Mother Miranda, a menacing figure who somewhat resembles a crow in posture, though clearly is the matriarch of this little monster mash. Miranda states that they have Rose in their possession, and Heisenburg is given the honor of disposing of "the father," much to Lady Dimitrescu's chagrin. Ethan has to run a death gauntlet, but he is somehow able to escape the traps set by Heisenburg and get into Dimitrescu's castle. We learn a bit about how she came to be this way, that Miranda allowed her to have three daughters, who can all turn into bugs, but die in the cold. Interestingly enough, our protagonist has his hand chopped off once again (making that a total of twice that his hand has been removed, the first time the Baker family reattatched it while he was unconscious) by Lady Dimitrescu's razor sharp fingers. It's okay though, after this short segment where the lady of the house chases him around, he pours some medical gel on his wound and he magically reattaches his hand somehow. Don't question it too much, but I will admit I laughed a lot at the absurdity of this part. Ethan unfortunately has to take out all of the residents of Castle Dimutrescu, including Lady Dimitrescu herself who transforms into a giant bat creature. Rose wasn't in the castle, but he does find a crib, evidence that the good lady of the estate may have kept her here for some time.

    Once he defeats Lady Dimutrescu, he finds a jar of seemingly no importance, but he takes it anyway and escapes the area, running into the old woman from before who explains the importance of Mother Miranda's "family members," showing Ethan a familiar sign on the wall that is like a family crest that has a great significance to people who have played Resident Evil games before. The crest looks exactly like the Umbrella Corporation's logo, with each of the streaks of red for one of the monstrous beings. From here, Ethan runs into who is now like an old friend, The Duke, who acts as the merchant of this game, and also appears to have some mysterious omnipotent powers. The Duke explains that Rosemary received quite a bit of power from Mia's time under the control of the Mold in Resident Evil 7, and in fact, the jar that Ethan recieved from the castle is actually her head. Mother Miranda apparently broke the girl's essence apart into different pieces, and gave the jars to her four "children." Ethan hears this and obviously knows what he has to do at this point, find the jars and reassemble his daughter, then escape this horrible place.

The Doll House and Other Colorful Setpieces...

    Next up for our hero is the abandoned house on the hill, and though it doesn't seem too bad at first, this is easily the scariest locale from any Resident Evil game that I've played. This is Beneviento's domain, and as such, there are dolls all over the place here. Ethan finds the second flask right away, in the arms of a puppet, but then the lights turn out and his entire inventory is stolen. A large puppet version of Mia is left on the table, and Ethan has to essentially solve an escape room situation to get out of the basement of this house, with no weapons and no way to defend himself. I won't talk all about what Ethan has to do in this area, but it is horrifying, I assure you. After escaping the basement and a deadly game of Hide and Seek (again, not elaborating on that), Ethan faces his fears and breaks the illusions of Beneviento's power, leaving the house on the hill victorious with flask in hand. He puts the jar in the chalice at the center of the village, where the Duke told him to put the first jar, and he's off once again, this time to the old Windmill.

    The windmill is the domain of Moreau, and Ethan once again finds the jar right away, but the entrance is sealed off, forcing him to go all the way around the windmills, while Moreau transforms into a much larger and much more disgusting fish person than he even was before. Ethan actually meets up with Chris and his team in this section, as they've set up a quarantine zone and have been studying this area for a while, it seems like something much bigger is going on here. Ethan confronts him about killing Mia, but Chris repeats that he doesn't know the full story and warns him to stay out of the situation, but refuses to say any more about it. Timing is the name of this game in this area as Ethan has to solve lots of puzzles while avoiding a murderous giant fish and turning a windmill so that enough power can go to a power station that can drain the water from the area. This culminates in a boss fight of really disgusting proportions, since Moreau's main attack involves acid vomit, and it's just a really bad time. After the transformed Moreau is defeated, he turns to ash like the rest of our monster rogues gallery of sorts, and Ethan is able to leave with Jar number three. As he's getting ready to leave however, Heisenburg hacks Moreau's TV and tells Ethan that he's left the jar entrusted to him in a stronghold not too far from where he is, wanting to test Ethan's strength and resolve. Ethan does so and has to face a whole slew of Lycanthropes, which we find out seem to be Moreau's creation, which he made for Mother Miranda in his lab. Ethan defeats the enemies and gets Heisenburg's jar, prompting Heisenburg to invite him to his area, the factory.

    Heisenburg, as I stated before, has power over metal, and as such, it makes perfect sense that he's been working on a cyborg Zombie army, doesn't it? It turns out that, according to Heisenburg, Mother Miranda has been testing Ethan all this time, and that she intends on making him join her monster family, but he makes him a counter offer to join up with him to take her down. Ethan refuses, and so Heisenburg pushes him into the factory and locks the door, forcing him to face off against his zombie cyborg creations. Ethan does his typical action-hero work, even though he seems to be the worst equipped to deal with this type of thing out of everyone. He finds his way out of the factory, but Heisenburg is too strong to be dealt with by normal means. Ethan ends up in the basement of the factory, but meets Chris once again who actually explains himself this time. It turns out that the Mia that was "killed" at the beginning of the game was Mother Miranda in disguise, since she's able to shapeshift apparently, and the reason that he didn't tell Ethan the truth was because he was worried that he had been corrupted by her powers, since they weren't sure exactly what she was capable of, which is the same reason that they took Rose. Clearly they didn't finish the job, however, and Mother Miranda was able to escape and wreck all the cars at the beginning of the game. 

    Chris gives Ethan what is essentially a tank with a chainsaw and a railgun to fight Heisenburg with, and finally trusts the man who has given so much to get his daughter back. Ethan has an amazing tank fight with Heisenburg, who is like a giant metal monster at this point, while Chris blows up Heisenburg's factory. Upon seeing the explosion of his factory and his metal army up in smoke, he refers to Chris as, "that boulder-punching freak," or something like it. which is the best line in the game, and also a reference to how silly Resident Evil 5 is. In that game, there's a scene where Chris has to punch a boulder out of the way of a path inside a volcano. That's neither here nor there, but I did have to explain that line at least. Ethan is finally able to defeat Heisenburg, and Mother Miranda shows up on the scene, explaining that Rose is actually the successor to Eveline, the manifestation of the mold in Resident Evil 7, and that when the sun rises, they will have a ceremony, and Mother Miranda will be her mother, as her actual child will be reborn once again. She laughs wickedly as the Megamycete, a fungus like the mold from Louisiana that is somehow under this area, bursts from the ground in many different places around the village. Miranda changes herself into all of her different forms we've seen in the game, Mia and the old woman from the beginning of the game, before changing into her true form and ripping out the heart of Ethan Winters. The man falls to the ground and alas the father is dead.

Death ain't all it's cracked up to be...

    The player takes control of Chris Redfield here, getting confirmation of Ethan's death and then leading a squad through the village which is now being consumed by monsters and the Megamycete. Chris laments waiting so late to tell Ethan what was going on, and completely blames himself for the man's death. Chris and his squad break into Miranda's underground bunker, containing lots of notes from different people, most notably one from Ozwell Spencer, the founder and former president of the Umbrella Corporation, who essentially thanks her for the idea of the T-Virus, and just like that, apparently Miranda and the Megamycete are what have inspired all of the crazy pain and torment in the entire Resident Evil franchise. Deeper inside, Chris finds a cell where the real Mia is locked up! Chris saves her and tells her the unfortunate news about her husband... but she smiles, and tells Chris that he truly doesn't understand just how special Ethan is, and neither does he.

    Ethan awakens to the familiar sound of a little girl laughing, and finds himself in some kind of shadowy realm. His body appears to be fully healed when he meets up with Eveline, the entity from the first game. You may want to buckle your seatbelts, as we're heading into the home stretch here. Eveline reveals that Ethan was actually killed at the beginning of Resident Evil 7 by Jack Baker, and he was revived by the mold. Since then, he has somehow become a being made up entirely of the mold, and thus, cannot truly die unless the mold itself does. Ethan wakes up in The Duke's carriage and tells him to get him to Mother Miranda. Duke says that he was already on his way, but double checks with Ethan if this is the right thing to do, since his body is "falling apart." Ethan says that he has to take her out and save Rose, no matter what. The Duke tells him that there is no going back to his old life after this situation, which Ethan knows and heads in the direction of the Ritual grounds.

    Ethan and Miranda are about to face off, but Miranda supposedly completes the ritual, which is meant to bring her daughter back from the dead, which is why she went mad with power in the first place, and also why she's referred to as "Mother Miranda." Instead, Rose's power is too strong, she reconstitutes as herself once again, and restored Ethan back to even more strength than he had before. Ethan is able to defeat Mother Miranda, but the Megamycete is still up to no good, as it's now growing out of control. Chris planted charges at the root of the fungus, and tells Ethan that he needs to hurry up and get to the helicopter. Ethan suddenly begins to give out, his body starting to lose form as the power of the mold is depleted. He gives Rose to Chris and tells him to take care of her and Mia, and to tell Mia that he's sorry for everything. Chris reluctantly hands Ethan the device that triggers the bombs and runs off to get to the chopper as the Megamycete separates them for the last time. Chris gets to the helicopter and they take off, much to the surprise of Mia, who asks where Ethan is, even though she already knows the answer. The charges go off, and Ethan Winters, along with the village, Mother Miranda, and the Megamycete, are all no more.

    The years pass quickly, and the memory of Ethan Winters is nearly forgotten, but we join a young woman on a bus many years later. Rosemary Winters looks to be a teenager or in her early twenties as she visits the grave of her late father, which she does every year on his birthday. Suddenly a few government agents approach her, chastising her for sneaking away from training and tell her that they're ordered to bring her back in. She threatens them when they call her Eveline, half joking that they have no idea what she could do to them. She gets into the car and they drive away.

    Just like that, the story of the father, the family man, and the unexpected hero is concluded. I'm sorry to end this story in a sad way, but that's just how the story goes in some situations, for the Winters family especially. On the plus side, Ethan was able to save his family, even though it cost him his own life. Rosemary Winters is carrying on the family name, and the DLC that just came out last week is actually all about her. I can't speak about it, since I haven't played it yet, but it would appear that she still has some adventure ahead of her.

    Thank you for reading all this, friends. I hope you've enjoyed this chilling collection of stories about the Winters family, and the fate of the world when Umbrella has been in it, it's certainly different from my usual, but it felt right along with the horror themes of October and Halloween. I love both  these games and I would highly recommend them to anyone who likes horror and isn't too squeamish, since these games do have a lot of grotesque imagery in them. I hope you all have a great week. In times like these, remember that no matter how dark and bleak your life may seem, at least you're better off than poor Ethan Winters. Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your spooky scary narrator, and remember, there are brighter days still ahead!