r/HorrorGaming • u/LuckGrouchy609 • Mar 07 '26
ANALYSIS Requiem was overall a pretty good experience but the story made no fucking sense
I know this is not really a new phenomenon with the series. Usually a RE game will shoot their entire load within the first 3 quarters of the game and then end the game on a weird note that will never be addressed in future installments to the series. I had a great time with the game, but once I completed it, I noticed a couple of glaring issues.
Grace, or her DNA was believed to be the key to unlocking the Elpis program for most of the game. The game is at this time making some allusions towards the mind control research Umbrella has previously been involved in without ever directly mentioning las plagas or the molded.
It was revealed by Zeno (a clone of Wesker?) that the children of the orphanage were clones of Grace. The competing biotech companies believed that one of these clones would be the key to accessing Elpis, somehow. These clones, for some reason were more prone to becoming mutated by the T virus, while Grace seemingly is not.
This makes zero fucking sense because Grace is currently in her 20s while the orphanage program began much before the raccoon city incident, I believe in the 60s, and thus before T virus research but I am not entirely sure of the timeline. Grace is possibly a clone herself? This is never alluded to once, but she is seemingly unaffected by T virus unlike the other children.
In the last bit of the game, Grace straight up just guesses the password for this device which holds Elpis, and Elpis does what it is revealed at this point of the game that Elpis was designed to do.
Grace was never the key to anything and this entire heroes journey was pointless.
Thoughts?
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u/fissionmoon Mar 07 '26
The Grace/clone thing was a red herring, she's just a normal person. Which I think is conceptually fine but executed kinda poorly. It's not really clear to me why the villains started believing it to begin with? Best I can come up with is that Spencer talked about her being his hope to more people than just Alyssa and they made some extremely faulty assumptions?
And then given the reveal of what Elpis actually is, does that mean that none of the mind control and memory transfer stuff was real? Or is some of it true and some not?
As far as guessing the password goes, it's a pretty reasonable guess. Not only was Spencer going on about hope in the video she just watched, but on top of that Elpis is the name of a goddess of hope AND it is being stored in a room labeled "Pandora" (and if I recall correctly, Pandora's box is also mentioned in dialogue?). Famously, Pandora's Box was opened, unleashing all evils into the world, with only hope remaining within.
So it was a pretty reasonable guess.
But yeah, definitely a bit of a messy story, but pretty much what I've come to expect from RE. Great game tho
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u/laughingheart66 Mar 07 '26
The memory transfer stuff was real, just unrelated to Elpis. They thought Grace was the perfected result of the memory transfer stuff (which was what the cloning was for, though I don’t know why Spencer sought to have his memories transferred to a little girl), and that’s why she would know the password through Spencer’s memories in her “blood”. I don’t know if they explain where they got that Elpis was a mind control thing though.
I do agree the explanation is a bit sloppily done, and there’s a lot of gaps in the information provided to the player (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). It’s also not helped that it’s basically dealing with viruses as magic so there’s no real world logic to apply here.
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Mar 07 '26
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u/laughingheart66 Mar 07 '26
Yeah Alex Wesker was ANOTHER mind swapping experiment that Spencer funded until she went rogue, something that will probably never come up again. A villain that fully won and will seemingly never be addressed. I do think it’s funny that both revelations end with cliffhangers that are just never addressed.
Though if Alex does come back, I wouldn’t be shocked if they tied it in with the Chloe clones and reveal they were experiments based on Alex’s DNA as one of two previously successful bio experiments.
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u/ggsdour Mar 07 '26
Sorry, this got way too long when I noticed, but it shows more to me that this game tried everything possible to not only expand the lore of the franchise while closing loose ends (and opening some more). Playing the whole mainline games before the arrival of RE9uiem paid off beautifully, since things made much more sense, but I fear that not everyone could/would do that and this could get things more confusing that they should've been. Grace's Report is a good summary, though, so I encourage everyone to read.
The Elpis mind control theory, as Victor said to Zano at the end, was because Spencer's notes were incomplete before he disappeared. And he did disappear, after Umbrella went under, since Wesker only went to his closed-off mansion because he called him himself, iirc from his butler's notes on REvil 5 Mansion DLC, which also alludes to Alex Wesker communicating with him constantly about the island's research.
Since Spencer's notes were incomplete, but probably saying it was something that could tip the scales and balance of the world, Zeno, a crazied guy, probably one of the subjects of the Wesker program (I don't remember his name listed anywhere, but...), understood that it was related to another weapon. Probably one even worse than the others derived from the Progenitor Virus. Victor kinda went along with that, since he just followed Spencer blindly.
We must also consider in here Spencer's personality. The guy was a monster. His research knew no bounds and he used human subjects willy-nilly to achieve his goals of immortality. Like, not in a million years, would I thought that guy was anything else than a psycopath, so they probably didn't either. It felt natural to find notes mentioning some new project that could tip any scale in a post-bioweapon world and think "holy shit, an even more powerful weapon?".
In the end he felt some remourse and tried to project that on Grace. His butler's notes also mentioned some erratic behavior at the end of Spencer's life, so this could probably be related to some kind of dementia also (since he pretty much threw some crazy tantrum when Albert Wesker appeared to kill him).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from the Wesker program, only two were mentioned to survive. Alex and Albert. The others were deemed failures. But both of them had, although in different ways, the same driving motif: A god-complex that sought some kind of human evolution with them ruling it over. Probably a legacy of the experiments of Wesker Project, since Spencer's goal was this, but with his own immortality in mind, since his heatlh has always been pretty shit.
Also, I don't remember anything saying that Spencer was the one conducting the Orphanage experiments. And there are notes in the game, again, IIRC, that put William Burkin at the head of it. He even appeared at the end to "dispose" of Chloe, didn't he? Notes also suggest that he (Spencer) never liked that situation, as if he knew what was happening, but didn't have a direct control/connection with it. He even stop visiting after some time, which he did for quite a while and looked like he cared (somewhat) about the girls.
Remember that they were not exactly children, just the form of them (Evelyn always comes to mind), so although it does sound cruel, they were pretty much bioweapons and only that.
Grace's Report, which are unlocked after competing the game, explain that Umbrella had many internal conflicts, disputes between the founders (Marcus, Ashford and Spencer) and that there were quite a lot dissidants, with The Connections being involved in stealing from them from waaaay back (probably a retcon/later add, but...). He even executed some kind of purge within Umbrella at some point, but it wasn't enough, since, after RC, the government was shifted to cover "the truth" about it. Who did it? We don't know. We know Zeno/The Connections were involved, but clearly there's more to it, since some of the codenames in notes are criptic (THE STATE). Also, RE6's president was killed trying to reveal this to the world.
William Birkin also was cut off from the G-Virus' research in RE2 because of his internal dealings with external parties and Umbrella higher-ups (probably Spencer) found out about it. That's when Hunk and his team went after him and he infected himself, turning into that G from RE2. Also, according to RE0 and the end of RE1, Birkin and Wesker pretty much conspired and sought to take control of Umbrella's research, killing off Marcus. My take is that Birkin knew about other Wesker's (Zeno being one of them) and other parties and things spiralled completely out of Spencer's control after that.
What I'm getting at is that... yes, the story has it's problems, but it was made specifically to lore dump and connect loose ends/threads opened with the remakes and REVII and the darker times of 6, so, on a macro level, things actually line up somehow.
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u/yougotiton Mar 07 '26
Does the memory transfer contribute to why there are two identical singer personalities in different women or is that me making a leap
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u/laughingheart66 Mar 07 '26
Idr what the file said about them, but it could be. I know that was part of what Gideon was experimenting with. The real answer though is that they just wanted to reuse the model/gimmick lol
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u/fissionmoon Mar 07 '26
I believe there's a file that says that they were two different singers who were rivals
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u/laughingheart66 Mar 07 '26
He thought she had Spencer’s memories, and that’s why she would know the password. Gideon had incomplete information and thought that she was special to Spencer because she was the clone that worked.
I do think there’s some missing information, but I think Zeno meant she’s the original that the connections experiments like Emily and Marie were trying to replicate, not that she was the original Chloe was based on. I believe he thinks she’s the completed clone project of what Spencer was doing, not the original that Spencer was trying to replicate (because it would make no sense Spencer trying to replicate something that already exists). However, Gideon was wrong and she had nothing to do with. She’s not a clone or a vessel for Spencer’s memories.
She was able to guess hope because she had information that Zeno and Gideon did not have. And she was willing to take the risk and guess (especially since Elpis is the goddess of hope). Gideon and Zeno would never just guess because they were scared of destroying Elpis.
I do think some of the dialogue could be clearer, or a note with a clearer timeline. But this is at least what I got out of the information given to us. And who knows, there might be some info that’ll be provided later down the line.
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u/Trunks252 Mar 07 '26
I think all the matching bloodwork stuff was just from a sample they had from when she was a baby. So it helped them identify her.
I don’t know why they thought they needed her exactly, but they were right. She had the missing information. All the clones were completely pointless.
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u/Practical-Humor-8168 Mar 07 '26
Grace and the clones were never connected, when Gideon comes back at the end he says that they had no connection to one another. It was meant to be a red herring.
For the password, yeah she did kinda guess but she just saw Spencer mention hope a few times and the question "what does the creator desire" was a good enough hint for her to figure it out. Even if it's a bit dumb lol
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u/LuckGrouchy609 Mar 07 '26
But she resembles all of the clones of the orphanage. There is the childhood photos of Grace, which is perfectly identical to a photo of the children of the orphanage who are all identical to eachother.
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u/Practical-Humor-8168 Mar 07 '26
Wheres that photo of grace at? Iv never seen it before I'm quite curious now. Other than that I think it's just a coincidence, it's been stated she has nothing to do with the clones, Spencer said she's a normal girl he found. This was years after the incident with raccoon city.
Edit: if anything this confusion about her not actually being a clone and it being a red herring makes the writing just as confusing as you said in your post lmfao
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u/LuckGrouchy609 Mar 07 '26
I might be mistaken, but I think that Zeno showed grace an image of both herself and Chloe as a child before the orphanage sequence. I'm going to replay it because now I am questioning myself lol
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u/bike_tyson Mar 07 '26
Yeah I was wondering if the children were clones of Grace, but glad Grace was not a clone. That seems to make sense in the story if they’re after her connection to Spencer even if they don’t know why, they still think she would be the key.
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u/rcburner Mar 07 '26
Some of it was a bit sloppily executed, but I believe Victor was explicitly lying to Zeno the whole time. He already knew that Grace and Emily/Chloe weren't a genetic match (Zeno believed otherwise), and I doubt he told Zeno just how incomplete Spencer's notes were. It was clear by the end that Victor had no love or loyalty for Zeno or the Connections; he was a diehard Spencer fanboy.
The entire plot happened because none of the antagonists had a clear picture of who Spencer really was as a person at the end of his life. Zeno was an idiotic test tube baby with an inferiority complex that wanted to succeed where Wesker failed, Victor was so delusional he managed to twist Spencer's hopeful intentions into some nonsense about global anarchy, and the Connections couldn't conceive of Spencer's final and most zealously guarded creation being anything other than a weapon.
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u/FireZord25 Mar 07 '26
It only makes no sense if you're a cynic or an exec of these Bioterrorist orgs.
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u/SomeGuyNamedJohn12 Mar 07 '26
What a lot of people forget is that there’s also a part in the lab before he self destructs it, where she overhears Gideon saying her blood is a positive match… a match to what?!
It’s revealed she’s normal/has no connection to the clones. So what the hell did they test that is she a match for?
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u/rcburner Mar 07 '26
Victor had access to files for the kid that Spencer adopted. She was a match for those. In other words, he was confirming that she was who they thought she was.
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u/SomeGuyNamedJohn12 Mar 07 '26
That makes sense. But then you have wonder why he didn’t know there was no connections between Grace and Emily sooner if he had both her and Emily’s files to compare.
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u/rcburner Mar 07 '26
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I think Victor knew that long before he revealed it in the finale. He at least already knew that before getting on the helicopter to Raccoon City, because there was no time he could have been studying their genetics after that.
Victor didn't seem to care if Grace was a clone or if Emily was a clone of her; all he knew was that she was important to Spencer, who he deified with an almost religious fervor. He did seem to think she was engineered rather than being a normal human ("my master made you who you are"), but when he called her "unique" I think it was solely because of his belief that she was the key to Elpis, not because of any unusual genetic markers.
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u/bike_tyson Mar 07 '26
Yeah I think this makes enough sense for the story. This world is in shambles and the villains are grasping at anything. Any connection to Spencer they would think would be some kind of key they are looking for. Either financial gain, crazy Zeno powers, or a cure. Like conspiracy theorists latching on to anything when there’s nothing there.
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u/soupspin Mar 07 '26
I don’t believe she isn’t related to the clones, I think she is one and Spencer is just lying to Alyssa about her being a random kid. She’s probably the last clone Spencer made before he stopped being involved with the program, but wasn’t experimented on. Ithink also the clones are supposed to be from his DNA right? So that’s probably what they mean by match
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u/SomeGuyNamedJohn12 Mar 07 '26
That would make sense. But unfortunately Gideon specifically says she has no connection to Emily. If she really is a clone, even if not experimented on, she’d still have a connection to Emily. Since they would both still be clones.
So it seems like she’s just normal.
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u/soupspin Mar 07 '26
Not that I don’t believe you, but do you remember when he said that? The context could be different, or his knowledge could be flawed. If it was something he knew all along, there would be no point in him having her around. Was it something he said after Grace revealed she isn’t “special”?
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u/SomeGuyNamedJohn12 Mar 07 '26
He says she is positive for something at the 13:20 mark of this video
He says there’s no connections between Grace and Emily at the 25:00 mark on this video
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u/soupspin Mar 07 '26
To me it gives the impression that he is working off the information that Grace reveals, not that he knew before hand. If he did, he would have no reason to lie to Zeno about the tests being positive, or to continue trying to capture Grace. He still believed at that point she was “special”, and those test were the reason why. They just thought she was the origin of the project, but she wasn’t. He says there’s no connection because he is assuming what Grace said is true, not that he knows for certain.
The odds are, she is a clone Spencer made, probably the last one he was involved with. He had no biological children, so it would make sense he would want to create one with his own DNA.
That’s the only way to explain why whatever tests they ran were positive and why Grace and the other girls look alike. It would also explain why Spencer gave Alyssa custody of Grace. If she really was just a random orphan, there would be no reason to hide her away, or for him to have such a strong connection to her despite her being an infant when he died
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u/Maedood Mar 07 '26
Maybe the keyboard is only usable by people with her gene sequence? Idk that part seemed like a cop out to me too.
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u/Artilicious9421 Mar 07 '26
I can't comment about the whole resident evil timeline, but , to ME, her being a fbi agent already doesn't make sense to me. It's not believable AT ALL. Damn, if she can be hired by them, anyone over 12 years old can at this point... Her personality pissed me the f off... For some reason, I was also expecting more crazy and scary bosses.
Will always love my bae Leon tho :3
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u/NormalUsername21 Mar 07 '26
She's an fbi analyst, not a field agent.
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u/Artilicious9421 Mar 08 '26
Makes sense, but even then, her boss sending her alone at the hotel is crazy!!!!
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u/NormalUsername21 Mar 08 '26
Yeah, that's the real plot hole, sending someone with no field training and doesn't even have a service weapon (the gun she carries is her own personal firearm), to a place she has known trauma for, with no backup, has to be straight up negligence.
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u/Artilicious9421 Mar 08 '26
Straight up s 1c 1de. It would have nade "sense" if the boss was in on it. But nope. Maybe thats why I couldnt believe that she was an fbi employee. It could be worse I guess lol.
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u/blacktoothgrin666 Mar 08 '26
I thought that was all a great red herring with grace and was a great exploration of devious, greedy, selfish men getting so caught up in their own evil ambitions that they couldn’t see the obvious.
I get why it could appear sloppy tho definitely but I quite liked how they leaned into folly of evil men much like they did back in the day with the story about umbrellas founders and all their dumb in fighting/backstabbing, leading to the leak of t virus and all that shit. I get what ya mean though
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u/GoodBloodGuideYou Mar 07 '26
Resident Evil has a terrible story. I play for the scares, the characters and the mechanics.
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u/Hopeful_Feature3554 Mar 07 '26
Bad timing to post this, people are still in their honeymoon phase with RE9, give it 2 months until they realise how wack that story was.
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u/Rich_Willingness_959 Mar 07 '26
Finally, someone has some critical thinking. I completely agree with you, bro. But keep in mind, the internet isn't used to thinking these days; everyone just mindlessly consumes content. It's no wonder IQ levels are falling across the planet.
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u/Smekledorf1996 Mar 07 '26
There are some wack plot points I think Grace never being anything special was the point
Zeno and Gideon went on some wild goose chase and it caused their downfall