In less than two weeks, Resident Evil 0 will come back into our lives so we can finally be reunited with rookie S.T.A.R.S. officer Rebecca Chambers and escaped convict Billy Coen.
These are two of the most criminally underused characters in Resident Evil, so it’s about time they were able to enjoy the spotlight again. As much as I’ve enjoyed the series’ recent course correction, I doubt it’ll ever fully go back to its roots. Capcom’s too enamored with the action genre to remember when they made games that were claustrophobic and isolating.
Chambers and Coen are a relic in the past, and I am absolutely thrilled to help them fight a few more living nightmares before Umbrella Corps comes to fling us back into the present day.
For two decades, we’ve watched this series go from survival horror to action horror to all the horrors. We’ve battled Umbrella’s army of genetically engineered creatures and witnessed those horrors spill out from the Spencer Estate into Raccoon City, and eventually, the rest of the world.
We experienced genuine terror through the eyes of dozens of characters, and to Capcom’s credit, most of the time I’ve cared about the person I was playing as. Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, Leon Kennedy, Barry Burton — few other video game franchises can boast a cast as iconic as Resident Evil.
Much like how no one is immune to the T-Virus, no game is immune to having awful characters. And when this series decides to gift us with a particularly bad one, it does so aggressively. So…
If you had to choose, who would you name as the worst character in Resident Evil?
I’ll go first. I choose Steve Burnside and his annoying, whiny voice. Fuck you, Steve.
