Ever since it was first announced, Capcom has made a big deal out of the fact that Ethan Winters and Chris Redfield would be returning to star in Resident Evil Village. Hardly surprising, of course, considering how the presence of recurring characters goes a long way in generating hype, though what you probably don’t know is the developer had at one point in time intended for another fan favourite to appear in the first-person survival horror affair.
Interestingly, this revelation doesn’t come courtesy of a leak or data-mined information, but official concept art freely viewable by anyone who owns Village‘s Trauma Pack DLC. While the add-on itself is relatively unremarkable (it provides a handful of starting items to make the campaign’s first few hours marginally easier), a series of designs reveal that Ada Wong was originally supposed to rescue Ethan from an early game sequence. Players wouldn’t have cottoned on to this, however, as she would’ve been disguised head-to-toe in an outfit reminiscent of Victorian-era plague doctors.
As for why she was cut, a caption accompanying the above image explains how Ada was ultimately omitted due to a “number of conflicting scenarios.” What exactly this refers to isn’t clear, though one likely assumption is that the spy showing up here would have resulted in continuity problems and contradictions. Is this indirectly alluding to future events in which Leon’s love interest plays an integral part? Perhaps, or maybe Capcom just couldn’t figure out a way to have Ada hold a meaningful role in Resident Evil Village‘s narrative beyond a cameo.
In any case, let us know what you make of this latest development in the usual place below!
