Highlights
- Resident Evil Village neglects Mia’s character, sidelining her and underutilizing her potential in the story.
- Mia Winters was a prominent character in Resident Evil 7 and her absence in Village is a missed opportunity for development.
- The narrative in Village relies on plot twists that require Chris Redfield to make questionable choices, sacrificing the development of other characters like Mia.
Resident Evil Village is a feast for all things fantastical and nostalgic, especially when it comes to what helped make Resident Evil 4 special, but unfortunately its entire narrative hinges on a plot twist. This twist is rewarding when looking back at how it’s set up, and yet, in order to fulfill it at the end of Resident Evil Village, Capcom needed Chris Redfield to make egregious and inexplicable choices so that truths would be hidden from Ethan Winters, all so that the story could go on the way it was intended to.
Somehow Resident Evil’s Mia Winters knew about Ethan while Chris didn’t, for instance, and she’s conveniently tucked away for all of Village so that truth couldn’t come out sooner. Village in general doing away with Mia was odd, too. Mia wasn’t playable as much as Ethan was in Resident Evil 7, but she’s far more prominent as a character and she’s who the story of the seventh mainline installment revolves around. Even Shadows of Rose completely disregards Mia, and if the Winters saga is truly meant to be finished now it will be a shame that Mia wasn’t given the attention and development that Ethan got.
Claire Redfield is Still Dying for a Comeback in Resident Evil
The Resident Evil franchise is currently at an all-time high, and recent success with legacy characters should herald the return of Claire Redfield.
Resident Evil Has Put Mia Winters on an Indefinite Back Burner
Resident Evil 7 Made Mia as Important as Ethan, if Not More
Mia is who Resident Evil 7 opens with and the pursuit of her is the game’s catalyst. Ethan still isn’t as iconic or beloved as a protagonist in Village, but he certainly wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Resident Evil 7 when his remarks hardly seemed appropriate for the impossibly horrific scenarios he was enduring.
Of course, Ethan never even really had an official face reveal, and Mia was clearly meant to take priority in the story as to who the action centered around. This would extend into the game’s third and most divisive act beginning on the boat with Mia as a playable protagonist finally. This didn’t last long, but it was revealing in terms of explaining how Eveline reached Dulvey and the Bakers and why Mia was connected to it all anyhow.
Ethan is essentially the player’s avatar vessel with Mia actually being a fleshed-out character and Resident Evil 7 honors that the whole way through. Then, for some reason, Mia was sidelined entirely for the next entry.
Resident Evil Village Neglected to Make Mia an Actual Character
Village is a huge game with a lot of moving parts and trying to cram Mia into it meaningfully might’ve been difficult and inauthentic. However, locking her away in the village while Ethan fights to find their daughter’s disassembled body seems like a gross underutilization of Mia’s character.
Most of what players see of Mia in Village isn’t even really her, but Miranda. It’s only during Chris’ playable segment that a cutscene reveals Mia was in the village and being experimented on so she can tease the big Ethan plot twist, once again servicing his character at the cost of turning Mia into a plot device. Mia is then seemingly forgotten about when it comes time to celebrate Rose and Ethan’s distant relationship, but even if Rose had lived her whole life knowing her mother it would’ve at least been great to see them interact in the DLC.
Instead, it seems as if Capcom was happy to dispose of Mia after Resident Evil 7 and the Winters saga supposedly concluding now makes a massive waste of Mia’s character. Mia would join a long list of Resident Evil characters cut down in their prime, following Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield as a woman the franchise should surely reprise down the line.
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village, or Resident Evil 8, is the direct sequel to RE7 and continues its story. The game became hugely popular upon release, with one of its characters, Lady Dimitrescu, becoming a meme. RE Village won Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards in 2021.
- Released
- May 7, 2021
- Genre(s)
- Survival (dupe) , Horror
- Engine
- RE Engine
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- How Long To Beat
- 10 Hours
- Metascore
- 84
- PS Plus Availability
- N/A
