As the Resident Evil franchise digs back into the vault to remake some of its most beloved titles, it is making subtle narrative changes to make the pseudo-science in its world more coherent. When once there were new—and completely out of left field—virus strains and Umbrella offices located around the world, developer Capcom has slowly started to weave those threads together, and some of those loose ends could be tied up in the rumored Resident Evil 4 remake.
At the end of Resident Evil 3, a nuclear weapon destroys Raccoon City as a last ditch effort to eradicate the T-virus running rampant in the city. This event cleaned the slate for the franchise, and meant that any future games could be set elsewhere, no longer tied to the city where the zombie outbreak started. In the time between Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4, several events take place involving other Umbrella facilities around the world.
Where Was Umbrella?
As the series has gone on, Capcom has attempted to fill in some of the gaps in the Resident Evil mythos with little narrative additions that have helped make the leap to the European setting of RE4 make more sense. Still, the original Resident Evil 4 plot features almost no mention of Umbrella, the pharmaceutical giant at the core of franchise. Asset leaks of the supposed RE 4 Remake give no indication that Umbrella is now on the scene, either.
The antagonistic organization in Resident Evil 4 is Los Illuminados, a religious group that also happen to dabble in bioweapon manufacturing. It developed the Plagas parasite, an organism that invades its host and from there can control them, and cause mutations. The viruses in Resident Evil have continued to evolve, but at the time, the Plaga was something entirely new.
New Information, New RE Canon
Where a Resident Evil 4 Remake is going to have to explain itself is in new information revealed by Capcom last year when Nemesis was introduced in Resident Evil 3. When talking about Nemesis' new ability to infect zombies with a parasite, Resident Evil 3 director Kiyohiko Sakata explained that the Plagas parasite was "the original basis for NE-α," which is the artificial parasite used in the Nemesis Project.
He clarifies that this new information was not how the monstrous bioweapon was originally designed by the team behind the original game. In the 1999 original, Nemesis was simply another of Umbrella's bioweapon terrors. This new detail about the origins of Nemesis connect it to Resident Evil 4 in a much stronger way, and could open up the possibility of including a Nemesis-type enemy in a remake of RE4.
How Resident Evil 4 Remake Could Explain This
To reveal that Nemesis, an iconic character in the series history, is linked to the Plagas found in Resident Evil 4 seems like no accident. Nemesis already sat well with most fans in the franchise's lore, so to shake up the character's origin feels like a set up for new plot details to emerge in an RE4 remake. While the Resident Evil 2 Remake was quite faithful to the original, the Resident Evil 3 Remake substantially changed some parts of the game. This shows a willingness by Capcom to take the stories of these classics in a different direction, so including a Nemesis-like angle in RE4 would be possible.
With Los Illuminados not appearing too often in Resident Evil lore, the organization could be rewritten to be under Umbrella's control, or, at least, to have dealings directly with Umbrella. The official discovery of the Plaga and all that has a deep history, but making it more obvious wouldn't be too much of a stretch considering fan favorite Ada Wong, Jack Krauser, and perennial RE villain Albert Wesker are all working for Umbrella's "rival company" in Resident Evil 4. Their motivation to obtain a Plaga sample would be equally plausible if they were trying to steal it from Umbrella instead of Los Illuminados.
The franchise continues to add new narrative threads to the RE world, with Netflix series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness being the latest part of the canon. New Nemesis lore also indicates that the creature was developed at the No. 6 Laboratory as part of Umbrella Europe efforts to develop bio-organic weapons. The No. 6 Laboratory at this time does not have a known location, so this element of Nemesis' backstory is also in play to be meddled with. Is Lab 6 actually the Island Laboratory from RE4? That would be a substantial change, but if done well, would be perfectly fine, as more primitive bioweapons with parasitic implants, the Regeneradores & Iron Maidens, were already being produced there.
After Resident Evil 2 set a high bar for the franchise with its close-to-faithful reimagining, and with fans split on the changes made to Resident Evil 3, there is pressure to get a Resident Evil 4 Remake right. Given the new details around Nemesis, it seems like some alterations to the plot could be made, but the game will have some explaining to do.
The Resident Evil 4 Remake is rumored to be in development.