The Biggest Chills and Thrills in Resident Evil 7!
Resident Evil 7 is an epic survival horror game that introduces you to the Baker family. Whether it’s Jack chasing you with lawn equipment, Marguerite spoon-feeding you a secret recipe, or Lucas throwing you a birthday party, the Baker family is full of surprises! The family’s secluded house radiates a chilling vibe that relentlessly keeps you on edge. Still, 10 moments stood out amid the constant chills and thrills!
10. Approaching the Baker Home
Eveline Awaits Outside the Baker Home
A Walkthrough of the Beginning of Resident Evil 7
The start of the game has your character, Ethan, traveling to Dulvey, Louisiana, in search of his wife, Mia. Your first playable scene is when Ethan exits his car and approaches the seemingly abandoned home. As soon as you reach the tall metal gate, the game instantly sets a tangible ominous tone.
On the path, you’ll find plenty of clues regarding the horrors-to-come. The van that the film crew arrived in is abandoned along the way. You run into hideous displays of animal body parts and catch your first glimpse of Jack Baker. Outside of the guest house, Mia’s purse and driver’s license seems to have missed the burn pile. Not many games know how to pack this much spine-tingling suspense into the beginning few minutes, but Resident Evil 7 sets the bar!
9. “Derelict House Footage”
A Walkthrough of the "Derelict House Footage."
One of the first significant insights into the underlying story is the “Derelict House” footage. You find this tape shortly after entering the guest house, and you pop it into the VHS player. All the tapes in Resident Evil 7 are playable, so you become the character filming the scene. In this case, you play as the cameraman tagging along to film the abandoned Baker home for a paranormal TV series.
It opens with you standing in front of the house with the other 2 crew members. You get to listen as the host insinuates, on your first day, that they may need to find a new camera operator and other side banter. When a member of the crew wanders off and doesn’t come back, you go searching for him and find a hidden entrance in the room that you’re watching the VHS tape in. You find your missing crew member, but not how you hoped!
8. The Guest House Attic
Mia Gets a Little Bit Scary!
Welcome to the Family
The story gathers momentum after you repair the fuse box that opens the attic stairway. At this point, you’ve already found Mia, but she’s clearly not the Mia you used to know. She’s turned into a supernatural version of herself and cut your hand off with a chainsaw. Yikes, a lover’s quarrel for the ages!
In the attic, you face Mia again until it seems that you’ve gotten rid of her for good. Your adrenaline doesn’t have enough time to settle. Before you can make it out of the house, you’re stopped in your tracks and spun around. Right as Jack Baker’s fist meets your face and you lose consciousness, he says, “Welcome to the family, son.” You get the impression that this is a family you’d rather not be part of.
7. The Dinner Table
Bon Appétit!
The Baker Family Dinner Scene
When you wake up after Jack’s warm welcome, you’re strapped into a chair at the dinner table. You get a heaping dose of family dysfunction as Jack saws Lucas’ forearm in half, to which Lucas protests with, “Not again!” Jack attempts to force the nauseating dinner into your mouth, and your refusal sends Marguerite into a frenzy. This scene makes it clear what level of crazy you’re up against. Depending on your family background, this might seem like a typical family gathering, or downright horrifying.
You also notice an elderly woman in a wheelchair next to you. She seems nearly lifeless, as she doesn’t move or speak. But she still somehow brings the creep-factor up. Throughout the game, she’ll appear in random spots, but she also appears in a crawlspace underneath the home. You eventually find out why she’s significant, but she’ll keep you feeling like you’re being watched.
6. The Garage Fight
Not Even Fire Can Stop Him!
See This Insane Boss Fight for Yourself!
I can vouch for the entire game being scarier in VR, but this scene showcases the VR mode perfectly!
In your attempt to escape, you spend some time evading Jack. You’ve gotten a glimpse of how diabolical he is, but you quickly realize that the dinner table scene barely scratched the surface. After you hear banging on the window, you have a short conversation with a Sherriff’s Deputy who agrees to meet you in the garage. Surely you didn’t think escaping is that easy, right?
This is where the VR fun begins. Within a few seconds of meeting the Deputy, the garage entrance begins closing. The Deputy panics and yells for you to lift it back up but is interrupted by Jack slicing through his head with a shovel. VR mode makes it appear like the shovel is quickly approaching your face and enhances the gruesome visuals.
A boss battle against Jack begins, which is guaranteed to send you into a panic. It seems like no amount of pocket-knife slashing or bullets slow him down. When you find the keys to the car, you get a chance to run him over repeatedly, but it’s still not enough. He takes control of the vehicle and tries to drive you straight into a stack of metal beams. With VR, you feel as if a beam narrowly misses crushing you, but Jack wasn’t so lucky.
Surely, it’s over now, right? Wrong. One more struggle with Jack ends with him putting a gun to his own head and pulling the trigger. Now’s your chance to get out of the garage and breathe a quick sigh of relief, but the scene leaves you shocked and disturbed!
5. The Marguerite Boss Fight
Burn, Mrs. B, Burn!
The Marguerite Boss Fight Gameplay
Marguerite alone is quite intimidating, and her precious insects make your skin crawl. You cross paths with her while looking for the ingredients Zoe needs to make the serum that will cure her and Mia. She’s continuously trailed by bugs and carrying a lantern you’ll need to obtain.
Things get crazy when it comes time to fight Marguerite. Her womb becomes a bug nest, and her limbs extend. She crawls around the greenhouse lunging at you with her gangly arms and swarming nest. She’s the first character that reaches their real demise, unable to come back and find you as Jack does throughout the game. Her body calcifies, leaving behind the lantern.
4. The “Happy Birthday” Tape
I Hope You Like Clowns!
Solving the "Happy Birthday" Puzzle
This tape, located in the attic above the kid’s room in the Old House, is optional, but it comes in handy. Remember the cameraman you played as during the “Derelict House Footage?” His name is Clancy, and he’s now being forced to participate in a demented puzzle that Lucas cooked up.
The objective sounds simple, light a candle then stick it on the birthday cake. But it doesn’t take long to realize that a shower of water extinguishes the candle when you reach the doorway. To solve it, Clancy endures a spray of nails and having a message etched into the skin of his arm. Once the puzzle is solved, Lucas reveals that Clancy isn’t allowed to leave, and the room goes up in flames.
As if seeing Clancy endure the puzzle wasn’t bad enough, Lucas first reveals how sadistic he is. Before the puzzle begins, he claims to envy Clancy and excitedly says, “This joy? Why you can’t fake this. It has taken me weeks to finish this, and it is finally ready.” It’s clear that Lucas went to great lengths to devise the puzzle and solution, and he continuously seems to enjoy watching you.
Lucas later traps Ethan in the same puzzle. If you complete the tape, you’ll already know the solution and how to rig it so that you survive, much to Lucas’ dismay.
3. Mutated Jack
You Can't Hide From Mutated Jack's Eyes!
Mutated Jack Boss Fight Gameplay
After you complete the puzzle, Lucas’ computer screen allows you to locate Zoe and Mia in the boathouse. By this point, you have the ingredients Zoe needs for the serum. Once you untie them, Zoe does quick work of creating 2 syringes of serum, but she remarks that her father is nearby.
Jack’s now-giant face and hands bust through the wall, grabbing Ethan while his distorted voice tells Zoe to get back to the house. Behold, Jack’s final form. He became a huge, pulsating, slug-like creature covered in swollen eyeballs.
As you fight him, you gain insight into how inhuman he has become. He expresses his anger at Ethan for tearing apart his family and turning Zoe against him. He even wails and mourns the death of his beloved Marguerite. It showcases the magnitude of the destruction of humanity within a previously loving family.
Once Jack is significantly weakened, Zoe calls out to you to use the serum on him. You slam the serum into Jack and watch him writhe as his body turns into crumbling stone as Marguerite did. Unfortunately, this leaves you with only 1 syringe left. You’re left to make a heartbreaking choice between curing Mia or Zoe.
2. “Test Subject E-001” Tape
Eveline Isn't Taking No for an Answer!
Gameplay of "Test Subject E-001"
Soon after choosing who to cure and escaping the Baker property, you spot the wrecked ship that brought Mia to this area. Ethan is thrown from the small motorboat, and you awake outside of the ship as Mia, no matter who you chose to cure. Ethan is engulfed by a supernatural force, causing Mia to board the ship in search of him.
One video of Mia in the game shows her telling Ethan that she’s away for a babysitting job. However, another video shows her hurriedly stating that she lied to him and urging him to stay away. Mia had been aboard this ship to help transport and control Eveline, an experimental genetically modified being that was aged to look like a child. As you roam the ship, you catch glimpses of Eveline, who tries to remind Mia of what happened.
Finally, Eveline corners Mia in a room with a small TV and VHS player. She forces Mia to watch the old tape, which Mia recorded during the catastrophic shipwreck. Eveline had escaped and was vomiting black goo from which the Molded spawn. Mia hunts her down, equipped with a watch that tracks her and heavy firepower. Once found, Eveline calls Mia “Mommy” and states that she wants to live in a house and be a real family.
This tape explains the truth behind Mia’s disappearance and Eveline’s motives for infecting and controlling the Baker family. It also puts you in the moment when Mia filmed her warning to Ethan and effectively ties the storyline together.
1. Confronting Eveline
The End of Eveline
Gameplay of the Final Fight with Eveline
When you regain control of Ethan, it’s time to go after Eveline. This is no easy task, seeing as you must traipse through the Molded-infested salt mines. But this explains the role of the elderly woman in the wheelchair. Eveline posed as her, presumably to keep track of Ethan and the other characters. You also get a sense of Eveline’s emotional struggles as someone who, though misguided, just wanted a loving family.
During your run through the salt mines, you obtain 1 more syringe of the serum, and your last hope is to destroy Eveline with it. As you reach her and inject the serum, the reveals herself as the wheelchair-bound woman and cries out, asking, “Why does everyone hate me?”
From there, she morphs into her final form as a massive head and long body. The Umbrella Corporation shows up and urges Ethan to finish Eveline off with a special gun that will finish her off. The ending of this fight brings relief after nonstop adrenaline throughout the game. Now, maybe it’s worth a try on the Madhouse difficulty?
