Resident Evil Village is getting playable Lady D and a third-person mode

Just when we thought not-E3 was done, Capcom pulled us back into a livestream to announce some cool Resident Evil stuff. During today's Capcom Showcase, Capcom announced that Resident Evil Village is getting a major update to both its story and side mode, Mercenaries. Soon, you'll be able to step into the shoes of Lady Dimitrescu herself and play through the entirety of Village in third-person.

As cool as it'd be to replace Ethan with Lady D as the Village protagonist, the playable villains will be limited to the Mercenaries side missions. In the trailer Capcom showed, we got a brief glimpse at her grabbing werewolf dude and slamming him to the ground. Also joining the Mercenaries ranks is Karl Heisenberg, the mean hammer guy that for some reason always makes me think of meth, and Chris Redfield himself.

But for my money, the coolest and weirdest part of this update is Village's third-person mode, which essentially lets you switch off the most unique thing about the newest run of Resident Evil games.

I get it—for many, RE will always be best played from over the shoulder. For me, it was the opposite. I thought RE2 Remake was good, but then I gave RE7 a shot and had a blast with its more immersive combat. Everything's a bit scarier when you can't see around a corner. That said, third-person is a pretty cool reason to return to Village for a second playthrough. It sounds like Capcom put in the work to make it more-or-less play like RE2 and RE3, with new third-person animations for all of the creepy in-your-face moments in RE Village.

The last bit Capcom talked about is a new Shadows of Rose side story releasing alongside this update. The new story stars the grown-up daughter of Ethan, Rose, and picks up right where RE Village left off. It's all coming on October 28, which should hold fans over until RE4 Remake comes out in March 2023.

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.