Last week, a Reddit user shared a brief video on the Resident Evil subreddit demonstrating an interesting moment from their Resident Evil Village playthrough.
While fighting the factory’s propeller-faced Sturm mini-boss near in the closing hours of the campaign, an apparent glitch caused the magnum to disappear from protagonist Ethan Winters’ hand, leaving him to fire on the monstrosity with an empty appendage rather than the desired firearm. The battle ends shortly after, the mechanical creature apparently so shocked by Ethan’s finger gun that it can’t muster the will to keep fighting.
“I’m not sure exactly how it happened,” the video’s uploader told Kotaku. “I think I was reloading my grenade launcher and then switched weapons at the same time Ethan lifted his hands in front of his face due to the fire. The finger gun persisted until I dropped down from the ladder in the next room.”
Try as I might, I was sadly unable to reproduce this glitch in my own game. And believe me, I really wanted it to work. The timing seems to be incredibly precise, and Ethan’s unpredictable reactions to the patches of fire created by the Sturm can make timing tricky. But seeing how Ethan’s model is already so conducive to the “finger gun” illusion, I have to assume the prolific Resident Evil modding community is already working on a permanent solution.
Ethan’s poor hands endure enough trauma in Resident Evil Village, so it’s nice to finally see them go through an ostensibly positive transformation rather than getting chomped on by werewolves or ripped apart by scary vampire ladies. Sure, a finger that fires bullets with the force of a magnum-caliber handgun isn’t ideal, but when surrounded by monsters in Romania, beggars can’t be choosers.