Summary
Capcom has put tons ofResident Evilcharacters through emotional, psychological, and physical wringers. Nobody’staken quite as much physical abuse asResident Evil’s Ethan Winterssince they physically couldn’t withstand or recover from such mutilation, for instance, while Chris Redfield has endured his fair share of emotional trauma with how many close ones he’s lost, largely due to the sheer number of installments he’s been featured in.
Jill Valentine still hasn’t returned toResident Eviland, even though she’s one of the most highly demanded characters for Capcom to reprise, somehow the community has accepted her retirement due to the psychological challenges she’d be recovering from sinceResident Evil 5. Legacy mascot characters all have their baggage now but there’s one character who only appeared in a single entry and may arguably take the cake—literally—as the franchise’s most pitiful from a narrative and gameplay perspective:Resident Evil 7’s Clancy Jarvis.
Clancy Jarvis is Resident Evil’s Most Distressing Character
Capcom knew it could exploit Clancy, a character who wasn’t a legacy mascot and thus unimportant to the series as a whole, and it sure twists the knife into his ribcage without any remorse. It’s also important to remember that unlike aLuis Serra or Billy Coen, Clancy is a mild-mannered cameraman and hardly even considered a side character.Resident Evil 7’s Ethan is an everyman, too, but he’s also technically deceased by the time he actually meets the Bakers at their supper table and there’s not really any amount of suffering he wouldn’t have been able to physically recover from anyway.
That’s not to say Clancy is the only character in recentResident Evilmemory who’s suffered greatly, but Clancy is easy to overlook due to him not being a recurring protagonist.
The number of abhorrent and disturbing experiences Clancy endures at the hands of his kidnappers Jack, Marguerite, and Lucas Baker is frankly ridiculous. The horrific events and torturous games Clancy is put through are in chronological order as follows:
Clancy’s Back-to-Back Torture in Resident Evil 7 is a Fate Worse Than Death
Nightmare, Bedroom, and 21are all icing on the cake regarding how much Clancy bravely suffers, butResident Evil 7’s base game alone is enough to represent how sad his death is. If players find themselves sympathizing with Clancy at all, it’s deeply upsetting to know that Ethan could learn how to survive the “Happy Birthday” puzzle and outwit Lucas’ trap because he witnessed how Clancy failed.
Clancy is therefore a true MVP ofResident Evil 7coupled with the good fortune Ethan has to stumble upon that videotape. The tape itself isn’t mandatory for players to succeed and yet Clancy’s death can at least serve a purpose this way, which is better than imagining that what he went through was for nothing at all.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
WHERE TO PLAY
Resident Evil 7 biohazard is the next major entry in the renowned Resident Evil series and sets a new course for the franchise as it leverages its roots and opens the door to a truly terrifying horror experience. A dramatic new shift for the series to first person view in a photorealistic style powered by Capcom’s new RE Engine, Resident Evil 7 delivers an unprecedented level of immersion that brings the thrilling horror up close and personal.Set in modern day rural America and taking place after the dramatic events of Resident Evil® 6, players experience the terror directly from the first person perspective. Resident Evil 7 embodies the series’ signature gameplay elements of exploration and tense atmosphere that first coined “survival horror” some twenty years ago; meanwhile, a complete refresh of gameplay systems simultaneously propels the survival horror experience to the next level.
