Lilith complains about Capcom slaughtering the Dimitrescu family (and RE8 in general) because omg the wasted potential!

Okay, so. Lady D is basically one of the most loyal villains in the game. Both to her daughters and Mother Miranda, who she looks up to. There’s an entry in her diary that goes “Am I not special? Am I not her favorite?” which proves that she wants to be just that (and it’s funny because that behaviour/mentality bleeds into Bela, who wants Alcina’s praise and a lot of her lines are eldest daughter craving for some of her momma’s praise). It’s quite clear that Lady D is devoted to Miranda… but the moment Ethan kills Bela, the moment she tells Miranda about wanting to kill him yet all she gets is a “remember the importance of the ceremony”; she literally ends the call and throws the vanity. “TO HELL WITH THE CEREMONY!”

Her devotion to Mother Miranda pales in comparison to her love for Bela, Cassandra and Daniela. She goes against Mother Miranda’s orders to get revenge for her eldest. That alone tells us a lot about her character. She has her priorities straight. But then Capcom comes in and decides to destroy her character by:

1) Letting Ethan escape not once, but twice. And it’s funny because in the basement she says “LIKE I’D LET YOU GET AWAY” and that’s just what she does.

2) She doesn’t tell Cassandra and Daniela about Bela’s death at any moment in the final version (at some point Cass had a line that indicated that she KNEW that Bela was dead, that she was GRIEVING. “You’ve killed Bela, you BASTARD!”). Like, they literally don’t know. Cassandra has a line that goes “Sisters… Come get him!” that can be triggered both before and after killing Daniela.

3) She doesn’t tell them to retreat. He’s managed to kill Bela, what makes you think he won’t do the same with Cassandra and Daniela? DANIELA HAD A SKYLIGHT IN THE LIBRARY, FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

4) If anything, they could’ve come up with a plan to ambush him together. To avenge Bela together. But no, the girls still see it as a game. The girls don’t know. The girls get killed— Lady D literally walks outside of the library and yet she doesn’t enter when Daniela is dying (I know there are bugs covering the door, but still!)

5) After you’ve killed them all, she only brings them up again in the boss fight (“how dare you talk about saving your daughter when you’ve murdered MINE!?”) and that’s hilarious because you can literally walk around the castle to get every treasure and ammo, to make the whole map blue, and if you encounter her it’s as if nothing had happened. As if her daughters weren’t dead. And it makes no sense! Her AI is literally wonky. I know you can always hide away from the stalker-like enemies in safe rooms, but having two (Duke’s and the winery) so close to each other is stupid. And Lady D doesn’t feel all that threatening, unlike Mr.X and Nemesis in the original game.

6) The unused voice lines. Seriously, the VAs are so freakishly talented and they convey such emotion and personality in their lines— but the unused ones go one step beyond. Bela sasses and complains about her sisters in true eldest and tired sister who has to clean after everyone’s mess and only wants Alcina’s praise kinda fashion. Cassandra has the “You’ve killed Bela, you BASTARD” line and “Daniela says she wants to play with you” one, which makes it feel as though they gossiped together. Daniela has “my sisters are terrible, they never play with me :c” and “I’m Mother’s favorite” and “Have you met Bela? She’s the clever one” which makes them feel like a family! BUT THEY DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT. Thanks to what we have we know that Bela’s the tired eldest sister who wants her momma’s praise (close enough), that Cass is a sadistic with little patience and some horny tendencies, and that Daniela is just horny on main because of her delusions. Like… I dunno, all that is part of their personality, yes. But I feel like being horny on main after Ethan’s killed your sister(s) isn’t the way to go.

7) Then we get Lady D’s lines during her boss fight. “How dare you talk about saving your daughter when you’ve murdered MINE!” and “It’s too late… You’ll never see your Rose again! Succumb to your despair!”. That last one is basically Lady D projecting her feelings on Ethan.

It’s almost as if Capcom had forgotten that Lady D is a mother and that Bela, Cassandra and Daniela are sisters and daughters at some point, then hastily brought it back. Don’t get me wrong, the VAs did an amazing job (god, I love them to bits, they’re also so damn wholesome), but the content is lacking. And all this could be said about the whole game. There’s so much potential and yet Capcom decided to let most of it go to waste. It is disappointing, but not surprising.

Hell, the Bakers in RE7 feel more like a family than those in RE8. They live in a smaller house than the castle, but things are distributed well enough to make it feel dynamic and challenging. The castle is ENORMOUS when you look at it from the outside, but it’s so limited once you go inside. And everything is so linear.

- You escape from the hooks and make your way out back to the main hall: you’re given the maroon eye on the way there.

- You defeat Bela: you get the bottle of Sanguis Virginis.

- You survive Lady D’s chase: you get the mask.

- You defeat Cassandra: the animal skull to solve the “puzzle” is there. You also get the mask.

- You defeat Daniela: you get the mask.

I think one of the main problems with this is that it’s so linear. There’s almost no challenge to it, and it’s disappointing. This doesn’t happen with Heisenberg’s area, which involves more awareness and a bit more of logic, but it’s a problem all throughout the game. The characters and areas look promising, but they don’t deliver enough. Capcom literally created all these interesting villains, but got rid of them as quickly as they arrived. It’s almost as if they’d focus more on Lady D marketing than anything else, and that saddens me.

I know it’s a Resident Evil game and that maybe I shouldn’t expect much. That it’s an action/horror game (and yet the only horror section is Donna’s, kudos for her) and that stories aren’t usually that fleshed out. But this time they had an INTERESTING concept in their hands, they looked at it, and basically went “ahaha tall lady makes people horny, let’s capitalize on her because money goes brrr” and that’s that.

There won’t be a conclusion to this rant. I just wanted to express my disappointment. Fanon is the new canon, peace out.