# Game Resident Evil Zero Story Recap
Macatrens – Released by Capcom in the year 2002 on the Nintendo Gamecube, Resident Evil Zero would be the prequel story for the franchise taking place 1 day before the events of the first Resident Evil and explaining the origins of the T-Virus. Directed by Koji Oda, and written by series regular Noboru Sugimura, the game started development on the Nintendo 64 console before needing to be rebuilt on the Gamecube for need of greater memory.
For story, two characters would be controlled at the same time, Stars rookie Rebecca Chambers, and newcomer Billy Coen. The player could switch between control of the two partners at any time in a new swapping system , which would add new complexity of puzzle solving, combat, and item management. The player could have the characters follow each other, or send them off to explore entirely separate areas at the same time and jump between controlling each or letting one be an AI.
For gameplay, while much remains unchanged from Resident Evil 2 including fixed camera angles, the biggest change is the removal of item boxes and universal storage. Now, players have the ability to put down items from their inventory on the ground, or swap between the two characters, adding a new challenge to survival and resource management.
The story only gets larger from here, so let’s cut it down to size with a RECAPitation. On July 23rd, 1998, the luxurious Umbrella owned train, the Ecliptic Express, is making its way through the night, when a mysterious man looks on from above. Suddenly, the train is pelted by bizarre and horrifying leeches, as they crash in, and begin engulfing the train and its passengers.
2 hours later, the Special Tactics and Rescue police force Bravo Team was already on its way in to investigate a series of strange murders in the woods outside Raccoon City, when their helicopter experiences an engine failure, and forces them to crash land. As they explore the surrounding area, they find a crashed Military Police truck and find the bodies of officers within that were supposed to be transporting Billy Coen, an Ex-liutenant sentenced to death for killing 23 people.
Thinking Billy killed his captors and escaped, they fan out and survey the area. As Rebecca searches, she spots a stalled train nearby, and as rain begins to pour in, she closes the door to safety behind her as she boards the Ecliptic Express. Looking around, she is shocked to see several corpses littering the train, and more surprised when they begin animating and moving to attack her.
She opens fire and escapes, and finding some journals, she learns the passengers here were to investigate the nearby Arklay Mountains laboratory and check on the abandoned experiments there. They also mention checking in on the shutdown Management training facility also in the Arklay Mountains. She is approached at gunpoint by Billy himself, who quickly dismisses her as not a threat, and moves on.
Soon after, her teammate Edward crashes in, gravely injured and gasping out that the forest is full of zombies and monsters. He dies before long, and is soon pursued by some zombie dogs crashing in after him. After surviving that, Rebecca gets a scrambled message from her Captain Enrico not to trust Billy, though it isn’t long before she encounters Billy again, who proposes they work together to escape alive.
She rejects him outright, claiming she can handle herself, but Billy keeps the offer open. Exploring ahead, she finds the body of a man that shockingly liquifies into leeches, which reassemble themselves into a strange mimicry of a well-dressed but floppy man. As she fires at him, he explodes into a mass of leeches that seek her out and almost engulf her, though Billy jumps in and expertly fires them off her body.
Suddenly, they all pull back en masse, as the duo sees them returning to a man outside highlighted by the lightning. Before they can wonder who he is, the train shudders as it begins moving again, and they think to check out the engine car and see who’s controlling the train. Rebecca reluctantly agrees to work with Billy going forward, and they agree to stay in constant contact with walkie talkies.
With Rebecca’s knowledge and ability to mix herbs and chemicals, and Billy’s toughness and physical strength, they begin to learn to how to work with each other. Encountering and defeating an escaped Scorpion BOW that was being transported, they work past encroaching leeches, unaware of the actions of two Umbrella agents on the train.
Elsewhere, Stars Captain Albert Wesker and Scientist William Birkin are overseeing the operatives on the train, wondering how there was an incident in both the mansion and a train that was 3 miles away. Wesker makes it clear he want the train destroyed as evidence, but this is interrupted as he hears his team get devoured by a sudden swarm of leeches.
Now, Rebecca and Billy find the engine car empty but out of control, and work quickly to activate the emergency brakes. The brakes are applied, and the train screeches to a halt, but not before striking a few barriers and toppling over on one side. Waking up some time later, the duo is shaken but still alive, and finding themselves in a strange new building.
Billy sees its a facility for the famous pharmaceutical company Umbrella, and Rebecca spots a painting with the exact same likeness as the leech man she encountered before. The painting is of Dr. James Marcus, the first general manager of Umbrella, and they are unaware again, of Wesker and Birkin looking on, though Wesker dismisses Rebecca as a threat.
Instead, a new voice calls out Wesker and Birkin, introducing himself as the man who released the T-Virus in the mansion, and also contaminated the train. He declares his revenge on Umbrella, and commands the leeches, who form together Dr. Marcus again, and whom is recognized instantly by Wesker and Birkin.
The man explains that Dr. Marcus was murdered 10 years by Umbrella and laughs at Wesker and Birkin, knowing they helped with that. Back with Rebecca and Billy, they learn this is an Umbrella training facility for future managment personnel, but also see several infected creatures like bugs and birds litter the abandoned rooms and so look to find a way out safely.
After defeating one especially large mutated centipede, they work past the riddles and secrets of this new puzzlebox of a facility and find a journal belonging to Dr. Marcus, noting he discovered a new virus and named it Progenitor, and his colleague Spencer pushed to start a new company called Umbrella with these findings.
Marcus allowed a partnership with Spencer if only to continue research and testing of Progenitor, leading to him mixing it with Leech DNA, and the resulting more powerful virus being named ‘T’ for Tyrant. Secretly, Marcus began human testing with the T-Virus, completing his testing with leeches, and was prepared to formally announce T and secure his position in the company.
Later, he knew someone was snooping around his lab but trusted his assistants Wesker and Birkin to deal with it. They find a literal secret dungeon hidden below the facility, but the mysterious man is aware of their precense, and lets loose some old experiments to deal with the trespassers. As Billy and Rebecca split up to explore, Rebecca is attacked by the early t-virus primate subjects, codenamed Eliminators, but takes a tumble down a hole.
Elsewhere, Birkin is in disbelief at whom Wesker suspects the mysterious man to be, but Wesker stresses the importance of keeping secret the old conspiracy against Marcus buried lest Spencer’s and their own positions in Umbrella be compromised. Wesker declares his intention to leave umbrella now, explaining that the biological weapon made with the T-Virus is almost completed and they need only combat data now.
Birkin disagrees, saying its too early, as while he’s done with researching the T-Virus, he’s not done completing the more powerful G-Virus. Wesker doesn’t care, saying he intends to lure STARs members to the mansion and use their superior training as test subjects. Birkin adds that they can at least destroy this facility with the self-destruct device beuilt in, which he’ll find and set off, thus taking care of this loose end.
Meanwhile, Rebecca is hanging on a limb, and Billy hurries to rescue her just in time. She’s grateful, though Captain Enrico calls in, asking her if she’s found Billy yet, to which she denies everything. She turns to him and asks him for the true story behind his charge of killing 23 people, saying she won’t judge him, but just wants to know the truth.
Billy explains that a year ago, his unit was deployed in Africa and on a mission to raid the hideout of enemy guerilla force, but many of his unit fell in the course of the mission until there were only a few left. When they arrived, they learned they were sent the wrong information, and there wasn’t an enemy hideout but rather a normal innocent village.
Not wanting to return at a loss, his unit commander ordered them to kill the villagers, and thats when trouble started. He stops there, though Rebecca is still curious, since she doubts Billy killed even the MPs transporting him. He drops the topic, explaining none of it matters now since his only choices are either serve his sentence, or keep running.
Finding more secrets in this deadly mansion, and more deadly experiments let loose, they learn Marcus’s leeches eventually formed a collective mentality and intelligence and acquired curious skills like the ability to mimic humans, especially Dr. Marcus himself. Billy wonders if the mysterious man is Marcus’s son or possibly grandson, but soon finds a cable car they can use to escape.
They’re caught off guard when an Eliminator knocks Billy over a railing, and a leech man sneaks up behind Rebecca. Surviving that but now on her own again, Rebecca continues on, and discovers a monstrously large and strange humanoid in an capsule. Finding a train elevator and taking it down, she is surprised to run into Captain Enrico again, who says he’s looking for the rest of Bravo team that has disappeared.
Rebecca drops that she found Billy but lost him recently, but Enrico dimisses that. She insists on looking for Billy, so Enrico just tells her to catch up with him ahead as he searches for another old mansion in these woods. She agrees, though as it turns out this would be the last time she ever sees him.
She moves ahead, but is suddenly startled by the humanoid monster she saw earlier now eyeing her down. It turns out to be the prototype Tyrant experiment, prematurely out of its tank, but no less dangerous for it. Rebecca manages to fend off the lunging BOW and succeed in knocking it down long enough to get away, but she is still under the eye of the mysterious man, who is no longer amused by her meddling.
She soon discovers Billy unconscious and stranded on some debris in an underground river, but something in the water knocks him away, washing him away beyond her reach. Navigating the water treatment plant, she finds and resucitates Billy, but they see this is where several older bodies have also washed up.
Billy suspects these were victim’s of Marcus’s experiments, and mentions Marcus working on a mother virus. Reunited once more, they focus on escaping again, but don’t get far as something else washes up behind them. The T-001 Prototype claws out of the water, now mostly regenerated, but more hulking than before.
However, it’s no match for their teamwork and combined fire, and they escape its clutches again. Crossing a dam, they pause when discovering a room full of leeches, and are greeted by the mysterious young man again. They ask him his identity, and are in disbelief when the man’s face morphs into the long dead Dr. Marcus’s.
Marcus chuckles and explains 10 year years ago his partner Spencer had him assassinated with the help of his once-trusted assistants Wesker and Birkin. However, what no one expected, is that the intelligent leeches he cultivated slipped inside his dead body, and consumed him from the inside, including his brain.
With the memories within now absorbed by the queen leech, Marcus was revived in a way by his creation, whom also inherited his desire for revenge against Umbrella, now thinking itself to be Marcus. Revealing the true form of the Queen Leech mimicking Dr. Marcus, it lumbers after the duo, though they succeed in overwhleming it with firepower.
They begin ascending with a cargo lift to a heliport when they see the Queen Leech regenerate and come after them, and to make matters worse, they hear the facility’s self destruct mechanism has been triggered. THe queen leech grows massive in size and strength, but Rebecca notes its photosensitive and weakened in the sunlight.
Splitting up now, Rebecca works now to open the heliport gate while Billy distracts the monster, and down to the wire, their teamwork wins again as they open up the gate flooding the heliport with fresh daylight. The queen leech struggles to escape the harsh sunlight, but Rebecca finds a loaded magnum and tosses it to Billy who catches it, fires it, and the impact of the weapon staggers the queen hard enough to force it toppling back down the shaft, where its consumed by the flames of the ensuing explosion.
Billy and Rebecca hurry out just in time, as the training facility mansion explodes behind them, destroying the evidence of Dr Marcus and his legacy. As the game ends, Billy hurls his handcuffs away, no longer feeling shackled, and they come across the mansion Captain Enrico said he would investigate. She takes his dog tags and makes the official claim he’s been killed by the zombies with these tags as proof.
Rebecca then salutes Billy as they say farewell to each other and part ways, with Rebecca unknowingly entering another nightmare, and Billy off to an unknown future. Resident Evil Zero has enjoyed the success of selling over 2 million copies worldwide.