Parents' Guide to Resident Evil Village: Winters' Expansion

RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE: WINTERS' EXPANSION adds three new elements to the base game (which is required to play): a short new story, additional missions for the arcade-style Mercenaries mode, and the ability to play the original game from a third-person perspective. Titled Shadows of Rose, the new story takes place 16 years in the future and stars Rosemary, the daughter of protagonist Ethan Winters. Lamenting the death of her father when she was a little girl, she travels into the consciousness of a mutant entity in order to rid herself of the strange mental powers passed on to her by her parents. This short campaign is spent revisiting areas of the original game -- such as the castle of Lady Dimitrescu -- which are now covered in pools of blood connected to a strange viney organism. The world is filled with ashy monsters that attack on sight, as well as strange "copies" of Rose, most of which are dead and either sprawled on the ground or posed in grotesque positions. Rose can fight the monsters with weapons she finds as well as her mental abilities (she can make them freeze in place for a moment), but she's better off running away from them in some situations. Much of the game is focused on puzzles, such as figuring out how to position a series of paintings and moving dolls around in dioramas. The additional content for Mercenaries -- a mode in which players choose a character before taking on waves of enemies and then buying more gear for the next level -- provides new playable characters Chris Redfield, Lady Dimitrescu, and Karl Heisenberg, as well as new stages. The new third-person perspective option applies to story missions, but not Mercenaries missions.