Continuing on the spicy path that this blog has taken lately, today I am going to elaborate a bit on the dark romantic aspect of relationships between characters, something that, surprisingly, is not a new thing in video games. As early as in 1995, Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within was maybe the first game to include such an element in its plot, which back then was particularly radical and innovative, given that the technical means were very few, and the ways to accompany a game with cutscenes were also rather limited. Regardless this didn't prevent the game's developing team to come up with a captivating story involving characters that since became iconic. The element of desire is quite prominent in the story, as I will analyze in a bit, and in a rather complex form, for that matter. I have also picked a few more select cases of characters who, like Gabriel, are not simply involved in the theme of desire, but are also deeply and dramatically affected by it in their attitude and mentality.

Desire disguised as confusion (Gabriel Knight in Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within)

Like I mentioned above, Gabriel's case can be considered an archetypical story involving the theme of desire, as it belongs to a video game that was most probably the first one to address such a subject and in such a radical way. Gabriel is a consciously straight ladies' man, and his self-confidence on that matter is particularly high. All this is doomed to change when, while investigating of a series of murders, he meets the charming and mysterious Friedrich Von Glower, typically a Baron but in reality a werewolf of more than one hundred years old. Friedrich is instantly attracted by Gabriel who initially seems to be unaware of the situation, but as the story progresses, he gets smitten with Friedrich although this is something that he cannot even acknowledge at first.

At a crucial turning point, however, he comes across Baron Von Zell, Friedrich's ex-lover whom Friedrich had turned into a werewolf during a moment of passion. Von Zell is the one responsible for the aforementioned murders, and while being hunted by Gabriel and Friedrich, he is shot dead, but not before managing to attack and bite Gabriel. Soon after, Gabriel starts to feel the effects, as he is slowly turning into a werewolf himself, something that he realizes and tries very hard to control and suppress. In a rather revealing scene, we can see him struggling with himself in physical and emotional pain as his inner werewolf struggles to prevail as well. In reality, what Gabriel is truly trying to suppress is the desire that he is actually developing towards Friedrich which, allegorically, found a way to the surface after Friedrich's ex bit him. Gabriel is in deep confusion because he is unable to admit and accept this unprecedented feeling, which also happens to be very strong and difficult to handle. Gabriel's inner struggle is in fact a battle with his own feelings and that part of himself that has awakened all of a sudden without him being able to control it at all. At the same time, however, he is struggling to persuade himself that all this turmoil has to do with him slowly becoming a werewolf, but in his attempt to focus on that, he is merely highlighting more what is truly going on inside him.

Desire suppressed by denial (Jill Valentine in Resident Evil 3 Remake)

The romantic aspect may not be particularly present in Resident Evil 3, but there still is a degree of electricity between Jill and Carlos, mostly filtered through admiration from his part, while Jill is rather prejudiced at first because Carlos belongs to a company that she knows is evil. As the story progresses, however, it becomes quite clear that Jill and Carlos are attracted to each other, something that Carlos shows almost directly, what with his attitude towards Jill and his choice of words when it comes to flirting her, albeit a bit awkwardly, and also given the tense circumstances they find themselves in. But for Jill, things are not that simple; although Jill is a very "raw" character, in that she is honest, sincere and crystal-clear, she is quite secretive when it comes to expressing her feelings. As the events in the story develop and she starts to see that Carlos is honest and she actually begins to like him, it is not very easy for her to admit it, let alone express it with words to him. Moreover, Jill is a person who puts duty above all and who values her partners very highly; this is something that becomes very clear during her brief dialogue with Carlos after she leaves the power plant, when Carlos calls her "partner" and she replies with a rather bitter and cold "Not your partner", because, for her, comradeship is something sacred. Carlos, on the other hand, is always laid back, and doesn't seem to take anything else into account except for the fact that he likes her, and he is very specific and clear about this. After Jill witnesses Nikolai betraying his team and leaving Mikhail and her to die, her prejudice against Carlos disappears completely and it slowly becomes clear that she does care for him. Chances are, if she didn't know that he was a soldier of Umbrella, she would have allowed herself to realize that she actually did like him from the beginning, both as a person and as a man. 

Even after all this happens, however, she is still in denial; being faithful to her mission and because her priority is the elimination of evil, she refuses to give room to her feelings while, subconsciously, trying to control them. After she is treated with the antidote and just as she is about to wake up, she has a nightmare during which Carlos gets in her room to inform her that everything is fine, but just then he begins to turn and he asks her to kill him. Jill cannot do it, of course, and a zombified Carlos attacks her, which is when she abruptly wakes up in anguish and confusion. The fact that, among all the people that she met in the course of the story, her subconscious decided to make Carlos attack her in a zombified state in her dream, can have a dual interpretation: on the one hand, being forced to work with Carlos had brought her closer to him, putting him inevitably in the position of a temporary partner, and subsequently someone whom she could trust, at least to a degree. The fear of losing a partner, and more so in such a violent way, had been with Jill from the start of the story, after the unfortunate incident with Brad; so now her nightmare reminds her that fear by presenting Carlos as a victim with Brad's fate. On the other hand, however, this subconscious choice indicates that Jill is attracted to Carlos but she refuses to allow herself the luxury of enjoying this feeling because if she does so, she will betray her mission. Her subconscious puts the man that she likes in the position of a dangerous enemy because she feels both enchanted and threatened by his presence.

Desire masked as guilt (Joseph Oda in The Evil Within)

Joseph's case is quite similar to that of Gabriel Knight in that, for both of them, desire takes the form of something considered forbidden and subsequently both of them experience a devastating inner struggle with their wild, primitive self through which they channel that feeling. But whereas for Gabriel all this was mainly due to confusion (Gabriel found himself in a situation that was unexpected and unfamiliar, and which he was unable to handle), for Joseph everything is pretty clear and conscious, which is why he is primarily led by guilt for what he experiences. Joseph is emotionally vulnerable, which is why being trapped in Ruvik's memories affects him so much. After unwillingly entering the STEM system, Joseph comes face to face with his most secret and suppressed fears and emotions, something that weakens his will and his resistances and results in him not being able to control himself and thus turning into a Haunted.

Soon after Sebastian finds him in STEM, Joseph experiences his first transformation during which he violently attacks Sebastian while struggling to take control of his monstrous self. The fact that this first transformation happens while he is with Sebastian is not random; since Sebastian is, unbeknownst to him, the receiver of Joseph's forbidden feelings. The next time he turns is when, due to Ruvik's control of his mind, he instinctively catches that Juli's presence is threatening, since in reality she is there as a spy on behalf of Mobius, and he attacks her in an attempt to push her out of the way and, eventually, to prevent her from affecting Sebastian. Later on, while still with Sebastian, he attempts to kill himself because he realizes that not only he is unable to control this transformation, but moreover a part of himself yearns to become a Haunted. Part of himself, that is, is ready to accept and embrace the feeling of that forbidden desire, but his conscious self, most probably having grown up in a strict, heavily traditional environment that forced him to follow all the expected norms and stereotypes, brings forward the feeling of guilt in order to make him suppress whatever it is that makes him revolt both emotionally and physically. Joseph becoming a Haunted then reverting back to his human form with even more guilt each time stands as an allegory for his struggle to come to terms with himself and break the restrains that keep him imprisoned.

Desire leading to self-destruction (Derek Simmons in Resident Evil 6)

Derek Simmons expresses probably one of the most straightforward forms of desire, given that he is not particularly complex himself, at least at the beginning. Originally the typical power-hungry villain with a Messiah complex, he developed an obsessive paranoia after falling in love with Ada. Of course for a man like him, "love" is not exactly the word we should use; he clearly cannot feel anything positive for anyone but himself, and what truly pushes him to extremes is not so much his feelings for Ada, but the fact that she rejected him. By rejecting him, Ada in fact challenged his power, something that, for him, is impossible to accept. After Derek crossed the line by coming up with the idea to create Ada's clone, his mania grew bigger, and his malicious acts shifted from general to very specific. At this point, it was desire that drove his actions, but also blinded him so much that he didn't realize that, by succumbing to this feeling and letting it take control, he got tangled in a peculiar and marginally twisted triangle, with two depictions of the same woman at its two points: Ada, the real one, and Carla, her clone. Subsequently, Derek's actions caused Carla's actions because she, in turn, realized that he had turned her into a lab rat when it was already too late for her to reverse the effects, while at the same time she felt deeply betrayed, not only as a scientist but also as a woman. It is hinted that the real Carla, for her part, had feelings for Derek but he would only see a potential Ada in her, so the realization of this added more fuel to Carla's already unstable psyche.

When Carla took her revenge on Derek by turning him into a monster, Derek's inner monstrosity also came to the surface and literally found a face. Not only he lost any sense of humanity but he also lost himself, and this was a path that he had in fact taken much earlier, when he first came up with the idea to create Ada's clone because he could not have the real one. His paranoia grew stronger after the clone was actually created, when he began to refer to and address the clone as if she was the real Ada. Such a sick situation, of course, could not drag on for too long, and would inevitably lead to his own destruction, aided also by Carla's thirst for revenge. From the moment when Derek was transformed into a monster, and seeing, in his paranoia, how powerful he could actually be in that state, he literally killed his human self, giving room to his inner monster.

Desire as obsession (Stefano Valentini in The Evil Within 2)

Although Stefano's murderous instincts can easily be mistaken for those of a typical serial killer, in fact they have much more depth, like he does as well, both as a character overall and specifically as an artist. Stefano's psyche is in turmoil, but there are two main conflicting emotions inside him: the extreme love that he feels for his own creations, and the venomous hate that he directs towards every other living soul around him. In fact Stefano is obsessed with his art, in a most twisted and unhealthy manner, and views everyone and everything through the distorted prism of his camera's eye. Stefano has given life to his camera by creating the hideous monster Obscura, which is also the depiction of his inner, normally unperceivable self. Moreover, Obscura represents his own feminine side, which he has embraced to a degree but still resents and feels contempt for. Stefano could be easily labelled a killer of women, but this would only be a shallow and superficial characterization for such a complex mentality. In reality he hates all human beings, independently of sex or age. In the real world, he started killing female models because, as a fashion photographer, he could very easily approach them as potential victims. Progressively, killing women became some kind of ritual, as through them he would every time attempt to eliminate his female side. In the reality of STEM, however, where he could act completely out of control, his "gallery" of victims grew bigger and richer. Male citizens and soldiers were also "honored" to become part of his installations, with some of them even getting to have their own personal exhibition room, like Turner, Hayes and Baker, and of course Sebastian for whom Stefano had prearranged a dedicated gallery hall in order to place the installation that he had conceived and which would feature him as a "protagonist".

For Stefano, desire is a very complex, dark feeling and notion; he hates Sebastian on the surface, but in the essence he yearns for that aspect of his that Stefano feels will make him an ideal model / victim. Sebastian combines two things that Stefano seems to deem as essential for the creation of his morbid art: innocence and sexual appeal. In his artwork, Stefano always depicts these two elements together, either directly or through symbols. Although he sees Lily as the ideal "blank canvas" for his future inspirations due to her innocence, he would still need victims to actually create art. Sebastian has Lily's pure heart, but he also has the sexuality that Stefano seeks so ardently for his disturbing creations. The sequence where Sebastian confronts and finally kills Stefano looks and feels like a twisted sex hunt, which becomes more than evident in case Stefano manages to catch Sebastian and stab him with lustful rage. At this stage, Stefano's obsession with his own art identifies both with the attraction that he feels for Sebastian on a physical level, and his desire to create "his masterpiece" which will incorporate all the perfection that he believes he has achieved: the perfect canvas, which is Lily, the perfect human material that would be Sebastian, and the perfect concept, which however he eventually lost the chance to create.

 

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Special thanks to afterdarkmysweet for providing info for Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within.

The Psychosexual Subtext of Resident Evil: Village

 

Resident Evil: Village is centered around Ethan Winters's nightmarish journey to find his abducted daughter Rosemary, however there are several other themes explored in the game on a secondary level that, however, add a lot to the story and the development of its characters. While Mother Miranda is the prominent evil mastermind, her four "children", the four lords of the village, are in fact the characters who give the tone of the adventure and the ones who, in the end, are the most memorable. When it comes to sexual imagery in particular, the obvious thought would be Alcina Dimitrescu, but in fact she is a red herring on the matter, as the essence of this subject lies somewhere else.

As Ethan is about to enter the Castle Dimitrescu, he is captured by Carl Heisenberg and brought to a peculiar council consisting of Miranda and her four children. It is the only time when he has the chance to see all the villains gathered together, and moreover while they are arguing about who is going to be the one to carry out his execution. Sounds like an evil child's game, which isn't random if we consider that Miranda, by having condemned these four individuals to be a part of her experiments, she has essentially shattered their personality and their own free will, and while they feel super powerful thanks to their unusual abilities, in fact they are just puppets in the hands of their "mother".

The whole scene looks like a grotesque act performed by a circus of freaks, and it would have been marginally hilarious if it wasn't so chillingly creepy. Alcina and Heisenberg are the most loud; each one of them makes it very clear that they want to be the one to kill Ethan. Their over-confidence is more than obvious and they feel much superior to their other two siblings. The badly disfigured Salvatore Moreau limits himself to getting close to Ethan to have a better look at his potential prey while whimpering like a whiny baby. And then there is Donna Beneviento. She can be seen sitting in a corner, her face covered with a black veil, never speaking a word while her creepy puppet Angie, controlled by her, rushes forward to have a look at Ethan as well, in a bold, unafraid and sadistic way. Donna looks like a silent stalker, patiently waiting for her prey to fall in her hands.

Donna Beneviento is an extremely intriguing character, one that definitely deserved more game time and more details revealed about her past and her family. But even what we do know about her and, mainly, what we see, understand and decipher as the story unfolds, is enough to make her stand out among the villains and end up being one of the most iconic characters in the Resident Evil saga. On first look, she is not easy to read. In her notes, Miranda characterizes Donna as mentally underdeveloped, which is the main reason why she could not be a good host for her daughter, Eva. Donna has the appearance of a grown woman, but mentally and sentimentally she is still a child. An insecure, lonely child, but at the same time a child with vicious, twisted instincts. Donna's backstory is a tragedy, something that can be reflected in her overall appearance and attitude. Born an aristocrat, she lost her parents at a very tender age, when they both committed suicide. Her mental health issues prevented her from becoming more social in her teen and early adult years, finding solace strictly in making dolls, a craft that she had learned from her father. Her only companion was a girl named Claudia, who belonged to Donna's bloodline but no one knew for sure whether she was Donna's sister or maybe her daughter, most probably an illegitimate one, if this was indeed the case. Claudia is buried in the Beneviento Flowerbed, a private cemetery just outside the entrance to the grounds of the residence.

Growing up, Donna's obsession with dolls and doll-making became even stronger. She also studied a lot in her mansion's rich library, and she became an expert on the local plants and flowers, learning to locate those that were poisonous, and use them to create mixtures that caused heavy hallucinations. As a side-effect of Miranda's experiments on her, she developed the ability to control inanimate objects with her mind, something that she took advantage of in order to manipulate her dolls around. She especially became attached to Angie, a very special puppet / doll, which looked like a skeletal figure, was dressed in bridal rags and the architecture of her face resembled a lot the Beneviento family's crest, the sun / moon complex. 

Donna's obsession with dolls is a major element of her character and an axis around which her whole personality revolves. According to Sigmund Freud, children subconsciously use the dolls as a means to indirectly express erotic and aggressive fantasies. The doll is a small object, therefore is much closer, as an image, to what the child sees in the mirror and, subsequently, much easier to identify with. With the dolls, children create an imaginary world where they hope to feel satisfied and happy, while at the same time attempting to explore aspects of the adult world. According to Rainer Maria Rilke, however, the doll acts as a safety belt for the child who would feel lost and alone if cast out in the wild world. But exactly because the doll is an object with which the child can easily familiarize, their identities get mixed and the erotic element becomes prominent again. Sometimes children treat dolls with viciousness and this, from the aspect of psychoanalysis, is an aftereffect of the subconscious, premature yearning for a sexual partner. Donna's attitude reflects all this, adding a most powerful sexual imagery in the story. Alcina and her daughters may look promiscuous and revealing with their seemingly saucy attitude towards Ethan, but in reality they only want blood. Donna, on the other hand, neither speaks nor moves, but the way she traps Ethan in her twisted, morbid game is overloaded with psychosexual nuances.

Dolls were prominent in yet one more Resident Evil game, where again they were linked to a disturbing sexual behavior: Alfred Ashford in Code Veronica had his secret palace filled with vintage dolls, plus one giant and very creepy dismembered one hanging from the ceiling at the entrance hall. Although the house used to be inhabited by a girl as well in the past - Alfred's twin sister Alexia - it is rather clear that, now at least, it is Alfred who is obsessed with dolls, given how he keeps them around the rooms standing like silent guardians: seemingly harmless but not the least terrifying. Being very close to his sister as a young boy, he developed an unhealthy obsession with her as a teenager. After her supposed death, Alfred took on the habit of wearing her dresses and a wig that resembled her hair and strolling around the house pretending to be Alexia. To be more precise, he did not only pretend to be his sister, but he would actually "become" her when in female disguise. The dolls kind of substituted her actual presence in the house, while at the same time they maybe signified Alfred's hidden desire to have his sister as a living doll instead of her obviously being the dominant and omnipotent twin when she was alive.

Being Donna's literal creation, Angie is a medium that is used to express her master's mood and feelings. While Donna is silent and motionless, Angie is talkative, sassy and restless. Here we have a peculiar inversion: the puppet acts like a living person, while the human adapts the attributes of a doll. Donna identifies with Angie on multiple levels and the way that she chooses to express herself through the doll is different every time. For Donna, Angie mainly acts as a substitute for Claudia but on a second - and maybe much stronger - level, the doll represents a complex combination of Donna's primitive maternal instinct and her carnal attraction to the opposite sex. The most obvious manifestation of the combination of these two symbolic attributes in Angie is the doll's appearance: she looks like a little kid, but she wears a grown woman's bridal gown.

In the secluded and spooky Beneviento residence, Ethan becomes the forbidden fruit. He is pretty much like McBurney in the iconic movie The Beguiled (Don Siegel, 1971). Deprived of his weapons, he becomes a victim to whatever sick plans Donna has in mind. She begins by trapping him in her workshop, in the basement of the mansion, and there she creates a haunting string of hallucinations where Ethan's wife, Mia, appears as a giant wooden doll with several items hidden in parts of her body. Ethan hears Mia crying or talking to him, he finds her wedding ring, the music box that was a gift from a relative for their wedding, a photographic film including snapshots connected to his family life, then a baby's cradle, which subsequently breaks, hidden even deeper at the bottom of a well in a second basement. Donna attempts to sentimentally and psychologically break him by bringing up painful memories connected to his family, while at the same time she makes sure that the atmosphere in the house is scary enough to keep him under control. Eventually she creates the hallucination of a giant, cannibalistic embryo, a morbid and horrifying mockery of Rosemary, which is chasing Ethan around the house threatening to kill him. 

And this is when Donna shows up and it's the one and only time when she speaks to Ethan directly, telling him that she can't let him leave. At this point, she still appears with her head covered, although she is on her own grounds and there is a portrait on a wall depicting her holding Angie, where her face fully shows. By choosing to appear like this in front of Ethan, she avoids eye-contact with him which would possibly lead to her not feeling secure enough to go on with her game. Determined to keep him there, she makes him chase her in the residence's rooms, although Ethan is actually seeing Angie floating around and hiding in several places in the mansion, forcing him to take part in a morbid hide-and-seek game. The only thing that Ethan can do to attempt to defeat Donna is to stab Angie with a pair of scissors; but in reality, he is actually chasing and stabbing Donna herself.

 

 

The scissors is again a strong sexual symbol with many nuances and Ethan's action of using it as a tool to overpower Donna works, for her, as a substitute for the sexual act. This sequence can potentially become even more intense if Ethan fails to find Angie in time; if this happens, the dolls around him grow blades which make them look like mechanical spiders, and stab him with mania, and of course it is in fact Donna again who attacks and stabs him, once more creating a hallucination involving the dolls. Notably, the first time that Ethan finds and stabs Angie, the doll bites him. Knowing that it is actually Donna who does this, the whole scene takes a completely different perspective, seen through the prism of Freud's theory about children using the dolls to express aggressive erotic fantasies. Donna may not be technically a child anymore, but her psyche is stuck in a problematic and sad childhood, something that obviously keeps defining her actions even in her adult life.

Up to the point where Ethan arrives at Donna's house and after he escapes from there, his role is standard and specific: he is the protective father figure and Rosemary's rescuer. But for the time that he spends inside the Beneviento mansion, his role changes dramatically. He becomes a potential game partner for Donna who, due to her emotional clinging to childhood, employs childish tricks (the hide-and-seek game) and objects (the dolls) in order to lure him towards her, which subsequently leads to Ethan acquiring one more role: that of the object of Donna's sexual desires. Donna's sick inner child views Rosemary as an antagonist, something that is intensified by Angie's reactions every time that Ethan grabs her and stabs her, but Donna as a grown woman also views Mia as an antagonist, and this is manifested mainly in the way that she chose, in the workshop hallucination, to present Mia as a grotesque giant puppet. After Ethan kills Donna by stabbing Angie with the scissors and all hallucinations are gone both inside and around the Beneviento estate, the basement of the mansion still remains off-limits to him. From a freudian aspect, the basement represents the memory storage: a place where past images are stacked and remain there abandoned and seemingly forgotten but still affecting the person involved.

The whole stage that takes place in the Beneviento residence is on a much different pace from the  rest of the game, and it is several levels creepier and scarier because it is built around psychological horror. It is pretty similar to The Evil Within's chapter "The Cruelest Intentions", not only as far as its atmosphere and setting are concerned but also because in both cases the memories of the protagonists are mixed with those of their stalkers. This is a feature that is always present in The Evil Within, but in that specific chapter it reaches its climax because memories become more personal for the stalker, just as is the case with Donna in Village. Story-wise, Donna  has many things in common with Ruben Victoriano, Sebastian's stalker in The Evil Within. She is playing with Ethan's memories by infiltrating them and placing herself in them by force. By presenting to him the human-sized Mia doll, it is as if she is implying that she, being a doll-maker, actually created Mia for him, and because it was her (Donna) who, as the creator, would breathe life into the doll, she would turn Mia into a host for her own manifestation and, indirectly, her own suppressed and undeveloped sexuality. From the moment when Donna appears in front of Ethan and establishes her own role as Angie's puppet master and, in a wider sense, as the one who pulls the strings in her domain, the child's play begins to transform to a sexual game, at which point Ethan stops being Donna's game partner and his role as the object of her sexual desire is the one that prevails in the end.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Uncanny Dolls: Images of Death in Rilke and Freud

Kidman's Ghosts

As a protagonist of The Evil Within's complementary episodes, Juli Kidman has her fair share of journeying in Ruvik's twisted world. Appearing as a reserved, quiet, rather secretive person in the main game, she offers us a chance to get to know her a bit more in The Assignment and The Consequence. It is in these two extra episodes where we learn for the first time that she is in fact working for Mobius, the secret organization that stole and used Ruvik's experiment and that was responsible for the kidnapping of Lily, Sebastian's daughter.

Juli used to be a rebellious teenager who would often end up in trouble with the law. As a child, she lived in a home where maternal affection was absent. She used to go out at nights and wander in the nearby cemetery where she would regularly steal the memorial statuettes that decorated the graves, to make people believe that they were cursed. Growing up as a delinquent in her adolescence, she was eventually recruited by Mobius agents who took advantage of her desperate state so as to lure her in the organization, offering her a home and protection on first look, but essentially using her as one of their numerous pawns towards the realization of their plans.

When Juli enters STEM in the main game, she is largely unbeknownst to it. Up to that point, she was made to believe that her role would be to simply spy on Sebastian's activities, being a rookie detective under his guidance, to make sure that he would never go anywhere near to discovering and exposing Mobius, and subsequently report to the Administrator, her boss. In reality, however, she was used almost as all the other victims of STEM, getting herself in an even riskier position as soon as Mobius discovered that she was, in fact, hindering their plans both because she wanted to protect Sebastian and, mainly, because she started to realize that the organization's motives for hiring her were not innocent and that their plans were evil.

After she wakes up in STEM, the world around her looks distorted and unreal. The people that she comes across in the corridors have a blurred blotch instead of a face, the pictures on the walls are blank and there is a vicious monster stalking her even before she takes notice. Later on, STEM becomes a huge trap with scarce light, filled with zombies guarding the halls and gradually revealing nightmarish visions of the recent past, first hinting at and then showing directly the real intentions of Mobius. In her journey, Juli has to face ghosts that have a special significance for both her character and the story.

The terrifying Shade (or Light Creature) is the most memorable ghost monster that Juli meets in her path. An unnaturally tall, ominous figure with long legs in black stockings and red high heels, the Shade has a huge spotlight instead of a head and its hideous torso which looks like a combination of a mouth and a vulva, is covered with a bloody sheet. It walks clumsily, making chilling noises as it goes, from time to time scanning the environment with its spotlight head the light from which paralyses whoever happens to be in its radius. The Shade seems to be looking for Leslie, as it can be heard calling his name, but later on we find out that it is searching for Juli as well. The role of this particularly gross monster is dual and contradictory, as it chases Juli so as to literally devour her, but from time to time it clearly acts as her guiding light.

The Shade looks like a monstrous, vile version of a woman. It wears high heels, just like Juli; and like with her, this is the only obviously feminine element about it. Juli never had a real, normal childhood, something that apparently made her grow into a confused adult. She has an attractive figure but her tall, lean legs do not have anything particularly feminine about them. Her short hair and child-like face make her look more like a teenager than a 27-year-old woman. We see this particular detail about her character even better in her 'Missing' poster, where the sketch of her head, closer to the game's concept art, reveals a girl with almost boyish features (check it here). In the same picture, we also notice that her dressing style looks somewhat vintage, matching that of Ruvik and Laura. Juli is still a little child trapped in a female body, unable to handle her sexuality and come to terms with it. The Shade seems to openly mock her, walking clumsily on its own high heels as if it is about to fall in pieces. It is as if the Shade is trying to tell Juli that inside she also is messed up like this and has almost no identity of herself.

A recurring ghost in Juli's story is the Administrator of Mobius who appears before her on several occasions, mostly to threaten her. Although he is a real person, he shows up as a looming dark figure, usually in unexpected places, to remind Juli of her duties and tasks and warn her that she will face severe consequences if she either fails or betrays the organization.

The Administrator looks and sounds like an automated bot; he is a man who obviously has no moral compass, an amoralist who is blindly and obsessively devoted to the cause of the organization that he governs. At some point, he summons what seems to be a huge monster with large claws, which we can only see as an ominous shadow and that chases Juli relentlessly in a sequence where one wrong step means instant death. In the end it is revealed that said monster is yet one more ghostly version of the Administrator, its hands and claws symbolizing the way Mobius controls - or at least wants to control - the world.

When Juli beats that monster, she makes one first step towards taking Mobius down. But this still happens in Ruvik's reality. In the real world, she continues to be a member of the organization, and she has a long way to go to actually achieve this, as shown in The Evil Within 2.

In connection with the Shade and its significance concerning Juli, are the clones that the Administrator summons at some point before the end so as to intimidate her. They are clones of herself, albeit frightening in sight and murderous in attitude, dressed just like her but in red, and they run around like walking dolls whose mechanism has gone berserk. They are chasing Juli around yielding axes, which again is a means to mock her as the axe is her primary defense weapon for most of her story. When the clones appear, it is like the Shade finally takes a more specific shape. 

Ruvik also appears in Juli's path, like he does in Sebastian's. In Juli's story however his role is a bit different. Slightly less threatening, although equally (if not more) creepy, he briefly appears in side rooms or passages and when he faces Juli, it is in order to warn her and actually guide her to realize that, for Mobius, she is just as expendable as their victims. Regardless later on he shows his intentions directly, attempting and at some point achieving in getting Leslie whom Juli is accompanying.

But Ruvik is not alone in STEM; Laura's ghost also roams the halls but can be only spotted by Juli once, through a pair of broken automatic doors. Unlike in the main story, where Sebastian comes across Laura's monstrous form and he has to fight with her, in Juli's adventure Laura appears in her regular, human form when she still had her innocence and good heart. Her appearance however is particularly frightening and intimidating, even more so since she does not speak or move.

Ruvik and Laura haunt Juli as part of the memory sequence that STEM incites and, as far as Laura is concerned at least, not because there is any other sort of connection between them and Juli. Still, as Laura is part of Ruvik's memories, he is the one responsible for her appearance in the zombie-infested STEM. Ruvik himself continues to show up from time to time in Juli's path in several ways, the most memorable being on pictures framed with blood cells in the last part of The Consequence, which are in fact portals revealed only after Juli sets the pictures on fire. In this case, Ruvik is trying to stop Juli from reaching Leslie, whom he wants so as to be able to escape STEM.

Ruvik is also responsible for yet one more ghost of sorts that Juli meets: Sebastian in a Haunted form who attacks her in the mannequin factory. While in the main game we are under the impression at that point that Sebastian indeed turns into a Haunted, when we reach that segment in The Consequence we can see that it is actually Ruvik that creates that illusion, attempting to hit two targets with one shot: on the one hand to scare Juli and on the other to make Sebastian believe that he is more vulnerable than he thinks and that Ruvik can do what he pleases with him. We do know for sure that it is only an illusion because Juli shoots the Haunted Sebastian, but as soon as Sebastian becomes himself again, there is no wound on his body.

Unlike Sebastian, his friend Joseph does turn into a Haunted on quite a few occasions - one of them being while the two of them are wandering together - but it is in Juli's story that we can see this transformation in more detail. Joseph may or may not appear close to the start of Juli's journey, in a dark, spooky corridor which is actually where the normal (so to speak) part of STEM ends and the ghosts start to appear. Juli can spot him in the distance with the help of her torch and hear him laughing evilly. The way he appears and disappears at that point, combined with the fact that his showing up is random, signifies that this specific manifestation is an illusion, one more ghost summoned by Ruvik.

Later on, after they part with Sebastian in the sewers below the asylum, they wander together for a very brief segment during which Joseph suddenly turns into a Haunted and attacks Juli, rattling out cryptic threats that may have more than one interpretations. In this case, he does turn into a Haunted, and it is not an illusion; however part of him is again possessed by Ruvik, which is why his words have a dual meaning: one which is related to himself and one that is connected to Ruvik speaking through him.

Specifically, when he tells Juli "I'm not going to let you take him", on one part he simply spells out Ruvik's threat that he will not let Juli take Leslie away, while on another, speaking for himself, he again threatens her that he, as Joseph now, will not let her kill Sebastian, as were her orders from Mobius.

When Juli meets Joseph again, he is still a Haunted, and this time he is determined to kill her. Juli manages to defeat him leaving him for dead, only to discover a bit later that he is alive and well and has reunited with Sebastian. This revelation confuses her even more, and hints that Ruvik is playing with her mind, as her previous fight with Joseph, which supposedly ended fatally for him, proves to have been yet one more illusion.

Juli comes upon an epiphany when she arrives at the STEM room while chasing Leslie, and bumps onto something unbelievable. She sees herself sedated in one of the tubes, in a sequence that is similar to the one that Sebastian goes through close to the end of the main game when he arrives in the same room and finds himself, along with the others, asleep in a tube, and which resembles the phenomenon of astral projection, but in reverse: she finds out that she is in fact asleep in STEM while up to then she thought that she was wandering in full consciousness around the place. This revelation makes her realize that Mobius was using her just like all the others, proving what Ruvik told her earlier about her being expendable.

It is actually thanks to all these ghosts that Juli starts to see more clearly and take decisions about her attitude towards Mobius and her life in general. Like when we have epiphanies through dreams, in a similar way Juli had her revelations through her nightmarish adventure in STEM. What is particularly interesting about Kidman is that we see her develop gradually in the course of two games. Her character starts as an outline in the main Evil Within, it becomes more solid in the extra episodes, and gets fully colored in The Evil Within 2. In a sense, her journey and the ghosts that haunt her in The Assignment and The Consequence mark the beginning of her sentimental coming-of-age. Her actions in The Evil Within 2 show that she finally put her past behind and found her own place in the world. By taking Mobius down, not only she frees the world of their threat, but also liberates herself from their grip and the constant reminder of the dark years of her life. By facing her ghosts one way or the other, she finally becomes a whole new person.

Related articles:
» The Symbolisms of The Evil Within
» The Evil Within Hearts and Minds 

Still Life: Dolls and Toys In Video Games

I remember years ago after I first watched Raintree Country, the compelling drama by Edward Dmytryk, one specific frame stuck in my memory and I would always recall it every time I thought about that film: the one where Susanna (Elizabeth Taylor) is sitting on her bed with an array of porcelaine dolls hanging above her. The fact that Susanna was an adult married woman made the presence of those dolls in her room look particularly creepy; because she didn't have them there as a collection or even a reminder of her childhood, but viewed them as a projection of herself and had them placed above her head as if they were her guardians.

Although dolls, and toys in general, are items that most grown up people tend to view with tenderness and affection, they are mainly associated with childhood and past memories. Probably we all have a vintage doll, a teddy bear or an action figure in our home; but things become more complicated when adult people keep dozens of dolls or toys in their private space, to the point where they dominate the place where they are - like in the case of Susanna's dolls. This usually indicates a persistent denial to accept that they have grown up and a sentimental attachment to their childhood.

Due to its numerous dark and twisted side-effects, this condition is being used quite often in video games, connected mostly to characters of villains. Sometimes, dolls and toys appear as symbols or objects of a specific significance. Other times, while they look like they are just part of the scenery, they may still serve a plot point or indicate something important. In this article, I will focus on the presence of dolls and toys in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Dark Fall: Lost Souls, Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea 2, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, Resident Evil 7 and The Evil Within 2, as in each of them the items in question have a unique role, indicative of their most frequently used symbolisms and connotations.

In Resident Evil: Code Veronica, a minor villain but a rather persistent lunatic is Alfred Ashford, the commander of Rockfort Island who likes to torture his victims with extreme and sadistic ways. Alfred can be seen in the main building of his mansion's grounds, but he also frequents his private palace, a tower constructed in gothic style that is heavily guarded by zombies and lies well-hidden from the rest of the world.

In the rather unfriendly entrance hall of the tower, there is a glass case with several vintage porcelain dolls kept in there in perfect condition. This whole set comes in striking contrast with a giant doll that is hanging from the ceiling with its disjointed limbs making it look more like a puppet.

The dolls are barely visible in the darkness, and this makes them more creepy

On the upper floor, yet one more doll is waiting to welcome the accidental guests; it is quite big and in good shape, but if we notice how it stands in the corridor, obviously in no connection to the rest of the place, we will undoubtedly receive the most unpleasant vibes. It is as if it is a guardian, placed there to watch who comes in and who gets out. I wouldn't be surprised if it could actually become alive and attack.

The huge doll in the corridor assumes the role of a guardian

In one of the bedrooms that we have to explore, there is again a glass case full of vintage porcelain dolls, and once we gain access to the hidden attic, we discover there a room full of toys with an elaborate carousel in the middle of it.

Alexia's room hosts more vintage dolls

Alfred is a scizophrenic sociopath, who passes his days contemplating the long past time spent with his beloved twin sister, Alexia. Apparently, after Alexia's demise, he fortified the palace which used to be his family home and kept almost everything in there just as it was; which is why the childhood tokens - namely, the dolls and toys - dominate in the rooms, giving the palace the disturbing look of an oversized dollhouse. Pretty much like Miss Havisham in Dickens' Great Expectations, who masochistically remains dressed in her wedding gown, supposedly waiting for the groom who never showed up on their wedding day but in fact refusing to accept her new reality and move on because she is unable to take control of her own life - likewise Alfred is content with looking at Alexia's giant portrait and talking to her while imagining she is there, incessantly bringing to his memory their common past and the happy times they spent together. But he does not limit himself to these moderate expressions of adoration. He goes as far as to wear Alexia's clothes and a blonde wig - an outfit that makes him look almost identical to her.

Alfred's attic is the inner sanctum where he keeps his childhood memories

Whether in good or bad shape, the dolls in Alfred's private palace are a strong indication of his madness and his attachment to the past and Alexia. The vintage dolls obviously belonged to her, and he keeps them in the cases, just like Alexia's body is kept in a capsule after her supposed death. When Alfred wears his sister's dress, he is not simply cross-dressing - he becomes one of her dolls. Just like dolls can be dressed with different outfits, Alfred changes his and for a limited time he identifies himself with Alexia. In that sense, the dolls are a medium with which he communicates with her. The giant disjointed doll that is hanging from the ceiling is a tangible manifestation of his own deranged psyche and mind. Why he had it placed there is not very clear, but it is likely that he did it so as to intimidate potential intruders, warning them that if they proceed any further they will share its fate.

The hanging doll is a creepy feature of the palace

Moreover, taking a closer look at that doll, we will see that it resembles Alexia; while its condition - beheaded, with missing limbs and covered in blood - symbolizes her death. The doll, although hanging from the ceiling, also looks like it is flying, bringing to mind Alexia's final mutation, which is a dragonfly.

The polysemous significance of dolls is further explored in Resident Evil: Revelations 2. Although their presence in that game is limited to just a couple of areas, both their appearance and their symbolism are so dominant and chilling that they are rather hard to forget.

One of the secondary but extremely important characters in the game is Natalia Corda, the little girl that Barry Burton meets moments after he arrives at the mysterious island looking for his daughter. Natalia is being pursued by Alex Wesker, the game's arch-villain, who wants to use her as a host in order to be reborn with absolute power since Natalia was the perfect candidate for her personal experiment. After Natalia fleed away in a desperate attempt to avoid all this, she teamed up with Barry and they traveled around the island in search both of Moira and a way out. When they first arrive close to Alex's hideout, they discover a ruined building with a disturbing decoration: there are little dolls everywhere, set up in the most terrifying installations.

The grotesque installation aim at freaking out the visitors

Later on, as they approach the Spencer mansion replica where Alex is lurking, they go through a cave where similar dolls can be seen around them, together with ceremonial candles. The word 'voodoo' comes directly to mind as we notice the way the dolls have been treated, while at some point Natalia spots her beloved teddy bear, Lottie, dismembered and nailed on a board.

It looks as if Alex was carrying out voodoo ceremonies

The dolls here are used by the game's villain as a means to threaten and terrify her victim directly. Natalia is very young, so Alex is using little dolls that will undoubtedly appeal to Natalia and, on a second level, she maybe identifies herself with them. The fact that Alex treats the dolls in such a violent and sadistic manner shows not only that she can resort to all kinds of means to do what she wants, but also that she will not hesitate to act towards Natalia just like she did towards the dolls.

As Lottie is a doll that belongs to Natalia, by 'punishing' it the way she did, Alex shows Natalia that this will be her own fate as well because of her disobedience.

Alex used Lottie to give a threatening warning to Natalia

The dolls are used in a similar way in Dark Fall: Lost Souls. In the compelling metaphysical thriller by Jonathan Boakes, Amy Haven, the cunning and sadistic ghost that haunts the Station and the Hotel in Dowertown, has three dolls which she calls her 'sisters'. Each doll represents one of three missing girls who died in different ways. The Inspector, the game's protagonist, has to find the dolls, place them in their coffins and match them with their missing eyes. This process, which is nothing less than black magic, gives him the means to overtake the demonic force that guards the Hotel's upper floor, where the solution of the mystery lies.

The colorful eyes of the dolls are their most creepy feature

Amy's dolls have a dual role: they serve as magical objects through which first Amy is able to keep the whole place under her control and later the Inspector breaks the spell that binds the Station and the Hotel, but they also are a hurtful symbol of Amy's destroyed childhood. Amy is a tormented ghost but she is also malignant. Instead of playing normally with regular dolls, she uses people as her toys and pretends that the voodoo dolls are her sisters.

In Resident Evil 7, the dolls and toys are as creepy as one would expect them to be in a horror story.  Eveline, the evil force that masquerades as a little girl in order to take over everyone and everything, uses dolls as baits and threats. There is a doll that resembles her and another one that resembles Mia, the wife of the protagonist, Ethan Winters. Eveline manipulates Mia trying to trick her into believing that she is a sad little girl who needs affection, and hates Ethan because his arrival means that she is close to be exposed and exterminated.

The Eveline doll (left) and the Mia doll (right) are used as enigmatic baits

Ethan discovers both dolls while looking for Mia in the Baker house, while close to the end of the story he comes across a giant version of the Eveline doll in the kitchen of the guest house.

The giant Eveline doll is one of the creepiest things in the game

Eveline is a demonic entity and as such is able to use animate and inanimate objects to serve her purposes. A little girl playing with dolls is something trivial, but a little girl using dolls to threaten people is not. Moreso since Eveline is not actually a little girl; this is just one of her forms, the most convenient in order to invade the Baker family home and infect its members.

The theme of distorted childhood can be traced again in the old room of Lucas and Zoe; it is a space full of toys some of which have a rather ominous and foreshadowing significance: the stuffed crocodile prepares the ground for the presence of the actual crocodiles that lurk in the bayou outside the farm house.

There is nothing cozy about the old kids' room of the Baker house

Similarly, the dollhouse that Ethan sees, among several other toys, in the kids' room of the old house symbolizes the Baker home which itself became a toy in Eveline's hands.

The toy house looks like a miniature of the Baker home

The expected voodoo dolls can be seen in a few places in the grounds of the old house, intensifying the atmosphere of evil and horror. Although they are there just for decorative purposes, they are still extremely creepy, and their aim is to terrify the potential intruders.

In Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea 2, the story begins with Elizabeth, the deuteragonist of the main Bioshock Infinite game, waking up in an abandoned toy factory with Booker DeWitt lying dead by her side. One of the first things that she sees is the head of a doll.

The doll head is like a reminder for Elizabeth

The doll once belonged to Sally, one of the girls who involuntarily took part in Frank Fontaine's brutal experiment, and its head appears crafted and painted in vintage style, as Sally originally lived decades ago. It also looks a lot like Elizabeth.

In the overall haunting and nightmarish atmosphere of the episode, the doll head in Elizabeth's hand becomes a rather ominous symbol of her own fate, as well as serving as a guide which will eventually lead her to Sally. When the episode starts, Elizabeth is in a bad shape but the discovery that she is bound to make is even worse: she sees her own self impaled to death in a dark corner of the toy factory.

In another reality, Elizabeth was a young girl locked in a golden tower, living in absolute safety but completely alone - almost like a doll. That was the state in which Booker found her in the main Bioshock Infinite game. In the Burial at Sea 2 episode, she may be living in a new reality, as an older version of herself in another time and place, but she still carries the consequences of the actions of her other, younger self. Regardless, as it turns out she is still a puppet in someone else's hands, as Atlas, the heartless villain of the story, orders her to carry out certain dangerous missions on his behalf promising that he will then let her go, but in the end he brutally kills her anyway. In the final scene, as Elizabeth dies, Sally shows up holding her doll. As she approaches Elizabeth, the doll's head disappears from the rest of her body and appears in Elizabeth's hand. While Sally goes nearer to comfort Elizabeth, the doll head slips from her hand, signifying both the fact that she finally found and saved Sally and that she herself sacrificed her own life to do this.

As Elizabeth dies, the doll head slips away from her hand

The dolls have a similar role and significance in The Evil Within 2. There are three recurring dolls in the game: one depicting Sebastian, the protagonist, one of Myra, his missing wife, and another one that has the form of Lily, his daughter.We get to see two of these dolls, the Lily doll and the Sebastian doll, very early in the game, in one of Sebastian's memories, where their presence is realistic and they are simply Lily's toys, made by her mother.

In Sebastian's memory, Lily is playing with her dolls

It is not until Sebastian enters the virtual world of Union and starts investigating the place that the dolls begin to have a more complex and symbolic role. While searching for Lily, Sebastian searches a warehouse and there, in one upper room, he finds the Myra doll in a pool of blood.

Sebastian finds the Myra doll in the warehouse

Still in Union, but getting closer to discovering a valuable clue about his daughter's whereabouts, he finds the Lily doll, again in a pool of blood, in the backroom of the cafeteria of a gas station.

The Lily doll is first found in the Pit Stop back room

Both of these dolls act as baits for Sebastian, as they have been strategically placed where he found them by Stefano, the villain who dominates the first part of the game. Stefano, who wants to take advantage of the potential of Lily's brain, wants to lure Sebastian towards him so that he can realize his evil and twisted plans that will supposedly bring his photographic art to another level.

However even after Stefano is exterminated, Sebastian finds one more Lily doll in the dark void. The doll lies on the bloody floor of the bottomless pit below the Marrow Laboratories, in a space that looks like a simulation of Lily's actual room.

The second appearance of the Lily doll is the Bottomless Pit

This time, it is Theodore, the game's main villain, who placed the doll there, in an attempt to bring Sebastian closer to him, to make him feel guilty for Lily's fate and persuade him to help him get rid of Myra and join his cult.

It is characteristic that Sebastian won't come across his own doll anywhere in Union, and the only instance where it appears is close to the end, when he finds Lily sleeping peacefully in her room, in the safe space previously guarded by Myra. The Sebastian doll can be seen sitting on Lily's bed, as Sebastian is taking his daughter away.

The Sebastian doll on Lily's bed is like her guardian angel

The dolls go back to their original, realistic role in the end, when all is over and Sebastian leaves with Lily. Before waving them goodbye, Juli gives Lily the Myra doll, as a token of her mother.

Lily takes the Myra doll as a reminder of her mother

The dolls in The Evil Within 2 illustrate the state of the characters they depict. The Sebastian doll, as it appears sitting passively in Lily's bedroom, represents Sebastian's status: Sebastian is sedated in a STEM tub while his virtual self, or his mind's self, is taking action in Union. On the other hand, Sebastian comes across the Myra doll and the Lily doll and finds them lying down, as if dead. This hints at their actual state, because although they are not dead, they are trapped inside STEM and the only way for them to get out is by Sebastian's intervention. Sebastian has to defeat the Matriarch, Myra's monstrous self, so as to allow the real Myra take control. Subsequently he is the only one who is able to take Lily out of Union, and once Myra destroys the system from inside, he is the one to bring his daughter out of the Core capsule. In the end, the only doll that appears is the one depicting Myra, as she voluntarily stayed behind and presumably perished with all the STEM system.