Heisenberg Is Resident Evil Village’s Most Overlooked Villain

The recent trailer for the new characters coming to the Resident Evil Village Mercenaries mode with the upcoming Winters’ Expansion DLC revealed a couple of home truths: the first is that people are just as obsessed with Lady Dimitrescu as they were last year, with the online frenzy around her reignited following her reveal as a playable character. The second is that no one doesn’t seem to have nearly as much time for Karl Heisenberg, the most intriguing of the four Lords of Resident Evil Village, and second of three new characters who you’ll get to play as in Mercenaries (the third being Chris Redfield)

Heisenberg is a more significant and complex character in the story than Lady D, and every bit the badass that she is, yet ever since fans first caught sight of the giantess, he’s been lower in the pecking order for both fans and Capcom. It’s telling that in both the trailer and a blog post written by the game’s producer Tsuyoshi Kanda, Lady D is the final reveal in a classic ‘best ’til last’ marketing move. Even Kanda himself introduces her as ‘the third and final character, and everyone’s favorite,’ while Lord Karl Heisenberg is sandwiched between her and Chris (a fantasy for some people, no doubt, but probably not for him).

It’s a shame, because the meme appeal of Lady D has overshadowed Heisenberg. Granted, he doesn’t have the, shall we say, ‘assets’ that made Lady D such a hit with fans, but the guy’s got some untapped story potential, not to mention some serious moves.

The trailer suggests that playing as Heisenberg looks like a riot. With his Magneto-like powers to control metal and a two-handed warhammer made from factory machinery, his showcased spellcraft and area-of-effect attacks make him more akin to a hero from Vermintide or Diablo than a typical Resident Evil merc. Add to that his ability to summon a companion in the form of one of his factory creations, the self-destructing Soldat Jets, and you have what’s sure to be one of the more playful mercenaries in the series’ history. 

What can Lady D do? Throw her vanity table and slash through enemies like an off-brand Wolverine?

Ok, fine, so I’m being a bit facetious. Lady D looks like great fun to play as, but the wider point here is that Heisenberg has been a potentially compelling character in Resident Evil Village who hasn’t received nearly enough exposition.

Of the four Lords designated by Mother Miranda, the driving force behind all things bad in Resident Evil Village, Heisenberg was the only one of the four Lords able to resist the brainwashing influence of the Cadou parasite. Where the other three Lords (Lady D included) are subservient to their master, Heisenberg is a rogue element, a schemer among a bunch of high-ranking goons who may as well be a procession of Castlevania bosses – automatically fighting you with no sense of autonomy. Heisenberg, on the other hand, seems to take a bit of a shine to our hero Ethan; his insistence near the start of the game on having Ethan chased by his Lycan army was, in hindsight, a lifeline, and perhaps a test to see if Ethan was a worthy co-conspirator against Mother Miranda.

Heisenberg is, by most accounts, the most successful host for the Cadou, as he’s the only Lord with no discernible negative side-effects. The parasite simply turned him into a magnetically charged demi-god capable of wielding a two-handed hammer like it’s made of polystyrene. His successful adoption of the parasite would’ve made him the perfect vessel for Eva – Miranda’s dead daughter who she’s obsessed with reviving – but his resilience to the mind control and subsequent lack of loyalty probably put paid to that idea. 

Later in the game, Heisenberg offers to join forces and weaponise Ethan’s daughter Rosa against Miranda. Surely I can’t be the only one who at this point perversely wished that you had the option to accept or reject Heisenberg’s offer, hurtling the story towards a ‘bad ending’ where Heisenberg topples Miranda and has his way? Perhaps the game could’ve ended with a Rammstein-style industrial metal concert in Heisenberg’s factory, with Heisenberg using his hammer as a bass guitar while Ethan sits backstage trying to put his daughter back together again from all her dismembered parts. It would’ve been the greatest game ending since James Sutherland discovered that a dog was behind all the events of Silent Hill 2.

At the very least, Ethan could’ve pretended to accept Heisenberg’s offer, giving the character a bit more story time before they broke their alliance later on. Bland and caring father that Ethan is, however, he rejects Heisenberg’s offer, consigning the eccentric to the scrapheap of Resident Evil lore.

Heisenberg’s origin was always a bit of a mystery. Despite talking with a genteel kind of lilt that would place him in the American South, his name and the nomenclature for the creations in his factory suggest that he was German (a theory supported by the fact that he wore a World War II German soldier dog tag). With this in mind, the incongruity of his Southern accent – a hint of Nicholas Cage from Con Air and everyone’s favourite pink cartoon lion, Snagglepuss –  has exactly the kind of absurd factor that Resident Evil thrives in. 

Sadly, Heisenberg’s section of Resident Evil Village, as well as his boss fight where he turns into a giant junkyard shrapnel mech, is one of the less interesting ones in the game, and fails to do justice to the character. It speaks to Resident Evil Village’s pacing problem whereby the game felt frontloaded with its best ideas and areas (Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento) before fizzling out in the latter portions. It meant that one of the narratively more intriguing characters never really got his time in the spotlight.

At least Heiseinberg’s appearance in the Mercenaries mode should be a hoot – a wild, hammer-swinging curtain call for a character who’s destined to remain something of a great unknown in the Resident Evil series.