Ada Wong Returns
The long wait is over and Separate Ways DLC has arrived on Xbox One, PS5, and PC (which this review is based on) this isn’t a standalone DLC so you will be needing Resident Evil 4 Remake. The current price tag for the DLC is 9,99$ or 9,99€ if you are from Europe this is a cheaper price point than DLCs that we had in Resident Evil 7 and also in Resident Evil 8 (which both were 14,99$), but the fundamental difference is that Separate Ways by length is longer DLC and just has more bang for the buck.
According to HowLongToBeat the average playthrough is around ~5h and that’s pretty close to my run as well. Now if you have already played the main game, pretty much all areas you visit are already in the main game – so most stages are rehashed and played from different starting points, but enemy placements are new and I would argue bit harder than in the main mode. The DLC is broken down into 7 chapters and the last one actually offers areas that were not in the main game and felt most fresh experience out of them.
What New Elements Are Introduced in Separate Ways?
Given that there was a 6-month gap between the DLC and the main game I was kinda of hoping that the developers would have put a lot more effort into all aspects of this DLC as a whole, meaning that we could have gotten new guns, new areas, new knives and some other mechanics that were not present in the main game. Well, the biggest difference you are going to see is the signature grappling gun, which allows you to swing to melee attack at enemies from a distance and allows you to transition from one location to another in the various areas of the stage, this is not, however, Attack On Titan so you are not able to use the gun freely as you please, only at the spots where it’s allowed.
The Grappling gun mechanic was well utilized early on in a specific boss fight and even in a couple of cutscenes as well, I was satisfied with the delivery, but I was hoping this would’ve been a unique pistol gun for Ada that could’ve been upgraded as you progress through the game, you can get an upgrade for the Grappling gun via a charm however. Speaking of guns… yeah there aren’t any new ones, which is frankly kinda sad because they do change the gameplay experience to a degree or bring a different flavor of playing.
There is also a new detective mode which kind of reminds me of the Batman Arkham game series and it’s kind of minor gameplay element, but at least to a degree, it’s making gameplay feel slightly different. Everything else about the gameplay remains the same, whether that’s shooting, crafting, or the enemy types.
Voice Actor Drama & Cinematic Critique of Separate Ways
In case you lived under a rock there was a reasonable amount of backlash against the new voice actor Ada Wong (Lily Gao), which resulted in her switching off her Instagram for a period of time – after a while she made a response regarding the critique and citing sexism and racist nonsense in generic Hollywood fashion. Now the idea of harassment campaigns generally is retarded given the fact that voice actors have no power to “pull out” from the game after voice acting has been done secondly I haven’t seen this be a successful strategy to make a gaming company switch their position on the matter.
But the truth is Lily Gao is a 3rd rate actor and an even worse voice actor, the general concept that we have to get matching races for voice actors has always been a pretty bad idea. I never liked the trend that Disney took to make all their new animated movies have big Hollywood names instead of already-established voice actors. I’m also not a fan of the new Ada direction, she was always femme fatale and basically an embodiment of a Sexual Fantasy – A lot of the locker room talk was already removed from the RE4 remake and this new dialogue also is the direction for worse.
There isn’t exactly much of any new dialogue in this DLC and perhaps ironically that was the best option given how weak the performance of Lily Gao was – Capcom has a long history of not being consistent with their voice actors on their franchises whether it’s Resident Evil or Devil May Cry for example.
Another point I have to talk about is how the quality of cinematic are lot lower in Separate Ways than they are in the main game, they lack a lot of that cinematic kino vibe, and most of the stuff we see are scenes with Leon but filmed from a different angle instead, like whats the point of this? Outside of breaking down when this stuff is taking place. All the new scenes are just very meh and nothing really new is shown here which was a shame.
Separate Ways Story <Minor Spoilers>
This DLC was a great chance to flush out the existing story of Resident Evil 4 Remake, but it ended up just rehashing most scenes that would be filmed from a different angle. In terms of brand-new dialogue? There was very very little of it – I was honestly expecting more. We get to see Luis and Ada interact with each other and they change some information here and there, but that’s pretty much it.
By playing this DLC you will barely learn anything new, outside of the brand-new Ending that will give you some brief insight into what is Albert Wesker trying to work next. I’m kind of interested will they get around working on Code Veronica or Resident Evil 5 next, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a totally new spin-off game only focusing on Ada, just with the caveat that Lily Gao will be out of the picture and that she will more like the original character that we like.
There is obviously the new hooded monster that will be around since the beginning and keep reappearing throughout the chapters, but that’s just fighting and not the actual story. Usually, there is value in seeing things from a different point of view and this DLC doesn’t manage to deliver on that front.
Closing Thought – I would be a lot more critical of this DLC if it actually was priced at 14,99$ because then I would have demanded more content and new stuff versus what we got here. I would have been down to maybe even paying 20$ for this if it meant exploring totally new area on the Island or something, but the idea of just playing the same maps again with a couple of different routes closed and debris moved over from here to there is not really making the game feel NEW to me.
It’s still however lot better DLC than any of the recent ones we have received for RE7 & RE8 so for that I do raise my hat and bang for the buck in that sense isn’t that bad. Capcom ought to remember that Resident Evil has focused on some nice-looking women and crawling to feminist overlords is never the solution – embrace the sexist origins & stereotypes of Ada Wong and keep going with that formula in the future.
