riskeys

[yngai]

actually hate the ressie wiki for adding ada's falsified backstory from the umbrella chronicles novelization to her wiki page because it claims 'the validity of this account is questionable', leaving people who are otherwise unfamiliar with the franchise's lore who naturally peruse the wiki to assume there's a possibility ada isn't lying through her teeth in the novel, or that there's a nugget of truth hidden in her account, despite it being clearly stated otherwise pretty early on. after ada is done reciting facts about the reunification of vietnam & the treatment of the hoa people to leon the narration states succinctly that 'it had nothing to do with ada or her family in the slightest', without even mentioning the amount of times ada is surprised by how gullible leon is

i'm not even sure why they're treating the novel as a source, other than the absnece of a concrete backstory for ada, but it's like adding the dick valentine master thief background to jill's page. it isn't canon owing to the fact that it contradicts the events of the game, given there is no rendition of RE2, not even the darkside chronicles' own retelling, where ada gives her backstory upon first meeting leon in the parking garage. while the wiki does make note of two pieces of information which are true to the novel's version of ada, as they are told through ada's own thoughts about her mission in raccoon city & her work with wesker, that being the migrant workers who died because of her spreading pesticide on a sweet potato farm + her rising through the ranks of a chinese-american criminal syndicate who was crushed by the FBI, ada almost getting caught but being noticed by wesker & given the job to spy on umbrella right after, i feel like whoever's editing her wiki page didn't read the novel all the way through because they don't mention the most insane part of the whole thing, which is that ada was present for the khmer rouge in cambodia & the rwandan genocide

these aren't things i consider in my portrayal both because there's only so much real world suffering in relation to resident evil i wanna discuss on this blog, the war on terror is already so horrible that i am tiptoeing around it sometimes for the sake of not just going on about how much i hate the united states of america, & that these are narrative elements meant to show us how prepared & ready ada was for the outbreak in raccoon city which contradicts my own portrayal & both versions of RE2 where she is very much flying by the skin of her teeth clinging to desperate manipulations & leon's gullibility to make it through alive & finish her mission. it doesn't make any sense for ada to go into raccoon city having been witnesses to this amount of cruelty already, but its also a little strange to equate a fictional zombie outbreak to horrible things that have happened throughout history

[yngai]

❯  GET TO KNOW ME BETTER.

ALIAS / NAME:  nadiya BIRTHDAY:  may 24th ZODIAC SIGN:  gemini HEIGHT:  6’3 HOBBIES:  gaming primarily, obviously roleplay, looking to get back into digital art soon. i wish i had something more to offer outside media consumption but i'm basically what happens when you take a gamer bro & put them on estrogen FAVOURITE COLOUR:  blue & black, i basically wear nothing but black CURRENT BOOK:  the witcher novels currently eyeing me from my shelf LAST SONG:  replayed demon's souls (original release, i don't own a ps5 or the remake tragically) recently so i've had the soundtrack on in the background because it's one of a kind, like the game itself it has its own unique atmosphere that differs from later souls entries. they all moved onto epic orchestrated scores that are definitely great in their own right, but it is a little sad that the remake's ost also followed this trend (still really wanna play it) LAST FILM / SHOW:  for movies, me & the lads just watched banned from broadcast: saiko! the large family. as for TV, we watched the newest smiling friends episode today! i don't really watch as much stuff on my own as i do with a group of buds if you couldn't tell INSPIRATION:  for this blog some of it is listed on my dossier page. i tend to find a lot of inspiration for ada in all sorts of weird places mostly because i am thinking about her character all the time & i tend to listen & relisten to her character playlist constantly (because my music taste is great & my song choices are very good, smile). if you're wondering why i never write i don't know either BEHIND URL:  yangai without the first a, a word with a double meaning depending on the spelling between concealing & flooding. the necessity a spy has for stealth & how their identity is submerged behind falsehood. it's too iconic to change now i suppose FUN FACT ABOUT ME:  i'm really mad that romania has a popeyes in bucharest & denmark doesn't, how does that happen? why has denmark failed me? it's like i moved for nothing...

TAGGED: let's pretend it was @buriedabove TAGGING: you, yes, you, the person reading this

[yngai]

happy 1 year anniversary RE4R! this is my new favorite official drawing of ada (cropped from this official artwork), look at her, she's a silly goofy cat waving at the camera, the only character to acknowledge the fourth wall

[yngai]

see the fun part about writing ada is that her prose is very introspective, heavy on metaphor & allusion & always showcasing how she fictionalizes the events & relationships of her life through the lens of the stage & acting as a profession, how she makes of what is real into fiction as a primary coping mechanism that helps distance herself emotionally & physically from her own actions & then, if she is in character, she opens her mouth & says ' pissing all by yourself, handsome? '

[yngai]

ada without the suave, classy & semi-flirtatious filter of her persona is such a vile, vulgar, cynical & petty person it makes me wish we got to hear more of her dropping the act to insult & belittle people who aren't simmons (even as she taunts leon openly the filter is still applied). she keeps the mask on tightly, even when she is alone. she never drops the act but there is a fire within her that is suppressed begging for blister & burn with all the rage she harbors for anyone that's dared underestimate her

[yngai]

one thing that always irks about ada's presentation is just how unrelated her sexualization is to her character, the closest she gets is the flirtatious dialog & innuendos in RE4 which i still argue are an element of the game's 'parody of an american action movie' style narrative & definitely played off as humorous & inappropriate to the situation as part of the overall comedy but as ada's character grows in damnation & RE6 there is almost no correlation between her role as a corporate spy & the way she is sexualized, seduction & coercion through sex aren't things that ada performs on screen, all of it is implicit to her history with john. its to the degree that simmons' in-universe objectification of ada is presented as both monstrous & a core aspect of his villainy/carla & project ada's backstory

[yngai]

trying to rationalize out the computational power of the I.R.I.S. given that even by today's standards, modern CPUs aren't small enough to fit inside a contact lens & therefore the calculations necessary to discern the distance of an objective & visualize it wouldn't be done by the device itself, but rather by a remote unit that connects to the I.R.I.S. wirelessly. probably through a satellite connection like the one used by wesker in the original separate ways to track ada's movements, or a separate computer unit the size of a raspberry pi somewhere on ada's person, maybe even her mobile phone from the end of RE6 but of an older generation; given that ARM CPU architecture has existed since the 80's & i did say ada's preferred operating system is linux. i did also figure out whether or not the I.R.I.S. is intended to be either a contact lens or an implant & while this might be a developer oversight, ada's right eye, the one that glows when the I.R.I.S. is active, reacts to the plaga infection:

something it wouldn't do if it was fully cybernetic, i imagine, unless it has some kind of react-to-infection type cloaking technology which, given that the lens seems to only cover one eye & glows distinctively while in use, doesn't seem likely. it's a useful investigation tool on reconnaissance assignments like the one in RE4R but otherwise a hindrance on most if not for all espionage work since it's a rather obvious tell

[yngai]

what i like about ada's report, & i'll get into it more eventually, is that despite it being ada explaining the plot (& her motivations) to you directly, it presents an interesting relationship between ada, a known liar & manipulator, & the audience. while she withholds information from other characters & skirts about on mystery throughout RE4 & separate ways, there is one person to whom she doesn't lie, to whom she does tell the truth, at least a part of it, & that is you, the player. it is a very neat narrative device that wouldn't work as well in a different medium

[yngai]

a lot about ada's character in resident evil 6 flies over people's heads but i'm always thinking about ada's line as she's about to provide sniper fire & help jake & sherry, "i suppose i should return the kindness their parents showed to me." a lesser pettier woman might've indulged in letting the children of two people who've separately put her through hell suffer as recompense. while i won't say she goes out of her way to offer aid given the only danger she puts herself in throughout the whole exchange is zipping around to whisk sherry to safety & the only reason the ubivsto is chasing after jake & sherry is because ada failed to kill it previously, it does speak to ada's rather wrapped moral fiber, something always shown & never told

[yngai]

another funny inference i've seen regarding ada in re4r is that both of her offers to leon to leave ashley behind & ride the helicopter with her are genuine despite :

a) both the main game & separate ways letting us know that ada's using leon as a distraction & thus she wouldn't want him to abscond spain mid-mission because several cutscenes before & after their reunion reinforce the idea that ada wants leon to keep the cult busy (her words) while she secures the amber . she openly refers to leon as predictable, meaning she knows what he'll do ahead of time (which isn't a hard guess, man has a mission & a girl to save, ada isn't the cleverest spy for realizing he'll go through hell & high water to complete his objective),

b) the question of quantity in regards to luis' suppressant is never brought up, in fact he specifically refers to him making a new batch of serum as he's listing the ingredients to ada (i.e. more than one, enough for all three), so ada doesn't know that ashley is lost no matter what, she is just taunting/testing leon (itself a callback to a line from one of ada's letters in the original where ada suggest that due to ashley's earlier infection she might not survive & leon should prepare for the worst case scenario, since she is way more calculated & pragmatic in the original),

c) her smile shown to the audience but not to leon, which i've discussed previously,

d) why would ada want leon on the chopper in the first place ? to hear her contact wesker & discuss the details of her mission ? she very pointedly avoids doing so throughout the game both to leon & to luis, but with luis she does slip up & mention wesker as she's suffering under the effects of the plaga, which is a great piece of characterization that is consistent with RE2R (she cracks under extreme pressure) . shame that luis' history with umbrella is never brought up in separate ways despite ada also being a raccoon city survivor & having spied on umbrella + have a connection with albert fucking wesker, someone luis should know

[yngai]

ON ADA’S LIFE AFTER RESIDENT EVIL 6, SOME RETRACTIONS / SOME ADDITIONS :

going forward i’ll probably walk back a majority of resident evil 6 canon divergence, for a number of reasons including that i’m too lazy to sit down & rewrite an entire resident evil game but also that as i’ve matured both as a person & as a writer i’ve come to better understand my issue with RE6 is that an it’s an incredibly interesting story told very poorly (where the chance of the characters wrestling with their discoveries is almost always whisked away by an overdrawn, jarring action set-piece that barely advances the plot) & the way to solve my issues is not removing some of the central themes of project ada but to attempt to make good on capcom’s blunder by adequately portraying them .  if you were to truly commit to rebuilding the game’s narrative from the ground up with ada in a leading role instead of a background one, then maybe some of my ideas would work but, again, who has the time to write endless drabbles about a stupid action-horror video game ?

joke’s on me, i have time

trigger warning, the following section contains mentions of implied assault, domestic abuse & forced pregnancy

my second reason is that i want to better work ada wong into the themes of resident evil 7 & 8, going in a direction for her character i’ve honestly never imagined myself considering but i think i stumbled onto a concept that’s a bit too good to pass up that involves making project ada just that little bit worse .  inspired partially by the series of files on derek’s transformation whose endnote detail the family’s plans to leave him for dead in china & usher in a new heir in his place, their displeasure & disappointment in him over all the wasted resources (& potentially the building of facilities in rival economies, his obsession with an asian woman, the family does exist to ensure global stability through white/western/american hegemony) spent chasing a docile, obedient substitute to a woman who will never love him back .  speaking of poorly told, by the by, the fate of the most powerful organization in the franchise after the death of its leader isn’t told to you in-game, you have to go to RE.net for it .

i doubt derek c. simmons was fully unaware that elements of the family were planning to oust him, he is meant to be the franchise’s overarching villain, with an heir prepared to take his role (a collateral descendant, i imagine), & his obsession with ada’s beauty & intellect, their compatibility as partners, tells me that he viewed her as more than just a showpiece to hang beside his throne, his desperation to have her back under his grasp because she, & only she, is worthy of being a mother to his child, of giving him a son that carries on his legacy, a child that bears their best qualities to lead the world into a future he envisions, him offering guidance from the shadows, clinging desperately to his power .  without a true heir, the coup would succeed even without derek’s death as him & carla had become a liability to the family’s ultimate goal & he is nothing if not a man made of contingencies .

i think you know where this is going .

of the many secrets ada finds through the lower levels of the quad tower, destroying carla’s final experiment & her research logs detailing neo-umbrella’s plans & operations, everything to do with project ada so that the theft of her identity is erased from stated record (though some reports from tatchi note the presence of two ada wongs based on cross-referenced sightings from BSAA personnel, plus, well one is dressed in reds & the other in blues, kind of hard to change clothing so often when you’re on the run from chris redfield), she uncovers a video diary of her doppelganger, one where she is constantly oscillating between extremes, between the happiness that derek, the one man who loves her most in the world, blessed her with the gift of motherhood & with a child that will show the world the love they share for each other & the other, the inner voice of the woman trapped within that screams to cut that thing out of her, take a knife & rip herself apart & spill its guts to show derek that she won’t allow his legacy to continue .  it sets the kernel of an idea she will build onto later, a child of her own incubating beneath the sea bed, a monster much like simmons, one that will destroy the world he’s created .

they stand at odds & fight as the logs go on with the inner voice ringing a hollow victory, carla realizing she can’t rid herself of the pregnancy, she has already done so much beneath simmons’ ever watchful gaze to ensure the world his & his family controls burns to the ground & failing to deliver the child would put her under too much scrutiny, she can’t allow her plans to fail .  the final few videos showing her, cradling a baby daughter in her arms, one final struggle between love & hatred that’s only decided when simmons enters the frame, enraged at carla’s failure to give him a son .  it’s wasted rage, he can’t afford to wait another nine months as the family accelerates their moves against him & ada averts her eyes the second she sees him raise his hand .  she’s seen enough, she knows what awaits in the dark laboratory that still stands in the quad tower & every nerve in her body tells her to run away, let it all burn down to cinders, but a pang of guilt pushes her forward, some kind of sick, perverted curiosity to uncover one final mystery that plagues her need to know everything .  a foregone conclusion whose answers & resolve she’s already internalized that she has to see through, for herself, for carla’s sake, for the ten thousand woman that suffered at her & simmons’ hand .

they wait for her, lost in a corner of the laboratory that has yet to burn, a room off to the side where something can be so easily forgotten,

whatever carla’s motivations were, the benefit of studying the offspring of a chrysalid mutant for the development of enhanced c, the strain used to turn simmons into what he always meant to be, or maybe a kind of unwanted bond formed the moment derek rejected his daughter, much in the same way he rejected carla despite her devotion to him in favor of ada (something to speak for a remnant of carla’s humanity), much like her reason for involving ada in her plans, either to see her burn with the rest of the world & pay for simmons’ obsession with her or because carla knows ada will put her life on the line to keep chaos from engulfing the planet, calling upon her as a way to quite literally stop herself, ada can’t parse it, not really .  she does like to guess, of course, & she’s the only character in RE6 that shows carla any kind of understanding & sympathy (what the hell did simmons do to you? / i don’t condone your actions carla, but at least now i understand them), aware that she can only really lay blame at the feet of simmons & trying to at least affirm carla’s humanity before she completely sheds it (but it was your conscience carla, that saw you fail. after all, isn’t that why you brought me into this? which is an oddly written & delivered line, but far be it from me to suggest RE6 isn’t the most well considered game in the franchise .  ada turns sour on carla the second she becomes an active threat, but there is a solemn goodbye to the carla that was after she starts biting back, some guilt in it too) .  which is why she carries out the only part of carla’s plans that should be seen through to its conclusion, ending simmons .

a young girl, two, maybe three years old at most, cowering away from the destruction right above them, left without carla or the scientists that took care of her .  the final unknown, the answer ada didn’t want to find .  a palpable fear hangs in the air, a dread that settled within her ribcage, she wished that the shadows could hide her, that she would only be a brief silhouette in the doorway that vanishes the second its seen but the flames flicker brighter, her face is shown in the fire, blood & dirt & watering eyes, & the child runs to her, she clings to her & it’s like a chain around her ankle, a weight to drag her down & a single word echoes through the chaos, softly spoken, relief, sadness, happiness, something that sinks ada’s soul, she drowns beneath the waves, in depths of herself left undiscovered—

in mandarin,  “  mother ?  ”

a sound like shattered glass, sharp & piercing, plunging its way into her heart, a new wound from which to bleed through, whatever & whoever ada wong is now .  she closes her eyes, daring not to glance below, tightening the grip on her MP9, placing her finger on the trigger .  it was her first thought, how she could end it all right here, project ada, simmons’ legacy, the decade of pain & suffering that led to marhawa, edonia, tall oaks & tatchi, but then she would become a monster too, wouldn’t she ?  beyond sympathy, beyond humanity, a hypocrisy that rings in her ear, makes it hard to hear whatever else the child says, the happiness of their reconnection, her cries of an undelivered promise, that they would one day leave this lab together .  she recants, a heavy sigh that brings no relief with it, as if from new lungs & she finally looks down, into a mirror of something she’d thought lost .  what she sees in that child is not carla, nor derek or the monstrosity that led to her birth, but ada’s own eyes reflected back .  an unwanted child born to a woman unfit to be a mother .  it’s a shock through her body, a jolt that forces her to act, holstering her gun & grabbing the child’s hand instead, another of carla’s promises she intends to keep .

another mess she has to clean up .

there’s a life out there waiting for them, one of many she’s built up over the years as a contingency, far too many times forced into hiding by those like simmons (as i doubt project ada was the sole outlet for his lust & obsession, why settle for a replica when you can have the real thing ?  & derek is a man used to getting what he wants), who would want to claim ada wong & her secrets all for themselves .  a small, tight-knit cantonese speaking community occupying an apartment block in singapore, where a travelling business woman returns home once every couple of years, now with a kid in hand .  there was a kind of slight heartbreak in hearing how “her” daughter could only speak mandarin, when so much of the ada wong persona is intertwined with growing up in cantonese-speaking hong kong, its culture, its cinema, her youth spent learning & performing cantonese opera, & the disconnect she felt in spite of it all, with a han chinese father & a mandarin name .  she wouldn’t expect simmons to have understood that, nor carla, it just lends itself to another way her identity had been perverted, degraded, lessened into a parody of itself that took center stage over the original act .  she can’t afford to be ada wong anymore, at least for now, & there is something at stake other than herself for once, a new purpose, a new way to be that has to be learned as she goes, & thus sheng ming hui & her daughter settle into a domesticity that is as much a welcome respite as it is a prison for a woman who has lived her life always wanting to spread her wings .

the child’s name is mei, a reference to the ada wong persona’s chinese name, 黃���芬 (wong mei-fan) & ada resolves to complete it with a flourish of her own, mei-li, something taken from her own mother’s name (judith yuen li-zhen (袁李贞), which, yes, is lifted directly off maggie cheung’s character from in the mood for love, i am nothing if not wholly unoriginal) .  though the surnames change as they move around the world in an effort to stay hidden, in time ada does begin affectionately calling her meimei .

there’s very few that know of ada’s fate after tatchi, among them :

jill  valentine  (@goetiya​),  her confidant, the only person allowed a peek beneath the veil in their mutual dance, a playful romance that dragged itself out from those precious few months before the raccoon city incident, who ends up taking mei-li under her own care after ada’s survival is discovered by the “ organization ”, the seedier underbelly of the federation of pharmaceutical companies that have begun sinking their teeth into the BSAA, as per my village verse .  through her, of course, other characters learn of mei-li, though not her connection to ada wong (subject to plotting, naturally), jill saying she has taken the child of “one of her contacts within the bioterror underworld” under her care, for a time .  chris redfield, rebecca chambers, barry burton & most importantly claire redfield, who ends up spotting in for jill as a babysitter when she’s at the beck & call of a darker BSAA .  it’s a risk assumed, how ada casts her shadows over jill’s life, forcing her to withhold the truth from the people closest to her .

leon  s.  kennedy  (@knnedy​),  whom ada drags to singapore one faithful autumn day, two years into her exile, a way to say goodbye, a way to air out the existential horror of carla radames to the man who stands the best chance of understanding it, something they both share, like raccoon city, like spain, yet ada knows her wounds run deeper than his .  maybe she’s grown softer, spending time as a mother to a child that shouldn’t have been born, maybe there’s still a few knives she’d like to twist into his back, some blame she would like to place, a way to motion guilt from herself onto him, but there’s an absence of choice here & so she serves him a warning, the cost of his bleeding heart .

mia  winters  (@terrorgone​​),  an old contact from ada’s days investigating tricell in ‘09, a riskier, more self-destructive side to her that’s shown after jill’s “death” .  a tumultuous relationship she holds no pride in that scorched prague for a month, someone she would be happy to forget about as she moves on to new marks & new identities but fate plays funny tricks on people & mia ends up being more significant to the world than she has any right to, in ada’s mind .  after dulvey, trading hands between various BSAA safehouses before being settled in romania, mia spots a familiar looking young girl following jill around as she’s interrogated at the BSAA’s north america branch .  she’s smarter than ada gives her credit for & she knows her & jill have something in common, peering down ada’s eyes up close .  it’s a chance to put a knife to ada’s throat much in the same way she once put a needle to her neck back in prague, to see the woman beneath the mask after ada didn’t give her the right .

anyone else is open for discussion .

some final thoughts, what, did you think we were done ? :

on the surface level the notion of ada wong as a mother is laughable, to me, but that’s usually because the avenue to motherhood people use is her relationship to leon & if this post wasn’t long enough i could list out all the reasons why it wouldn’t work, but like anything regarding the ada/leon romance you have reduce both characters to tropes they subvert in order for it to function & make their dynamic that much less interesting & that much more intense in a way that it isn’t portrayed on-screen .  

hopefully i’ve argued my case for taking her character in this direction, because keeping in with ada’s overall subversion of the femme fatale archetype, it’s not the narrative that treats motherhood as the end of her character (as her story goes on well into the events of village), but herself, she views it as a punishment, as a prison, as an end to the illustrious career of super spy ada wong when that’s not really the case, small joys though she finds in playing a doting mother to an unloved child, she can’t keep away from her calling & she continues observing the motions of the world from afar, as well as her side hobby as a grey hat hacker trading in sensitive information to dismantle legal & criminal organizations alike .  her inability to reconcile with her new life eventually leading to her capture & her separation from mei-li before the events of RE8 .

i think it gives ada more of an in with ethan winters & a reason to help him over the course of RE8 beyond just using him as a way to get to miranda & her research, as she too, like him, like miranda, is a parent desperate to reunite (or just reunite, in ethan’s case) with her daughter .  a woman otherwise unfit to be a mother (miranda, alcina) that does what she can with the broken pieces of herself to make a life for her child (mia) .  it also serves to tie an overall narrative between games that feel like they’re from different franchises, RE6 & RE7, through the uniting theme of family & the children who grow up in resident evil’s rendition of our very own global forever war .

anyway, i think that’s my piece, thanks for reading !

[yngai]

we are winning at levels never before thought possible it seems, after making the wrong choice of becoming an ada wong fan & having to subsist off the crumbs of characterization given to me in in-game files, supplemental material & scant lines of dialog it seems capcom is truly going to give me everything i have ever wanted :

probably giving ada the best DLC in the franchise, a meaningful relationship with a character that isn't leon that seems to take precedent in her story over her few chance encounters with leon in RE4R ( i have a feeling her & luis' history gives their dynamic far more meaning than his little rollercoaster ride with leon ), cool sci-fi contacts replacing the glasses she never really used in the original, integrating her grapple hook in her combat when it was sadly only ever used for traversal, actual content specifically designed for her campaign & not just reused arenas from the main game ( some of these are from the original carried over to ada but i think her performing the coolest thing leon does in the original, dodging the lasers, is sick ), finally positioning wesker as an antagonist in ada's story directly rather than him hanging over her like a school headmaster trying to play mindgames .

it's honestly so personally rewarding to see capcom go to such lengths for a character they have otherwise neglected, even in a game like re6 where she carries the emotional core of the story ( in specific her developing relationship with carla as she learns she is more than just some lab-made doppelganger, which was sadly undercooked - like most of the game, despite the explosions )

[yngai]

SEPERATE WAYS (2023) INITIAL THOUGHTS - PART ONE :

while i think i set my expectations a little too high regarding this DLC & there are areas where i was left disappointed, aspects of the original story that begged for expansion which are either ignored or just as obtuse, i do enjoy the new additions & scenarios unique to her campaign ( resulting from it being given proper development time, when the original was always an afterthought, a quickfire rendition of the main scenario whose actual story is relegated to direct exposition from ada in between chapters + the attached guidebook offering context on her actions & allegiances ) . ada's characterization falls very much in line with how i've portrayed her . while capcom always delivers on engaging gameplay ( RE4R's combat is the franchise's best & ada's unique move-set sets this DLC apart ), characters & story can often take a backseat to the breakneck pacing of the action, to atmosphere & overall world, monster & sound design .

i wish this wasn't a consistent issue but having been a resident evil fan for at least half a decade now this is what i should've expected, there are some excellent moments hampered by wasted potential & while these are faults i am happy to see ada wong being given a chance to shine . separate ways was always setting up ada's own solo outing that was later backtracked & her narrative role reused for damnation, only somewhat realized with RE6 as ada's campaign carries the most story relevance as we learn the motivations & background of the game's villains, with ada confronting her own manufactured persona plastered onto another woman . this DLC feels like that promise fulfilled, ada unchained from her narrative dependance on leon as we relive the events of RE4R from her perspective . whereas for leon it's a horror, for ada it's just another day clocking in to work . everyone was left wanting for more & thinking ada robbed of her story relevance by luis, but even in the original her campaign is what cements her role in the narrative & it is the same here .

i don't tie my blog's canon exclusively to the remakes & as i've detailed here there will be a lot carried over from the original moving forward with my portrayal, especially in how resident evil 4 (2005) is a self-aware take on the american action movie, where ada plays & subverts the role of the femme fatale very plainly . this is something important to how i perceive & portray ada, because i think an issue regarding most analysis of her character is that despite her duplicitous, calculated nature, people take her & her words at face value . in this remake much like in her every appearance, there is a disconnect between her actions & the information she relies to other characters, it's what makes her interesting to me ( & why i've written her for as long as i've been a ressie fan ) . we've known since RE3 that ada wong is a cover, a mask worn by a woman that thrives on lies & deceit, & the weight of it, her existence in a world on the brink of self-destruction is what gives her life meaning .

separate ways (2023) doesn't truly pick up until after luis' death, sadly, i don't think her infection is given much proper development, but her relationship with luis going beyond one file & one cutscene is a welcome addition to her story & the interplay with luis' arc & theme of redemption adds a lot of context to ada's scenes in leon's campaign . the build up is a little middling but the payoff is worth it .

this isn't going to be an in-depth analysis post, i still need to gather my thoughts, think of this more as a rather long list of observations :

first off, i love that ada's introduction & approach to rescuing luis shows her undercover . this is the first time in the franchise we see ada, a spy, sneak into a situation not donning her signature raven black hair matching her usual red/black color scheme . while the leather gloves are a dead giveaway to eagle eyed viewers, it's a nice change of pace for a character we are told is a spy though we rarely see do proper espionage ( she is more akin to a gentleman thief ) . does make me wonder where she procured the outfit since the inhabitants of the castle are on high alert, & what she thinks of all the dead hitchhikers she walked past on her way down .

i also enjoy that ada humors luis by giving the chance to finish off his private dance number & that from her expression alone there's instant regret, an eye roll, placing a cigarette in his mouth to shut him up, later turning her head away to create distance as luis leans in, before her demeanor with him grows openly hostile as he continues testing her patience . i will say though, this scene does feel like it belongs later in the campaign, it makes little sense for ada's route throughout valdelobos to be castle -> village -> castle ( luis even mocks it, asking ada if she ever thought she'd come back to the castle later . seems like a cheeky nod from the developers hinting at the strangeness of the circling ), & it always felt like their cliffside chat was supposed to be their first meeting . in fact, this is hinted at by the code phrase used, one luis asks leon upon their introduction & later ada, stressed in the e-mails exchanged . which is absent here as i think originally the trouble luis got himself into that leon hears of in the prince charming radio call was getting recaptured . this is a writing decision made specifically for the DLC that, in my opinion, does conflict a little with the main scenario, but i can live with it .

i guess it's nice of ada to pick up a pack of cigarettes on the way to valdelobos, i just wish she smoked one or two in a cutscene, maybe they're not her brand .

some insights into ada's arms dealing background given from the descriptions of her springfield armory xd ( blacktail ac ), customed made for ada's personal use, she must know some excellent gunsmiths . interesting as well that her knife 'has meant the difference between life & death on more than a few missions', she is shown to be rather proficient with knives in later cutscenes too . really makes her expression when leon essentially mansplains the usefulness of knives in close quarters all the more understandable . she thinks it very funny, because she never initiated the fight with the intention to harm ( finger off the trigger, playful lilt to her voice, in the remake leon has openings ada doesn't exploit, leon is her distraction against los iluminados why would she harm him at all ) . in both renditions it's a part of her game to judge his training, how it has changed him & in the remake she does get caught off guard by how seriously leon takes the encounter, the build up of resentment of a six year old death & betrayal ( deserving, of course, a consequence for ada's actions in raccoon city that leaves little room for whatever lingering sentiment people misinterpret in their interactions ) only regaining her foothold when he tries to talk down to her . then she mocks what he's become .

after learning of ada's infection i first speculated it would coincide with her own capture by méndez's forces after rescuing leon at his home, sedated as in the original & injected with her own plaga instead of becoming a sacrifice . instead her infection happens first thing, resulting from a fairly surface level cut on her right arm that heals & vanishes ( along the damage to her sweater ) within minutes . while we are told that pesanta possess a unique form of plaga infection specific to her victims ( fitting with her name drawing from catalan folklore as a creature that causes breathing problems & nightmares by perching atop a person's chest ), plaga infections happen through the injection or forceful swallowing of a parasite into a host . in the remake the parasites survived incased in amber, preserved like the insects they are, in the original they became petrified & their spores infected miners hired by the salazar family, & now i guess an organic spike cutting someone slightly is enough for a parasite to start growing in your body . but hey, infection through a wound sustained on your forearm from a black-clad monster pursuing you throughout your mission, ada/jill parallels anyone ?

it's just a shame pesanta isn't a stalker enemy that irregularly pursues ada throughout the castle & village, an active threat that looms over the horizon . she is encountered three times, always alone ( sans illusions, which i suppose is a nice nod the hookman version of RE3.5 ) & the third time is the reimagined U3 boss fight, where ada is freed of her infection . this is told to us, & ada even comments on the usefulness of the information, in a file found in the display room, but it's almost kind of a copout as to end the infection plotline as soon as possible .

for leon it lingers until the very end, he goes to such great lengths to cure himself & ashley, ada vomits her parasite & brushes it off like it never happened, & it's such a shame because pesanta's ability to control her victims through waking nightmares would've been such a great chance to introduce some more horror to ada's journey, insight into her character by the nature her nightmares take, imagery & symbolism, maybe an even more overt series of hallucinations in the castle as a full on callback to RE3.5, something beyond her nightmares being a boss mechanic ( not asking for anything beyond a 5-10 minute sequence is a 3-4 hour long DLC ) . this is why i'm currently on the fence about retaining it as part of my canon, i guess until we see the story relevance of the blood sample wesker takes in their first encounter .

ada, to me, is a character that always struggles with her lingering humanity that gets in the way of her own selfish whims & her employers' desires . she finds herself getting invested & distracted by the people she comes across during her missions, by a moral line she is unwilling to cross no matter how beneficial it would be in the long run, which is bolstered here as she affirms luis' promise & need for redemption . while i won't bore you with the notion that her greatest flaw is that she cares too much or anything ( she doesn't ), it is an aspect of her character that makes her a more realized person but dampens her life of espionage . it's an operational failure, but not a personal one, something i would've loved to see reflected in her struggle against the plaga, her humanity succumbing to a power she can't truly comprehend . one that might be useful in her betrayal of wesker, a man who thinks himself as having surpassed humankind . a notion considered but ultimately discarded as she is self-assured enough to think she can stand against wesker on her own terms .

pleasantly surprised to see ada's glasses return in a superior form, one i'm definitely keeping, as the I.R.I.S. system is a gameplay feature & a fun little spy gadget that makes far too much sense as a tool in ada's arsenal . not just explaining her prowess with her grappling hook but scanning the environment for footprints & fingerprints, a gameplay feature i hope to see return in any prospective future instalment featuring ada . she is noted in a character blurb from the original RE2 to be an investigator, an information retrieval specialist, as both the g-virus & the dominant plaga are referred to as evidence that ada is tasked with collecting, rather than research material ( the former makes a lot more sense once you consider that ada's golgotha sample never resurfaces after RE2, while the g-virus itself does in dead aim, degeneration & RE6, it's always through other avenues, namely, HUNK's sample landing in the hands of umbrella europe's facilities in france, frederic downing escaping raccoon city with his own sample & carla radames extracting the lingering golgotha in sherry's system - the latter kept by ada for undisclosed purposes, the same file mentioning she has no desire being part of wesker's apocalyptic designs ) .

when i first played the demo for RE4R i immediately locked onto the game's present though underdeveloped stealth mechanics . i remember testing its limits seeing how far i could sneak into the village before initiating combat ( it wasn't very far ), & it set my mind ablaze with the possibility that separate ways would expand on its stealth system, making ada a more covert operative . while there's certainly opportunities for stealth, more than the base game, it would've been very neat to see the I.R.I.S. system implemented in such a way as to allow ada to scurry by undetected . enemy sightlines & alert levels, a ping system allowing you to see enemy movements behind walls, i'm just dreaming about an ada wong metal gear solid game .

does make me wonder though if this is just an ace in ada's deck that wesker is otherwise unaware of, as he could very easily tap into her eye to see her activities in real time, though i doubt it's in any way connected to any network ( los illuminados also has the facilities to interrupt any radio communication ) . ada keeps wesker updated to her progress via her radio & never removes the I.R.I.S. like she discards her sunglasses, i'm unsure yet if it is a contact lens or a permanent implant .

an incredibly goofy line but i think as ada's report unveils, ada isn't necessarily the most creative woman when it comes to word choice ( she leans too heavily on obvious metaphor & cliché even in her speech patterns ), i don't think this topples her equating umbrella's collapse with an umbrella folding & brining all of spencer's shadowy conspirators ( wesker included ) out into the light & their wretchedness into full view, their battle of light & darkness as they seek to erect a new umbrella, that's still my favorite ada wong-ism . i think her quips in this DLC make her out to be even more of a dweeb than ever before & believe me she thinks she is so clever .

very brief for an introductory monologue but i do like that RE4R's primary theme of change is carried over to ada's narrative through the lens of how raccoon city changed her, kind of been a long running aspect of my portrayal, the complete shift of the ada wong persona & the ideals of the woman underneath after a night that almost undid everything she was . this in tandem with the reputation garnered from her survival & the opportunities it presented her as a corporate spy is what molded ada into a much more efficient, smarter operative willing to reopen old wounds as to form scar tissue . her questioning wesker's designs with the amber here, as well as telling luis earlier she has yet to decide what to do with the amber, is also a very nice callback to death's door where ada's single thought following her discussion with wesker at the apple inn is the possibility of a g-virus outbreak on the scale of raccoon city ( 'if the t-virus did this, what would happen if the g-virus got out ?' ) .

she probably blessed whatever higher power she doesn't believe in that no such outbreak has ever occurred, a BSAA file on golgotha specifically states this fact & the disastrous consequences should one ever occur & as i've mentioned previously, her sample never amounted to much . this does tie into a point i will make once we reach the post credits scene, it's something that makes me very happy .

i don't think ada was ever fully prepared for raccoon city, even prior to the outbreak itself the darkness of the umbrella corporation was of an evil she had yet to encounter ( if you subscribe to her presence in arklay & stay in raccoon city up until the outbreak as i do, rather than being sent into RC on two separate occasions ) . while there was plenty of dread & deceit in her life, death & betrayal, petty crime & arms dealing that made her the perfect candidate to be a corporate spy on behalf of one of umbrella's rivals, the eugenics driven research into the t-virus which would eventually lead to the development of bioweapons for the us military was a revelation not easily stomached . she was in over her head with no out but to continue her mission until she found herself in a living nightmare with no real plan & no backup, a desperate woman donning lies trying & failing to manipulate her way to her mission's success . the desperation of her half-constructed lies that only a rookie like leon would believe ( & even he quickly formed doubts ) is what really cements RE2R as one of my favorite characterizations of ada, she lost control & paid for her failure with the life of her persona, only for that name to become her moniker once she managed to drag herself out of raccoon city's wreckage, one of the few survivors .

ada takes on a very cheeky matter-of-fact tone in this radio conversation, combined with the fact she must've already known about the kidnapping of ashley graham before going into valedobos, might be a hint towards ada herself having tipped off the us government towards ashley's location specifically to rile up the cult as a distraction ( 'couldn't have picked a worse time' ) . this does fall in line with a file from the original game, where the cult suggest a similar theory that i think ada's report on leon confirms outright, as she plans for his involvement in a starring role while she works in the background, mentioning how simple the structuring of the operation was prior to los iluminados capturing the us president's daughter . the kind of thing that tends to complicate matters, thanks krauser .

OH MY GOD HE SAID THE LINE !!!

[yngai]

i'll finish the thoughts post eventually just need to get the ball rolling on the rest of it but i will say one major disappointment i have with RE4R in terms of its story is that while it is better told, there are so many interesting elements from the original that begged to be carried over & expanded upon that are simply either completely missing, changed entirely or otherwise left just as vague, & no better example i could think of than operation javier being mentioned but completely butchered as being solely krauser's backstory with no connection to wesker, t-veronica, leon or manuela hidalgo (unless they plan on giving us some kind of krauser DLC that would at least expand on the single file we've been given, there's hints in separate ways of a connection between wesker & krauser at the very least) .

there was a push here to make what was a very goofy & charming outing for ressie into something darker & while i do enjoy some of the directions taken by the franchise since RE7 the lingering dread of its subject matter hidden beneath an unassuming veneer of b-movie cheese & gratuitous action has always been present, RE4 being no different, but i think the remake tried to have its cake & eat it too & while it delivers & enhanced the gameplay thrills of the original, i do think its story is overall lesser in comparison with several elements simplified for easier digestion (& completely missing almost any mention of american foreign intervention, salazar musing about the popularity of the word terrorist in a game set in 2004 & released in 2005 is kind of insane considering what america was justifying at the time & still is under the guise of combatting terrorism), especially in its villains, i've already mentioned my dislike for remake!saddler but wesker ? what did they do to you man .

[yngai]

i was gonna write a longer diatribe about capcom's imposed limitations on their female characters for the sake of player eye candy but really what i wanted to say is that i'd love to write more of ada living on the opposite ends of the suave femme fatale persona she projects on assignments that have her more in control . days off or off-days where she is a little more disheveled, a little bit high, carrying on her life of crime shedding the mask but retaining camouflage as the spite & cynicism that underline her professional detachment bear teeth . mostly because this comic's imagery (x) is exactly what i picture in my mind for the darker sides of ada's existence, lower stakes, lower paying jobs for people who could never grasp in their hand the fate of the world, a no less draining release from the times she was forced to decide between her survival & death on a scale she cannot comprehend . also i'm a sucker for crime thrillers, give me more .

[yngai]

they should've never made ada a hacker (specifically with her intercepting luis' emails to his college friend & that one scene in damnation where she forces the elevator to svetlana's laboratory to open to help leon & sasha + herself escape the self destruction sequence she intentionally activated) because i've taken it now to mean (i watch way too many computer software review & repair videos) she will be annoying about her preferred linux distributions to anyone who will listen, fellow spies, hackers & whichever partner wakes up to ada typing away on her laptop in their living room looking like she hasn't slept the whole night