LogFAQs > #952123050

Part 2 - Umbrella Management Training Facility
With the Ecliptic Express overturned at the end of its last ride, Billy and Rebecca emerge from the wreckage, miraculously alive and only a little worse for wear. With no point in hanging around a burning pile of metal, the pair head the only way they can: into the Umbrella Executive Training Facility (also known as Umbrella Research Center or Umbrella Management Training Facility depending on where you're localized). Despite its elegant mansion-esque design, this was indeed a school and among its many rooms you can find a lecture hall, library, operations room, and several lab support areas including a gas chamber and animal storage area. That's long in the past however; Rebecca and Billy stumble upon it long closed and abandoned, and are initially greeted with the piercing sight of James Marcus, whose portrait dominates the central staircase of the facility. Rebecca recognized him as the weird leech man she had almost been killed by earlier. Elsewhere, unbeknownst to them, Billy and Rebecca are being surveyed by Wesker and Birkin, who in turn are being monitored by the man in white, who resurrects a copy of Marcus using leeches right in front of their eyes. It looks like whatever is going on here, it's motivated by revenge against Birkin and Wesker.

Well, it's time for things to slow down a bit. Rebecca and Billy have a school to explore. Through environmental storytelling and file acquisition, we can piece together just exactly happened here, both when it closed down in 1978 and now just on the cusp of its reopening 20 years later. The zombies encountered here are from the First and Second Investigation Units, respectively made up of soldiers and scientists sent by Wesker and Birkin to secure the school from BOWs and take stock of medicine and lab equipment that could be invaluable for research. Things obviously didn't turn out too well for them. Around the facility you can see evidence of recent activity from the units: a fire burning criminalizing documents in the conference room, scaffolding for restoring artwork in the assembly hall, corpses that have not fully zombified yet, and files left behind detailing some chemical acquisition.

Rebecca and Billy fight there way through the decrepit facilities, uncovering not only the recent events but also some brief peeks into the facility's past too. There's a diary from the assistant director talking about Birkin & Wesker as students there, with others from Marcus himself to have them become rivals. (Not with a friendship that strong!) Last names are conveniently left out of the document so Rebecca doesn't spoil the events of the Mansion Incident for herself. A diary from Marcus helps show a little of the origins of the T-Virus, which, as detailed in Wesker's Report II, came from Marcus' Progenitor virus mixed with leech DNA. He clashes with Spencer over utility of the virus and uses human subjects to get ahead in his research. Rebecca and Billy also come across skeletal remains of former students used for Marcus' research.


Oh, Rebecca and Billy also have a little tussle with a giant centipede, known as the Centurion. It's an appropriately disgusting enemy, but again it kind of just comes out of nowhere. And you would tend to think there should be several of these things crawling around but no there's only the one and it's never really even spoken about.


After learning what they can about the former Umbrella stomping grounds, Rebecca and Billy make their way into the basement to turn off the steaming boiler and move further under the facility, but this basement can be more accurately described as a hidden torture chamber and prison filled with some remnants of Marcus' sick research methods, human or otherwise. Rebecca has to head into the torture chamber on her own, where she succeeds in turning off the boiler but gets attacked by an Eliminator, bitten to be precise, before the floor collapses from under her, as she's left dangling for her life in the lower sections of the facility. Poor girl can't catch a break.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXRpq4H2X28
Billy finds her past the formerly active boiler and pulls her up just in the nick of time. This proves a real bonding moment, as Billy opens up to Rebecca about his past and why exactly he was being transported to his execution. A year prior, Billy and his Marine unit were in the jungles of Africa intervening in a civil war, looking for a guerrilla unit's base, but intense heat and guerrilla attacks eliminated almost all the men. Billy and three others survived long enough to find that the base they were looking for was merely an innocent village. Billy's commanding officer ordered the village to be killed, not wanting the trip to be for nothing, but Billy refused and was knocked out and blamed for the whole thing, leading to now. The story moves Rebecca enough to not report Billy to her captain Enrico, but Billy remains still indifferent to the whole situation. As an aside, I love Rebecca's little thinking idle animation after the scene, like she's still contemplating and processing what she heard. Great touch! Billy's backstory is also quite interesting me, as war crimes is a topic almost never covered by the series; I wish it was more fleshed out but what's here still adds another dynamic of horror to the game.

Meanwhile, Wesker and Birkin see the writing on the wall: the return of Marcus means Umbrella is finished. Wesker's heading back to Raccoon to gather the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team to gather combat data on the T-Virus at Spencer Mansion, while Birkin is cleaning up what's left of their mess at the URC before continuing his work on the G-Virus. With this many pots heating up at once, something is bound to come to a head soon. But, we will take a quick aside next time as Wesker strikes off on his own little mission.

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What's up with Rebecca's Eliminator bite?
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Rebecca Chambers is the only character to get bitten by a T-Virus infected creature in a canon cutscene and not get infected with the virus. While it's not really brought up, there are several possibilities for this: she's immune, "dry bite" meaning no fluid was passed between the host and victim, or simply the infection was staved off. Either way, it's a weird thing to show and not really care about, as usually something like that is a big deal.

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I've decided to put my fears behind me. I'm not going back.
https://imgur.com/a/du8zgsT - https://imgur.com/a/VTNzDEW