Last night, a Resident Evil 7 teaser was uploaded as a free demo on PSN. The whole thing lasts maybe 20 minutes, tops. Lots of people have played the demo multiple times, searching every nook and crannyâbut many believe theyâve yet to find every secret.
To get this out of the way: the demo has more in common with games like P.T. than it does more recent Resident Evil titles. Thereâs not a whole lot of action, really: most of what you do is explore a house in first person, and you solve puzzles (or if youâre like me, you freeze somewhere for ages in terror because you totally heard a weird sound.)
To be more specific, you play as a camera man who breaks into an abandoned house with the intent of shooting a movie, only to have someoneâor something trap you inside. Itâs not 100% clear if these things are traditional zombies, but theyâre certainly not human.
As you search through the house, you come across a variety of different objects you canât immediately interact with, like a VCR:
But the more you dig into the house, the more proverbial keys you find, the more you can backtrack and mess around with stuff. Itâs actually really easy to get stuck if youâre not observant enough, but there is a way to âbeatâ the demoâor at least, get an ending. There are actually a few different endings, depending on what you do. I got the one where you use the key to leave through the back door, but there are others, like using the fuse to go upstairs. All prompt you go to sign up for the Resident Evilâs Ambassador Program.
Here is where things get juicy: every known ending at the moment uses the items you find (the key, the fuse, the axe)âŠwith the exception of this thing:
Nobody knows what to do with this finger you can pick up. If you Google it, or search on YouTube, or on social media and forums, nobody has a clue what to do with that damn finger, though thereâs the sense that it could unlock an ending nobody has seen yet:
Iâve also seen some confusion as to what to do with the axe, though it seems to me that you just need it so you donât get attacked during the phone call. Also, to chop up some mannequins (though only some can be destroyed?) Its possible the axe has more uses that nobody has figured out yet, however.
Right now, most people are racking their brains trying to figure out what to do next. So far, thatâs meant some hilarious experimentation, like trying to put the finger in the microwave. Some people are also trying to figure out if there is a way to escape the house without getting whacked by zombie dad, though thatâs proven to be a dead end so far. Others are messing around with the mannequins, the PS4âs date, and the in-game audio in the hopes of cracking the case.
Thereâs also a going theory that the lamp could be hiding morse code given the peculiar way in which it flickers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP8OqpO7FFk
The biggest question of all, though: Is there actually a use for the finger, or is Capcom just fucking with the fans? Because that would be hilarious.
Whatever it is, people are still playingâand the more they play, the more they discover small secrets. Like who the hell is this woman who appears multiple times throughout the game? I totally missed her on my playthrough, though other players have managed to document her many, many times:
Via r/residentevil
This is what I mean when I draw a P.T. comparison: there is an element of repetition, as people play over and over again in the hopes of finding new clues. For some hardcore Resident Evil fans, this deviation might seem like sacrilege. Others may feel that they are like, totally over the P.T. frenzy, and that itâs lame that another game is trying to ape it. The idea at the heart of this demo may not be novel, but hey. Iâm having fun with it anyway.
If you have any theories about the finger, or manage to make a breakthrough in finding new endings, drop me a line at [email protected].
Oh, and if youâre having trouble: here is how to find the fuse, keys, and the axe in the Resident Evil 7 demo, courtesy of AceBoogz Gaming. Spoilers!
