Jill Valentine

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Context

Resident Evil aka Biohazard is a hugely successful series of video games. It started in 1996 and largely defined the survival horror genre. Though it significantly drew from Alone in the Dark  .

Jill is one of the original two playable characters from the very first game.

Like the rest of the protagonists, she has the combat skills to survive zombie hellscapes and other biological horrors. But one thing she has those other characters don’t is a wider array of skills, especially technical ones.

Furthermore, there seems to be a market for strong female Special Forces operatives like her. And she’s a well-rounded experienced character with a fully fleshed out storyline. She thus might make a welcome addition to various teams that are typically male-dominated.

Notes

This profile has S P O I L E R S for many Resident Evil storylines.

The header image is an excerpt from a render by Andy Ackles on DeviantArt  .

Background

Powers and Abilities

Jill has the rare distinction of being one of the few women to be recruited by Delta Force. She’s got the skill set to make her a valuable member of most special ops teams, even cinematicThe level of power and (un)realism found in a spectacular action movie. ones.

Her key asset in special operations is speed. Whether hand-to-hand or in a gunfight, she can outpace and outmanoeuvre multiple opponents. Or a single opponent who would overpower her in a straight fight.

Jill also excels at evasion, avoiding enemy fire until she’s got an opportunity to turn the situation to her advantage.

She has also got special skills that aren’t always common to operatives. Such as breaking and entering (chiefly lock picking) and bomb disposal. One imagines that she sought unusual military qualifications to compensate for Army gender discrimination.

She is stated to be a dedicated and hard-working person.

History

Jill was born of a French father and a Japanese American mother somewhere in the American Midwest.

She joined the US Army and served with distinction. She was one of the few women recruited and trained with 1^st SFOD-D, a.k.a. Delta Force.

After leaving the army she was recruited by Albert Wesker into the STARS (Special Tactics and Rescue Service). This was essentially an elite SWAT team, detailed to assist police departments. Ms. Valentine was the only woman on the team.

As the team’s B&E specialist, she would usually take up the rear position until her skills where needed.

Jill got along well with her teammates and forged solid friendships with them – particularly with Chris Redfield.

Resident Evil 1

(Jill is one of the two playable characters. Her lock picking ability and the fact that she can carry more items give her a slightly easier path.)

(The storyline is slightly different, depending whether you pick Jill or Chris when the game starts. It also changes depending on a few other key decisions the player makes later. Here we’ll go with a typical Jill playthrough.)

The rural area around Racoon City had been haunted by a series of bizarre and vicious attacks. Both locals and out of town hikers had vanished. Most were never seen again, but those whose remains were found looked like they had been devoured by a pack of wild dogs. Worse, other victims bore human teeth marks.

Out of control wild animals were bad enough, but the possibility of actual cannibalism was a complete PR nightmare. STARS Bravo Team was therefore sent out to get to the bottom of it.

However, they too disappeared. After 24 hours of no contact, the Alpha Team was sent in after them.

Slaughter near Raccoon City

After a quick flyover, Alpha located Bravo’s helicopter. They found the dismembered corpse of the pilot within, and another teammate’s body in the vicinity.

Before the team could investigate they were attacked by a pack of seemingly rabid dogs. They lost one of their teammates before they had a chance to react.

The sudden ferocity of the ambush terrified their pilot, Brad Vickers. He flew away in a blind panic abandoning the rest of the team. Only four operatives lived long enough to reach a nearby mansion:

Using classic horror movie logic, the team decided to split up to cover more ground.

The mansion incident

After facing down zombies and other undead horrors, Jill became suspicious of Barry. He seemed to be working against the team’s interests.

But she eventually realised (if Jill chose to trust Barry one last time and gets the good ending) that he was being manipulated by the real villain. Namely team leader Albert Wesker, who had threatened Barry’s wife and child if he did not comply.

Wesker was actually working with the Umbrella Corporation, a big pharma conglomerate – and a huge donor to the STARS Teams. And the mansion was a secret testing facility for Umbrella research into biological weapons.

There had been a leak. Umbrella’s prized T-virus escaped, and mutated the lab workers and nearby animals into undead horrors.

Wesker, being ever the opportunist, decided to see how the STARS Teams would fare against the creatures. This would be valuable field data, which he couldn’t get by just shooting his operatives in the back to cover up the incident.

Tyrannical

The team fought their way through the house of horrors. They eventually fought the big bad – a Tyrant creature. This monster seemingly slew Wesker when it awoke.

This showdown in the underground lab triggered the self-destruct countdown. The team reached the surface in time, but so did the Tyrant on their heels.

Brad Vickers dropped a rocket launcher from his helicopter to aid them. Luckily for the team, Vickers felt guilty about abandoning them earlier. He therefore had flown around the area all night trying to find them.

The monster was then blown to hell by Jill or Chris (depending on which character you picked at the beginning). The survivors flew off into the sunset with the lab exploding behind them. Cue end credits.

Video

The HD remaster version of the trailer for the 1996 game.

History (part 2)

Resident Evil 2 and 3 take place in the same city on the same night. The events are told from three different POVs by the three playable characters. Furthermore, the two games that came out a few years apart. Unsurprisingly, there are continuity discrepancies.

Here again, we’ll go with Jill’s account. Also, her game is the first game in the series. Therein, she’s the solo protagonist and only playable character from the beginning. Since is publisher is famous for retconning  plot points at later dates, her version of that night can be assumed to be the most correct one.

Whistleblowing

The STARS survivors went to Police Chief Brian Irons with their account of the mansion incident. They demanded that justice be done and that Umbrella be held accountable. But Irons stonewalled them.

The team decided to go over his head and take the matter to the US government. But Umbrella had a lot of pull there, and the survivors knew that accusing such an influential firm of one of the worst biological outbreaks in world history was an uphill battle.

Ergo, they knew that they would need hard evidence to get anyone in power to listen.

Outbreak

The Umbrella Corporation had taken… “precautions” of a sort to prepare for a new outbreak. Namely, to eliminate any STARS operatives present, lest they survive and cause trouble.

Their means to do that was an upgraded Tyrant monster, called “Nemesis” or “Pursuer”.

The accidental outbreak soon came. Given Umbrella’s cartoonish irresponsibility and disregard for human life, that was inevitable.

Brad tried to warn Jill that the city was about ready to go hell in a handbasket, but the Nemesis slew him. Jill barely made it out before her apartment was destroyed. As the only STARS agent left in Raccoon, she was now stalked by the monster.

(That she was attacked by surprise is the best shot at rationalising her in-game outfit. Let’s assume that she’s running around in a strapless tube top and a tight leather miniskirt because she was about to go clubbing or somesuch. And let’s assume that she carries her equipment using a… holding it in… oh look! Over there! It’s Squirrel Girl !)

Nemesis

Ms. Valentine dodged Nemesis for a while – specifics depend on player choice. She then teamed up with Carlos Oliveira, an operative for the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Force. He took her to their base of operations.

There she met mercenaries Mikhail Viktor and Nicolai Zinoviev. Initially they didn’t trust her, since she was police and they worked for Umbrella. But eventually the group called a truce. They agreed that survival was more important than allegiance.

Together, they repaired a train as their ticket out of there. But the Nemesis was still in hot pursuit.

There are varying accounts of what happened next, but Zinoviev betrayed the others. He locked them in one of the cars before he made his escape.

Badly wounded, Viktor stayed behind with explosives, hoping to take the super-Tyrant with him. But the creature survived and further mutated.

Evac

Jill was separated from Carlos, but nevertheless reached the evacuation point at St. Michael’s Clock Tower. However, she had been stabbed by Nemesis and thus infected by the T-virus. That made her pass out.

Carlos found her, and was somehow able to track down a cure for the virus. But Ms. Valentine was unconscious for two days. Meanwhile, Nemesis destroyed the helicopter that they planned on using to evacuate.

Again, there are murky conflicting reports. But the two managed to hunt down and slay Zinoviev as revenge for betraying them.

They also did manage to kill the Nemesis once and for all. Then narrowly escaped Racoon City before the government dropped a nuclear warhead on it.

Video

Here’s the Jill-centric trailer for the remastered version of RE3. Much-improved graphics, and a less jarring outfit for our heroine.

History (part 3)

Jill then joined a private anti-biohazard group along with her close friend Chris Redfield.

One of their missions took them to the Greater Caucasus. There were rumors of BOWs being active there.

The Fall of Umbrella (The Umbrella Chronicles)

The village had already succumbed to a T-virus outbreak. They were only able to rescue a kid named Anna. She was the only uninfected survivor, as her parents had hidden her away long before the trouble started.

While making their escape they encountered the very much alive Albert Wesker. He stole Anna’s locket before departing. They pursued him, but he rapidly outpaced them – his biological enhancements meant that he was now superhumanly fast.

They did track him back to Anna’s house. Wesker was using Anna’s locket as a key to her parent’s safe. But it had been booby trapped. The explosion ended their pursuit and destroyed all evidence.

Still, it was now clear that the small village had been helping Umbrella manufacture bioweapon monsters. One the next morning, Jill and Chris received intel about a nearly factory. They set out to destroy it, and end Umbrella.

Salt the earth

The factory had been completely taken over by the T-virus. Therein, the ex-STARS fought a T-A.L.O.S., an armored and computer-aided Tyrant upgrade, as a final boss.

They were able to get to the main computer, to get the files they needed to incriminate Umbrella. But Wesker stole the files for himself, and wiped the computer before escaping.

Umbrella, however, did go down. Wesker leaked enough information to the US government for them to level federal charges against the company.

Still, he kept all the juicy Bio-Organic Weapons (BOW) data to himself, so that he could further his own agenda.

Aftermaths

Umbrella’s fall had quite a few unintended consequences.

Rogue employees started selling Umbrella’s tech and secrets to anyone who had enough money. Thus terrorism around the world rapidly shifted towards biological attacks.

This of course was a living nightmare. Governments around the world created their own special forces to counter this new threat.

Video

The older Umbrella Chronicles trailer.

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