Translating the original RE8 trial scene storyboard
RE8’s bonus DLC concept art pack includes a couple of pages of an early storyboard for the trial scene, dating to back when Miranda was still going to be a foreign researcher rather than a village native, and Ada Wong was still part of the cast. Though the text is all in Japanese, I had a crack at translating it ‒ it makes for a fascinating comparison to the finished game.
Images and translations are under the cut below – but here’s the dot-point version of how this older storyboard compares to the finished one.
Instead of Miranda, the trial is overseen by a masked figure called only ‘shaman’ (祈祷師). Instead of lycans, the trial is attended by numerous villagers, all eager to see Ethan punished.
This may be the big one: the shaman claims an ‘Adam-sama’ has been angered by Ethan’s (unspecified) crimes. My best guess at this mysterious ‘Adam’ is that it might be a name for the megamycete. Whoever he is, all the 'Eve' connotations of Eva/Eveline (and even the Rose flasks) suddenly start to sound a whole lot more significant.
Even here, the trial is dominated by Dimitrescu and Heisenberg fighting over who gets Ethan – or at least who gets his body, after his execution. Dimitrescu still wants his blood, while Heisenberg presumably wants him for soldat-material. Moreau briefly makes his own bid, but he just wants to eat Ethan.
Donna’s one act is to apparently stop time at a crucial moment to speak directly to Ethan without anyone else hearing – though this seems to be an illusion she creates while contacting him psychically. No sign of Angie, who probably isn’t part of the game yet.
Rather than escaping through Heisenberg’s gauntlet, Ethan is rescued by Ada Wong (disguised behind a plague mask). I’m guessing Heisenberg’s role as pseudo-ally hadn’t fully developed while Ada was still supposed to be involved.
Conflict between the lords seems to be framed more as conflict between separate houses/families. Heisenberg makes a reference to ‘us Heisenbergs’ (perhaps this is from the time when his mother, father and twin brother were also supposed to be characters?) and Moreau to his ‘Kuku-family’.
Though the name ‘Heisenberg’ does appear, he’s mostly called ‘Geek’, while Moreau is ‘Half-fish-man’ (半魚人), and Donna is simply 'Spirit' or 'Ghost' (心霊). Lady Dimitrescu is the only character who is actually called that (though it’s mostly abbreviated to just ‘lady’). I could not tell you why a Japanese dev team would decide that ‘geek’ was a good moniker for their heavy-metal-Frankenstein-wannabe, but here we are. (Note that most of the game files associated with Heisenberg are still labelled ‘geek[something]’, so clearly this was a moniker that stuck. Donna’s files are almost all called ‘ghost[something]’. Moreau and Dimitrescu mostly get shortened/mangled into 'moro' and 'domi'.)
Heisenberg and Dimitrescu actually come to blows over Ethan in this version, with Heisenberg launching his hammer at her and seemingly killing her, or at least blowing her away. But I think we can take it as read that even in this version, she'll show up okay and be back to torment Ethan later.
Oh, and did I mention this little addendum at the end which hints at Miranda doing some kind of surgery on Chris? WTF?
Standard disclaimer for all my Japanese translations: I’m nothing like fluent, and rely on online dictionaries for a lot of harder vocabulary. Corrections from anyone better qualified are welcome.
Okay, on to the actual translations! I'll include the full pages as we get to them, but I'll also break them down into smaller chunks so I can share and translate smaller chunks as we go through.
Page 1
[Ethan wakes up to find he can't move because his handcuffs are chained to the floor]
[Ghost-nobles and villagers buzzing in the church]
[Banging noise as shaman bangs his staff]
Shaman: "Everyone, quiet!"
[Church falls silent]
Shaman: "I have heard from each of the lords. This man's crime threatens the very foundations of our family! Lord Adam is furious! To allow this man to live will bring disaster upon the village! Only his death will appease Lord Adam's anger!"
[Cheering from the crowd]
Lady Dimitrescu: "In that case, after the execution, the Dimitrescu family shall receive the victim. My daughters haven't had nearly enough blood to drink of late."
Geek (Heisenberg): "Oi, wait a minute. From what I've heard, you witches have had it your own way long enough."
["Geek" burns Ethan's hand with a cigar]
Geek: "Us Heisenbergs will be taking this one, got it?"
[Ethan shrieks in pain]
Lady: "Didn't you have several victims sent to you just the other day?"
[Half-fish-man (半魚人) walks up to the Geek]
Half-fish-man (Moreau): "Oh, grant him to my Kuku-family, I.. I want to break him open and eat his insides!" (Note: I think Moreau's actually saying something even more colourful here, but I'm having trouble translating it)
[He approaches Ethan, parasites emerging from under his hood]
["Geek" halts him, brandishing his hammer]
Half-fish-man: [Groaning noise]
Lady: "I will not allow you two to do as you please!"
Geek: "Hm, how to settle this?"
Half-fish-man: "Oh, oh…!"
[Rising noise of cursing onlookers]
[Geek raises his iron hammer]
Page 2
[The moment he throws his hammer at Lady Dimitrescu, a halucination begins and time seems to stop. Direction and focus of camera fits the spirit]
Ghost (Donna, in a voice no-one else can hear): "….(You… have summoned him… receive your reward…)"
[Reality returns]
[The hammer pierces Lady D. and blows her away, part of the church collapses. Panic as villagers fall or die]
Geek: "Don't worry. Your corpse will become my plaything."
[A mysterious masked figure appears and fires three shots into Heisenberg, five into the shaman]
Masked figure: "Run!"
[Cuts the chain holding Ethan to the floor]
Geek: [getting up] "..what the…?"
Shaman (still full of arrows) yells to the villagers: "What are you doing! Don't let them escape! After him!"
Masked figure: "This way!"
[Still handcuffed, Ethan runs through passages before finally making it outdoors]
Page 3
Masked figure: [while reloading crossbow] "Your daughter is alive. Go get her back, okay?"
Ethan: "What are you…"
[Masked figure sees someone coming from behind] "No time, go!"
[Ethan screams as he's thrown over the railing]
[And here endeth the storyboard]
Page 3 Addendum
This brings us to the latter half of Page 3, which contains only a single column of panels. Remaining space features an extra half-page of Miranda in her original foreign-scientist incarnation, pictured with what I assume were some of her experiments. There's some text on these too ‒ hand-written rather than typed, which made it a right bastard to figure out. But I had a crack anyway, because even at a skim-read it had me going, "wait, does that say the monster is Chris?"
Yep, it does. The captions (as best I could make them out) read "Miranda's paranormal organism experiment" (奇生体の実験) and "After plastic surgery on Chris' face" (クリスの顔に整形後).
This only raises so many more questions. Is Chris actually working with Miranda, or has she captured him for experiments? Is she repairing Chris' face after some horrific accident? Is she altering some monster to make it look like Chris Redfield? Or ‒ in a far more entertaining possibility ‒ was this meant to be an in-game justification for why RE7's Chris looks nothing like he does in RE8?
I have no answers for you, but you can really feel how much this game changed in development just from these little glimpses of what might have been.
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