Resident Evil 6 Story Explained: All Four Campaigns

Resident Evil 6 came out in October 2012, made by Capcom. Its story runs from December 2012 to June 2013 and is split into four campaigns that cross over each other: Leon S. Kennedy and Helena Harper in the United States and China, Chris Redfield and Piers Nivans of the BSAA, Sherry Birkin and Jake Muller, and Ada Wong on her own. This page puts all four together in the order things happened, then explains how each campaign ends. It has full spoilers. (Resident Evil 6)

Before the story begins#

In 2009 Chris and Sheva Alomar killed Albert Wesker in Africa, in Resident Evil 5. Sherry Birkin, the girl Leon and Claire Redfield saved from Raccoon City in Resident Evil 2, carried the G-virus her father William Birkin had injected her with. She had grown up in government custody, with a senior official, Derek Simmons, as her guardian, and now worked as a federal agent. Leon worked for the President, Adam Benford, an old friend. (Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 6)

The one secret that tied them together was Raccoon City. The US government had hidden its own part in what happened there for fifteen years, and President Benford had decided to tell the world. (Resident Evil 6)

Edonia, December 2012#

Edonia, a country in Eastern Europe, was in a civil war, and someone was selling the rebels bioweapons. Chris led a BSAA team there and stormed the rebel base. Inside they found a prisoner: a woman who looked like Ada Wong. She said she had been supplying the rebels through a group called Neo-Umbrella and had found a new virus, the C-Virus. As the team escorted her out, she infected them. They turned into cocoons, and what came out of the cocoons killed them. A blow to the head wiped Chris's memory. Piers Nivans, one of his men, got him out. (Resident Evil 6)

Jake Muller was a mercenary fighting for the rebels. His unit had been given "supplements" by a mysterious woman, and everyone who took them became a monster, the creatures the BSAA called J'avo. Jake didn't change. Sherry arrived to tell him why: he carried antibodies to the C-Virus, and his blood could make a vaccine. Jake agreed to help for fifty million dollars. (Resident Evil 6)

A huge bioweapon called the Ustanak hunted them across the mountains. They ran into Chris and his team, and fled in a BSAA helicopter that the Ustanak brought down. Sherry was impaled by wreckage and healed in front of Jake, and she told him about Raccoon City and the virus inside her. At the Edonian border Neo-Umbrella captured them, and the woman who had handed out the supplements told Jake who his father was: Albert Wesker. The pair were taken to a facility in China and spent six months as test subjects. (Resident Evil 6)

Chris, meanwhile, disappeared. Six months later Piers found him drunk in a bar in Eastern Europe, unable to remember what he was running from, and brought him back for an operation in China. (Resident Evil 6)

Tall Oaks, June 2013#

At the end of June 2013, President Benford came to Ivy University in Tall Oaks to make his announcement. Before he could, a bioweapon released a cloud of C-Virus into the building and the city around it. Leon found Benford already turned. He had to shoot his friend. A Secret Service agent, Helena Harper, said she was to blame and that she would explain everything at the city's cathedral. (Resident Evil 6)

Under the cathedral was a lab full of human cocoons, and a tape showing Ada Wong being born from one. Deep in the catacombs Helena found her sister, Deborah, who had been held hostage. Deborah mutated in front of them and Helena had to kill her. Then she told Leon the truth. Derek Simmons, the President's National Security Advisor, had kidnapped Deborah to force Helena to help him kill Benford. (Resident Evil 6)

Simmons framed Leon and Helena for the assassination. A missile wiped Tall Oaks off the map to contain the outbreak, as Raccoon City had been. The real Ada was there too. A message that claimed to come from Simmons had drawn her into the affair, and in his lab she found the same tape and worked out that a copy of her was walking around. She told Leon and Helena about Simmons's power base: the Family, a secret group that had steered world politics for generations to keep its members rich and the world "stable". With Ingrid Hunnigan's help, Leon and Helena faked their deaths and followed Simmons to China. (Resident Evil 6)

Lanshiang#

In the Chinese city of Lanshiang, the C-Virus was everywhere. All four stories now ran into each other. (Resident Evil 6)

Back in action in Lanshiang, Chris got his memory back. He remembered Ada betraying his team in Edonia and became obsessed with killing her, ignoring Piers and losing more men on the way. Jake broke out of the Chinese facility and found Sherry, and they made contact with her boss, who turned out to be Simmons. (Resident Evil 6)

Leon's plane crashed in the city, and he and Helena soon ran into Sherry and Jake. Leon and Helena then spotted Ada, but Chris got to her first and accused her of everything. Leon stepped in and said Simmons was the real enemy. The two men pointed guns at each other while Ada slipped away. Chris calmed down and went after her, and Leon went after Simmons. (Resident Evil 6)

At Simmons's meeting point, he admitted he was behind the attacks and said they kept America and the world stable. Leon and Helena covered Sherry and Jake's escape, but the pair were captured again. Simmons, injected with the C-Virus, mutated, and Leon and Helena brought him down. (Resident Evil 6)

Chris and Piers followed "Ada" onto a Neo-Umbrella aircraft carrier. She was preparing a missile full of C-Virus gas. A burst of fire from a helicopter cut her down, and she fell from the bridge. The missile launched anyway and burst over Lanshiang, and the city filled with zombies. On the same carrier, the real Ada found the full story. Simmons had wanted an obedient version of the Ada he had never been able to control. After many failed test subjects, his scientist Carla Radames was injected with the C-Virus and Ada's DNA and became her double. Carla's own mind came back, and she set out to destroy Simmons and everything else. The helicopter fire had come from Simmons's side, and the message that drew Ada in had come from Carla. Carla's body rose again, mutated, and the real Ada killed her. (Resident Evil 6)

The ending explained#

Because the campaigns end at different points, here's how each one closes. (Resident Evil 6)

Leon. Simmons wasn't dead. Ada flew Leon and Helena to the top of the Quad Tower, where he attacked again in one monstrous form after another, and with Ada's help they finally killed him. Ada vanished, but left Leon the evidence of Simmons's crimes. It cleared Leon's and Helena's names, and Leon kept going. (Resident Evil 6)

Chris. Leon asked Chris to rescue Jake and Sherry from Neo-Umbrella's facility on the seabed. When Chris told Jake that he was the one who killed Wesker, Jake pulled a gun on him, until Carla's final creation, the Haos, woke up. Chris sent Jake and Sherry away, because Jake's blood mattered more than anything. The Haos crippled Piers, who injected himself with the C-Virus to fight it, put Chris in an escape pod and stayed behind as the facility fell. Chris went back to the BSAA with a new team. Piers's sacrifice gave him back his reason to fight. (Resident Evil 6)

Jake. Jake and Sherry escaped the seabed facility and killed the Ustanak for good. Jake gave Sherry a sample of his blood, cut his price from fifty million dollars to fifty, and left. A vaccine was made from his blood and the outbreak was slowly brought under control. (Resident Evil 6)

Ada. After helping kill Simmons, Ada went into Carla's lab in the Quad Tower and burned all her research, including one last cocoon. Then she answered her phone and took her next job. (Resident Evil 6)

Put together, the story is about lies at the top. The man meant to protect America started the disaster to keep a fifteen-year-old secret, and the woman he made into a copy of Ada turned his own tools against the world. The Family loses its leader, but the game doesn't say what happens to the group itself. It also leaves Ada's new employer unnamed. (Resident Evil 6)

What it sets up#

Resident Evil 6 is the last of the action-heavy main games. Resident Evil 7, set in 2017, moves to a new hero, Ethan Winters, in a Louisiana farmhouse, though Chris turns up at the end. Between Resident Evil 5 and this game sits Resident Evil: Revelations 2, set in 2011. The full order is on the Resident Evil timeline. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)