Resident Evil Code: Veronica Story Explained

Resident Evil Code: Veronica came out on the Sega Dreamcast in February 2000, made by Capcom with the studio Nextech, and returned in 2001 as Code: Veronica X with extra scenes. It's set in late December 1998, three months after the Raccoon City outbreak, and it follows Claire Redfield and then her brother Chris Redfield from an island prison to a base in Antarctica. It's also the game that brings Albert Wesker back. This page covers the whole plot and the ending, so it has full spoilers. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica; Resident Evil Code: Veronica X)

Before the story begins#

In Resident Evil 2, Claire came to Raccoon City looking for Chris, survived the outbreak with Leon S. Kennedy and Sherry Birkin, and got out just before the city was destroyed. Chris had already gone to Europe with the surviving members of S.T.A.R.S. to take the fight to Umbrella. Claire went after him. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Two other threads matter. Wesker, the S.T.A.R.S. captain who betrayed his team, was apparently killed by the Tyrant in the Spencer Mansion in July 1998. And deep in Umbrella's history sat the Ashfords, one of the families who founded the company, whose star scientist had vanished years earlier. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Rockfort Island#

Claire broke into Umbrella's laboratory in Paris looking for Chris. She fought her way through the guards but was caught and handed to Rodrigo Juan Raval, who had her flown to Rockfort Island, a remote Umbrella prison and training base. She was still in a holding cell when the island came under attack. Saboteurs blew up the lab in the military training centre, a t-Virus strain got out, and aircraft bombed the base. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

A wounded Rodrigo let Claire out, reckoning she'd die anyway and there was no point leaving her to starve. She stepped out into the prison graveyard just as dead inmates began climbing out of the mud. A gunman opened fire on her from a mounted machine gun, then came down to apologise. He was Steve Burnside, a teenage prisoner locked up on the island because his father had sold Umbrella's secrets. Steve wanted to get off the island alone and said Claire would only slow him down. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Their paths kept crossing. Claire found Steve at a computer reading files about Chris, and used the terminal to send a message to Leon asking for help. Steve told her nobody would come. Later the two of them fell through a walkway and Steve came face to face with his father, who had turned into a zombie. He froze, but when the zombie went for Claire he shot him. Afterwards he told her how he and his father had ended up on the island. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

The island's commander was Alfred Ashford, the seventh Earl Ashford, a vain and cruel man who had tortured and executed prisoners for years. He decided Claire was one of the saboteurs and hunted her with a sniper rifle. Stranger still, Claire and Steve kept seeing a blonde woman in the Ashford residence who spoke and acted like Alfred's twin sister, Alexia. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

The Ashford twins#

The truth was in the Ashfords' own records. Alfred and Alexia were born from a project to clone the family's most brilliant ancestor, Veronica Ashford. Alexia was a genius who graduated from university while still a child and went to work for Umbrella. Alfred was a by-product of the process and never matched her. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

In 1983 the twins found out how they'd been made and turned on their father, Alexander Ashford. Alexia had created the t-Veronica virus by combining the Progenitor virus with an ancient virus she'd found in a queen ant. She tested it on Alexander, and it turned him into a mindless monster later called the Nosferatu. Then she worked out how to take the virus herself without the same fate: she would sleep in cryogenic suspension for fifteen years while it matured inside her. She went under in December 1983 and left Alfred to wait for her. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

The Alexia on Rockfort was Alfred. Alone for fifteen years, his mind had split, and he dressed in her clothes and spoke in her voice. After a confrontation at his private residence, Alfred returned to the base, set the island facilities to self-destruct, released a Tyrant to finish off survivors and fled in a Harrier jet. Claire and Steve found a cargo plane and took off, but the Tyrant had got aboard and Claire had to deal with it in the air. Then Alfred took remote control of the plane and set its autopilot for Umbrella's base in Antarctica. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Antarctica#

The plane crash-landed at the Antarctic base. Planes evacuating Rockfort had already brought the outbreak there, and the base was full of the dead. Alfred caught up with them again, but in the fight he was shot and fell from a ledge. He dragged himself to the cryogenics lab, thawed his sister, and died in her arms. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Claire got past the Nosferatu and she and Steve drove off in a snow vehicle. Giant tentacles burst out of the ice and threw it over. Alexia, awake and in full control of t-Veronica, had them dragged back to the base as her prisoners. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Chris and Wesker#

On the other side of the world, Leon had passed Claire's message to Chris, and Chris landed on Rockfort Island to find her. He found Rodrigo, who told him Claire had already gone, before a huge worm-like creature swallowed Rodrigo. Then Chris came face to face with a man who should have been dead. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Wesker was alive and much changed. He had survived the mansion thanks to a virus he'd taken before that night, and now he moved with inhuman speed and strength. He had turned against Umbrella, and the attack on the island was his unit's work. He had come for Alexia's t-Veronica. In Code: Veronica X he also crosses paths with Claire on Rockfort, and only an interruption stops him from killing her. When Wesker learned that Alexia was alive in Antarctica, he left by submarine, and Chris followed. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica; Resident Evil Code: Veronica X)

At the base Chris found Claire, freed her, and the two went after Steve. Alexia had injected him with t-Veronica. He mutated into a huge creature with an axe and went after Claire, but stopped himself before the blow landed and turned on Alexia instead. Her tentacles struck him down. He changed back, told Claire he loved her, and died. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Wesker found Alexia in a replica of the Spencer Mansion buried under the ice and demanded a sample. She refused and transformed, and her blood burned. Even Wesker couldn't hurt her, so he retreated and left Chris to fight her. Chris beat her once, then she came back in a bigger, insect-like form. He set the base to self-destruct and finished her with an experimental weapon, the Linear Launcher. That was the end of the Ashford line. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

The ending explained#

With the countdown running, Wesker's men took Steve's body for their own research, and Wesker grabbed Claire as a hostage. He wanted Chris more than her, so he let her go on the promise of a fight. Chris couldn't match him, but he dropped steel girders on him, and with fire spreading and the base about to explode Wesker broke off and headed for his submarine, promising they'd meet again. Claire had a Harrier ready. Chris reached it seconds before the blast, and the two flew out together. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

What it means is simple enough. Umbrella's grip was slipping and other people were circling its research. Wesker was now a free agent with a body no ordinary human could fight, and he had the t-Veronica research and Steve's body to study. The Redfields were together again, and Chris had a personal enemy who knew him well. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

The game leaves two questions open. What did Wesker do with Steve and t-Veronica? The later games don't answer that directly. And who was Wesker working for? Resident Evil 4 shows him still pulling strings behind Ada Wong in 2004, and Resident Evil 5 finally puts him and Chris in the same room again. (Resident Evil 4; Resident Evil 5)

Where it fits#

Code: Veronica is the end of the original run of Umbrella-era games. In story order, Wesker's raid on Umbrella's Russian base in 2003, told in The Umbrella Chronicles, comes next, and Umbrella's collapse soon follows. Resident Evil 4 picks up in autumn 2004 with Leon, now a government agent, in rural Spain. Resident Evil 3 is the story just before this one, and the full order is on the Resident Evil timeline. (Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles; Resident Evil 4)

Capcom has also announced Resident Evil Veronica, a remake built in the RE Engine, due in 2027. The remake drops the "Code" from the title, and this page will be updated when its version of the story is out. (Resident Evil Veronica official site)