It’s safe to say that almost no one thinks of Salvatore Moreau as their favorite character amongst the Four Lords on Resident Evil Village — let’s be honest, we are all still in love with Lady Dimitrescu and her darling daughters. However, if you go off the main path and explore the village thoroughly, it’s possible to uncover the secrets of the evil doctor, one of the main forces responsible for making Ethan Winter’s life a living hell filled with nightmarish creatures. To explain Moreau’s surprising impact in Resident Evil Village’s story, we’ll need to go through spoilers. So, if you are still hunting all of Resident Evil Village’s files, you might want to come back later.
Spoilers Ahead!We are first introduced to Salvatore Moreau after Ethan is kidnapped by Karl Heisenberg, the mad scientist with electromagnetic powers. After being thrown on the floor of a macabre cathedral, Ethan is greeted by Mother Miranda, the big baddie of Resident Evil Village, and her special children, known as the Four Lords of the village. While Dracula-inspired Lady Dimistrescu fights Frankenstein-inspired Heisenberg for the fate of Ethan’s life, a grotesque hooded figure wanders around, looking frightened and out of place. It’s clear right from the start that Moreau is the least favorite son of Mother Miranda, teased by his siblings both for his deformities and for his apparently low brain functions. When it’s finally time to face Moreau, after escaping Dimistrescu’s castle and surviving the mental traps of Dollmaker Donna Beneviento, Resident Evil Village even tries to make you feel sorry for the disgusting monster.
As soon as Ethan gets to the village’s water reservoir, our hero stealthily finds his way to Moreau’s special flask, containing the crystalized arms of Ethan’s daughter Rose. When Moreau realizes Ethan took his flask, the villain starts to cry and beg, telling Ethan how he needs to protect the flask to prove he’s a good son, otherwise, his siblings would keep picking on him. It’s a scene both pathetic and sad that might make you wonder, for a second, if Moreau is actually a victim in the whole affair. But only for a second, because Moreau quickly reveals his rant was just a way to distract Ethan long enough for the villain to block all exits with his green goo. As soon as Ethan is trapped, Moreau reveals his true nature, while he plans to kill Ethan and show everyone he’s Mother Miranda’s most worthy child.
While trying to escape Moreau, Ethan gets into a boat and looks for a way out through a flooded section of the village. However, as soon as he’s on the water, Ethan is attacked by a monstrous fish. After encountering Chris in what looks like a safe space on dry land, Ethan discovers the fish is actually Moreau, capable of transforming into a revolting amphibious creature that can move freely underwater. Contrary to Lady Dimitrescu, Moreau cannot control his transformation, and actually needs to use all his strength to maintain a partially humanoid shape, a task that causes him great pain. Still, once the beast is released, Moreau becomes a powerful foe, unstoppable while he has enough space to swim. It’s up to Ethan to drain the flooded village section.
Ethan rushes through windmills while chased by fish-Moreau in order to get enough electricity to the village’s dam. Once he can activate the dam, Ethan opens its doors and let the water flow freely, unflooding the area and taking away Moreau’s advantage. It’s then time to fight the creature, capable of vomiting acid and running Ethan down with its gigantic blob-body. To defeat the creature, Ethan needs to hit the fish monster hard enough for it to open its mouth, revealing Moreau’s fragile human body inside, a clear weak spot you can unload your magnum on.
As Ethan goes through the water reservoir, we get to learn more about Moreau’s personality. Even if his initial rant was part of a trap, there’s truth to the villain’s words. From reading Lady Dimitrescu’s personal journal, we learn that Our Dear Tall Vampire Lady despises Moreau, questioning Mother Miranda’s decision to hold him as an equal to the other Lords. Moreau knows he’s loathed, and constantly shouts how he’s going to get his mother’s affection once Ethan is defeated. Moreau is evil, no doubt about that. But he’s also troubled, which makes him an easy-to-control asset to Miranda. Even so, one might wonder how Moreau is actually useful to Mother Miranda as he cannot even constrain his own shape properly. The answer is hidden in Moreau’s Clinic, an optional area that reveals the monster’s impressive impact in Resident Evil Village.
As with his brother and sisters, Salvatore Moreau’s design gets its inspiration from gothic horror, more precisely from the tales of the evil doctor created by H.G. Wells for "The Island of Doctor Moreau." The connections between Wells’ Dr. Moreau and the one in Resident Evil Village might not be clear during your first playthrough, should you miss a couple of nooks and crannies hiding some of the game’s files. Once you find a secret journal in Moreau’s Clinic, however, it’s clear that the feeble figure caused a lot more trouble than you thought. After all, Salvatore Moreau is responsible for creating the main enemies of Resident Evil Village: the Lycans, in all their shapes and scary sizes.
Well’s novel follows a shipwrecked man who gets rescued and taken to a secluded island filled with animal-human hybrid creatures, the work of Doctor Moreau, an evil physician that conducts cruel experiments while trying to build the perfect being. Like his literary counterpart, Resident Evil Village’s Moreau gets Miranda’s blessing to experiment with the mold and the Cadou, the parasites responsible for all the monsters in the game. Trying to stop his patients from dying, Salvatore Moreau injects mutated humans with wolf blood, creating by accident the first Lycans.
While every other Lord builds different enemies that Ethan must defeat, it’s unquestionable that the Lycans are the main menace of the game. Besides the regular enemies, we even have the Vârcolac variants that act as sub-bosses, and two Uriaș as full bosses. This reveal makes Moreau a more important villain than we can first imagine, as he’s the father of most of the enemies Ethan needs to fight or flee from during his stay in the village. Mother Miranda wanted Moreau to build strong bodies she could use to resurrect her dead daughter, but even if the experiments failed, the Four Lords ended up with an army of monsters to command. Not a bad feat for a character who is easily dismissed as an inferior creature.
It’s not clear in the game if Salvatore Moreau was a doctor before Mother Miranda implanted him with a Cadou, or if the Clinic belonged to his family, including the ancient founding Nichola line, before the transformation. His limited cognitive capabilities might have deteriorated after the Cadou implantation, or maybe Salvatore just followed the steps of another Moreau by playing doctor after his transformation. As Salvatore displays nautical tattoos on his left arm — a jellyfish with "mother" written in the middle and an anchor — it would be easy to think he was actually a fisherman or sailor, which could also explain his particular mutation. This would actually make Moreau even scarier, as his experiments were performed on innocent people, all while lacking any proper education and care for his subjects.
Even if Lady Dimitrescu will be forever in our hearts, Resident Evil Village has a lot of interesting characters. Moreau plays his part to perfection during the main story events, but it's what he does behind the scenes that makes him such a fascinating and disgusting villain. It will be surely interesting to see where the franchise goes from here, and what new kind of fantastic freaks Resident Evil will bring us in the future.