About halfway through Resident Evil Remake, a new type of enemy rears its ugly, scaly head. Upon defeating Plant 42 in the Dormitory, you find a key that will open up most of the remaining locked doors in the Spencer Mansion. When you return to the mansion, most of the zombies are gone… replaced by faster, stronger, more agile monsters called Hunters, which are a frightening cross between a reptile and a human. What is more, these green-skinned, hunchbacked creatures are now infesting rooms that you’ve previously cleared. Any safe spaces you may have carved out for yourself are gone.

Hunters act a bit like mini-bosses, displaying what Umbrella’s end goal ultimately was at the time. The game’s lore notes that Hunters are created by injecting reptile DNA and the t-Virus into a human embryo, turning it into a cunningly intelligent – and, more importantly, a controllable – minion for Umbrella. In fact, the Hunter represents one of Umbrella’s most formidable and profitable B.O.W. projects, with numerous models developed over the years.

The concept for such a creature dates back to the early 1980s, following William Birkin’s successful refinement of the β strain of the t-Virus. There was a projected 10 per cent immunity rate if the virus were dispersed as a weapon, so ‘mutant animals’ were considered as a means of cleaning up any survivors. The goal was to develop the first battle-suited B.O.W., capable of opposing enemies that had anti-virus equipment. It would have the intelligence to understand and execute simple orders. It would also be quick and agile, capable of closing in on targets at high speed to cut them down.

Birkin devised the idea of infecting human embryos three weeks after fertilisation, using the newly developed and stabilised β strain t-Virus as a bonding agent, before splicing in reptilian DNA. An artificial growth promoter was applied at various intervals, and subsequent modifications and monitoring led to the test subject becoming a complete organism after approximately one year. During the earliest phase of development, Birkin went through many test subjects in his bid to create the perfect reptilian-based combat unit.

Eventually, a prototype was created under the code name ‘MA-120’, and initial testing proved successful. The organism had enhanced mobility, sharp claws for slashing, and hard scales for protection. It also had the minimum intelligence required to follow orders, allowing it to fulfil its purpose – to battle human soldiers and tear them apart. Umbrella knew that a major challenge when creating human-based bioweapons was excessive corrosion of the cerebral neocortex, which results in a severe loss of intelligence, as seen in a standard zombie. But Birkin countered the problem by injecting these new creatures with genes from a lower form of life that only possessed instinctive levels of intelligence; this seems to have inhibited the virus’s erosion of brain cells. The earliest prototype was evaluated as being able to learn up to ten simple commands. The bioweapon was named ‘Hunter’ because, during early combat tests, they displayed a demonstration of pack hunting to take down their targets.

The MA-120 was never put into full production, but its evaluation data was used as the template for all future variants. After over a decade of successive research and improvement, the Hunter attained viable status as a combat B.O.W. in terms of cost and effectiveness, becoming the first creature to be mass-produced through cloning. It was to be Umbrella’s flagship B.O.W., and in 1998, the MA-121 Hunter α became the first model to be manufactured. However, only a relatively small number of clones were produced before the viral outbreak in the Arklay Labs; these are the ones you encounter on the Spencer estate during the game.

The Hunter’s weapons are its long, hard claws extended on both hands and feet, which are powerful enough to decapitate a person. Thanks to well-developed muscles, it also boasts extraordinary jumping power and will leap onto its prey from a great distance. The hard, thick, keratinised skin covering its whole body is as strong as Kevlar fibre used in bulletproof jackets, meaning the Hunter can withstand significant damage before it begins to weaken. If there are multiple Hunters, they are known to work together in coordinated attacks on their targets.

The Hunters that show up halfway through Resident Evil Remake essentially replace zombies as the enemy you most frequently encounter in the Spencer Mansion. Only later do you find out where they came from. They were released from captivity in the laboratory beneath the estate to escalate combat with the surviving S.T.A.R.S. team members, both to eliminate them and to allow CCTV to record the Hunters’ fighting capabilities. As for who released the Hunters… well, we’ll pick that story thread up another time.