I had considered combining the articles for both mini-episodes of Resident Evil: Revelations 2, Little Miss, and The Struggle, but after spending one hour with Little Miss and realizing that the play-styles were going to be vastly different between the two games, I decided that I would dedicate one article to each. I also found out that the other extra episode The Struggle does not take place immediately after/around the same time as Little Miss. I had misunderstood the timeframe when I read that it took place "six months after. . ." since during Barry/Natalia's chapter when Barry says that he first got Claire/Moira's distress call six months before arriving on the island. So The Struggle article may have to wait a while, but on with Little Miss.
Little Miss tells the story of Natalia Korda on the island leading up to her meeting Barry Burton at the midpoint of Episode 1: Penal Colony. Even in E1:PC, I felt that Natalia was going to be an unreliable character to follow because her character seemed so out of place, which seems like it was one of the primary reasons she was introduced. After playing Claire/Moira's chapter involving experimented upon murderous and likely insane inmates at an otherwise abandoned prison facility on an island in the middle of some large body of water, coming upon a young girl in a nearly pristine white night-gown is going to be out of the ordinary. To say nothing about her ability to locate and detect the presence of creatures through walls and floors. Kansas is long gone at this point; thankfully nobody (at least at present) has made that joke because it is a bad one. You are welcome.
Without giving too much away, the basic premise here is that Natalia has a stuffed bear named Lottie from when she lived on Terragrigia with her parents and she is looking for Lottie who has appeared to have gone missing after Natalia flees the laboratory she was being held in. While being experimented upon on the island, she is able to interact with Lottie through some type of VR-ish headset device where they communicate with each other. To what end is probably a major part of her character arc and that has yet to be revealed at the end of Episode 1. But throughout this episode, Natalia, along with the help of a part of Natalia's psyche, hereto referred to as Dark Natalia because she is wearing a dark dress.
What makes this interesting is that in Ep.1-2 when you play as Barry and Natalia, is that Natalia does not have access to any weapons apart from a brick so when you control two Natalias she is not all of a sudden packing a Walther PPK but stays consistent to her representation in the game. Natalia is able to equip and use a smokescreen weapon (only after locating them semi-hidden throughout the stage), which can be used to block enemies from being able to spot Natalia for a short time. This section of the game would fit perfectly within my Weaponless Survival Horror article since the point of this episode all stealth based and you have to avoid the monsters in order to access the next area. If you are spotted at all by any of the monsters, Natalia crouches down in a fetal position, you are audibly berated by Dark Natalia, the monster who spotted you glows red and you are essentially caught forcing you to start over from your last checkpoint. While an interesting mechanic, I did find it frustrating about midway through the game as I was sure that I could not be seen, such as in an inaccessible room with barred windows, but when I had Natalia stand up to explore a desk, I was immediately spotted and had to start over. One other interesting aspect of this was that each of the monsters had their own range for being able to detect Natalia, which I did appreciate since it meant that not every monster was a cut-and-paste job. In one odd instance, I was Dark Natalia with Natalia hiding in bushes with a wandering/patrolling monster about. Dark Natalia was scouting up ahead and when I saw the monster pass by the bush, I switched to Natalia, only to find that the monster had in fact passed through the bush, pushing Natalia along with it and when I switched characters, it then recognized the character and I was caught. Thankfully this only happened one time otherwise it could have really gotten on my nerves.
Honestly, there were times when going from the entrance of one area to the exit felt repetitive in that there was little to no puzzle solving, just sending Dark Natalia up ahead to find out where the monsters were, because the monsters are unable to respond to a semi-physical manifestation of a person's psyche, mark the most inconvenient monster and then avoid that monster. Rinse, repeat. At the end of some of the areas, Natalia would come across a letter from Lottie who becomes more-and-more depressed at being left behind and neglected. These letters were pretty creepy and sad at the same time, especially when Lottie talks about harming itself even though Lottie is a stuffed toy, the way it is presented is very effective. This is what kept me playing the stages and going forward. And once I realized I was making my way towards the beach where Natalia would eventually meet Barry, like in the beginning of Ep.1-2, I was trying to put to memory what locations were like as I anticipated that I would be coming back through here in Ep.2-2, especially since some of the routes lead to dead-ends or to rooms that did not contain anything of interest even though I snuck past a handful of the monsters.
An entertaining part of Little Miss was seeing/hearing/watching the interactions between the two Natalia's, often with Dark Natalia berating Natalia at every chance she could get. Even when Natalia was spotted by one of the monsters, Dark Natalia would quip back with lines like, "Looks like you're toast!" "What a shame!" (in a very sarcastic tone), and other demeaning Little Miss really had a lot of cross over with what I imagine was going through Gollum/Smeagol's mind in The Lord of the Rings and I was perfectly okay with those similarities. Once I made this connection, which admittedly came later than it should have, I was eager to see how/when Natalia would actually come into this power/ability on her own.
At the end of the episode, I was pretty satisfied overall, although I did feel that it could have been a little shorter and still gotten the hide-and-seek point across a lot quicker. The most unsettling part of Little Miss was definitely the postcards from Lottie, being read in a child-like voice but the content being depressed and angry at Natalia and talk about hurting itself (which is odd because Lottie is only a stuffed toy), but I just found it very unnerving and a lot more effective than evading walking flesh golems with chainsaw attachments on their legs. Presently, I did not feel that I was learning any spoilers in-game from playing Little Miss out of release order and instead playing somewhat chronologically, although to do that accurately I would have had to have played Little Miss right after finishing Ep.1-1.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Come To Me, My Hand For To Ask
P.S. And for everyone wanting to know how I performed in the level, this was my ranking. Not amazing, but not bad either. And in my defense, since there was variation in the ranges that each monster could detect Natalia in, there was a fair amount of trail-and-error throughout the episode.
A number of the times Natalia was found were primarily from not being hidden when I thought I was, like hiding in a bus while Dark Natalia was scouting, trying to get through an area that I did not realize that I did not know that I had skipped, or by accidentally pressing the button to stop crouching. During the first couple of zones, I had the number of times being found down to fewer than five, but that is just anecdotal so you will have to take my word for it.
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