RE5 Location Confirmation?

[Project Omega]

According this post, the observant beasley23803 points out that in the new PS3 gameplay video you can see this symbol used for the currency in the game : "₦". As Beasley pointed out, it's the currency symbol for the Nigerian "Nairas" and is only used exclusively in Nigeria. Nigeria is located on the western coast of Africa; which is where Sheva's BSAA branch is located ("West Africa") and since it's on the coast, it would also have the salt water caves we seen in a few of the trailers.


Sheva's last name, "Alomar" means long life in Zarma. Zarma is the language of the indigenous people in southwest part of Niger. So there's a chance that might be her country of origin. It's spoken in Nigeria by about 88,000 people, but that's because the Niger River passes through Nigeria. Most people that speak Zarma live on or near the Niger River...

Going back to the various trailers, there are portions where the characters are expoloring mountainous terrain (as seen where Chris is attacked by some wierd flying enemy), so there has to be mountains (whether they are volcanos or not still doesn't matter since we haven't seen any new volcano references so that may have been scrapped).

There are portions of the trailers that include water scenes which look as the characters are on a large boat so that pretty much nullifies most river boats and would lend better to coastal countries. There is also that speed boat scene with the masked woman, that could have been either on a coast or a wide river; its hard to tell from the scene which one it was... The Niger river exits to the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria through the Niger River Delta...

Speaking of the Niger Delta, that region is also known for it's oil production. Nigeria, being Africa's biggest producer of petroleum, there was a scene in the trailers that looked like it was an oil refinery, but there are several of those across Africa as well..

[Biocore]

I believe the location of RE5 is a fictional city or country in africa called Kujuju. Whether this is just a city or a country is unknown. But Kujuju is specifically mentioned in the trailers where it says "Kujuju is our home". It's unlikely to take place in a real world african country because of the fictional setting dealing with a fictional parasite (ie. las plagas).

[Project Omega]

Of course it's fictional, but excitement is derived from knowing the surrounds were based off of a real world location. Knowing this would give us a sense of what to look foward to in the game.

The locations we've seen in the game include a dock on either the river or the ocean, the rural small african village, a mountainous area, what looks like an oil/petroleum refinery, a dark mine, a semi-aquatic cave, a larger city (perhaps, I doubt the small village would have a need for a large bridge, this area probably belongs to the area with the docks and river)...

There's also that humvee, motorcycle, and truck chase scene over the african grasslands with Chris/Sheva attacking the infected with the mounted machine gun...

[Bertha]

Nigeria would make the most sense...don't forget the battle ship we saw. The country is also on the coast.

[Project Omega]

In one of the trailers, I could have sworn I saw a crashed helicopter... Perhaps there are some Black Hawk Down references in this game?

[Archelon]

In one of the trailers, I could have sworn I saw a crashed helicopter... Perhaps there are some Black Hawk Down references in this game?

Well, there will be a crashed helicopter in the game. I'm not sure if I recall actually seeing it in any of the trailers (there was an artwork showing it though in Famitsu), but the demo from E3 shows the helicopter crashing as a result of being attacked by the flying parasites.

[Stars1356]

The producers of the game did say they visited Africa to check the area out just as they did with Re 4. I'm sure that the areas in the game have been influneced by a number of different areas. I'm not to familar with Africa so any guesses or theories are interesting.

[Dot50Cal]

If you recall, they said they took inspiration from Black Hawk Down, so its plausible that will be a focal point. Especially when you hear over the radio "all units head to the crash site of the chopper" or something to that effects on the gameplay videos.

Sheva's BSAA patch says West Africa, btw.

[Project Omega]

Something rather random....

New piece of the puzzle.

[Chimera]

Nice catch, P.O. I noticed that flag shortly after the trailer was first released, but just assumed it was fictitious. The Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis? Very odd to say the least. The nearby island of Redonda did catch my attention, however. It was apparently abandoned during World War I, after a large guano mining operation was shut-down, and has been uninhabited ever since. Access now appears to only be by helicopter. Another nearby island, Montserrat, is home to the Soufriere Hills volcano, which has been active since 1995.

None of this probably means anything, but the flag is pretty hard to ignore. The geographical locations in this series have, for the most part, always been extremely vague (the Loire Village), or totally fictitious (the Arklay Mountains.) While the use of Nigerian currency doesn't exactly tell us a great deal about the game's African location, this flag is much more specific.

I suppose that the tanker might simply be flying the flag of this tiny Caribbean nation, but why would Capcom choose such an obscure location? Remember all of the early speculation that a possible location for Resident Evil 5 might have been Haiti? Well, Saint Kitts and Nevis aren't that far away. The problem with all of this, of course, is that Masachika Kawata recently stated at Leipzig that there wouldn't be any location changes that would require a significant amount of travel time. I'm not really sure I believe anything these developers/directors/producers tell us anymore, however. Regardless of how all of this pans out, it's always fun to just speculate on things like this. Again, nice work, P.O.

[Project Omega]

Saint Kitts, I remember from my Sheena Island research. It's general form, appeared to match the general shape of Sheena Island but I took it off the list of candidates of possible islands because of the fact I always assumed Sheena Island to be closer to Europe because of the voices of the characters which were all stereotypically British from what I can recall (aside from the muffled voice of the cleaner commander, which was probably forced to try to sound as American as possible). Looking back, that could have just been a casting oversight, but from investigations I've done for humanities and history courses, Caribbean English, while being heavily influenced by British English, still sounds much different from what I recall Lott, Lilly, Vincent sounding like... In the end I never finished the search for what the island may have been based on, but settled on the general location of Greece and some of the Grecian islands due to a background reference I found way back... Something along the lines of Lemnos or something... I recall Lemnos being where Hephaestus' forge was located which further fueled research on that location since I was doing comparative analysis on Greek mythology thanks to the names Capcom gave the BOW. Seeing as how that island was home to a forge of a greek god, and in the game it was Umbrella's forge for creating Tyrants, the similarites ended about there. There are no real ties between Hephaestus and Hypnos....

[Biocore]

It's OFFICIAL : Much to everyones dismay, believing Capcom has bad taste, it was revealed that Biohazard 5 (called Resident Evil 5 in North America) will take place in Darfur. Congrats.

[Darkmoon]

Have you a link, please?

[Archelon]

I don't think he was being serious.

[Darkmoon]

My sarcasmometer isn't working right now due to illness. And I can believe Capcom would do something like that, but I've expected the worst from Capcom since they cancelled 1.5.