'Wow, that was quick': Resident Evil Requiem devs thought it would take 2 weeks to crack the Final Puzzle, but players did it in 4 days

Between getting beaten up by blister head zombies and running for dear life from The Girl, I spent a great deal of time, perhaps too much time, trying to figure out how the hell I could solve The Final Puzzle in Resident Evil Requiem.

After hours and hours of staring at a bunch of numbers that somehow corresponded to the moon, star, and sun symbol, I gave up on figuring it out myself and opted to wait for the masses to take a crack at it.

(Image credit: Capcom)

It only took four days. With the help of a little datamining, that is. But even still, the accomplishment was so great it even managed to surprise the dev team.

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"Wow, that was quick," director Akifumi Nakanishi said in an interview with Denfaminicogamer. "We did something similar with the 'doll's finger' puzzle in the demo for Resident Evil 7, and even then I was worried that nobody would be able to solve it. But when we actually released it, it was solved in half a day.

"So, regarding this 'final mystery,' I intended to design it as something that would last at least two weeks. Even within the development team, people were saying, 'I don't think anyone will notice this.' But as you can see, the result was very fast."

(Image credit: Capcom)

Producer Masato Kumazawa even added: "When I heard about it from Nakanishi, I said, 'No way, nobody will be able to solve this!'"

There were many outlandish parts to The Final Puzzle, but the most ridiculous was undoubtedly the grinder part. After completing all the prior steps perfectly, once you reached the conveyor belt and grinder in the basement you had to wait there for 15 minutes until the belt ran out of bodies to put in the pit. Only then is the stage set for you to jump in and try to survive several more minutes of the grinder running—while avoiding all the zombies that stand up, rather than killing them.

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Some fans theorised that the point of this arcane process was supplying enough blood to the grinder to flood the system and bring the doll floating up to the surface, but Capcom has yet to confirm that theory, or the reasoning behind the next absurd step. After surviving the grinder you had to go back to the Hospital's bathroom and flush the toilet eight times.

What do you mean that's convoluted? There's a picture of a dead body in a toilet stall with the number eight scribbled in blood next to it—sort of—so obviously that means you need to flush the toilet eight times to flood the system, to get the doll, to reunite the doll and Emily in the next playthrough, to complete the symbol puzzle with the doll and Emily, to get a little message and 20,000 in-game currency, god. Keep up will you.