Resident Evil features plenty of unethical experiments, and Project W is no exception. Project W was created by Oswell E. Spencer, one of the founders of Umbrella Corporation. With strong ideals, Spencer's belief that the end justifies the means is shown clearly in his work.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Resident Evil 5 and Revelations 2.Each Resident Evil game deals with a virus that threatens the well-being of a family, community, or the globe. The oldest of these viruses is the Progenitor Virus, which is believed to be at least millions of years old. The properties of the Progenitor Virus became the basis for Project W, but its biggest drawback is the mortality rate of the original virus strain.
With the help of forgotten Resident Evil character Sheva Alomar, Chris Redfield comes across the Progenitor Virus in the ruins of a Ndipaya civilization in West Africa. While hunting for information about Jill Valentine and finding the source of the Uroboros virus, they find the Stairway of the Sun, where flowers grow that infect people with the Progenitor Virus if they're eaten. However, Spencer found these flowers long before Chris, and he wanted to use them to create a society that fit his standards of a utopia.
The Progenitor Virus Sparked The Possibility Of Project W
Before Spencer found the Stairway of the Sun, there were legends about the West African Ndipaya tribe. Some of their history is told through murals in Resident Evil 5, which deserves a remake for some of this storytelling if nothing else. The Progenitor Virus was both their greatest strength and weakness. The of the Ndipaya tribe who survived being exposed to the Progenitor Virus gained superhuman abilities. The virus allowed them to become the most advanced civilization at the time, but the high mortality rate of the virus left many dead in the process.
Spencer wanted to use the Progenitor Virus to create a utopia of highly intelligent people, and those who survived exposure to the virus gained high intelligence as part of the superhuman abilities it bestowed. Yet Spencer needed to solve several problems before he could begin Project W properly. For the sake of securing funding and having a location at which to perform experiments with the Progenitor Virus, Spencer became one of the founders of Resident Evil's iconic, money-hungry Umbrella Corporation.
Project W Started With Gathering Suitable Test Subjects
Spencer had a specific set of requirements for the type of people who could bring about his ideal world. Because his vision required the candidates for Project W to share his ideals, Spencer decided to use children as the subjects because they could be taught to have the same values as him. From the beginning, Spencer wasn't concerned with ethics when working on Project W.
The first criteria for Project W candidates wasn't about the children, but about their parents. Spencer looked at the contribution of the parents to mankind, and he then adopted their kids, not always in a legitimate fashion, to be test subjects. Every child taken to be part of Project W was given Wesker as a last name and received the best education that Spencer could buy.
Project W Subjects Were Monitored To Find The Best Of The Best
Among the children of Project W was Resident Evil villain Albert Wesker. The children were allowed to go into careers of their choice while they were being monitored. Many of the Wesker children developed an interest in Umbrella as they grew older and pursued jobs there, including Albert and Alex Wesker. Out of all the test subjects, only Alex knew about Project W because of the relationship she developed with Spencer.
Spencer chose the top thirteen subjects of Project W to be infected with the virus as the next phase. The subjects were infected either through manipulation or under the guise of a general medical check-up, and only Alex and Albert survived the infection. However, Alex didn't gain the superhuman abilities that came from surviving the infection because she contracted a disease prior to being infected, leading to her not gaining or losing abilities from the Progenitor Virus.
Results Of Project W On Its Survivors
Since he was the only survivor to gain superhuman abilities, it makes sense that Albert Wesker is the star of the Dead By Daylight Project W DLC. Project W officially ended when Spencer died, but Alex and Albert continued his work in their own ways. Albert started the Uroboros project with the intention of infecting everybody on the globe so that only those who could withstand the infection survived to begin a new era for mankind, and this has clear roots in Spencer's ideas about eugenics that he ed onto the Wesker children.
Alex had to take a different route to continue Spencer's work. Since she had a disease, her first task was to plant her consciousness in a new body in a search for immortality before she continued to make strides towards an intellectual utopia. One of the scariest side games in Resident Evil, RE Revelations 2 shows Alex's efforts to obtain a new body and the lengths she went to in order to find a suitable candidate. Despite being raised in the same project, Alex and Albert had very different ways of achieving their goals, and their upbringing gave them the knowledge and resources to pursue those goals.
Because of the Progenitor Virus, Umbrella Corporation was created and this resulted in a lot of death and torment for innocent people. A lot of projects were ruthless and the feelings of the subjects weren't taken into consideration. From the Progenitor Virus, many of the other viruses featured in RE games were created as researchers kept working to improve the virus to obtain better results. Spencer's ambitions led to the destruction of Raccoon City and countless deaths.
Umbrella was responsible for a lot of the worst monsters in Resident Evil, but currently in the timeline the corporation is no longer around. However, Neo Umbrella and Blue Umbrella might be continuing the work of Spencer, even though the latter claims that it's working to help against viruses rather than causing outbreaks. Information about Project W doesn't appear until RE5, but it's a core part of the series' story along with Spencer and the Progenitor virus. In a way, Project W is both the basis and the core of Resident Evil even now.
