Resident Evil Requiem's mystifying Final Puzzle is case-closed after its solution was discovered by accident

Flukey YouTubers 1, dataminers 0

The chillingly named 'Final Puzzle' in Resident Evil Requiem filled much of the action-horror game’s launch week with cheevo-hunting intrigue. What began as a simple search, a box-checking exercise to complete the last of Requiem’s optional challenges, has since shredded nerves (and driven at least two RPS guides writers into frazzled despair) as the puzzle revealed itself an almost sadistically opaque game of Simon Says, where Simon doesn’t actually say anything. He wants you to do something with that severed arm, though.

Earlier this week, however, the code was cracked, seemingly after a Pokemon card YouTuber stumbled into the solution by accident. Gengar Collects, whose videos typically involve showing off colourful paper rectangles rather than borrowing creepy dolls from flesh monsters, is now widely credited with 'discovering' the requisite steps through sheer luck, with the precise details confirmed hours later by dataminers. Here’s Jeremy and Callum’s Final Puzzle guide, if you want to see them for yourself.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Capcom

I confess that my journalistic instincts bristle at the notion that Gengar Collects fluked his way through some of these. Randomly flushing a toilet the correct number of times might be a reasonable luck-out, but the odds of him just happening to go AFK at the exact point where you’re supposed to intentionally stand still for twenty minutes, and get the toilet flushes right immediately after, is 'winning the lottery while being attacked by a shark that’s being struck by lightning' territory. And yet, I believe him. Or I want to believe, at the very least. It’s certainly true that dataminers, who if anything were kinda cheating, didn’t figure it out until hours after this initial completion. Why pretend like you chanced into if you were smart enough to solve the puzzle through deduction or technical wiles? Good on Gengar, I say.

Jeremy, on the other hand, says: "Please say that the whole thing revolves around flushing a toilet, and the whole puzzle should also be flushed down a damn toilet." Ah, you’ll get it next time, Jezza. And for any Resi Requiem players wanting a less time-intensive and/or khazi-focused puzzle, there's always Barry's Scavenger Hunt.