You Can Skip 80% Of Ashley’s Section In The Resident Evil 4 Remake, But There’s A Catch

Ashley Graham’s section in Resident Evil 4’s remake is a sizeable chunk of Chapter 9, most of which can be skipped if you know the trick. This technique has some impact on how things flow during her set piece but ultimately comes with a catch. Despite having a moderately significant drawback, using this technique is worth the effort.

Near the end of Chapter 9 in Resident Evil 4, you’re taken away from the action and put in the shoes of Ashley Graham. Going from a fully-equipped super agent to a college girl is a drastic shift in gameplay. The set piece focuses on Ashley navigating the Castle Library with a special lantern in hand. The main focus of this part is to solve puzzles in order to find an item to free Leon.

Normally, the section takes a while to complete. This is mainly due to the detour you have to take in order to figure out the Chosen Time. One of the clocks you encounter in Ashley’s section blocks the path to the Mausoleum which contains the Salazar Family Insignia. The other clock leads to a hidden passage back to the library.

The main goal is to find the solution to the clocks and acquire the Salazar Family Insignia. The nature of this puzzle leads to some backtracking. However, if you are on your second playthrough or just aren’t a fan of the section, you can adjust the clock hands to bypass the set piece.

The correct values change depending on the difficulty of your playthrough. Another thing to note is that this strategy prevents one of the knights from knocking over the bookshelf in the library as well.

For Assisted and Standard difficulties, the chosen time will be 11:04. This value is different for Hardcore and Professional as you’ll have to set the hands to 7:00. By using this technique, you can go directly to the Mausoleum without triggering the first cutscene where Ashley talks to Leon through the blocked gate. While this may seem like an amazing strategy, it comes with a bit of a catch.

By playing the section as intended, you unlock a hidden path. The path leads to an upper section in the library where you can find one of the best weapons in the game—the CQBR Assault Rifle. Being one of the new additions in Resident Evil 4’s remake, the weapon requires rifle ammo to use. Players will have to make a decision between Stingray’s precision firing and CQBR’s full-auto mode because rifle ammunition is fairly limited.

However. this is where the silver lining comes into play. Should you choose to utilize this strategy, the CQBR Assault Rifle will be available at the Merchant from Chapter 11 onwards. The attention to detail in the remake of Resident Evil 4 is phenomenal.

Not only can you skip the village fight, but you can also obliterate Ramón Salazar with golden eggs. You can even chuck two heavy grenades or use a rocket launcher to skip the wrecking ball area. Resident Evil 4’s remake has been a massive success for Capcom. Being the biggest launch for the series on Steam and surpassing 3 million units in the first 2 days, Capcom continues to provide quality experiences.

The Resident Evil 4 remake is out now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.