William Birkin’s G3 phase is inarguably the trickiest part of Claire’s story. That crucible is in Carci's rear view, but as the live crowd at AGDQ 2024 reminded him, one more roadblock remains.

After defeating G3, Claire retrieves Sherry from the office-turned-sick-bay. They return to the nexus of the Umbrella lab and ride an elevator down to the facility’s deepest floors. Navigating the next rooms entails weaving through ivy zombies cluttering tight paths. “They're just waking up,” Carci says of the zombies. “They're not going to hit us as long as we move in a nice, straight line. They’re not going to hit Sherry, either, so we’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ve saved every single flash grenade,” he continues, meaning the flash grenades serve as a panic button in the event an ivy zombie grabs Claire.

Claire and Sherry make their way to the tram on a large, rounded platform. Carci drops Sherry off inside, grabs the joint plug (essentially a giant battery) from the floor, and leaves the tram to enter a control room. Here, he inserts the join plug to supply power to the train, and then grabs a chaingun packed with 400 rounds of ammunition. That chaingun, coupled with the nine grenades Claire can find, are Carci’s best arsenal against Ms. Redfield’s final boss: Birkin’s G4 mutation. “We have nine grenades. Leon gets a tenth from the alligator.”

G4 bears no resemblance to anything human. He—it—appears when you return to the train car platform. This fight can be difficult unless you’ve prepared for it as comprehensively as Carci and his friend MattDaRoc. The train car divides the platform in half, with room at either end to round around it. As soon as the fight starts, Carci levels the chaingun at it and opens fire on the cluster of eyes in its chest cavity. Eventually, it will drop to the ground. This starts the most critical part of the fight for Carci—running around and around the train car, looking back to lob grenades or open fire with the chaingun. He only does this when he’s at the opposite end of the train as G4—the monster charges when you’re far away, but if you’re at the far end of the train, you can easily run around the car and keep it between you and G4.

While the chaingun is useful, grenades are Claire’s best friend. They pack the biggest punch, and they can knock G4 from the wall if it attempts to climb, a critical part of the strategy since G4’s dive from high up the wall can be unpredictable and difficult to dodge. “Wait for the eyes to grow back—pow,” Carci says, taking shots as he guides Claire around the arena. “Is he going to climb? No, you're not,” he says as a grenade erupts below G4, dropping it onto the platform. You have to destroy several clusters of eyes for the fight to end. “Wait for the eyes to grow back in again,” he says, narrating the action as he blasts more eyes to soupy pulp.

Carci strings the monster along, throwing grenades and firing bullets as he maneuvers around the car. Four grenades. Five grenades.

“Six. Seven—oh, that was it?”

You’ll know when G4 is on its last legs. It collapses in a mound of flesh, blood, and eyes, and crawls toward Claire, pulling itself forward in a vain attempt—unless you’re reckless—for one last attempt at ending our heroine’s quest. All you have to do is back up and lay waste to the last cluster of eyes with the chaingun.

“That was it!” Carci says. “That’s no damage!”

It’s true. After finishing G4, Claire’s ending cutscene plays, and the credits roll. Unless you’re playing her B scenario, aka the Second Run, in which case you have one more fight, G5, to go.

But this isn’t the B scenario. This is the first campaign, and Carci has finished Claire’s fight and made GDQ history. For the first time, a player has completed a game without losing a single hit point of damage.

Carci’s couch leaps to their feet as the live crowd erupts in cheers. “I was just so happy for him. He practiced his ass off for a couple of months to nail that run, whether it was Leon or Claire. Honestly, when he was celebrating everything felt like it was going in slow motion with that song ‘Chariots of Fire’ playing in the background.”

At the computer, the cork pops on all the adrenaline and nerves Carci kept bottled. He throws his head back and pumps his fist. Overcome with emotion, he bounds from his chair and runs up and down the main aisle. Around him, the crowd whoops and cheers and applauds. A torrent of victory messages and congratulatory emotes flood Twitch’s live chat.

In a way, we’ve made history too. Streamers rarely speak in first-person when they make progress in games. Instead of I did it, they say We did it. They thrive on their communal support system, the people who tune in to every stream to cheer them on as they push to shave milliseconds off their PBs (personal bests) and complete challenge runs.

That’s what makes livestreaming so fun for both the performers and the viewers. Carci made GDQ history. So did his couch. So did the live crowd. So did I, watching from home, and so did tens of thousands of other viewers.

Carci rides the excitement like a wave back to the stage. He collapses in his chair. The initial rush of excitement has faded. What comes next is relief. His heart hammers in his chest as he closes his eyes and takes deep breaths. Then he shares his gratitude.

“First and foremost, I want to give a huge shout out once again to MattDaRoc. Matt was a lurker in my chat since before he started streaming, and we’ve been running these games together. Thanks to Matt, I still have fun playing Resident Evil. I appreciate you, Matt. Love you, man.”

Next up is his girlfriend, his Lemon, who was counting on him to do his best. Mission accomplished. Then comes his esports colleagues; the rest of his couch, Kat-Link and Ecdycis; and, of course, his Twitch community. Still bubbling with euphoria, he announces what’s next for his audience, one he rightly expects to grow thanks to all the new viewers who made history alongside him. “When I come back to streaming, I'm gonna be working on a new damage run of Final Fantasy VIII. I'm actually dead serious. I was working on that one for a while. How's it going to happen? I don't know. You're gonna have to find out.”

Turn the page, and you won't have to wait long.