Resident Evil Requiem's The Final Puzzle may be the most convoluted challenge to grace Capcom's series, and no one's figured out the answer yet

Throughout my playthrough of Resident Evil Requiem, I came across a few items which I had absolutely no clue what to do with. I investigated some further, but didn't dwell on it; I had a review to write after all. But after getting to the end, a checkbox for The Final Puzzle popped up in the challenges menu. Great, now I'm even more confused.

After endless discussions with PC Gamer's senior guides writer Sean Martin and a helpful peep at IGN's The Final Puzzle reveal, we've finally gotten to the bottom of what all these extra items were for. Well, most of them.

Spoiler warning for Resident Evil Requiem puzzle solutions and story elements ahead

It's just as convoluted as we feared. Towards the end of Rhodes Hill Hospital, you'll find a weird and gory item called the Severed Hand. Ok. What does this do? Well, if you put it under one of the laser microscopes you can find around Rhodes Hill, it'll reveal the following: GGC AAG AUA UGU CAU, along with this message: "Let's play." No, I don't think I will.

The string of letters is actually a DNA sequence. You get to keep the hand even after you've analysed it, so I just thought it was an easter egg at first. Resident Evil deals with a lot of infectious viruses and mutations, after all. But no, it's actually the start of something way bigger than I could've imagined.

There are several stages you need to complete throughout the course of the rest of Resident Evil Requiem, which'll then land you with the prize of ticking off The Final Puzzle checklist. But here's the kicker: no one seems to have been able to solve this puzzle yet, including us.

The trick seems to be finding out which of the following symbols: Moon, Star, and Sun, correspond to the letters in the DNA sequence. I spent about five minutes turning an hourglass around in Grace's hands while in Gideon's secret lab, before shoving it back in my inventory, never to be used again. But now I discover it has a secret code written into its base, which you can only see if you hold it upside down and wait for the sand to fall away.

The code on the hourglass reads "U = 380,000", which apparently means Moon, as this is 380,000km away from Earth (obviously). A note you find in the Research Facility's Courtyard reveals that "C = 4.2 ly", which is the distance to the nearest Star (which is not the Sun) that is 4.2 light-years away. And according to a sticker on the side of the Blood Lab microscope G = 150,000,000. The Sun is 150 million miles from Earth. So, Moon = U, Star = C, and Sun = G. But what about A? Well, we can apparently ignore this, as after solving the Toy Uncle Bobblehead puzzle, you get the prompt "Just ignore A". See? Simple.

All the other puzzles in Requiem were relatively straightforward—there's a logic to them, which means you'll be able to figure it all out with intuition if you've been paying attention. Figuring out all the basic quartz puzzles took me no time at all, even when I had to colour in a page from the Chairman's diary or dissolve a lock in the Lead Researcher's room.

This is not the case with The Final Puzzle. It's a slightly different approach which requires players to painstakingly pour over every single new item that enters their inventory and scour the maps for clues. Is it useful information that the roulette wheel in Rhodes Hill Hospital's Parlor only ever lands on Black 15, Black 29, and Red 7? Probably. Even after putting the DNA sequence into the Lead Researcher's puzzle box, there's no huge revelation that The Final Puzzle is anywhere near finished.

The challenge also has a clue which reads: "Let the sweet pair hear the voice". In a bid to solve this, our senior guides writer spent far too long trying to lure two singing zombies in Rhodes Hill Hospital towards one another, to no avail.

I'm not the greatest fan of these kinds of puzzles. It seems to be more of an excuse to get players replaying the game in hopes of 100-percenting it than being a fun and testing experience which adds anything worthwhile to the progression. But we'll have to wait and see whether anything greater comes of The Final Puzzle, I'll certainly eagerly await any discoveries made by the masses once Requiem launches tomorrow.