Lady Dimitrescu first appeared in a January 2021 teaser trailer that quickly cemented Resident Evil Village's place in the public consciousness as "the game with the big vampire lady." She swept the hearts, minds, and creative outputs of hordes of fan artists with such ferocity that I'm still not sure whether I could safely do a google image search on my work browser. According to Maggie Robertson, the actor who brought the vampire giantess to life, the role was equally transformative for her.

Robertson recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly as part of a group interview with the "Pixel Pack," a group of high profile videogame voice actors gathered by Neil Newbon, who played Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3. The Pixel Pack aims to raise awareness and solidarity for their craft as they face challenges like the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

Many of the interviewed Pixel Pack actors, like Mass Effect femshep actor Jennifer Hale, spoke about a fading distinction that used to separate videogame acting talent from their theater and stage peers. Echoing that sentiment, Robertson said that her Lady Dimitrescu performance was informed by her history in Shakespearean acting.

"Having a Shakespeare background, I pulled a lot of Shakespeare stuff into this. There was something very Shakespearean in the way that she utilizes language," Robertson said. "It's not just the claws, it's not just her transforming into a beast at the end that does damage. It's her words. She really uses the power of her words to hurt."

I can't speak to how well Shakespeare's works channel the presence of a towering monster lady, but being able to employ those more traditional acting techniques for her Dimitrescu performance clearly paid off—even if Robertson wasn't entirely prepared for the impact the character would have.

"I had no concept at that time of what being in a video game could offer me in my career, in my life. My only intention was to do the best work that I could do and, honestly, not make a fool of myself," Robertson said. "And then to see the way that she was embraced by audiences, it was just very surreal. It really truly changed my life in every possible way."

Since playing Lady Dimitrescu in Resident Evil Village, Robertson has continued her voice and motion capture performances in games like God of War: Ragnarok, Baldur's Gate 3, and more.

We spoke to Robertson back in 2021, where she went into deeper detail about the overlap between her theater background and her work in Resident Evil. Comparing her experience in Lady Dimitrescu's motion capture sessions—her first time doing performance capture—to black box theater, Robertson said her classical acting background made her "uniquely primed" to inhabit the role.

"It's just playing. It goes back to being a kid and using your imagination to create these fabulous worlds," Robertson said. "That feels like it gets at the real core of why I wanted to be an actor in the first place."

REPO is already getting its first update and it includes the feature we all need most: a way to stop that duck from sabotaging our team.

On Friday, REPO's dev team shared an early look at the viral horror game's first update since its early access release in February. While there's no release date for the update yet, we know at least a few highlights that are on the way, including a new map, facial expressions, quality of life updates, and, most importantly, the duck bucket.

I've lost count of how many times my friends and I have died in REPO thanks to the cute, deadly duck. If you're in the same camp, there will soon be a remedy. As its name suggests, the "duck bucket" is a bucket you can place over the duck to stop it from following you around – or stop your teammates from accidentally clicking on the duck and setting off its monster mode while you're trying to lug a vase to extraction.

On top of that, the first update will also include a new map called "The Museum." The devs hinted in their announcement video that this map will feature more opportunities for parkour. So, if you haven't lost a round of REPO to an ill-advised jump yet, you'll get plenty of chances to test your skill (and your luck) in the museum.

Some quality of life improvements are on the way, as well, including a visible border at extraction points, which will allow you to clearly see when an item is out of bounds. You'll still die if you're caught in the extractor when it's activated, but at least now you can make sure all of your hard-earned loot counts toward your quota instead of getting destroyed for being just outside of the extractor.

The REPO devs also confirmed they are working on public lobbies, following up on a request for player feedback from earlier this month. Right now, you can only play REPO with friends who also have the game, so if you're solo, you're stuck with no one to play with. Luckily, public lobbies are on the way, but it sounds like it might take a while for Semiwork to roll out the feature.

The devs explained in their announcement video, "As an overwhelming majority seems fine with matchmaking where you can either host public or private, together with a kick button, that's what we'll be looking into. And for the sake of transparency, adding a kick button might sound like something very simple, but it involves server coding, which is a whole new area for us."

Even if it takes a while for Semiwork to introduce public lobbies in REPO, there's still a lot to be excited about in the game's first update. If you haven't tried out this whacky indie horror game yet, now is the perfect time to give it a shot (or convince your friends to). REPO has exploded over the past few weeks, earning 96% positive reviews on Steam since its early access release.

If you love Lethal Company or Among Us, REPO is not a game you want to miss. It's quickly become my favorite horror game thanks to its hilarious physics and goofy robot avatars⁠—even if I do keep dying to that duck.