Ada Wong has appeared in eight Resident Evil games across 25 years, starting with the original Resident Evil 2 in 1998 and most recently the Separate Ways DLC for the 2023 Resident Evil 4 remake. She is the series’ professional spy, a freelance operative who sells to the highest bidder, and the one person Leon S. Kennedy can never quite read. Below you’ll find every game she shows up in, who played her, where you can play each one today, and what her story actually adds up to.
Who Ada Wong is, in one paragraph
Ada is a mercenary agent who first drifted into Raccoon City in September 1998, claiming to be looking for a missing boyfriend. That was a cover. Her real job was lifting a sample of the G-Virus from Umbrella’s underground lab, and she has been doing variations of that job ever since: stealing bioweapon samples, playing rival organisations against each other, and bailing “leon kennedy” out of trouble at the exact moment it costs her nothing. Capcom has never confirmed her real name. Her own in-game files in Resident Evil 4 describe “Ada Wong” as an alias, and that fits a character whose whole appeal is that you never know which side she’s on this week.
Every game Ada Wong appears in
| Game | Year | Developer | Platform at launch | Ada’s role | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil 2 | 1998 | Capcom | PlayStation | Supporting, short playable section | Sally Cahill |
| Resident Evil 4 | 2005 | Capcom | GameCube | Supporting, playable in Assignment Ada and Separate Ways | Sally Cahill |
| Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles | 2007 | Capcom | Wii | Playable in the “Death’s Door” scenario | Megan Hollingshead |
| Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles | 2009 | Capcom / Cavia | Wii | Supporting in the Raccoon City retelling | Sally Cahill |
| Resident Evil 6 | 2012 | Capcom | PS3, Xbox 360 | Full solo campaign | Courtenay Taylor |
| Resident Evil 2 (remake) | 2019 | Capcom | PS4, Xbox One, PC | Supporting, short playable section | Jolene Andersen |
| Resident Evil Re:Verse | 2022 | Capcom | PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC | Playable multiplayer character | Jolene Andersen |
| Resident Evil 4 (remake) and Separate Ways | 2023 | Capcom | PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, PC | Supporting, then a seven-chapter campaign | Lily Gao |
She has also crossed over into Dead by Daylight as a survivor in the Project W chapter (August 2022), and appears in the live-action film Resident Evil: Retribution (2012, played by Li Bingbing), the CGI film Resident Evil: Damnation (2012) and a brief cameo at the end of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021, played by Lily Gao). This article sticks to the games.
Release order vs story order
Ada’s games don’t line up with her life. The two remakes retell 1998 and 2004 with updated details, and the Wii light-gun games revisit Raccoon City from new angles. If you want to follow her as a character rather than as a product line, this is the order.
| Story year | Event | Games that cover it |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | Raccoon City outbreak, G-Virus retrieval | Resident Evil 2 (1998), Resident Evil 2 (2019), Darkside Chronicles (2009), Umbrella Chronicles “Death’s Door” (2007) |
| 2004 | Los Plagas mission in rural Spain | Resident Evil 4 (2005), Resident Evil 4 (2023), both versions of Separate Ways |
| 2013 | Carla Radames, Neo-Umbrella and the C-Virus | Resident Evil 6 (2012) |
| 2024 onward | Not yet shown | Resident Evil Requiem, if she appears |
Treat the remakes as the current canon for 1998 and 2004. Capcom has quietly let them overwrite the originals in the official timeline, which matters for one big Separate Ways plot point we’ll get to below the spoiler warning.
Resident Evil 2 (1998): the red dress and the first double-cross
Ada only turns up in Leon’s half of the game. You meet her in the RPD basement hunting for the reporter Ben Bertolucci, and from there she drifts in and out of Leon’s path through the sewers and the Umbrella lab. The 1998 script gives her almost nothing to say, which is partly why she works. She is a mystery in a red dress with a pistol, and Leon spends the entire game projecting a whole personality onto her.
You get to play as her for a short stretch in the sewers after Leon takes a bullet meant for her. It’s a few minutes of gameplay, but it set the template Capcom returned to in 2019. The original is hardest to play today, since Capcom has never re-released it on modern storefronts. Your options are the PS1 disc, the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast ports, the GameCube version, or the old PC release.
Resident Evil 4 (2005): the grappling hook era begins
Shinji Mikami’s Resident Evil 4 rebuilt Ada as an action heroine. She saves Leon with sniper fire, drops out of windows, fights Krauser with a grappling hook and generally steals every scene she’s in. The GameCube original included Assignment Ada, a short island mission where you collect Plaga samples with a limited arsenal. The PlayStation 2 port later in 2005 added Separate Ways, a five-chapter campaign that follows Ada through the village, castle and island in parallel with Leon.
Separate Ways is where the lore gets serious. Ada’s Reports, a set of five unlockable files, spell out that she works for Albert Wesker’s unnamed organisation and that even Wesker doesn’t trust her. Every modern port of RE4 includes Separate Ways, so you can play it on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC and the standalone Quest 2 VR version. The VR version is the one exception: Separate Ways isn’t in it.
The Umbrella Chronicles and The Darkside Chronicles (2007 and 2009)
These two Wii light-gun games are the easiest Ada appearances to miss. The Umbrella Chronicles includes “Death’s Door”, a short scenario that picks up right after Ada’s apparent death in Resident Evil 2 and follows her escape from a collapsing Raccoon City. It confirms she survived the fall and explains how she ended up in Wesker’s employ. The Darkside Chronicles retells Leon and Claire’s night in Raccoon City with Ada in her usual supporting role, with updated dialogue that’s a little closer to how she speaks in RE4.
Neither game is on current storefronts. The HD Collection for PlayStation 3 (2012) bundled both, and the Wii discs work on a Wii U. If you only want the lore, “Death’s Door” is a 20-minute scenario and worth watching a playthrough of before you start RE6.
Resident Evil 6 (2012): Ada gets her own campaign
Resident Evil 6 is four games in one, and Ada’s is the fourth. At launch you had to finish Leon, Chris and Jake’s campaigns before her five chapters unlocked. A December 2012 update let you start with Ada immediately and added an optional co-op partner, a nameless “Agent” with no dialogue, for players who wanted to run her story with a friend. Her campaign is built around stealth and puzzles rather than the gun-heavy set pieces of the other three, and her crossbow with explosive bolts is one of the best weapons in the game.
Her story introduces Carla Radames and Derek Simmons, and ties together the loose threads from the other three campaigns. If you’ve bounced off RE6’s bloated action, Ada’s campaign is the one most worth pushing through. You can play the whole game cheaply on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC. For people who want the full four-player experience, the other campaigns sit comfortably among the “cooperative survival horror games” worth revisiting, even if the horror has mostly drained out.
Resident Evil 2 (2019): the trench coat and the EMF Visualizer
The remake, directed by Kazunori Kadoi and Yasuhiro Anpo, swaps the red dress for a red trench coat and shades and gives Ada a proper personality. Jolene Andersen plays her as cool, amused and always three moves ahead, and the chemistry with Nick Apostolides’ Leon is the best in the series. Her playable section is longer than in 1998: you navigate the sewers’ water treatment plant using an EMF Visualizer to hack panels and open doors, armed only with a pistol while the regenerating zombies shamble around you.
She again only appears in Leon’s route, so if you want Ada, start as Leon. The remake runs on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Nintendo Switch via cloud streaming, and iPhone and Mac. Scare-wise this is the most frightening game on the list by a distance, and a sensible first survival horror game for anyone who finds the fixed-camera originals too fiddly.
Resident Evil 4 (2023) and Separate Ways: the current definitive Ada
The 2023 remake kept Ada’s role in Leon’s campaign roughly intact, then rebuilt Separate Ways from the ground up as paid DLC on 21 September 2023, priced at $9.99. The new version runs seven chapters, adds a proper relationship between Ada and Luis Sera, restores the laser corridor and U-3 fight that were cut from the main remake, and reworks her grappling hook into a core traversal and combat tool. It’s the best Ada has ever been to play.
Lily Gao’s performance split fans at launch, and she was subjected to online harassment severe enough that she addressed it publicly. Give it time. Her Ada is colder and more guarded than Sally Cahill’s or Jolene Andersen’s, and once Separate Ways reveals what she’s dealing with during the mission, that reserve makes sense. Separate Ways also adds Ada and Wesker to The Mercenaries mode. The remake is on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, PC, iPhone 15 Pro and newer, and Mac.
Resident Evil Re:Verse and Dead by Daylight
Re:Verse is the free multiplayer mode bundled with Resident Evil Village, released properly in October 2022 after a long delay. Ada is one of the playable survivors, using her RE2 remake model and voice, and she mutates into a bioweapon when killed like everyone else. Nobody will recommend Re:Verse as a game, but it’s a legitimate appearance.
Dead by Daylight’s Project W chapter (30 August 2022) added Ada Wong and Rebecca Chambers as survivors alongside Wesker as the killer. Her perks are built around stealth and information, which is a fair reading of the character. If you play horror on PC regularly, Dead by Daylight remains one of the better “pc horror games” for a group night, and Ada’s chapter is a cheap way to add her to your roster.
Does Ada Wong appear in RE9?
Capcom announced Resident Evil Requiem at Summer Game Fest in June 2025 with a release date of 27 February 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The lead is Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst and daughter of Outbreak’s Alyssa Ashcroft, and Capcom confirmed Leon as a second playable protagonist at Tokyo Game Show in September 2025. Ada has not been confirmed by Capcom at the time of writing. Leaks and rumours have circulated for a year, and the series has never once put Leon in a mainline game without Ada somewhere nearby, so expect her. Just don’t treat her as part of the game until Capcom says so.
Where to play each Ada Wong game today
| Game | Easiest way to play now | Rough price |
|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil 2 (1998) | Original PS1, GameCube or Dreamcast disc | Second-hand only |
| Resident Evil 4 (2005) | PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC (Steam) | $19.99, often $9.99 on sale |
| Umbrella Chronicles / Darkside Chronicles | Wii discs, or PS3 HD Collection | Second-hand only |
| Resident Evil 6 | PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC (Steam) | $19.99, often under $10 |
| Resident Evil 2 (2019) | PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, iOS, Mac | $39.99, regularly $9.99 on sale |
| Resident Evil 4 (2023) | PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, iOS, Mac | $39.99 plus $9.99 for Separate Ways |
| Resident Evil Re:Verse | Free with Resident Evil Village | Included |
| Dead by Daylight Project W | PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch | Around $7 chapter DLC |
Which Ada Wong game should you start with?
For a first Resident Evil, play the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 as Leon. It’s the scariest game on the list and the best introduction to who Ada is. If you want the most Ada for your money, play the 2023 Resident Evil 4 remake and then Separate Ways straight afterwards, since the DLC fills in everything the main campaign skips. Resident Evil 6 is for people who already like her and want five hours of her point of view, and the original RE4 is for anyone curious where the grappling hook and the sunglasses came from.
If you liked this
Resident Evil 4 Separate Ways (2023), because it’s the only time you get Ada’s full story without Leon in the way. Resident Evil 6 Ada campaign (2012), because the crossbow and stealth sections play unlike anything else in the series. Dead by Daylight Project W (2022), because it’s the cheapest way to play as Ada with friends.
What Ada actually wants: the lore, with spoilers
Spoiler warning
This section spoils the endings of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4 and its remake, Separate Ways and Resident Evil 6.
Ada’s story across the games is a slow reveal of a woman who lies to everyone, including her employers, and keeps one honest attachment she refuses to admit to. In 1998 she tells Leon she’s hunting her boyfriend John, an Umbrella researcher whose letter to “Ada” you can find in the first Resident Evil (1996). John was real, but he was a mark. Her job was the G-Virus. She gets a sample, gets shot by Annette Birkin, appears to die in a fall, then throws Leon the rocket launcher he needs to kill the Tyrant. “Death’s Door” in The Umbrella Chronicles shows her limping out of the city and into Wesker’s hands.
By 2004 she works for Wesker’s organisation, sent to Spain to recover a dominant-strain Plaga from Osmund Saddler. The original Separate Ways ends with her taking the sample off Leon at gunpoint and leaving with it. Ada’s Reports suggest she handed Wesker a lesser sample and kept the real one, which is how fans explained Wesker’s later obsession in Resident Evil 5. The 2023 Separate Ways rewrites this cleanly: Ada is infected with a Plaga herself, Luis Sera’s suppressant keeps her alive, and in the final scene she orders the helicopter pilot to change course rather than deliver the sample to Wesker. That’s the canon now. She chose Leon’s side, at least once.
Resident Evil 6 is about what that choice costs. Derek Simmons, head of a shadowy group called The Family, became obsessed with Ada and used the C-Virus to transform a researcher named Carla Radames into her exact double. Carla then founded Neo-Umbrella and framed Ada for a global bioterror attack. Ada’s campaign is her hunting her own copy, watching Carla die, and then helping Leon and Helena Harper destroy Simmons. She ends the game burning Carla’s lab and taking a call for her next job. No resolution, no confession, just the same woman walking away again.
That’s the pattern across all eight games. Ada never explains herself, never stays, and never once lets Leon down when it matters. Requiem will either finally pay that off or keep her exactly as she is, and honestly either is fine.
FAQ
What game does Ada Wong first appear in?
Resident Evil 2, released by Capcom for the PlayStation on 21 January 1998. Her name is mentioned a year earlier in a researcher’s letter in the original Resident Evil (1996), but she isn’t seen until RE2.
Is Ada Wong a villain?
No, but she isn’t a hero either. She’s a freelance spy who works for whoever pays, including Albert Wesker in Resident Evil 4. She has repeatedly saved Leon’s life and has never attacked him directly.
Which Resident Evil games let you play as Ada?
All of them in some form except Darkside Chronicles. You get short sections in both versions of Resident Evil 2, Assignment Ada and Separate Ways in both versions of Resident Evil 4, the “Death’s Door” scenario in Umbrella Chronicles, a full campaign in Resident Evil 6, and multiplayer modes in Re:Verse and Dead by Daylight.
Who voices Ada Wong?
Sally Cahill in the 1998 and 2005 originals and The Darkside Chronicles, Megan Hollingshead in The Umbrella Chronicles, Courtenay Taylor in Resident Evil 6 and the film Damnation, Jolene Andersen in the Resident Evil 2 remake and Re:Verse, and Lily Gao in the Resident Evil 4 remake and Separate Ways.
Is Ada Wong in Resident Evil Requiem?
Capcom has not confirmed her for Requiem as of writing. Leon is confirmed as a playable character, which historically has meant Ada is close behind, but that remains speculation until Capcom shows her.
Does Ada Wong love Leon?
The games never say it out loud. Separate Ways in the 2023 remake comes closest, with Ada defying Wesker’s orders rather than hand over the sample Leon risked his life for. Treat it as an open question Capcom is deliberately keeping open.