Albert "Al" Lester is a character from
Resident Evil Outbreak.
He was the former director of the Arklay Hospital which was situated on the outskirts of Raccoon City in the Arklay Mountains. It was funded an administered separately to Raccoon General Hospital (RGH). The pharmaceutical organisation Umbrella Corporation set up a fake company in order to supply the hospital with a trial drug named T-JCCC203 which was developed as a cancer cure but contained the
t-Virus as its base. He also received cash bribes directly from Umbrella employee
Dr. Greg Mueller. Illegal human trials also took place at Alberts behest.
The first human trial involved a cancer patient named
Doug Frost. While the treatment eliminated cancer cells, it also made him extremely aggressive and had a taste for the flesh. He then deteriorated rapidly and soon died.
Interestingly, his wife
Dorothy Lester was also in the terminal stages of cancer and he decided to hope for the best and trial the treatment on her also. Similarly, it removed the cancer from her body but as well as altering her mental state, it also eventually turned her into what we now know as a
Zombie. While the hospital was subsequently investigated by the Raccoon Police Department (RPD) and then closed down, Albert was let go due to an interruption by Umbrella Corporation which led them to look the other way.
Many years later and now an old man, the hospital lay abandoned and Albert lived by himself in a lone cabin in the Arklay Mountains forested region. With no job and no partner, he gradually began to lose his sanity - as a matter of face, he occasionally returned to the hospital and noticed that in the old ICU section there was a mutant plant growing on the wall. For reasons unknown, he began to see this plant as the reincarnation of Dorothy and started to feed it with animals he found roaming around the area. This caused the plant to grow throughout the hospital, similarly to
Plant 42 at the
Spencer Mansion which was quite nearby.
With the plants ever increasing need to feed, Albert developed a character where he would wear an executioners hood and bore a large axe. he would then target human victims and kill them mercilessly before bringing them back to the plant for sustenance. After doing this for some time, Albert became infected with T-JCCC203. At first he was not aware, but eventually he could tell that something in his body was different, and soon he had a large green area of skin on his torso.
He became something of a 'ghost story' subject throughout Raccoon City, with people telling stories about a hooded man with an axe who killed animals and people.
When the
t-Virus outbreak occurred in Raccoon City, it essentially halted his supply of humans and animals as they had either been evacuated from the area or became zombies. However, when survivors began to explore the Arklay Mountains he jumped at the chance to lure them to their doom and feed his giant plant. However, he was unable to do so and became overwhelmed by their skill.
The giant plant was destroyed by the survivors - and the withering roots which essentially held the building up began to fail and the hospital started to crumble. Instead of trying to escape, he ran back to the source of the plant - the ICU, and there he found the body of Dorothy. It's likely that her body was stored inside the heart of the plant - when it emerged it was partially decomposed.
Albert then died when a large piece of rubble landed on him, crushing him to death.
He is playable through unlocking and actually has a few different types. Two of them are based on
George Hamilton, one is based on
Kevin Ryman and the other is either based on
Mark Wilkins or
David King depending on which game you are playing. Interestingly, although one of his 'costumes' is his mutated Axe-wielding model, his axe is not available as a weapon.
It's worth pointing out, (obviously) his name sounds similar to
Albert Wesker. This may have been coincidental.
