How to get the wooden cog & skip the farm Resident Evil 4 remake

One of the many helpful skips in the remake

Right near the beginning of Chapter 1 of the Resident Evil 4 remake, you have several skips available in the village portion of the story. There’s the village square bell skip, and the wooden cog/farm skip. Here’s how to do the latter and keep trucking to your S-rank clear time.

Option 1: To skip the farm in the Resident Evil 4 remake, you can shoot the lock with your pistol

Walk into the farm (past the typewriter) and veer right. Look through the window at the back of the barn (taking out the enemy via stealth) and look for the lock on the door. Shooting the lock off will create a shortcut that will allow you to skip much of the farm; instead of running through it laboriously to get to the top of the barn.

In my experience, it’s fairly easy to aim at the lock even though you can barely see it: as the white on-screen reticle (the thing that you use to aim) will shrink a bit when you’re targeting the lock.

Once you hear it break and fall on the ground, that’s your cue.

Option 2: Or, you can toss a grenade into the barn

If you want to save time you can toss a grenade in there to blow the lock off.

It costs exactly one grenade, but it’s a more reliable/quicker method to get into the barn, and doesn’t require wasting bullets to hit the right spot.

Either way, walk right in and climb up to loot the wooden cog

Once the lock is gone you can waltz into the barn unfettered (unlocking the front door to said barn if you want). Climb up and grab the cog!