Yes. That's exactly my point.

But another thing that I find kind of annoying, is that near the end, Chris finds a note about Spencer. This is just a cheap ass way to have this entire strange game being linked to the other games.

I fail to see how it even is. But meh. Capcom does this all of the time anyway. It takes ages for them to actually go anywhere with this crap. By the next game, they're usually doing something completely unrelated, which in turn never receives any real conclusion. They rinse and repeat the cycle so many times, that it's a very off putting business practice.