Resident Evil Requiem will "steer the story back on track" after Biohazard and Village "veered away from the main storyline." Learn more about what game director Nakanishi shared about the upcoming survival horror title.
Resident Evil Requiem Aims to Steer the Franchise Back on Track
Requiem Began Development Six Years Ago as a Smaller Project
Resident Evil Requiem is one of the most talked-about games of early 2026, and recent interviews with the development team have shed more light on how the game came together, why it looks and plays the way it does, and how it plans to reconnect with the franchise’s earlier storylines.
Game director Koshi Nakanishi told PlayStation Blog that development on Resident Evil Requiem began roughly six years ago, initially on a smaller scale and in a very different form than what players will see at launch. The current version of the game only began to take shape around three years into development, after Capcom reassessed the project’s direction and its role within the Resident Evil timeline. Nakanishi explained that although Resident Evil 7 and 8 were successful, they were designed as more self-contained stories that stepped away from the franchise’s ongoing saga. With Requiem, the team felt it was time to return to the main storyline that had built up from the original games through Resident Evil 6.
This is best reflected in the game’s choice of protagonists. Resident Evil Requiem features two playable characters: veteran series icon Leon S. Kennedy and newcomer Grace Ashcroft. Rather than repeating the multi-protagonist structure of Resident Evil 6, which divided the story across four separate characters and campaigns, Requiem focuses on a tighter pairing.
In a different interview with Eurogamer, Nakanishi compared Leon and Grace’s dynamic to "sushi," arguing that their individual gameplay styles are meant to complement each other and create a stronger survival horror experience when combined. "Even if you think you want one style, the ‘flavor’ of this game comes from the combination of two styles," explained Nakanishi.
Grace’s sections center on traditional survival horror, with an emphasis on the tension and vulnerability attached to games like Resident Evil 2 Remake. Leon’s segments, on the other hand, are more action-oriented and echo the faster-paced feel of Resident Evil 4 Remake. The goal, he expounds, "is that, by combining them together, they are more than the sum of their parts."
This, then, means that one route affects another. Nakanishi explained to PlayStation Blog that choices made by one protagonist ripple into the other’s. If you defeat an enemy or loot an item with one character, for instance, they won’t be there when the second character passes through. "It creates a different kind of replay value compared to previous games in the series," said Nakanishi.
Leon Dubbed a "Hot Uncle" by Fans
To that end, the team put significant effort into making Leon feel both visually and narratively believable as a returning character with decades of history behind him. As fans may have noticed during his reveal at The Game Awards 2025, Leon is old now. The Japanese fanbase, according to AUTOMATON, has even described him as a more mature or "hot uncle" version of the character.
Nakanishi mentioned that Leon’s new look was refined extensively, with female developers at Capcom being "pretty strict" in reviewing and fine-tuning even the smallest details, including "the wrinkles on his neck."
The aim was not just to age Leon realistically, but to reflect the wear and experience of a character who has been fighting bioterror threats for nearly 30 years within the series’ timeline. "Every staff member had their own interpretation of Leon’s 30-year-long history," said Nakanishi. "So they would tell me things like, Leon would definitely not act like that in this kind of situation. So, there were more opinions about what he’s like on the inside compared to his looks."
Requiem returns the franchise to Raccoon City, roughly three decades after the city’s destruction in Resident Evil 3. The game revisits its ruins while also introducing new locations tied to Grace’s investigation into a series of murders connected to the past of her mother, Alyssa Ashcroft—one of the protagonists of Resident Evil Outbreak. Leon, meanwhile, is pursuing his own lead involving a former Umbrella scientist, Victor Gideon, as he investigates the disappearance of a police officer at the Wrenwood Hotel.
Despite such a dense history, Nakanishi affirmed that "the game is designed to be welcoming to complete newcomers who don’t know anything about the Raccoon City Incident or haven’t played any Resident Evil titles before."
Enemies React Intelligently and Have New Behaviors
Gameplay-wise, according to Nakanishi in his interview with PlayStation Blog, Resident Evil Requiem is building on lessons learned from recent entries. Here, players are given the option to switch between first-person and third-person perspectives. After Resident Evil 7 and Village changed the series into a first-person view, Capcom observed that "some players struggled playing in first-person" and preferred a more traditional camera.
The addition of a third-person mode in Village’s DLC served as a testbed, and positive feedback from that encouraged the team to include both perspectives from the start in Requiem. "We recognized that some players found first-person mode too frightening but could still enjoy the game in third-person," Nakanishi said. He added, though, that "seeing Grace panic on-screen caught some players off guard and startled them unexpectedly, which was a nice surprise."
The development team has also focused on reinventing familiar elements, including its enemies and weapons. In one early sequence shown in demos, players encounter a "chainsaw revving zombie doctor," which reflects their "chainsaws for everybody" concept. Zombies in Requiem "retain some traces of intelligence and instincts." As such, they can also pick up weapons. What Nakanishi simply means by the aforementioned concept is that enemies react to their environment. "For example, if a weaker nurse zombie swings a chainsaw, it’ll slip from her grip and go flying," he explained.
The PlayStation Blog interview delves deeper into the technical enhancements players can expect, such as DualSense haptic feedback and a more immersive soundscape. For those on PS5 Pro, the game will have advanced ray tracing and 120 FPS support. However, much about the game remains undisclosed; fans will have to stay tuned as Capcom continues to reveal more ahead of the game’s February 27 release.
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