Resident Evil Village felt like a celebration of the franchise, an homage to the many forms the series has taken over the years. From exploring a giant mansion to pumping a monster full of lead in more action-oriented firefights, Village had it all. But its dollhouse section, which evoked the overwhelming dread and helplessness of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, stole the show. This specific direction seemingly shapes Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline game in the series, led by RE7 director Koshi Nakanishi. More crucially, Requiem also takes players back to one of the iconic locations where all the trouble began: Raccoon City.
During Summer Game Fest Play Days in Los Angeles, I watched a special hands-off presentation for the game at Capcom’s booth before playing a behind-closed-doors 30-minute demo of the same segment. As a long-time fan of the franchise, Requiem feels identical to the recent mainline entries. But after waiting over four years since Village, Capcom’s potent survival horror formula hasn’t shown signs of waning.
Requiem stars Grace Ashcroft, a young FBI technical analyst and the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, an investigative reporter who last appeared in 2003’s Resident Evil Outbreak. My gameplay demo begins immediately after the conclusion of the reveal trailer. Grace, who has been mysteriously captured, awakens upside down, strapped to a bed, and understandably scared out of her mind. She manages to escape, but she’s out of the frying pan and into the fire. Capcom tells me Grace has little combat expertise, and my session features zero action. That means relying on my wits to survive the derelict Wrenwood Hotel, the site of Grace’s mother’s murder.
The game defaults to the now-standard first-person perspective, but Requiem allows players to switch to third-person at any time by toggling an option in the Pause menu. Fans have begged for the inclusion of a third-person mode in the mainline games at launch for years, so I’m happy to see Capcom oblige. I played the demo using both modes, and although Capcom labels first-person view as the “recommended” experience (meaning it’s scarier, not that the gameplay is better), my time with Requiem proved terrifying regardless of perspective.
Opening the first door gives way to an oppressively pitch-black hallway; it almost feels mean-spirited to tell players this is what they must walk into right off the bat. Creaks and bumps amplify the tension as it’s tough to gauge what’s merely the sounds of a rickety old building or a sign that Grace is not alone. This is where the game feels most like RE7, as I bump around in the dark spaces searching for open doors, every step producing a heart-stopping creak as I fear alerting whatever may be lurking. Despite being labeled a hotel, Wrenhood seems more like some kind of clinic. Several rooms have hospital beds, and I find remnants of medical staff, such as messages and, more horrifying, the bodies of doctors. I don’t know what purpose this place once served, and the more I explore, the more I begin to believe the answer probably isn’t positive.
The game immediately slips into the classic RE formula, as I find a locked door bearing a cherub icon over the lock indicating the necessary key. A lit hallway sits behind a gate powered by a fuse box missing one of its fuses. I find the fuse in one room, but it’s locked behind a case. Another room has a note stating the fuse box requires a screwdriver to open it, which should be located in the nurse’s office. As I begin solving this puzzle in reverse order, searching drawers yields items like a health-regenerating shot and a classic green herb. The closest thing I find to a weapon is a bottle used to distract threats rather than deter them. But what I need first and foremost is the lighter, which I soon locate, allowing me to illuminate my shrouded surroundings, albeit just slightly.
After finding the office, Grace opens a door that causes a dead body to fall onto her in my first jump scare. The corpse, wearing a doctor’s lab coat, clearly looks infected, though that doesn’t stop Grace from checking his pulse and asking if he’s dead in an unintentional funny bit. Suddenly, a large mutated arm emerges from the darkness to seize the body, slowly lifting it towards a grey, bloodstained maw of seemingly once-human teeth that takes a massive bite. Grace can hardly speak as the camera pans up to reveal what I can best describe as a towering, humanoid hag-like creature sporting stringy grey hair, a bulbous eye, and a tattered rag masquerading as clothing.
Whether this creature is a former patient or something else, it’s enormous, barely fitting in the room. I run for my life, and the beast pursues, squeezing its large, mutated form down the narrow corridors. At one point, it grabs me, lifting Grace to take a big, debilitating bite out of her, necessitating a quick heal. I retreat into a nearby room, closing the door behind me. Curiously, though, the monster doesn’t follow. After waiting a minute, I carefully open the door and look up to find a gaping hole above the doorway. So that’s how this thing is getting around the hotel. As the creature crawls inside the ceiling, hanging light fixtures shake and creak to indicate the monster’s proximity.
Meet Requiem’s new persistent enemy, following in the terrifying footsteps of Mr. X and Lady Dimitrescu. The rest of my demo is spent trying to avoid and evade this threat as it periodically resurfaces, at one point crashing through a wall to cut me off à la Jack Baker in RE7. This entire sequence reminds me of RE Village’s horrifying dollhouse section in the best and most unsettling ways. Sneaking silently helps me find my fuse box, triggering a race to the gate with the creature in hot pursuit. Sadly, seeing how this chase ends will have to wait until the full release.
My time with Resident Evil Requiem didn’t yield any revolutionary ideas or surprises; it feels familiar and terrifying in the ways I’ve come to love since 1996. The big questions are Grace’s role in this story, what new threat she’s facing, and when this event occurs: are we in the decade-plus future when Resident Evil Village’s Shadows of Rose DLC took place, or a different period? I can’t wait to answer these questions and more when Resident Evil Requiem releases on February 27.
