We all have regrets. And while you can’t do anything to fix your regrets, you can leave them behind.
That’s the idea at the very heart of Resident Evil Requiem, a game that feels like it wants to be a final sendoff for the lengthy saga of Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, and the series’s now hunky poster boy Leon Kennedy. But in doing so, it seems only fitting that Requiem is riddled with not only Resident Evil’s biggest strengths, but also its weaknesses. What results is quite possibly the most Resident Evil game you can imagine: a roller-coaster ride of action set pieces, a terrifying puzzle box, a baffling whirlwind of absurd story twists, and a healthy dose of unrealized potential.
Resident Evil Requiem may not be a genre-defining masterpiece, but it’s another strong entry in the legendary horror franchise – and one that nails its shlocky feel. And while it’s impossible to tell at this moment if Requiem’s promise of truly moving on from the past is true, it’s the game’s most tantalizing tease.
A Tale of Two Heroes
Requiem is in a bit of a strange spot, story-wise. It draws on threads from both the remakes and the Resident Evil 7 and Village sagas, but, above all, it is a direct continuation of the Umbrella and Raccoon City storyline. And while newcomer Grace Ashcroft has been the face of the game so far, there’s one thing I want to make abundantly clear – this is a Leon Kennedy game through and through.
Requiem kicks off with Grace, an FBI analyst, getting sent to investigate a series of bizarre deaths near the condemned Wrenwood Hotel – where her mother, journalist Alyssa Ashcroft, was murdered eight years prior. There, she’s kidnapped by former Umbrella scientist Victor Gideon, taken to his lair at Rhodes Medical Center, where she crosses paths with Leon, who’s also investigating several strange deaths.
The two characters’ stories then intertwine as you flip back and forth between playing as each one, discovering new wrinkles to the Umbrella conspiracy that shake the foundations of the entire franchise. While I’m restricted from talking about most story details, the best way I can describe Requiem is as a “lore game.” This entry offers a new perspective on why Capcom remade the likes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 – as a way to prep players with the info they needed to go into Requiem. If you’re into that freaky deaky Umbrella stuff, boy, you’re in for a treat – as this game dives headfirst into it.
But that also represents one of my bigger issues with Requiem at large, an overdependence on nostalgia. Requiem absolutely sings in the gameplay design department, which we’ll get to shortly, and there are a handful of new story ideas that are surprisingly effective. But at a certain point in Requiem, the game starts heavily leaning on its idea of leaving the past behind – but gets swept up in trying to bring all its disparate lore threads together. And it’s hard to describe these nostalgia plays as anything more than a mixed bag.
On one hand, I genuinely love Leon grappling with his past failures, haunted by his inability to stop the destruction of Raccoon City, and in the years after, repeatedly failing to stop other bioterrorism outbreaks. But on the other hand, without saying too much, Requiem resurrects entire plotlines and even enemies in a way that feels cheap, more of a Star Wars: The Force Awakens style “remember this?!” play. When Requiem focuses on the emotion of its core characters, it’s at its strongest. But the other real downside on the story front is how Requiem sort of leaves Grace behind.
I mentioned before that this is the Leon show, and the further you get in Requiem, the more that starts to become apparent. Grace initially is a fascinating character, an Ethan Winters-style regular person who is simply entirely out of her element. I particularly like a line very early on where a door suddenly slams, and Grace straight up just stands there and says, “What do I do?”
Grace, as a sort of lost lamb, is deliberately juxtaposed against the mercilessly bloody section of Leon, where he, more than ever, feels like an action star carving through anything in his path. But what initially starts out as an interesting character arc reaches a disappointing end, as Grace’s role is relegated to the background in favour of all of those ties to the past, and Leon’s role in everything.
There’s a strong sense of irony to Requiem’s narrative, honestly. As a whole, this game feels like Capcom internalizing the mistakes made with Resident Evil 6, splicing gameplay elements from the Remakes and Winters games together to create something more cohesive. It’s clear Capcom wants to learn from the past, but narratively it’s a game also obsessed with said past – obsessed with wrapping things up and reevaluating major story beats. In some ways, Requiem is a game at odds with itself, and that, in turn, is why I find myself having such complicated feelings about the whole thing.
Putting the Pieces Together
But luckily, the one section where those warring elements pan out perfectly is gameplay.
There’s a bit of a “two games in one” approach with Requiem, with Grace’s sections heavily leaning into the more horror-centric first-person design of RE7, while Leon goes full-force RE6 adrenaline injection.
Each of Grace’s sections is designed as one of the series’ puzzle boxes, where you navigate around an interconnected area, completing puzzles, running away from a pursuer, and poking around for information. But what’s truly impressive about Grace’s sections is how meticulously designed each one feels, with a wealth of moving parts that all click together perfectly.
There’s a huge emphasis on ammo and inventory management as Grace, and I constantly found myself scrounging for crafting materials and every bit of ammo I could find – oftentimes spending a few minutes in the menu simply crafting and sorting things between my inventory and the save room box. Then the game layers in a wealth of interesting contextual elements and enemy designs. The mutated zombies of Requiem all basically have muscle memory, remnants of the lives they lived before. This means that each enemy often has a kind of tick or tendency.
Worker zombies in the care center remember having to turn off all the lights, meaning you can use lights to distract them and sneak by – like moths to a flame. Maid zombies diligently clean mirrors or windows in the facility, opera singers having a piercing scream that can stun you and alert nearby enemies, and patients with head trauma injuries will react violently to any loud sounds you make, sending them into an absolute frenzy. Then you have even further wrinkles, like how if infected blood lands on dead zombies, they can mutate into Blisterheads – doubly powerful infected with upped speak, whose only weak spot is their head.
Each of Grace’s sections has a number of unique enemies that perfectly mesh with the overall puzzle design, creating challenging, terrifying, and enthralling sections – especially on higher difficulty levels. And while the quality of Grace’s sections never declines, outside of one obvious short piece that’s easily the weakest of the game, because of that growing focus on Leon, the game naturally pivots away from her in the latter half.
And while that’s slightly disappointing, the good news is that Leon’s gameplay is equally enjoyable, just in an entirely different way. Leon’s sections truly feel like RE6 2.0, heavily stressing twitchy action and set pieces, but this is also highlighted by some of the best gunplay the series has ever seen.
In every way, Leon feels like a wrecking ball, like a monster let loose into a sandbox, knocking over all the little pieces you’ve built aggressively. On top of an arsenal of pistols, shotguns, rifles, and more, Leon has a deadly axe that he can use for melee attacks, stealth, and executions – quite literally hacking off enemies’ heads in a single blow. It’s genuinely delightful how brutal Leon’s combat feels, giving off a sense of a grizzled veteran, a kind of John Wick that can blow off zombies’ heads without looking – but still has a rolodex of one-liners in his head (there’s some all-timer Leon lines here).
But similarly to Grace’s sections, what helps elevate Leon’s gameplay is the use of smart, dynamic mechanics and set pieces that break up the minute-to-minute flow. For example, in one section, you climb up a demolished building, shooting out glass panes beneath the enemy’s feet to send them plummeting below.
These two disparate halves of Requiem both feel like thoughtful advancements of Resident Evil’s gameplay design, in entirely different ways. But because of that character split and de-emphasizing of Grace, the game’s pacing can be a bit all over the place, with Leon’s sections running anywhere from ten minutes to four hours.
And while I universally like almost everything that’s here, gameplay-wise, there is still a sense of unfulfilled potential – and I think that’s largely Requiem’s largest flaw. The two-games-in-one approach means that there’s just a tinge of each side of the game lacking that critical punch. Grace’s sections are great, but there’s ultimately no meaningful resolution for her, both narratively and mechanically.\
I wish there were a cathartic ending to Grace’s gameplay, making all the meticulous resource management I put in feel worth it, but instead, the game centers on Leon’s action. Similarly, there are hints of how Leon’s action focus could integrate with methodical horror, but it’s all too brief. What’s there is great, I just wish there was a little bit more.
Verdict
One of the most fascinating things about Resident Evil, as a franchise, is how often these games take on different interpretations as the series progresses. We don’t think of Resident Evil 5 the same way as when it came out, or Resident Evil 6, or Village. This is one of the few gaming franchises that meaningfully uses the past, both narratively and from a design standpoint. These are games integrally shaped by their place in time, the world, and the larger series. And similarly, I think Requiem is a game that we’ll be talking about for years to come, reevaluating more than once.
With that in mind, Requiem is a game that is undoubtedly tied to the last decade of Resident Evil – directly building on the story of Resident Evil 2 Remake, while integrating design innovations from the Winters games. It’s a game hopelessly obsessed with the past, while still wanting to be “about” looking to the future.
It’s utterly fascinating to see a game pulled in so many directions, by so many different ideas, and still, in the end, turn out pretty good. I have problems and quibbles with Requeim, to be sure, but it’s hard to deny the game has an air of confidence about it – a confidence that’s infectious. I may not love everything that happened, but damn if I’m not glad I experienced the wild ride Resident Evil Requiem took me on.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
