Resident Evil Requiem was one of the games showcased at Capcom Spotlight 2025, held on June 26. During the show, we learned more about the story, gameplay, characters, and why Leon was ditched for Grace Ashcroft.
According to Resident Evil Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi, the game is centered around the core concept of “addictive fear”. Nakanishi believes there is a catharsis that comes with overcoming your fears, which makes you crave more of it.
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“That intense focus, while scary, makes for a really fun game,” Nakanishi said. “This served as our launching point for Requiem.”
Resident Evil Requiem producer Masachika Kawata confirmed the game will be an offline, single-player game. While horror remains one of the most important ingredients in the Resident Evil series, some of the entries in the franchise have tilted towards action.
Why casting Leon as Resident Evil Requiem protagonist didn’t make sense
With Requiem, Capcom wants to return to the roots of the franchise by making the fear factor a key component of gameplay—and this is one of the reasons why casting Leon didn’t make sense.
The protagonist in Resident Evil Requiem is an intelligence analyst for the FBI, Grace Ashcroft, who is an introvert and easily scared. Nakanishi said the choice of Ashcroft was because the developers “wanted someone who experiences horror from the same perspective as the player”.
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“We always thought about making Leon the protagonist, but making a horror game based around him is difficult,” said Nakanishi.
“He wouldn’t jump at something like a bucket falling. No one wants to see Leon scared by every little thing. So, he’s actually quite a bad match for horror.”
The second reason why it didn’t make sense to cast Leon as the protagonist has to do with the story. Requiem is set about 30 years after the missile strike that desolated Raccoon City.
Raccoon City
The story is a tribute to the survivors of that first outbreak and missile strike. It needed a new character that was connected to a victim of the Raccoon City incident. Hence, the choice of Grace to investigate her mother’s mysterious death in an abandoned hotel in Raccoon City. Returning Leon would have meant making him older, and that could degrade the character’s appeal.
“There were a lot of characters who were involved in the original outbreak, who lost their lives or were changed drastically as a result of it,” explained Nakanishi.
“So many characters have come out of Resident Evil. This game is a requiem, a eulogy to those who came before.”
Resident Evil Requiem is scheduled to release on February 27, 2026. The series will be 30 years old in March 2026, and the developer hopes Requiem will live up to the 30-year legacy of the game.
