Capcom's Resident Evil Requiem aims for emotional tension and pacing

Capcom’s next mainline Resident Evil entry, Resident Evil Requiem, aims to push the series’ emotional and pacing extremes rather than simply escalating gore, director Kōshi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazawa said as the studio prepares for a February 27, 2026, release on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. The game, showcased in a playable demo at Gamescom, returns players to Raccoon City 30 years after the original outbreak and introduces a new protagonist, FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, who begins the story terrified and unarmed but is promised to grow into a more capable survivor.

A major new accessibility and design choice is the ability to swap freely between first and third person camera perspectives. Nakanishi said that the first person perspective he used on Resident Evil 7 made that game intensely immersive but also too frightening for some players. Third person in Requiem is intended as an option for those who found that intensity overwhelming, he said, and the team added character animations and other tweaks so the same scenes convey distinct emotional impacts in each view.

Capcom’s creative lead described Requiem’s central design ambition as enlarging the...