Resident Evil (1996-) (RE) has always been one of those franchises for me. And Resident Evil Requiem (2026) (Requiem) is very much one of those games.
It feeds an appetite for exploration and rewards curiosity in a way that’s hard to achieve while still maintaining the tension and dread you expect from the genre. As you clear one room, the urge to satisfy the question of “what’s behind the door I passed 10 minutes ago” arises — a format I find personally intoxicating. Part of this is pacing, but the other is how the gameplay is delivered. When playing as one of the two protagonists, Grace Ashcroft, it feels like a cross between RE7 (2017) and Alien: Isolation (2014) — mostly slow-crawling traditional horror. And when playing as the other, Leon Kennedy, things transition to violence and action. Areas you anxiously snuck through as Grace are recontextualized when you play through them as Leon, achieving the feel of a New Game+ run before you’ve actually replayed the game — which, as a recovering completionist, scratches an itch I didn’t quite know I had.
This isn’t just for pacing or game design’s sake, though. It’s an issue RE has been trying to solve for almost 20 years.
RE6 (2012) hit a rough patch that almost ended the series. RE7 successfully redeemed it by pivoting HARD back into first-person horror. Requiem took inspiration from what worked in previous installments, piecemealing the horror and action elements that fans did resonate with. RE4 (2005), after all, wasn’t nearly as poorly received as RE6. Whether by luck or design, they finally figured out the formula — striking a balance in Requiem that marries the two genres without alienating fans of either type of RE installment. And of course, with the protagonists personifying these genres not just in gameplay, but in theme and narrative, the relationship and dichotomy between them stands out to me as the most fascinating part.
Grace is frightened, methodical, and out of her depth; Leon is a glimpse into her future. He is the same sort of person — but he has survived long enough to stop being scared. Capcom handles their relationship so thoughtfully, that this duality has been praised to death since the game’s release. But what those conversations often miss is that the importance and intentionality behind this isn’t just about storytelling or gameplay styles. It also acts as a passing of the torch. In a meta sense, sure — Capcom introducing a new protagonist — but also in the emotional payoff of grizzled Leon, who has endured several of the previous games, meeting the brand new, up-and-coming fan favourite that is Grace, who unavoidably reminds him of a young version of himself. Much of the discourse also overlooks the wildly varying reception of the series leading up to this point, but to me, Requiem benefits from that history. It is an entry that feels confident — like both an ending and a clean slate for the series.
I’ll obviously be revisiting this entry, but in the meantime I almost grieve how complete an experience it feels, as though I have left part of myself behind with its ending. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers here, but suffice it to say: strap in. Requiem comes for your heartstrings in the most devastating and beautiful ways.
