Resident Evil Requiem preview – first and third person horror

Capcom has unveiled 30 minutes of gameplay footage for Resident Evil Requiem, at the Playdays event at Summer Game Fest, and we’ve seen it all.

Summer Game Fest 2025 might have been a bit short on major announcements, but it had the only one that mattered for many fans: Resident Evil 9. Capcom revealed the game is called Resident Evil Requiem, but the initial trailer only featured a few minutes of gameplay and it wasn’t clear what it was about or whether new character Grace Ashcroft is the sole protagonist.

Following the conclusion of Resident Evil Village’s DLC, and the wrapping up of the Winters’ storyline, Requiem is poised to be another of the series’ many changes in direction. Although it remains one of the longest-running narrative franchises to have never had a full reboot, so there are plenty of references to the existing lore, even as the gameplay and graphics are taken up a notch, with Requiem serving as the first current gen-only entry in the series.

Grace appears to be the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft from Resident Evil Outbreak – which is a surprisingly deep cut, given Outbreak is not well remembered nowadays. Grace seems a more grounded, cerebral protagonist than the likes of Jill Valentine or Leon S. Kennedy (both of whom are rumoured to be in the game) but her exact role in the new game is currently unclear.

The 30 minutes of gameplay started with Grace hanging from the stretcher we see in the trailer, which is revealed to be taking place at the new Wrenwood Hotel location. It’s not clear how she got there, but she’s got a large, bloody bandage seeping on her chest. Grace’s struggles against her tight bonds and hospital blood drip gave me the same visceral claustrophobia I felt when experiencing the Kitchen tech demo for Resident Evil 7 at E3 2015 and these feelings were pervasive throughout the whole preview.

The footage then concentrated on Grace stumbling through a contrasting mixture of eye-bleedingly bright white corridors, filled with sinister looking horse statues, and dark rooms and cupboards full of bloodied body parts. It’s in one of these dark storerooms, while inspecting a corpse, that you get your first jump scare – but it’s only from a rolling bottle, which Grace quickly adds to her inventory.

This proves to be a bait and switch, as you then get a good look at the disgusting bio-horror hag from the reveal trailer. It devours the head of one of the corpses before turning its attention to Grace. It looks a bit like Lisa Trevor from the Resident Evil remake, which was always one of the best additions to that game, but somehow even more slimy and disgusting.

Naturally, Grace immediately runs away and the footage shifts to showing her solving some familiar puzzles involving fuses and a screwdrivers, that allows her to get under a grate and into the white marble staircases and gold chandeliers of what is presumably the Wrenwood Hotel lobby.

Capcom wasn’t offering any explanations for what was going on in the footage, but it seemed there were some major time skips involved, so it was hard to piece together what was going on in terms of the story or progression. However, it’s clear that the contrast between light and dark (which, funnily enough is pretty much exactly what clair obscur means) is a major theme for the game, with broken light switches and bulbs in several of the rooms.

The final tease involved a new option that allows you to switch, via a menu toggle, almost instantly between third and first person views, hopefully allowing for the best of both worlds, when it comes to the the first person view of the Winters duology and the third person view of the recent remakes.

It all looked great and my only niggle was Grace’s whimpering and stumbling footfalls, while completely understandable, were overly loud, repetitive, and seemed quite distracting even during this short gameplay preview.

The preview left a great many questions unanswered, most obviously whether Grace is the only playable character and whether any of the veteran stars (pun intended) of the series will be in the game. It’s also unclear who that old man in the dusty chair is, as while the initial guess was Wesker his age suggests it may actually be Umbrella founder Oswell E. Spencer, who hasn’t been seen since Resident Evil 5.

He appeared to die in that game, but that’s surely no impediment for a Resident Evil character. The gameplay footage also didn’t show anything from Raccoon City or the old police station, despite them being in the trailer, so it’s not clear how much of that is actually in the new game.

The footage was running on a PS5 Pro and looked stunning, with the flickering lights adding to the contrast of the rooms, that were dark with puddles of sticky black ooze that have to be burned away with a Zippo lighter. Everything looks very realistic and this is certain to be the best looking Resident Evil game ever, and one of the most graphically impressive games of the generation.

Capcom was in a hurry to finish up the Winters saga, with the DLC for Resident Evil Village, so it’s unclear how much time Requiem is going to spend tying up its loose ends. Despite the rumours of Leon and Jill making an appearance, some fans think that at one point it’s Chris Redfield who’s saying, ‘Have you seen the same shit I’ve seen?’ in the trailer.

So maybe the game actually features the whole gang getting back together – which would be appropriate given the franchise is celebrating its 30th anniversary next year.

With new mechanics, a new female protagonist, and new monsters, it’s clear that Requiem is trying not to rely too much on the past, while also staying true to the series’ horror roots. Just as Village was influenced by Resident Evil 4, it seems like Resident Evil 2 is the major influence here – in terms of the interior exploration and slower, more tense atmosphere.

Capcom has been on a roll lately, and with a big anniversary coming up it seems as if they’re pulling out all the stops to make Resident Evil Requiem a suitable homage to the past and something exciting and new for the future.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: TBA
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 27th February 2025
Age Rating: 18

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