Resident Evil Requiem Interview: Returning To Raccoon City, Lessons From The Past, And The Mysterious Hooded Figure

Capcom has refounded its footing with Resident Evil in recent years. Following a decidedly mixed reaction to 5 and 6, its two latest titles, Biohazard and Village, felt like a true return to form. With the excellent remakes of 2 and 4 also coming within that window, the series is back at its best.

Requiem already looks set to carry that torch, returning to the city where it all began, and with its launch less than six months away, I was lucky enough to sit down with the game’s director, Koshi Nakanishi, and producer, Masato Kumazawa, to dive deep into what we can expect from the upcoming title.

An Unfamiliar Protagonist In An Eerily Familiar Setting

Much like Biohazard, which introduced Ethan Winters, Requiem is set to debut a new lead, Grace Ashcroft, the daughter of Alyssa, who debuted in 2003’s Resident Evil Outbreak. It’s revealed as part of Requiem’s plot that Alyssa was murdered in the “Wrenwood Hotel Case”, which serves as the primary inspiration for Grace to join the FBI, and for her Resident Evil story to begin.

“We wanted to have a new character for this game, and we wanted them to be more normal, more grounded, but less experienced in the survival situations,” Nakanishi tells me. “Of course, that describes Ethan from the last two games, but even more so than him, we wanted a character who was more of an introvert in these situations, somebody who tends to get more scared. That would really ramp up the horror players feel on her behalf when they’re playing as her.”

Focusing on the daughter of a character who was a major part of early Resident Evil lore, in turn, allowed the team to confidently return to Raccoon City.

”Biohazard and Village were quite a left turn away from the main storyline; we spent them in different locations than we normally would and had a different kind of storytelling,” Nakanishi says. “When we thought about the position this title has in the series, we felt 9 was a chance to progress the main plot forward. It’s almost like coming back into the mainstream of the series. We wanted to dig into the lore a bit, including the most iconic part of the game’s storyline, which is the Raccoon City incident. It’s the first time in a few years you’re seeing the next chapter in the overall Resident Evil storyline.”

While returning to Raccoon City and continuing the series’ underlying storyline made sense for the team, it presented quite a challenge: appealing to new fans, while not alienating the old.

“There’s always a balance we want to strike between fan service and having new players being able to jump in without any prior knowledge,” Nakanishi tells me. “Raccoon City is a major connection to the past games, and if you’re a fan, it’s going to be thrilling to see that location updated post-destruction, but I want it to be something players can enjoy 100 percent without knowing all the background. I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to do homework to play this game; that’s not the case.

“We definitely had a lot of arguments about how to present Raccoon City, and I got told off for not having things right a few times, but I think we finally got there. It was a really enjoyable process to reimagine Raccoon City all these years after the incident.”

Learning Lessons From Previous Resident Evil Games

With Resident Evil 7 and 8 being so successful, I wanted to find out what lessons Nakanishi and his team had learnt and would be bringing forward into Requiem.

“Although Resident Evil 7 went back to survival horror, Village went more in the action direction; it escalated the action of 7,” he tells me. “I didn’t want it to be a never-ending escalation of action. It felt time to go back to the opposite direction of the spectrum towards horror.

“You can essentially boil Resident Evil down to two different styles: Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4, and if Village was on the 4 side of the scale, then we’re going back to the RE2 style with this, building on classic exploration, backtracking, and resource management. Within that, you will, of course, have intense bursts of combat action.”

While Resident Evil 7 and 8 proved extremely popular, 5 and 6 before it weren’t, averaging the lowest metacritic scores for mainline games in the series’ history. But that doesn’t mean the team is ignoring them when it comes to Requiem.

“I worked on those two games, so I know they have their fans,” Nakanishi laughs. “The general consensus was that they went way too far in the action direction. The characters, the setting, the enemies were so different. 7 and 8 had their complaints, too, with players saying that although the horror-action balance was good, because of Ethan Winters and the Baker family, for example, it isn’t the classic series setting.

“After two games apiece with those kinds of reactions, my feeling was, ‘why not do both?’, and we’ve finally managed to bring our perfected blend of horror with action elements, combined with the main series’ iconic characters and storylines to make the ultimate Resident Evil title to date.”

The Stress And Ire From The Rumor Mill

Resident Evil Requiem has been one of the most heavily-speculated-upon games in a while. Whispers around Leon Kennedy’s return have circulated heavily, while the hooded figure, seen in one of the game’s trailers, has had players guessing which returning character, if any, it could be.

But while speculation about the mysterious character is rife, Nakanishi and Kumazawa were, initially at least, reluctant to share more details.

“The hooded man is one of the key antagonists in the game. We’re starting to reveal a few hints towards the ‘bad guy’ side of the storyline, and he’s certainly a key character in that, but that’s all I can say,” Nakanishi says. Kumazawa interjects, adding, ”There’s also the Umbrella logo in the trailer, so the clues are all starting to come together.”

Regarding the fan theories, Nakanishi says he receives a lot in his personal DMs on social media, often shrugging them off, but it can get frustrating.

“I’m very grateful that people are paying attention to the game, and I’d like to reward everyone’s attention and passion,” Nakanishi says. “Sometimes, though, I talk to people and they act as if various speculation and rumours are just already a confirmed thing, and then they start talking on that basis. I would like everyone to remember, let's calm down a bit, what we've shown you so far is everything we can say.”

“People get frustrated with us, because even though we didn’t promise things, the rumours and theories were such that they were widely believed,” Kumazawa adds. “Rumours are rumours.”

Conversation quickly turned back to the Requiem’s hooded man. “Everyone is convinced [the hooded figure] has to be a reveal of a returning cast member, and there is speculation that it ‘must be this person’ or ‘must be that person’. But we don't always want to just lean on surprise comebacks like these,” the pair tells me. “The hooded person is a new character. We will confirm that much. In this case, it's a newly created character for this storyline, so it's a bit of a previously undisclosed detail, but hopefully it contextualises how we’re approaching the game's story.”

Although the duo can find the constant speculation a little frustrating, I couldn’t help but prod the bee’s nest a little more, asking whether the team had plans to visit any of the more niche Resident Evil titles, like Outbreak, in which the Ashcroft’s story began. Naturally, their answer will probably lead to more speculation, as Nakanishi tells me, “Not just Outbreak, I’d love to have a chance to make all kinds of great Resident Evil games in the future.”