RESIDENT EVIL REQUIEM

It doesn't take a Village

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What defines Resident Evil? After almost three decades, the answer to that question remains joyously changeable. These aren’t games beholden to any single setting, hero, monster or genre, to the extent that, in the late 2010s, its identity split cleanly in two. While the seventh instalment introduced a new firstperson approach to survival horror, a parallel track of releases hewed closer to tradition, revisiting earlier games in the style of the series' first big reinvention: the muscular over-the-shoulder action introduced by Resident Evil 4.

That clear divide was muddied a little by 2021's Village, which put its gunplay so front and centre that at times it essentially became an FPS. Meanwhile, the latter track of releases reached the game that inspired their approach in the first place. It's been a good while, then, since we've had a Resident Evil more interested in frights than fights.

All of which brings us to Requiem, the series' ninth game (the 'q' of the title occasionally flickers to become a '9', just as letters in the title of its predecessor doubled as 'VII'). Capcom clearly has history on its mind here: Requiem is set for release just weeks short of Resident Evil's 30th anniversary, telling a story that takes the series back to Raccoon City after many years away, with a choice of both first- and thirdperson perspectives. Could this be an attempt to draw in all of the series' disparate identities, closing the loop ahead of the big day?

This question is front of mind as we sit down for our first demo of