Resident Evil Requiem’s Gameplay is “Almost An Upgrade” Over Resident Evil 2, Says Director

When you think of Resident Evil, two types of gameplay come to mind – the more methodical survival horror of Resident Evil 7: biohazard (and older entries like the first game) or the more action-heavy Resident Evil 4 and Village. Resident Evil Requiem appears to be delving into greater scares, as evidenced by its protagonist, Grace Ashcroft.

Director Koshi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazama explained this process to IGN at Tokyo Game Show 2025, and how there’s an “inflation effect” when leaning more towards action. “I think you can broadly classify Resident Evil titles on a scale of how much they’re like Resident Evil 2 or Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 7 was definitely on the 2 side of that, as it returned to survival horror roots and was very acclaimed for that. Resident Evil Village built on that and added in more action and gunplay and brought it toward the Resident Evil 4 side of that particular scale,” said Nakanishi.

“But if we kept going in that direction there’s almost an inflation effect, where you have to keep adding more and more action to outdo the previous title, and by doing that you ultimately end up where Resident Evil 5 and 6 went, and although they’re still great games, the consensus is that they pushed Resident Evil so far in the action direction that it was no longer horror.

“I didn’t want to have to do that with Resident Evil’s ninth title, where I just tried to outdo the action in Village and ended up making something I didn’t want to make.” As a result, Requiem is “swinging the scale” more towards Resident Evil 2’s style of gameplay and calls it “almost an upgrade.”

However, there’s also the concern about improving on the scares of previous titles, and Nakanishi admits not knowing if the game is scary until players go hands-on. “We’ve made so many of these that we can’t tell anymore until someone else plays it. There was actually a bit of a worry internally before we showed the [Resident Evil: Requiem] hands-off at SGF and the first hands-on at Gamescom. Was this actually scary? Because we don’t even know anymore. This is our bread and better, what we make every day.”

When asked about cut content that went a little too overboard with the scares, Nakanishi said, “We didn’t really implement it, so it wasn’t cut, but- we don’t know if something’s scary. So we say, we’ll do this, we’ll do that, we keep adding on stuff, and at one point we were like, what if [Grace] gets a big gash in her leg, or her leg gets cut off, because that thing attacks her, and oh my god it’s so scary, but we talked ourselves down a little bit.” This isn’t to say that other terrible things won’t happen, so stay tuned.

Resident Evil Requiem launches on February 27th, 2026, for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. You can check out the developer’s process of bringing it to Nintendo Switch 2 and how fans should “calm down a bit” regarding rumors (especially those regarding Leon S. Kennedy being in the game).