While the Resident Evil franchise is known for its excellent use of stalker-styled enemies across various titles, producer Masato Kumazawa has revealed that Resident Evil Requiem will see this type of enemies used as a “small part of the game”. In an interview with Well Played, Kumazawa mentioned that Capcom didn’t want the stalker to be the main part of the game.
“I understand how there are a lot of opinions surrounding the stalker, but we are giving a survival horror experience,” he said. “We did learn from the past on how to balance it. We’re trying not to make it a main part. It’s like a small part of the game. The most important thing is that because this game is new, we wanted to focus more on trying to scare the player in many different ways.”
“Providing that players can be involved in many different kinds of situations, we’re just trying to cover a whole lot of scenarios to make sure the players can get scared and experience the horror.”
This is likely part of the company’s plans to take a different approach to the horror genre with Resident Evil Requiem. Back in September, director Koshi Nakanishi, had spoken about how the developers were pacing the horror factor of the upcoming title to allow players to catch their breaths every now and then. Bringing up Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 remake, Nakanishi said that Requiem wouldn’t keep the horror dialed up to the max all the time.
“Speaking then to Resident Evil 7 and 2, I think they reflect a typical game design that we have for this series, where you can’t keep the horror tension to the max through the whole game, because it’s quite exhausting,” he said. “So, you need to have this dynamic pacing curve where you’ll have a very tense, horrific sequence, and then we give you a bit of a release or a catharsis from that and let you come down from that with more slightly peaceful exploration or some exciting combat, and then we gradually bring you back up the horror part of the curve.”
“Again, that’s the standard practice for Resident Evil. The difference this time is there’s a new system that I can’t quite get into yet, but if you think of the difference between the tension and the release being a certain size of wavelength, as it were, of that curve, I want to make the distance between those aspects bigger than ever before in the series, and it just becomes a complete roller coaster ride between the different aspects of the series. I’m very excited for people to eventually understand what I mean by that.”
Stalker enemies are far from a novel concept when it comes to horror games. However, the Resident Evil franchise has featured quite a few iconic examples, including Resident Evil 2’s Mr. X, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis’ titular Nemesis, and Resident Evil 7’s Jack Baker. Capcom had previously confirmed that Resident Evil Requiem will also feature a stalker-type enemy. Some details about this stalker enemy have even been confirmed thanks to August’s gameplay demo.
Resident Evil Requiem is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on February 27, 2026.
