Resident Evil Requiem: A Casual Fan’s Perspective
A bustling city square. Pedestrians lining the streets. Alleyways leading to a condemned hotel. A clinic with a dark secret. A frightened young FBI agent. A stalwart hero. Mutated monsters. Dark, mysterious experiments. And an old, bombed out police station. Welcome back to Raccoon City.
My personal history with Resident Evil is complicated. I grew up in a strict religious household with arbitrary rules like "Don't be playing those spooky survival horror games behind our backs!" While I missed out on the games themselves, I could still read magazine articles about them, which featured gory screenshots of monstrous creatures and eerie environmental artwork, on top of the badass character designs for which Capcom is well known. Ultimately, all that did was pique my interest over the past 30 years. Luckily, Resident Evil Requiem has more than satisfied my craving for Capcom's venerable survival horror/action franchise, and serves as an emotional coda to one of its longest-running story threads.
Resident Evil Requiem (or RE9, as I’ll also refer to it henceforth) features an intriguing dichotomy at its core: the creepy, slow-paced horror of new protagonist Grace Ashcroft's levels, contrasted with the bombastic, action-heavy sections featuring long-time series hero, Leon S. Kennedy. Grace is a novice FBI analyst, toiling on reports at her field office while being called in to investigate mysterious murders at the same hotel in which her mother, Alyssa Ashcroft, was murdered. In a cool callback to RE: Outbreak, Alyssa returns in a flashback sequence early on in Requiem, a fascinating touch sure to please longtime fans of the franchise. In the present day, Grace enters the scene of the crime: a dilapidated, claustrophobic hotel in a district called Wrenwood, where she discovers dark secrets and a horrific presence.
While Grace deals with the terrifying echoes of her past trauma, Leon is introduced as an older iteration of himself, having persevered through the Raccoon City Incident in 1998's Resident Evil 2 and RE4's Las Plagas village in 2005. He's become a battle-hardened man for whom taking out zombies and other frightening creatures is just another opportunity to fire his Requiem hand cannon and unleash a cheesy '80s action movie one-liner. It's a hilarious contrast to Grace's panicked reactions, and it positions Leon as the older, seasoned veteran of the series whose presence is a welcome respite following the intense terror of Grace's sections. Notably, you can switch to a third-person camera at any time, though the developers do recommend playing as Grace in first-person.
Apart from the dual-protagonist structure, the game features excellent graphical fidelity, superb sound design and music, as well as top-tier animation and vocal/motion capture performances. I was impressed by Capcom's attention to detail with environmental storytelling and enemy design and behaviors. One of the major gimmicks we saw in the lead up to Requiem's release was the fact that the zombies retained certain elements of their former personalities, whether it be the light switch-flipping hotel manager or the chef who's constantly chopping meat into bloody chunks as he prepares "dinner." The first time I encountered a zombie who threw a makeshift spear at me, I was shocked. Some of them even fire guns or wield chainsaws later in the game, which Leon can then pick up and turn against them in certain cases.
New guns and melee weapons also appear in RE9, not least of which is the eponymous Requiem hand cannon itself, a heavyweight revolver pistol that not only nearly knocks Grace over when she fires it (it kicks like a mule!), but also deals heavy damage to any target it hits. Semi-automatic pistols, close-range shotguns, submachine guns, and long-range sniper rifles are all featured in this game, meticulously modeled and featuring some incredibly cool reload animations. Clearly, Leon's a big John Wick fan!
Mercifully gone are the days of the breakable kitchen knife for our heroic former RPD officer. Leon’s new hatchet is a formidable weapon even in the early levels, and it only grows stronger as you unlock upgrades and master the parry mechanic, which works on nearly every enemy attack. I loved that Leon could also sharpen the hatchet with a whetstone whenever its durability was low, which led to a few hairy moments in combat if I neglected to do so between encounters.
In contrast, Grace's main weapon is a simple handgun and a variety of tools at her disposal, which require ingenuity and resources (like blood she can harvest using a collection tool) to craft. In addition to her pistol, Grace can cobble together a new stealth weapon called the Hemolytic Injector, which instantly takes out zombies and causes their entire body to explode in bloody chunks. It's the most satisfying stealth kill weapon I have ever experienced in a video game, bar none.
While the sound design and music shine in Leon's areas of the game, I have to say that Grace's sections are the true showcase for Capcom's audio engineers and composers. It's the eerie little details that constantly led me to turn Grace's head to and fro because I thought I heard something, or that made me gasp in fear as I inched my way down a dark, claustrophobic hallway, searching for a way out of the "clinic" run by the game's antagonist, Victor Gideon. Even the soft clink of an empty bottle hitting the ground elicited a reaction out of me, and later areas feature sound-sensitive creatures who will pursue you if you do something as simple as step on a piece of glass.
And then, of course, there's The Girl, the hulking foe who stalks Grace throughout the clinic, as revealed in the game's trailers. Capcom's latest monstrous pursuer introduces herself in a frightening display of power and terror, and plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with our heroine. While getting caught is truly horrifying, I have to admit I loved the death animations that played when it happened. Truly disgusting stuff!
Moreover, the soundtrack and background music in Requiem is very fitting and ratchets up the tension when needed. Leon's introduction is intense and propulsive, with the electronic rhythm and synth-flavored drums pushing you forward through the enemy horde. To counter that, Grace's portion of the campaign features subtle orchestral and electronic elements which emphasize her fear and vulnerability, to the point that it conditioned me to prepare for stealth combat whenever I began to hear the instrumentation take over.
With all that said, I do have a few issues with the game, mainly revolving around a few iffy control moments during combat. Naturally, Capcom would want to emphasize the horror elements in the franchise, but not being able to lock on to enemies and bosses as Leon puzzled me during my initial playthrough. Good thing parrying with the hatchet was a god-tier addition to Leon’s arsenal which served to alleviate my concerns somewhat, especially as someone who’s primarily an action game fan.
When it comes to RE9's story and narrative, there were a few elements I felt were missing or glossed over. I'm sure longtime fans can guess at what I'm alluding to here, but due to spoilers, I won't mention any names. Considering the highly self-referential nature of Requiem and the vast amount of RE2 callbacks we witness, I was expecting so much more, and that was the one emotional throughline that I felt was left hanging. Honestly, I wonder why Capcom doesn't put more focus on their under-utilized female characters. There’s so much narrative ground to cover there, but they refuse to mine it. It’s a very strange creative decision, if you ask me.
Still, the fact remains that Requiem is a strong emotional coda to the main storyline of the series, and a fitting conclusion to many of the franchise's long-running story beats. As a casual fan, it provided me with 17 hours of fun gameplay, spooky scares, and dynamic combat in addition to an intriguing narrative twist, which may leave some fans feeling put off. And why was the “bad ending” even placed in the game? It felt perfunctory and shoehorned in, like the developers included it to cross off a line item on a producer’s checklist. It could have been so much more.
Overall, I’d highly recommend playing RE Requiem, both for longtime fans and casual newcomers who may have only completed a few other titles in the franchise. There were a few aspects that left me wanting more, and the late-game narrative twist felt underwhelming, but I’d still call the game a great bookend to the series’ overarching saga. Grace is a worthy addition to RE’s heroic pantheon, and Leon--even as an older man in his 50s--has still got it. Especially the hilarious one-liners. They never failed to make me smile, and that’s a rare accomplishment in a genuinely creepy horror game.
So yes, weary travelers… Visit our lavish Wrenwood Hotel. Join our revolutionary studies at the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center. Revisit Raccoon City. Make yourself at home. And don’t worry, we won’t bite.
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