‘Addictive fear’: my goosebump-inducing first encounter with Resident Evil Requiem

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A surprise announcement at the end of the 6 June Summer Game Fest presentation revealed the ninth entry in the iconic Capcom survival horror series: Resident Evil Requiem, coming early next year.

Diehard fans of the series (which has spawned films, television shows and more) immediately began picking apart the trailer, which highlights protagonist Grace Ashcroft, the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, featured in 2003’s Resident Evil Outbreak. Requiem appears to be set in Racoon City, the fictional location in the franchise that was famously nuked to try and stop the spread of the zombifying T-Virus.

Game director Kōshi Nakanishi introduced the game at a demo in LA last week, saying that Requiem’s core theme is “addictive fear” and that Grace Ashcroft is a much more timid, fearful protagonist than the military-trained heroes of previous games.

I heard reactions to the demo before I saw it (screams and shouts, mostly), and when it was my turn to enter a dark room with a few dozen other people, boy, did it freak me out. I think anyone would be fearful if they woke up hanging upside down from a gurney, with a needle in their arm regularly drawing blood into a massive glass container hanging nearby. That’s how this snippet of Resident Evil Requiem gameplay begins, and it’s hard not to wince in empathic pain as Grace tries to free herself from her restraints. She manages, however, and the game shifts from a cutscene into first-person play, offering a few options to examine items in the room, which looks like it’s in an abandoned hotel or hospital.

As you’d expect, certain rooms have functioning electricity, but Grace is mainly in the dark, red emergency lights bathing everything in an eerie glow. She stumbles around, trying to find keys for locked doors and fuses to boot up breakers, all while something moves about this spooky space with her. Just when it seems that Grace has the tools to escape whatever the hell this place is, she stumbles across a body. Before she can figure out whose it is, a disgusting, massive creature resembling the monster in Barbarian appears, with massive black eyes, huge ears, pointed teeth and hands that are far, far too large.

The creature picks the body up and bites into its flesh, in a moment that feels like a one-to-one recreation of the famous Goya painting Saturn Devouring His Son. Goosebumps dance up my arms. We see this creature a few more times during the gameplay snippet, punctuated by screams from the players. At the very end, it seems like the demo starts over: the pause menu pops up, and the player navigates to a toggle between first- and third-person modes. The crowd “oohs” and “ahhs” – there hasn’t yet been a Resi game that lets you swap between perspectives (except Village, which added that functionality as part of a paid-for update in 2021).

The phrase “this is the overture to our darkest symphony yet” appears on-screen before the demo ends and we are ushered into a dark hallway to exit. “What the fuck?” someone mumbles behind me. Not every Resident Evil game has pushed the boundaries of video game horror, but this one has made an especially disturbing debut.

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