- 1 week ago
At Gamescom 2025, we sat down with Capcom’s Koshi Nakanishi and Masato Kumazawa to talk Resident Evil Requiem’s protagonist, setting, and how it compares to the wider franchise.
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00:00Stay away from me!
00:16Hi, my name is Koshi Nakanishi and I'm the director of Resident Evil Requiem.
00:23Hello, my name is Masato Kumazawa and I'm the producer of Resident Evil Requiem.
00:30Can you talk us through a little bit of what the press has been playing in the demo,
00:35like where are we in the game, what's going on in the story and what are some of the gameplay
00:38elements
00:39that they've been able to experience here at Gamescom?
00:42The section in the demo that we're showing here at Gamescom is from towards the start of the game
00:47and the protagonist Grace finds herself kidnapped by some sort of mysterious entity or organization
00:55and she's literally strapped upside down to a table and has no idea what's going on.
01:01She frees herself only to find that she's being pursued around this location by a bizarre monstrous creature.
01:10Needless to say from that description of all the different aspects of Resident Evil games,
01:14this demo section is firmly focused on horror.
01:17And so then, going back to Resident Evil Village, the concluding scenes of Resident Evil Village
01:24suggest like a continuation of that story, but then Requiem feels like something very different.
01:31Are we likely to see any more references to Resident Evil Village or is this a very separate story?
01:42I think it's a common experience with Resident Evil games where we don't exactly pick up the exact thread that
01:47was left on the previous game.
01:48You know, Resident Evil 6 ended on a sort of tease of Jake, the character from that game,
01:53possibly seeing where he might go next and then Resident Evil 7 was a totally different protagonist, for example.
01:58So, there's a lot of parallel threads in motion and I think we just choose where we're going to focus
02:02our spotlight at any given time.
02:04It doesn't mean those other characters aren't out there somewhere getting on with business, but we're just not showing you
02:08just yet.
02:08Although at the end of Village we saw Chris Redfield at the BSAA in action,
02:12we decided to return to the more general mainline story of the series for this entry.
02:17So, it's looking towards Raccoon City and after so many years not having seen this location,
02:22catching up on where we're at with that and picking that up as the main thread.
02:25So, rest assured, I'm sure Chris is out in action somewhere in the world,
02:29but for now we're not really looking at him and we're looking at somewhere different.
02:32Yeah, you mentioned Raccoon City there. Obviously now it's in ruins.
02:36And so, what is it like re-imagining a lot of those locations after the sort of devastation of Raccoon
02:42City?
02:44How do you keep those locations still iconic and recognisable after such a devastating event?
02:51In terms of the process of returning to Raccoon City, I don't want to go into too much detail about
02:57exactly which locations you'll be visiting because, you know, it gets into spoiler territory,
03:01but we did essentially start with the existing design and layout of Raccoon City as has been seen most recently
03:07in Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes.
03:09I won't say we went into like a physics simulation of exactly how it was affected by the biologic weapon
03:14that was used on it, but we thought it through.
03:16We were like, okay, well this is where the bomb landed in the city, then this would be the blast
03:19zone and, you know, the shock wave would maybe travel into these areas and that's how they'd be affected.
03:25And I wanted to have a certain level of believability to that while still having creative freedom to design this,
03:30as you can see here, you know.
03:31At the same time, you want to keep some of those iconic places and even if it's not necessarily realistic
03:36that they wouldn't be reduced to rubble,
03:38things like the RPD gate that we've been showing, you know, you want to keep some of those iconic locations
03:41recognisable and something for fans to point to.
03:44I think it also gives it a sense of tragedy and loss to look at the ruins of something that
03:48you thought you knew so well from the past games when they're intact and to see them crumbling and barely
03:52there.
03:52It's got a poignancy to it that I wanted to have as a bit of an edge to that depiction
03:56of Raccoon City as it stands today, 30 years after the incident.
04:00So Grace is a much more, I guess, vulnerable protagonist than sort of Chris Redfield.
04:07So what does that mean for the shift in gameplay? Can we expect this to be more horror focused when
04:14I'm playing as Grace than the previous iteration presently?
04:19The start point for her is to be incredibly vulnerable and helpless. She hasn't got any weapons on her and
04:23she's completely unaccustomed to being thrown into this kind of intense situation.
04:27But she goes on a journey and you'll go with her too. She will grow throughout the game and gradually
04:32become more competent and capable and overcome her fear somewhat.
04:35She will naturally find weapons eventually and be able to, you know, grab guns and shoot back at the horrors
04:40that await her.
04:41So she doesn't stay in this completely terrified, helpless state throughout the whole game.
04:45In Resident Evil Village, the house Benvenito, I can never pronounce that very well, was like a particularly sort of
04:52scary, claustrophobic, really unique kind of gameplay element.
04:57And from what I've seen of the demo, a lot of those kind of similar claustrophobic horror running away instead
05:04of fighting back.
05:05Was that an inspiration on this game going forward specifically?
05:09There are similarities to that section for sure. I think each Resident Evil title has these sort of standalone parts
05:15where maybe you don't have the weapons you're used to and we can increase the horror feeling with that.
05:19And we kind of structurally brought that horror aspect to the forefront right at the start of the game in
05:24order to gel with the characterization of Grace, who's someone who, you know, is completely not expecting to be thrown
05:29into such a horrible situation.
05:31But we want to add something fresh as well. So rather than just copying and pasting over how it's Benvenito,
05:36things like the mechanism for how you protect yourself from the creature in the demo and the creature itself and
05:41its design and how it feels to be pursued by it in this section are something that I think bring
05:45another level to that concept of the claustrophobic, unarmed character section of the game.
05:51So can you tell me any specific ways in which the gameplay has evolved from Resident Evil 4 Remake or
05:58Village?
06:00I think the two recent titles you mentioned, Resident Evil 4 Remake and Village, are somewhat more on the action
06:07side of the series in terms of the mixture of elements that they have. Requiem is something different.
06:12If I had to compare it to past titles, it's more along the lines of Resident Evil 7 or the
06:17Resident Evil 2 Remake.
06:18You could call it so-called old school Resident Evil, you know, with exploration and backtracking and that kind of
06:23thing.
06:24So it's more hewing closely to those lines than the titles you mentioned.
06:28It does of course feature all the classic core pillars of Resident Evil features that everyone knows and loves, such
06:34as combat, exploration, puzzle solving, resource management of limited number of items.
06:39And we've just, we've given it our own spin this time for Resident Evil Requiem's sort of game atmosphere.
06:46Speaking then to Resident Evil 7 and 2, I think they reflect a typical game design that we have for
06:52this series where, you know, you can't keep the horror tension to the max through the whole game because it's
06:56quite exhausting.
06:57So you need to have this kind of dynamic pacing curve where you'll have a very tense, horrific sequence and
07:02then we give you a bit of a release or a catharsis from that and let you sort of come
07:06down from that with more slightly peaceful exploration or some exciting combat.
07:10And then we gradually bring you back up to the horror part of the curve. Again, that's the sort of
07:14standard practice for Resident Evil.
07:15The difference this time is there's a new system that I can't quite get into yet, but if you think
07:20of the difference between the tension and the release being a certain sort of size of wavelength, as it were,
07:27of that curve.
07:27I want to make the distance between those aspects like bigger than ever before in the series.
07:31And it just becomes a complete roller coaster ride between the different aspects of the series.
07:37And I'm very excited for people to eventually understand what I mean by that.
07:41One feature that I know everybody's excited about is the ability to switch between first person and third person in
07:47the settings.
07:48What was the idea? Why was that important to include in this game?
07:52I think one of the main reasons is that we want a variety of players to be able to pick
07:58up and play this game.
07:59And we've had sort of two strands recently with the series, the third person remakes of Resident Evil 2, 3
08:04and 4, and then the first person perspective 7 and Village.
08:07And naturally the player base can tend to sort of fall on either side depending on your preferences of viewpoint
08:11and how comfortable you find each viewpoint.
08:13So by combining them both in this game and giving you the option, what we're basically saying is regardless of
08:17which sub-series of the game you like, then you can play Requiem in that style that suits you.
08:25On reflection though, looking back at Resident Evil 7's first person perspective, I implemented that as a way to make
08:31it more immersive and more scary than ever before.
08:33But it was possibly too scary. I think some people couldn't handle it and either couldn't finish it or didn't
08:37even start it.
08:38That's something that I look back on thinking that, you know, I want to make sure that people can enjoy
08:41this game.
08:42So if you start the game off in first person perspective and you're finding it's too much, then third person
08:46is almost a way to step slightly back from that level of horror and make it slightly easier to deal
08:51with and makes it slightly less hitting close.
08:55From a design standpoint, it seems like it would introduce a lot of challenges. It would be a nightmare.
09:02How do you design levels that work in both first person and third person?
09:05Can you talk about some of the challenges that making that decision to allow the player to pick which one
09:11they want to do, some of the challenges that you guys encountered?
09:15Including both perspectives wasn't exactly twice as difficult. There were some aspects where we had to make adjustments for each
09:21one.
09:21But what we found was that if you just take the camera out of the character's head and show the
09:25third person, if you don't tweak it and add in more animation and characterization to them,
09:30then they look quite unnatural and robotic because the first person version of them is just running along and they
09:34wouldn't be reacting to anything because you couldn't see those reactions in first person, right?
09:38So an example in the demo which you played is that if you played in third person in a certain
09:42scene, Grace actually trips and stumbles over herself.
09:44She's so scared when she's running away from the creature.
09:46That doesn't happen in first person because making the camera move like that in first person would be very unnatural
09:51and possibly even uncomfortable.
09:52So that's a third person specific tweak that we added to make up for the fact that it's not quite
09:57as immersive, but you can almost empathize with the character more when you see them on screen.
10:01And it's two different ways to get across to the player what kind of emotion we want them to be
10:05feeling and how we want them to be scared for the character,
10:08whether that's by seeing through their eyes or on their behalf by looking at their expressions and reactions and their
10:13different emotions.
10:15And throughout the game, we ended up adding lots of tiny tweaks like that to make both perspectives have their
10:19own different take on the horror that you're going to feel.
10:26Resident Evil Requiem is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series XS and Steam on 27 February 2026.
10:33I hope you're excited for it. I look forward to it.
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