No other game developer dared to reveal their newest game at Summer Game Fest by teasing players three times with an anniversary message, followed by a sale announcement for previous titles in the series, and then ending the two-hour showcase with an actual world premiere look at their latest survival horror game. While Resident Evil Requiem’s initial reveal may have been cheapened by all the teasing beforehand, the reveal was worth it.
Following our brief look at Onimusha: Way of the Sword, we were greeted behind closed doors with another look at the trailer, announced earlier in the week, along with the first sneak peek at gameplay for the upcoming Resident Evil Requiem.
While Resident Evil VII: Biohazard’s connections to the Resident Evil universe were muted early on and left players wondering how it was connected to the legacy of S.T.A.R.S. and the Umbrella Corporation, Requiem starts by introducing the player character as Grace Ashcroft, a young FBI investigator and daughter of the late Alyssa Ashcroft, one of the varied protagonists from the Resident Evil Outbreak series (and eagle-eyed fans might recognize the byline as one of the reporters of The Dulvey Daily, a newspaper for the local parish where the Baker family resides in Resident Evil VII Biohazard. Capcom aims for a “fresh, vulnerable perspective” on the Resident Evil series by introducing a character already haunted by a major family tragedy, yet not a fighter in the traditional sense, but rather a survivor.
The demo opened with Grace Ashcroft being suspended upside down on a hospital gurney with an IV in her right arm. The developers made a point to highlight Grace’s training in the FBI to try and stay cool under pressure through breathing techniques and self-talk to cool down. She then tries to tip the stretcher over to stop the blood from rushing down to her head, and uses the shards of a broken glass vial to cut her bindings free, all through an in-game cut scene before the gameplay transitions into a first-person perspective as Grace.
This section of Resident Evil Requiem takes place in an abandoned hospital, although it only appears to have been abandoned somewhat recently. There are still a bevvy of locked doors that mark a series’ long-running tradition, both ones with broken handles and others with elaborate door handles or stone carvings to indicate which key is needed. And it wouldn’t be a Resident Evil game without needing to replace fuses in a fuse box to turn on the lights or open an electronic shutter, so I’m proud to say that these puzzles are back once again. Grace isn’t one to have deep pockets on her, so she only has a modest eight-slot inventory to hold onto these key items, at least to start.
Grace Ashcroft doesn’t have the same combat training that Ethan Winters underwent between Resident Evil Biohazard and Village, so she instead will have to rely on more practical weapons, such as throwing empty bottles. A small UI tip showed both a power and radius for the bottle, so I would assume there would be a variety of these weapon types at her disposal. To navigate the darkened halls, Grace picked up a lighter with the same ornate emblems as one of the gates around the hospital, although we couldn’t make out what that symbol was.
Much of Resident Evil Requiem was spent in the dark shadows and ambiance of the abandoned hotel with no shambling zombies or dogs to contend with. After a brief jump scare when opening a door, Grace gets her first encounter with an infected human, one thankfully already dead for good. It’s here that an even larger monster is introduced, a massive hunch-backed, grotesque fiend with massive teeth that gobble up the corpse. Due to its hulking size on par with Lady Dimitrescu, its running speed isn’t that fast, and Grace can escape her with relative ease, at least for a brief moment, before the monster escapes into the ceiling above. After another surprise encounter and getting a sizable chunk of her shoulder bitten off, Grace had to heal up using a med injector she found earlier, a healing tool that was first introduced as part of Chris Redfield’s kit in the last two mainline titles.
In a scene that will be all too familiar as players experience the horror for themselves, Grace is slain by this hulking monster as the screen fades away. The audience is reminded that this was merely the overture to their darkest symphony to date. Resident Evil Requiem’s demo session ended with a quick continue back to moments before disaster and a cheeky peek at the options to turn on a third-person camera mode. Yes, while Capcom is leading with the first-person perspective of the past few titles, third-person gameplay will be available from the start, and you can even spin the camera around and see Grace’s face, unlike the enigmatic Ethan Winters for most of his adventures.
Resident Evil Requiem will be available on February 27th, 2026, across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC.
