(Image credit: Capcom)
At NYCC 2025, I got my first hands-on with Resident Evil: Requiem at the Capcom booth in what’s promising to be an intriguing 9th entry to the franchise. Full disclosure: I didn’t finish the level and died. Twice. Though apparently, some kid at the convention beat it in eight minutes, which… yeah, made me feel old. Though I can admit, this one hits different.
The game starts out by introducing a playthrough as a new protagonist, Grace Ashcroft, and it’s playable in either first or third-person point of view. Grace is not your typical RE hero. Not a Jill Valentine-level lock-picker with Nemesis slaying capabilities, nor is she a finesse Leon S. Kennedy Government agent fighting evil with sidekicks and a cheesy array of action-star puns.
Instead, Grace is a timid FBI researcher, a critical thinker, and surprisingly, the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft from Resident Evil Outbreak, who was mysteriously killed in 2020. Grace’s goal? To figure out why her mother was murdered. That brings her to the Wrenwood Hotel, situated deep in the ruins of a nuked Raccoon City, which was nuked 30 years prior (Grace’s story is set around 2028).
(Image credit: Capcom)
Requiem wastes no time getting into the horror, as Grace wakes up strapped to a chair, drenched in sweat, as her blood is either being drained or transfused. The early cut scenes look incredible, crisp, and full of tension, with hints at what’s at stake in the overarching story.
From the beginning stages, the setting is claustrophobic, confusing, and very much in the vein of Resident Evil 7, where from the start, you know danger is lurking. I also noticed something strange from the get-go: Grace doesn’t seem to have a reflection in mirrors. I can’t tell if this was a trick of the eye or a part of the game, but it leaves me excited to explore more of Resident Evil Requiem when the game officially comes out.
Gameplay leans more toward Silent Hill than classic RE, which is ironic, considering the new Silent Hill basically plays like Resident Evil now. Early comparisons call it similar to the never-finished horror demo classic by Hideo Kojima, P.T, in the sense that it feels like you’re being stalked. The atmosphere feels intentionally oppressive, with haunting sound design and low-lit lighting, making every bit of movement terrifyingly tense.
And then… the big one. As you soon learn that a giant monster woman is hunting you. Imagine Nemesis, Lady Dimitrescu, and Mr. X rolled into one relentless nightmare. She breaks walls, follows you across rooms, and one-hit kills you by biting off your head.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Speculation is that this is Alyssa Ashcroft. And given the franchise’s tendency to use children or parents of main characters as monsters, like with Lisa Trevor or William Birkin, I’m actually inclined to agree that it’s a high possibility.
Now, controls on how to deal with this threat are familiar if you’ve played the series before: crouch, quick turn, and the game’s traditional UI for item management, used since RE4 20 years ago. However, there’s a new tool incorporated into the gameplay: the lighter, your guide through the darkness of the building.
Figuring out how to avoid or slow down big monster lady took up the majority of the demo time, and despite the fact that the lighter attracts her towards you, the fluorescent room lighting in one particular room seems to burn away her skin. Whatever the mechanics, light usage is going to be heavily featured in this entry, which makes sense, as we’re testing the end of this generation’s consoles’ ray tracing capabilities.
Finally, in a nice nod to modern survival mechanics, you can throw items, bottles mainly, with R2 to distract or lure enemies. Think The Last of Us, but in Resident Evil style.
The rest of the demo leaned heavily into puzzles. Finding keys, finding fuses, and activating doors like in the early RE games, but without all the combat. I’ll be honest: the new mechanics didn’t blow me away, but they do add a tense, methodical layer to the horror.
From early reports, it also seems zombies are back in the series, though you won’t encounter them at this early demo. It’s been leaked that Leon S. Kennedy will make an appearance, possibly as a playable character. Some have speculated it might be Leon’s final rodeo.
So far, Requiem is shaping up to be tense, smart, and terrifying. A return to the series’ roots, but with enough fresh ideas to keep it feeling new. Grace Ashcroft might not be the hero you expect, but she’s definitely the one you’ll be clutching your lighter for, as the franchise continues to pivot focus more on horror and less on action.
Resident Evil Requiem comes out on February 27th, 2026. Published and developed by Capcom, it will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
Christian Angeles is a writer and entertainment journalist with nearly a decade of experience covering comics, video games, and digital media. He was senior editor at The Beat during its Eisner Award–winning year and also served as managing editor of The Workprint. Outside of journalism, he writes comics and books.
 | A guest post by
|
Probably one of my most anticipated releases coming out. I love the RE games and have really appreciated the return to survival horror style game play with Biohazard and Village.