Key Highlights:
- Resident Evil Requiem redefines vulnerability by stripping away the action-hero safety net.
- Grace Ashcroft is deliberately inept, and it’s her fragility that fuels the tension.
- Third-person perspective accentuates her clumsiness, creating a horror experience closer to Outlast than Resident Evil 4.
I’ve played countless survival horror games over the years, but few have forced me to feel as helpless as Resident Evil Requiem. Within 25 minutes of my hands-on, I wasn’t commanding a capable hero like Leon or Jill. Instead, I was wrestling with Grace Ashcroft – a protagonist who panics, slips, and sobs her way through danger. And that design choice is deliberate. Capcom isn’t offering power fantasy here; they’re forcing you to endure powerlessness.
In third-person, that lack of control is amplified. Watching Grace tumble on blood and crawl back to her feet while a towering predator stalks me felt jarring, even frustrating. But in survival horror, frustration is a tool.
Where Resident Evil traditionally empowers you with just enough weapons to fight back, RE Requiem borrows from games like Slender Man, Outlast and Alien Isolation, where survival means avoidance. I’ve always argued that Capcom is at its sharpest when it weaponizes vulnerability, and here, Grace is the embodiment of that philosophy.
The Rhodes Hill Care Center demo reinforced this with clever mechanics. Early on, I found myself testing light sources – lamps, emergency lights, a battered lighter – assuming they might offer only atmosphere. When the chained abomination hissed and retreated from a lit room, I realised light wasn’t just mood; it was survival.
As someone who’s studied horror design for years, I can tell you this is classic misdirection. You think darkness hides you, but here, illumination is your shield.
What makes this more unnerving than Nemesis, Jack Krauser or even Mr. X is the unpredictability. The creature doesn’t just stalk hallways; it crawls through ceilings, emerges from shadows, and rewrites your escape routes. At one point, it smashed through a locked door, scaring the hell out of me, forcing me to rethink the very space I thought I’d mastered. That constant disruption of “safe loops” is exactly how you create sustained dread.
Third-person also reveals nuances you’d miss in first-person. Grace’s trembling, the way she stumbles when sprinting, her near-breakdowns when hiding behind cover, these are not heroic animations, they’re visual cues that remind you she is not built for this.
In my experience, it turns players into directors of their own panic, watching a protagonist you can’t fully trust. And I’d argue that’s scarier than being the action hero yourself.
Of course, this raises the question: can an entire game be sustained on such fragility? I’ve seen it work in micro-doses — Sherry in RE2 1998 and the 2019 Remake, Ashley in RE4. But carrying a full campaign as Grace will test players’ patience.
My hunch? Capcom knows this, and Leon’s shadow still looms large. My bet is we’ll see him, perhaps as Grace’s father, a reveal that balances vulnerability with legacy.
After all, there are strong rumours that this will be Leon’s last, and that he may even be killed off altogether. We’ll have to wait and see if this rumour is confirmed or denied by Capcom though.
Resident Evil Requiem feels claustrophobic, messy, and even unfair at times. But that’s the point. By stripping away the safety net of competence, Capcom forces you to adapt in ways you don’t expect.
Light becomes your weapon, sound becomes your betrayer, and Grace herself becomes both your burden and your anchor. After just half an hour, I walked away rattled, not because of what I saw, but because of how powerless I felt. And that, to me, is survival horror at its most honest.
For those of you waiting to try it out for yourself, it will be arriving next year on Feb 27 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.