I’m sitting in a small theater, watching a behind-closed-doors demonstration of Resident Evil Requiem (RE9). As the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, I have to keep reminding myself it’s just a hallway.
There, stretching out ahead was a simple hallway, a sconce lighting the door at the far end. There were no monsters, no blood and gore, just a hallway, a lit door, and darkness in between. And I was terrified. The stillness was broken only by the heavy breathing of the player character and the rusty creeking of chandeliers swaying above.
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Each step screams of danger, yet none came on the long march, even as the threshold was crossed. Through the door was an old galley-style kitchen, an antiquated push-button light switch to the right just inside. As an unsteady hand reached out and pushed the button, the darkness was pierced by a sudden flash of light, a loud crack pierced the air, and people screamed in terror all around me.
At Summer Games Fest, But Why Tho? had the chance to sit in on a first look at Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline entry in the Resident Evil series. Two things became abundantly clear in our roughly 30 minutes of watching live gameplay. RE9 was incorporating the lessons of every one of its predecessors. And it is going to be scary as hell.
RE9 started as just a hallway, and then it got even worse.
Initially revealed during the Summer Games Fest live stream, Resident Evil Requiem is Capcom’s latest sojourn into Survival Horror. Here you will play as Grace Ashcroft, FBI analyst and daughter of Resident Evil: Outbreak’s Alyssa Ashcroft. She’s been sent to investigate a body linked to a series of mysterious deaths and strange pathology. This investigation leads her to the Wrenwood Hotel, where her mother had been murdered eight years prior.
Somehow, things have gotten even worse for Grace after accepting that assignment. She’s strapped to a gurney, an IV drip in her arm. The gurney is propped against a wall, positioned so that Grace is hanging upside down. Her only means of escape is using her free fingers to tug on the line to the IV, eventually pulling down the glass container, and using a shard of the broken glass to cut through her restraint. The graphical fidelity is spectacular, which makes it all the more painful when she slices her wrist with the glass and rips the IV needle from her arm.
As Grace gets her bearings, we see the world through her eyes. She is in what appears to be a dilapidated hotel room that looks like it was built in the 1950s (and not cleaned since). She exits through the single door and is greeted with the aforementioned hallway, illuminated by moonlight filtering through windows to her left and a few dim, red emergency lights to the right.
Grace is compelling, and Resident Evil Requiem’s atmosphere is oppressive.
The crack and flash that greeted her when she pushed the switch in the kitchen were the power coming on. The lights flicker to life, illuminating half of the kitchen nearest to her, though the rest remains pitch black. From the darkness, a lone glass bottle rolls toward Grace, though whatever sent it her way remains unseen.
There are no other sounds or signs of movement, but there’s a strong feeling that stepping out of the light means certain death. Grace instead turns back to the hallway, and taking a detour away from the room she awoke in, follow a side path. There isn’t any music or other explicit indicators that we should be afraid, but the tension of the dark passages is palpable. Suddenly, a light blinks to life in the distance, revealing a towering, twisted creature! No, wait, it’s a statue of a man atop a horse. Even as a bystander in the audience, the paranoia is getting the better of me.
Eventually, Grace comes to a doorway that seems to lead towards a path out, but it’s blocked by bars. The controls are nearby, but missing a fuse, a classic Resident Evil key item search if ever there was one. She explores another guest room, there’s no fuse, but there is a bottle she can throw, and a Zippo-style lighter. Its illumination effect is minimal, though the reflection of the light off of metal decorations in the hallways as she continues exploring is spectacular.
Lighter in hand, she returns to finish searching the kitchen.
Grace, the rep from Capcom, explains, isn’t a fighter. She has some training with firearms, but it’s doubtful she is going to be throwing out a lot of spin kicks or executing suplexes. Her growth isn’t about becoming a lethal zombie thrashing killing machine, it’s about learning to overcome her fear. Addicting fear, they tell us, is the core concept of Resident Evil Requiem.
Grace reaches the back of the kitchen and comes to the pantry door, her only source of light the lighter in her hand. She opens the door, and a person bursts through directly at her, filling her field of vision. What seemed like an attacker is instead a dead body, though his eyes and skin are wrong somehow, like an unnatural sort of decay is taking place.
As Grace recovers from the jump scare, it becomes clear the danger hasn’t passed as a massive hand reaches out, wraps itself around the body, and drags it away, eating it with a sickening, wet crunch. A few seconds pass, then, from the dark pantry, the creature emerges. It resembles a person, though easily twice as tall, with long, gangly limbs that are somehow still too long for its body. Grace turns, runs, and the creature gives chase. It’s only when she ducks into a side room, taking refuge in a closet, that whatever it is gives up her trail.
From here, a cat-and-mouse game plays out. Grace returns to the kitchen, enters the pantry to find it soaked with blood and filled with bodies. After a careful search, she finds a toolbox and a screwdriver, perfect for freeing an unneeded fuse to use on the gate controls. As she searches the remaining rooms, however, she gets the creature’s attention again, perhaps by sprinting too near it. It crashes through a wall, grabs Grace, and, with a massive bite, takes a chunk out of her shoulder, though she’s able to escape and apply a healing injection.
Resident Evil 9 is terrifying while capturing its past.
Later she comes across a fuse held in place by a screw in a lit room. She is free with the screwdriver from earlier; she has what she needs for the gate controls, but now is bathed in darkness once again. As she creeps towards the locked bars, the creature drops down from a hole in the ceiling and gives chase once again.
As the demo concluded, they showed us one last trick. The menu pops open with the flick of a button, and after a simple toggle, the perspective switches from first to third person, which you can do at any time. Leaving the presentation, a few things stuck out to me. This was utterly terrifying, in the best, heart-pounding way. It’s also gorgeous, and it is easily one of the best-looking games Capcom has ever made.
Resident Evil Requiem mixes elements from the entire history of Resident Evil, from the classic puzzle solving, to ever-present danger from Mr. X or Nemesis in RE2 and 3, to the emphasis on pure fright of the most modern entries in the series. If you have the fortitude to handle the horror, this could be the next instant classic in the Resident Evil series.
Resident Evil Requiem releases on February 27, 2026 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
