Capcom’s new Resident Evil Requiem gameplay and director commentary set up a sharp split between Leon’s explosive action and Grace’s creeping stealth horror, introduce unsettling “janitor zombies,” and push for the series’ broadest emotional range yet.
Capcom’s latest 13-minute Resident Evil Requiem showcase is less a simple gameplay reel and more a mission statement. Through alternating sequences with Leon S. Kennedy and newcomer Grace Ashcroft, plus running commentary from director Koshi Nakanishi, the video lays out how Requiem will juggle bombastic power fantasy and slow-burn dread while trying to become “an experience with an emotional range unlike any other series entry to date.”
The key is contrast. Leon and Grace are not just two protagonists with different loadouts, they are designed as opposite temperature baths: Leon the “hot sauna,” Grace the “cold plunge.” The new footage finally lets those competing sensations sit next to each other, and the whiplash is very intentional.
Leon: Action hero in a world coming apart
Leon’s section sticks to an over-the-shoulder third-person camera and plays like the natural evolution of Resident Evil 4 remake’s combat loop. The demo puts him in tight village streets and interior spaces that are dense with breakable cover, ladders and flanking routes, all of it begging to be kicked, vaulted over or exploded.
Leon’s kit is built to keep players on the front foot. He chains roundhouse kicks into close-quarters gunplay, slide-dodges through lunging attacks and uses his environment to keep crowds in check. A new hatchet sub-weapon lets him intercept grabs and carve through groups, but it has its own little survival-horror wrinkle because it needs to be resharpened. Watching Leon pause to grind the blade mid-mission hints at a rhythm where you oscillate between swaggering aggression and tiny moments of vulnerability.
The footage also shows Leon hefting a chainsaw that looks more like a reward for smart play than a baseline tool, the sort of weapon that turns an already confident combatant into a walking blender. Nakanishi’s commentary leans into that fantasy; this side of Requiem is about feeling capable in the face of grotesque threats, a far cry from the suffocating fear that defined earlier entries.
What keeps it from tipping fully into shooter territory is the way enemies move and pressure Leon. They shamble, lunge and swarm in unpredictable waves, forcing constant repositioning. Even in this action-forward slice, there is a sense of being barely ahead of catastrophe, which keeps the sequence tethered to Resident Evil’s survival roots.
Grace: First-person terror and the return of frailty
Then the camera snaps to first person and the temperature plunges. Grace’s segment is framed almost as a rebuttal to Leon’s heroics. She is weaker, slower to dispatch threats and built around observation, stealth and avoidance. Nakanishi describes her as the cold bath after Leon’s sauna, a jolt meant to shock the player back into a state of anxiety.
Grace moves through dim corridors and institutional spaces where line of sight is restricted and every sound feels amplified. The focus is not on clearing a room but on reading it. Shadows, sound cues and the unsettling routines of the undead become tools to exploit rather than obstacles to bulldoze.
She does carry what the director calls a “pinch hitter” in the form of a brutal handcannon, but the commentary makes clear it is a last-resort panic button, not a license to go loud. Spending that shot feels like cashing in your safety net. Once it is gone, you are back to creeping behind cover, watching patrolling enemies and timing your moves between their behaviors.
The other major pillar of Grace’s gameplay is a new crafting hook built around zombie blood. In her section, you can harvest blood to create a vaccine that prevents nearby corpses from reanimating. It sounds like a small touch, but tactically and thematically it matters. Mechanically it lets you control future threat density, deciding when to spend precious resources to keep a room genuinely safe. Emotionally it casts Grace not just as a survivor but as someone trying to limit further suffering, even among the already infected.
Viewed next to Leon’s power fantasy, Grace’s segments reintroduce that old Resident Evil feeling that you are one mistake away from disaster. The first-person view tightens your field of vision, every footstep feels louder than it should and even simple traversal becomes an exercise in tension.
Zombies who remember being alive
The most striking new detail in the showcase is not a weapon or a boss but the behavior of rank-and-file enemies. Nakanishi explains that some zombies in Requiem “retain characteristics from when they were alive,” and the footage makes good on that idea.
We see what fans have already dubbed the janitor zombies. One infected custodian is shown obsessively polishing mirrors, trapped in a loop of meaningless cleanliness amid decay. Another former butcher still calls out “next” to non-existent staff, as if clinging to a routine long after any customers or coworkers are gone. A different zombie repeatedly flicks a light switch, plunging a hallway in and out of darkness. For Grace, that last behavior becomes a stealth opportunity as she times her movements with the pulses of shadow.
These enemies are still threats. Leon can kick their heads off, and Grace will sometimes have to slip past them while they mutter and twitch. Yet giving them residual habits shifts how they read on screen. They are not purely AI states that idle, patrol and aggro. They look like people mid-disconnect, stuck between who they were and what the virus has turned them into.
Resident Evil has dabbled in tragic or semi-sentient monsters before, usually in the form of named bosses or story-critical infected. What is new here is that the same idea is being pushed down into the most common enemy types. The average corridor zombie might now evoke a flicker of pity before you line up the shot.
Capcom is careful not to oversell this as a morality system. Nakanishi’s comments and the promo cut both underscore that this is still a series about putting down monsters in often spectacular fashion. But by seeding memory and routine into basic foes, Requiem primes players to feel something more complicated than pure revulsion or triumph.
Emotional whiplash by design
Taken together, the Leon and Grace sections reveal what Capcom means when it calls Requiem its most emotionally varied Resident Evil yet. It is not just about sadness or tragedy; it is about mood swings.
With Leon you get confident momentum, stylish executions and the satisfaction of mastery. Moments later, as Grace, you are reduced to holding your breath behind a desk while a janitor zombie methodically cleans the room you are trespassing in. The same universe that lets you swing a chainsaw like a rock star also asks you to sneak past a former worker who cannot let go of their shift.
That contrast is reinforced even at the systems level. Leon’s resharpenable hatchet introduces a tangible maintenance loop into otherwise fluid combat, reminding you that weapons are tools to manage, not infinite extensions of will. Grace’s vaccine crafting and enemy memory behaviors, meanwhile, introduce decisions about who to save from reanimation and when to invest in future safety.
The 13-minute video is padded with the usual modern marketing beats, from preorder trinkets to a glossy Porsche tie-in for Leon’s car, but Nakanishi’s commentary keeps pulling the focus back to that core promise. Requiem wants to let you feel powerful, helpless, guilty, relieved and maybe even a little sad, sometimes all within the same chapter.
For a series that has spent nearly three decades oscillating between camp, action spectacle and pure horror, Resident Evil Requiem’s new footage suggests Capcom is finally trying to make those tones coexist within a single, carefully calibrated experience instead of choosing one for a whole game. If this 13-minute slice scales up, the ninth mainline entry may not just be another pivot in the franchise’s long tonal history but the first to truly embrace its full, messy emotional spectrum.