Capcom’s trailer at The Game Awards finally, after months of speculation and leaks, confirmed that Resident Evil pretty boy Leon was going to be in Resident Evil Requiem. To this point, the marketing had focused almost exclusively on the game’s other main character, Grace Ashcroft. Given that split in the demos and trailers, it would be easy to assume that Grace would take up the majority of the game, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Videos by ComicBook.com
According to an interview with director Akifumi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazawa, Leon and Grace will roughly take up the same amount of time in Requiem when it comes out on February 27th, 2026. Nakanishi said that “in terms of gameplay, Grace and Leon’s playable sections are almost equally split” and specifically called back to Revelations, the spin-off title that first came to the Nintendo 3DS in 2012. This oft-forgotten game that later came to more powerful hardware had players going back and forth between rotating protagonist Jill Valentine and newcomer Parker Luciani.
Nakanishi spoke more about why there was a split and how the character and personality of each played a role in dividing up the game like this.
“I’ve said before that Leon isn’t well suited to horror,” said Nakanishi. “Since quiet sections where you cower before monsters don’t fit him, his chapters focus on intense, adrenaline-pumping action. Grace’s sections, on the other hand, are the scarier ones. We’re really emphasizing the difference in their experiences this time.
“It’s almost like having two games with completely different types of tension mixed together. Early on, we worried players might not be able to keep up, but now we feel that the contrast gives the game a unique rhythm, like jumping into a cold bath after sitting in a hot sauna (laughs). It was important to combine the slow and fast segments well, and Grace and Leon turned out to be the best combination for that. Leon also has lots of new actions, giving you a strong sense of release compared to Grace’s sequences.”
What Resident Evil Games Will Requiem Play Like?
Essentially, Capcom wanted to give players a more horror-focused experience with Grace and then more action-oriented scenes with Leon and their respective levels of vulnerabilities informed their tones. This contrast is most easily seen in Leon’s debut trailer. Grace opens it by cowering and running away from a freakish beast. The music then amps up when introducing Leon and quickly shows him taking a hard turn in a car and blasting an infected foe. It ends with him kicking various infected beings and using a chainsaw to carve through someone.
These chainsaw-riddled, kick-heavy sections are, in Nakanishi’s words, supposed to release the tension the Grace sections have built up. He said players will “feel safe” with Leon and scared with Grace, calling this dichotomy a “consciously designed horror structure.” The structure is based on Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4, with Grace embodying the former and Leon’s sections representing the latter, and Nakanishi stated that this combo will give players “a kind of exhilaration and satisfaction that past Resident Evil titles didn’t offer.”
Nakanishi had previously said Leon was considered to be the sole protagonist of the game, but Grace was chosen to make the game more scary. He clarified that statement in this interview, noting how “that was before the project solidified” and the team committed to two heroes “once development began in earnest.”
Leon has had to share the spotlight in mainline Resident Evil titles a few times. He starred in one of the four campaigns in Resident Evil 6 and was at the center of one of the two campaigns in both versions of Resident Evil 2. The original Resident Evil 4 and its remake also give players the chance to play as the distressed damsel Ashley Graham and infamous spy Ada Wong.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image Courtesy of Netflix
