‘Resident Evil Requiem’ Director Teases “New System” for the Franchise

The release of Resident Evil Requiem is fast approaching. Heading up to the game’s arrival, which will be on Feb. 27, director Koshi Nakanishi offered a new tease for the game. He addressed how there will be some particularly frightening moments, though players will be given a chance to breathe afterward if they can manage to survive them. That’s good news for Resident Evil fans who like to explore a game’s environment in addition to those kinds of terrifying encounters with freakish monsters.

“We’re definitely going to play around with your emotions a lot with this one,” Nakanishi said in a Future Games Show chat, per GoNintendo. “You can’t keep the horror tension to the max through the whole game, cos it’s quite exhausting. So you’d need to have this dynamic pacing curve, where you have a very tense, horrific sequence and then we give you a bit of a release or a catharsis form that. And let you calm down from that with more slightly peaceful exploration or some exciting combat and then we gradually bring you back up to the horror part of the curve.”

Nakanishi continued, “That’s the kind of standard practice for Resident Evil. The difference this time is there’s a new system that I can’t quite get into yet, but if you think of the difference between the tension and the release being a certain size of wave length of that curve. I want to make the distance between those aspects bigger than ever before in the series. It just becomes a complete rollercoaster ride between the different the aspects of the series. And I am very excited for people to eventually understand what I mean by that.”

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Resident Evil Requiem will feature two playable protagonists. This includes the return of Leon S. Kennedy, who was first introduced back in Resident Evil 2 and instantly became one of the franchise’s most popular characters. FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft will also be a protagonist alongside Leon. What’s known about the game is that Leon’s missions will be more action oriented, akin to Resident Evil 4, while playing as Grace will feel more reminiscent of the classic survival horror vibe from the original games and Resident Evil 7. Players will be able to switch between first-person or third-person perspective.

Resident Evil Requiem will be released on Feb. 27, 2026, for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.