He's not horrified anymore. He's just working.
In the long tradition of stories about what fear does to people over time, Resident Evil Requiem places two souls side by side — one who has faced the abyss so many times it no longer blinks back, and one encountering it for the first time. Director Kōshi Nakanishi has designed this duality not merely as a gameplay mechanic, but as a meditation on what it costs to conquer terror repeatedly, and what it means to face it fresh. The game marks a deliberate homecoming for the franchise's main narrative, using the contrast between veteran Leon Kennedy and newcomer Grace Ashcroft to ask whether mastery and humanity can coexist.
- After years away from the main storyline, Capcom is pulling divergent threads back together — and the weight of that reunion is felt in every design choice.
- Leon's three decades of survival have stripped the horror from his experience, leaving behind something efficient and unsettling: a man who chainsaws through the infected with the calm of someone filing paperwork.
- Grace Ashcroft arrives as the series' most frightened protagonist, crouched in the dark with one bullet, her terror engineered to mirror every newcomer who has never seen this world before.
- The game's central tension is architectural as much as emotional — creatures too large for their spaces, protagonists too experienced or too green for what surrounds them, both searching for a way through.
- Nakanishi frames the entire enterprise around a quiet human truth: that people seek out fear because surviving it, even in fiction, delivers something that feels like peace.
Leon Kennedy moves through an attic with a chainsaw and no visible distress. Somewhere nearby, Grace Ashcroft holds a single bullet and tries not to breathe too loudly. This is the organizing image of Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline entry from Capcom, and director Kōshi Nakanishi spoke with Polygon in New York about why that contrast is the whole point.
Leon last carried a game in 2012, with a brief return in the 2023 remake of the fourth installment. His reappearance here is deliberate — Requiem is designed to reunite the franchise's main narrative after Resident Evil 7 and Village followed Ethan Winters down a separate branch. "When the development team sat down to create Requiem, they wanted to return to the main route of the storyline," Nakanishi explained. Leon, who has been fighting infected creatures since the 1998 Raccoon City Incident, embodies that return. The game's amplified gore and industrial sound design are not gratuitous — they are characterization. His kills are efficient. The horror has become routine. "The blood and guts was to emphasize his ability and how natural fighting has become to him."
Grace Ashcroft is built as his opposite. An FBI agent encountering bioweapons for the first time, she is, by Nakanishi's own description, the most fearful protagonist the series has ever centered. Her inexperience is also an invitation — newcomers to the franchise will find their own disorientation reflected in hers. Her arc moves toward adaptation and strength; Leon's arc quietly asks what it costs to have already made that journey so many times.
The story Nakanishi describes is more intimate than the franchise's recent globe-spanning conspiracies — two people in confined spaces, learning to survive, finding something like peace. He pointed to haunted houses as a model: most people leave smiling, because confronting fear and coming out the other side delivers a particular kind of joy. Requiem, it seems, is built on exactly that premise.
Leon Kennedy walks into a narrow attic and methodically begins tearing through infected creatures with a chainsaw. Blood spatters the walls. He's calm about it—almost bored. Somewhere else in the same building, a woman named Grace Ashcroft is crouched in the dark with a single bullet in a gun the size of her forearm, breathing in shallow, terrified gasps, scanning for movement in the shadows.
This is the central tension of Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth entry in Capcom's long-running horror franchise. Director Kōshi Nakanishi sat down with Polygon at a preview event in New York to explain how the game uses two protagonists to tell a story about mastery and terror, experience and vulnerability. Leon hasn't carried a game since 2012's Resident Evil 6, though he did return for a remake of the fourth installment in 2023. His reappearance here signals something deliberate: a return to the main narrative thread after two games—2017's Resident Evil 7 and 2021's Resident Evil Village—that followed a different character, Ethan Winters, down a separate branch of the story.
"With those titles, Capcom was able to explore a new branch of the story and universe," Nakanishi explained. "When the development team sat down to create Requiem, they wanted to return to the main route of the storyline." The game, he said, ties together the divergent threads the franchise has spun over the years, blending old and new. Leon represents that convergence. He's been hunting infected creatures for nearly three decades—the Raccoon City Incident that launched the series happened in 1998—and that longevity shapes everything about how he plays. The gore is amplified. The kills are visceral. A mutant baby the size of a minivan gets its face emptied by shotgun blasts. The industrial soundtrack that accompanies Leon's sections emphasizes his detachment, his efficiency. He's not horrified anymore. He's just working.
"One of the huge focuses of Requiem is Leon in his current state," Nakanishi said. "He's more experienced, more seasoned than ever before. So that kind of expression, the blood and guts, was to emphasize his ability and how natural fighting has become to him." The demo Polygon played included a boss encounter with something called the Chunk—an overgrown mutant creature crammed into an unfinished attic. The design challenge was making it feel fresh in a series that has already thrown countless enormous enemies at players. The answer was architectural: place the creature in a space too small for it. Watch its flesh squeeze through narrow hallways. Watch it struggle against the geometry of the room.
Grace Ashcroft is the inverse of Leon. She's an FBI agent with no experience in this world, seeing bioweapons and infected creatures for the first time. She's the most fearful protagonist the series has ever centered, Nakanishi said, and that's intentional. "She's basically seeing these enemies and biohazards for the first time. So, in a way, that will also mirror newcomers to the series who are just joining us." As Grace progresses through the game, she learns, she adapts, she becomes stronger. Her arc is about overcoming fear. Leon's arc is about the cost of having already overcome it so many times that the horror has become routine.
The story itself is more intimate than the globe-spanning conspiracy narratives the franchise has explored in recent years. Nakanishi framed it as personal—a story about two people confronting terror in a confined space, learning to survive it, and finding something like peace on the other side. He reflected on why horror games matter at all, why people pay to be scared. "Most people are smiling when they come out," he said of haunted house attractions. "There's some part of being human that you want to overcome that fear, and that eventually brings peace and joy, in a way." Requiem, it seems, is built on that premise: that the act of facing down horror, of surviving it, of mastering it, is itself the point.
Citas Notables
Requiem ties together the new and old, with Leon representing that convergence of the franchise's divergent storylines.— Director Kōshi Nakanishi
The blood and guts emphasize Leon's ability and how natural fighting has become to him after decades of experience.— Director Kōshi Nakanishi
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why bring Leon back now, after so long away from the main story?
The last two games followed Ethan Winters down a different narrative path. Requiem is about gathering those threads back together—returning to the central storyline while keeping what worked in those side stories. Leon represents that convergence. He's the character who can tie old and new together.
The gore seems deliberately amplified. Is that just spectacle, or does it serve the story?
It's about Leon's relationship to violence. He's been doing this for thirty years. The blood and brutality aren't shocking to him anymore—they're just the work. The gore shows his mastery, his calm. It's the sound design and the violence together that tell you he's not afraid.
And Grace is the opposite—she's terrified.
Completely. She's seeing this world for the first time. One bullet. No experience. That fear is real for her in a way it can't be for Leon. But the game uses her as a mirror for new players too. As she learns and adapts, so do they.
The Chunk boss—the mutant baby squeezed into a narrow space. That's a strange creative choice.
It solves a design problem. The series has done giant enemies before. Putting something enormous in a space too small for it makes it feel fresh. You see it struggling, contorted, trying to move through hallways it can't fit through. It's unsettling in a different way.
What's the larger theme here?
Overcoming fear. That's what horror is really about—not the scare itself, but the triumph of moving through it. Leon's already done that work. Grace is doing it now. The game is about that journey from terror to mastery, and the peace that comes after.