After decades of crafting some of the most iconic nightmares in gaming, the developers behind Resident Evil: Requiem are facing an unexpected dilemma: they’re no longer sure if their game is actually scary.
In a candid interview at Tokyo Game Show 2025, director Koshi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazama revealed that years of working on the Resident Evil franchise have dulled their ability to gauge fear. “We’ve made so many of these that we can’t tell anymore until someone else plays it,” Nakanishi confessed. “There was actually a bit of a worry internally before we showed Requiem at Summer Game Fest and Gamescom—was this actually scary? Because we don’t even know anymore. This is our bread and butter, what we make every day”.
This admission comes as Resident Evil: Requiem marks a deliberate pivot back to the franchise’s survival horror roots. Nakanishi explained that recent entries like Resident Evil Village leaned heavily into action, drifting toward the style of Resident Evil 4. But with Requiem, the team aimed to recapture the dread and tension of Resident Evil 2, resisting the “inflation effect” of escalating action that plagued Resident Evil 5 and 6.
The new protagonist, Grace, embodies this tonal shift. Unlike the gun-slinging Leon S. Kennedy, Grace’s journey is more vulnerable, atmospheric, and psychologically intense. Yet even her design sparked internal debates. At one point, the team considered giving her a gruesome leg injury to amplify the horror—before deciding it might be too much. “We talked ourselves down a little bit,” Nakanishi said, laughing.
Despite their uncertainty, early hands-on impressions suggest Requiem might be terrifying after all. Fans who played demos at Gamescom reported genuine chills, especially from the game’s stalker monsters and ruined city setting.
Still, the developers are relying on players to be their barometer. “We need to see audience reactions to know if what we’ve made is actually scary,” Nakanishi admitted. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability from a studio known for orchestrating fear—and a reminder that even horror veterans can lose sight of what frightens us most.
Resident Evil: Requiem launches February 27, 2026, on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Whether it’s truly scary? That’s up to you.
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