Last week in Cologne, Capcom’s nerve-jangling Resident Evil Requiem demo was one of the highlights of the Gamescom 2025 show floor. Offering an introduction to the game’s hero Grace Ashcroft, as well as a suitably unsettling monster, the short taster of next year’s title simultaeously felt fresh but also like classic Resident Evil — a perfect blend of old and new for the series’ upcoming 30th anniversary.
But, as we all know, there’s something else about Resident Evil Requiem driving fan interest right now — and that’s the ongoing question mark over the status of floppy-haired fan favorite Leon S. Kennedy. Rumors persist he is in the game as a second character, though, if indeed he is, Capcom once again held back from revealing the Resident Evil 2 and 4 star during the Gamescom’s Opening Night Live story trailer.
My gut feeling here is that Capcom is thoroughly enjoying all the speculation, and in no hurry to end it one way or another. Of course, fans should expect more Resident Evil Requiem details to be announced in due course, but all according to the game’s carefully curated marketing plan. And this is why, as I readied myself to sit down with Requiem’s director Koshi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazawa, I was overly not surprised to be told that the pair would not comment on whether Leon was in the game or not. (Otherwise, this would have have been my first question.)
That said, and without specifically confirming Leon either way, Nakanishi and Kumazawa had plenty to say on fan expectations for a game that Capcom itself has been promoting as the entry that finally gets back to the franchise’s origins — though, intriguingly, the pair confirmed Resident Evil Requiem was not designed specifically as a 30th anniversary game, a clarification Capcom perhaps feels necessary to keep some wilder fan expectations in check. There’s plenty below about Requiem’s new monster star, a hulking, heaving distorted female figure that seems set to take on the same status as Mr X, and an apparent shutdown of a theory as to the monster’s identity (it doesn’t sound like it’s Lisa Trevor). Read on for all that, and much more.
IGN: Let’s start by talking about the monster — do you have a name for her yet?
Koshi Nakanishi: She’s scarier if we don’t tell you her name. Feel free to give her a nickname! ‘Big Mama’ is one of the ones we’ve heard, but we’re taking all kinds of suggestions.
IGN: These enemy characters often become emblematic of the games they’re in — such as Mr X, Nemesis, even Lady Dimitrescu. How do you begin designing these characters that become such a, literally, big part of your game?
Nakanishi: Yeah, there’s been quite a few types of so-called ‘stalker enemies’ in Resident Evil games over the years and I think it’s become a bit of a legacy of the series to have these pursuers. That made it difficult for us in terms of how to design a new one that would stand out amongst the crowd of iconic characters that you mentioned.
Actually in this case the character was originally smaller, but I figured let’s scale her up and I think that was the right answer because then her incredible size suddenly becomes overwhelming and she literally stands out from the pack of stalker enemies. The base concept was an enemy that you would know in an instant, and when you glance you know, like, ‘that’s not right, I don’t want any part of this, this is bad.’
IGN: There’s a clear visual cue when Big Mama steps into the light that suggests she can’t follow you into lit rooms. The light burns her, and you immediately understand that this makes lit rooms a safe zone. Was that a reaction to past safe zones in bright rooms where enemies aren’t able to pursue you, but without an in-universe reason why?
Nakanishi: Yeah, that’s part of it. I wanted to bring a slightly new twist on the idea of exploring the so-called mansion-type environments that are typical to Resident Evil games and rather than having a specific location that’s safe, or unsafe, you will have noticed that a lot of the rooms have light switches and lamps and things in them. So I think it’s more to let you have a chance to create your own room that in a given situation that particular creature is afraid of the light amd won’t come in.
IGN: One of my favorite moments from the demo was when the light went out in a room that I thought was safe. Are there still rooms which are definitively safe, maybe with a typewriter in? Or is it that, in this game, no room is completely safe?
Nakanishi: I’m glad that worked on you because that was my exact intention. I think with horror you need to establish the rules and then you need to break them to add even more fear and anxiety. So you figure out how to stay safe, and then you realize that it’s not as safe as you thought. It is a way to just bring a next level of fear to the experience. You think you have it, and then we pull the rug from your feet. So that’s exactly my intention.
IGN: So, are there rooms in the game that are definitively safe?
Nakanishi: Even I don’t want to know if I can commit to 100% safe.
IGN: Obviously Big Mama is the focus of this demo but, going back to those horror rules, you also presumably need sequences where the player feels more safe. How much of the game has the pursuer element in?
Nakanishi: The demo takes place pretty early in the game and the situation Grace finds herself in is the most terrifying of her life. She’s a fairly inexperienced, she’s never been in this kind of biohazard situation before. So that’s pretty much like a maximum level of fear for her.
There will of course be a growth that she experiences and she’ll go through this and come out hopefully feeling a little less scared. And you’ll have moments where you’ll be able to take a break from that extreme horror and do some exploration, backtracking and puzzle-solving and then gun combat as well.
She will get weapons in her hands. She won’t be defensive throughout the entire game and I think that it’s a satisfying growth journey that you go on with her where she’s not going to be terrified right through the end of the game.
IGN: So Grace herself will be able to fire guns later in the game?
Masato Kumazawa: Yes. As you mentioned, the series is known for this kind of tension and release, catharsis curve. We can’t sustain maximum anxiety throughout or its tiring, but we also want to keep you on your toes so you have to have this rollercoaster dynamic tension throughout. And we’re going for that again, but we want to make the wavelength of that curve be the biggest it’s ever been, where you’re going to have huge tension spikes and then we give you a great release of tension as well.
IGN: There are some very interesting theories about the monster online. I’ve seen discussion about Big Mama being Alyssa, literally Grace’s mother, turned into a monster. There’s also chatter that the monster’s screams sound the same as Lisa Trevor. Are you aware of some of these fan theories and is there anything you would like to point players towards?
Nakanishi: We’re very much aware of the discussion and speculation about this kind of thing and as a player, whenever I’m playing a game, I love to get involved in that stuff, but I don’t think it’s fair for me to weigh in on those debates as a developer.
Kumazawa: I don’t want to burst this bubble before the game comes out. That expanding discussion and speculation is part of the fun of waiting for a game to release and then you’ll get the answer when you play the game. So hopefully you can that just a little bit longer. One comment I will say is that you mentioned about the scream being part of the speculation, the sound in the demo is not final, it’s actually temporary audio, so I wouldn’t focus too much on what you can hear in the demo right now. When the final game comes out, it’ll become clearer.
IGN: A lot of people who’ve played the demo here at Gamescom have said it would be great to release it publicly before the game comes out — and in the past the Resident Evil series has done things like that. Is that something you are considering?
Nakanishi: Nothing is confirmed or set in stone at the moment, but we are also monitoring the feedback of people who are playing the game at events and we’re going to take that into consideration when we decide our next steps.
IGN: Let’s discuss Alyssa — fans were pleasantly surprised to see her return, some time after Resident Evil Outbreak. Why was her character picked to return and become such a big part of Requiem’s story?
Nakanishi: We knew we wanted to return to Raccoon City for this game. It’s been a long time since the Raccoon City incident and for the past few titles we’ve been exploring slightly more unknown corners of the Resident Evil universe. So, coming back to the Umbrella Corporation and the series main central mysteries and themes was the goal of this project.
With that in mind, actually, Alyssa was the perfect character to be the key to all of this because she, as fans will know, is a survivor of the Raccoon City incident who then became a journalist and wanted to uncover the truth behind Umbrella Corporation’s involvement. She chased up leads and as you saw in the Opening Night Live presentation, she ultimately paid the price of her life for that investigation.
Grace, her daughter, now is the next generation. She didn’t directly experience the Raccoon City incident, but her life is changed by the death of her mother — the murder of her mother as a consequence or cover up of all this. So she’s taking that torch to the next generation and as an FBI investigator wants to get to the truth behind not just the incident but her mother’s death as well.
So when you think about it in those terms, really Alyssa was crucial and almost the only character we could have used to connect all of these dots together
IGN: And it feels intentional, as the Resident Evil series approaches its 30th anniversary, to have a game that looks back at those origins, right? How ambitious are you being answering some of those mysteries and questions from the initial games in Requiem?
Nakanishi: It’s difficult to exactly say how many of the lingering mysteries of the Resident Evil lore will finally be answered, but you will get answers in this game to at least some of them. And while it’s not an ending for the series, it moves the general storyline of the universe forward.
IGN: Why did you make the decision, with such a focus on the older games and older mysteries, to introduce a new protagonist?
Kumazawa: Although there are a lot of connections in this game to the lore and the mysteries of the series, past titles and overall storyline, I don’t want to give the impression that you have to be an expert in all of this lore to really get the game. If this is your first Resident Evil game ever, we’ve designed it so you can enjoy it on its own terms, as a game with a storyline that features a character who, if anything, as a new protagonist Grace almost represents that kind of player.
She’s someone who didn’t experience all of these things but has heard of them and heard of Umbrella Corporation and Raccoon City, but it’s actually all fresh and new, and terrifying. Of course, if you are a fan and know those things, there’s an extra level that you can get out of it, but you can still get a 100% from this game. And if you do know any of it, you’ll get 120%.
And by having a new character, I think we can bring you on a journey with her that shows her growth, from being fairly terrified and inexperienced at the start of the game, when you’ll feel the same, so you can grow with her and become more comfortable. I can’t really say exactly what will happen on that journey, but I’m really confident that you’ll love coming along for the ride when the game finally releases.
IGN: There’s so many fan favourites from the Resident Evil series’ past that players want to see come back. Do you feel a need to include elements of the past, especially in this game that looks back to the series’ origins?
Nakanishi: Yeah, it’s tough to answer without getting into too much we’re not ready to talk about yet, but we know that people expect to be surprised or pleasantly surprised whenever they, like you say, they get the connections or they’re happy to see this or that they’re familiar with coming back. But I’m sure that people will be happy when they see how we’ve managed to blend a fresh approach and a fresh new character with also things that fans will recognize.
IGN: Finally, without asking about any particular character being in the game, I’ll simply enquire — are you enjoying the current amount of speculation online about Resident Evil Requiem?
Kumazawa: Yeah, we love checking out the conversations that are happening, but this isn’t a game which is entirely focused on looking back. And we’re back in Raccoon City, but that’s not the only location in the game. It’s coming out in the 30th anniversary, but it wasn’t planned that way. It just ended up with the development was finished and the game is ready to release in 2026, which is the 30th anniversary. It wasn’t built in to be an anniversary title that is only backward facing. So there’s a lot more to the game than just the series’ legacy. We didn’t call it Resident Evil 9 after all. There’s a clue in the logo type, but ultimately the name is Resident Evil Requiem. That’s what we want you to take from the name of the game. That said, the feeling we need to live up to fans’ expectations is in a good sense a kind of pressure because it motivates us. So we love to see it.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
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