During Gamescom Asia × Thailand Game Show 2025, Resident Evil 9: Requiem Producer, Masato Kumazawa, and Director Koshi Nakanishi offered a clear reference point for what they’re building: if you want a past title to compare it to, Resident Evil 2 is probably the closest match. That doesn’t mean Capcom is retreading old ground for nostalgia’s sake — it signals a tonal choice: smaller, tighter, and more intimately terrifying than a full-on action spectacle.
That RE2 vibe shows up in the ways Grace Ashcroft is written and portrayed. Grace isn’t a soldier or a hardened field agent — she’s an FBI analyst suddenly pulled from a desk into the chaos of Raccoon City’s aftermath. The developers leaned into that inexperience. One tiny but brilliant choice they mentioned is that Grace doesn’t even know how to use the series’ iconic Herbs at first. This detail puts such a huge emphasis on how little Grace knows and how inexperienced she is. For decades, herbs were our lifeline; here, they become another thing to panic over, and that really deepens the horror experience.
The “addictive fear” the team keeps talking about is built on that discomfort. They said that “overcoming fear is what hooks you [to this game]”. They even really emphasized and revisited how the game approaches fear. To make players feel the fear Grace feels, they made her stumble, hesitate, and panic. Which in turn, makes players panic alongside her. Hell, they even made her sweat highly detailed just so that you can feel every bit of discomfort and anxiety.
It’s this journey — from fumbling with a herb to standing your ground — that could make Requiem the most emotionally resonant entry in the series in years. Returning to Raccoon City also gives the setting emotional stakes as Grace is personally invested in finding a connection to the incident that claimed her mother’s life, so her fear is anchored in grief and history, not just survival instincts.
As we slowly get closer to the game’s launch and as more and more about the game gets released, we’re so excited to find out how Capcom will end up delivering on the RE9 experience. Players have been waiting for an entry that really gives an intense survival horror experience and, so far, Resident Evil 9 Requiem seems to be checking the right boxes. And with the RE9 Producer and Director mentioning that RE2 is a good comparison for the upcoming game, then they’re definitely off to a good start!