Resident Evil Requiem: A Tale of Two Survivors
Courtesy of Capcom
Resident Evil Requiem takes a real risk by not choosing one tone and sticking to it, instead giving players two protagonists with completely different relationships to fear and letting their stories unfold side by side. This is a risky structural approach, and mostly it works, since the horror and the characterization are not separate elements in this case. They are in fact the same element, just seen from two different points of view.
The fear in the situation comes from the way the game handles it. Since Grace is an FBI intelligence analyst and not a field operative who has received formal training, she shows a real and untrained vulnerability when she's in rooms where people want to kill her, she's quick-witted and resourceful, but her training in the use of firearms doesn't eliminate the shaking of her hands or the pause she experiences before opening a door that she knows is a mistake. This gap between what she knows and what she feels confident in makes her scenes effective: you never see a hero systematically clearing a building; instead, you watch someone convince themselves they can survive one room at a time.
It achieves this by giving her sections a slower pace that better fits the traditional survival horror style, featuring limited resources, unpleasant sound design, and a camera that stays in empty hallways for just a little too long. It is a type of horror that succeeds since it is based on the character rather than on carefully timed jump scares. When Grace's storyline reveals the layers of her own origins, the feeling of dread shifts from monsters to identity, something which is a much harder thing to pull off, and Requiem mostly makes it work.
Leon's portion of the game presents a different and more subdued kind of horror and is probably the more intriguing approach the writers have taken. He is no longer the sarcastic newcomer from Raccoon City; instead, he is older, exhausted, and coping with the slow-developing effects of his decades-old exposure to the T-Virus. Seeing a character defined for more than twenty years by his competence and control struggle with his own failing body gives every moment of action in his campaign a new meaning. The hacking combat, the parries, the combat focused on adrenaline, none of it now comes across as simply a power fantasy; rather, it seems to be a man refusing to slow down because to do so would mean facing up to what is happening to him.
It is the best example of characterisation in the entire game: the sections involving Leon are faster and more violent than those involving Grace, but they are haunted in their own way; Leon's horror is not concerned with what is in the dark but with The fact that screen time is divided equally between the two characters ensures that neither one is shortchanged, and the scenes in which their stories overlap have real impact since both parts have been allowed to develop independently. The way Grace's storyline ends on a note of found family and quiet hope fits well with Leon's more weathered, hard-earned survival; together, they suggest the series is interested in exploring what horror does to different types of people, in my opinion.
The sudden shift in tone from the slow, tense parts involving Grace to the fast-paced action horror scenes can at times disrupt the flow when switching between the two characters during a playthrough. Furthermore, part of the storytelling structure relies on knowledge of the series' backstory more than is necessary since the game is also aiming to introduce new players via Grace.
While neither problem ruins the overall experience, they reveal the seams in the game's ambitious design. Resident Evil Requiem works because it realizes horror isn't a single type; horror is more personal and appears in different ways depending on who is afraid and why. Grace Ashcroft is a strong new presence in the series and earns her sense of dread on her own rather than relying on nostalgic callbacks. Leon Kennedy also has one of the most emotionally honest storylines in the history of the character, using horror-genre techniques to examine mortality as opposed to just creating cheap scares.
As a result, Requiem is one of the more thoughtfully developed entries the series has produced in recent years. It explores different kinds of fear, both handled with real care. 9/10. One of the best games I have played this year.
