Skilful hero-juggling can elevate Resident Evil Requiem, even when Leon kicks the tension in half

Resident Evil Requiem director Akifumi Nakanishi has said the imminent sequel is “almost equally split” between its two protagonists, stealthy newcomer Grace and returning mass zombie murderer Leon S. Kennedy. After playing a few hours at Capcom HQ, a chapter that apparently follows on immediately from the pure horror hag-dodging that Edwin endured, I’m hoping that’s an imperfect translation – Leon’s gun fu action brawls can mesh surprisingly well with Grace’s spook ‘n’ sneak sections, but those tension breakers seem best deployed sparingly.

Not that I disliked Leon’s introduction, a brief but intense flurry of headshots and hatchet swings in a cramped doctor’s office that rapidly filled with lunging undead. A twist on the token chainsaw-wielding baddie also gave the fight an entertaining focal point, by turning the series’ most prolific anti-Kennedy weapon into a desperate game of hot potato: its owner would drop it, I’d pick it up, I’d drop it, someone else would pick it up, they’d drop it, someone else would pick it up, and so on. My most panicked shots ended up being aimed not at the enemies closest to my throat, but at whoever would turn to grab the discarded gardening equipment. Good action, that. Maybe not truly horrific. But good.

Still, it was only minutes before I was back behind the eyes of Grace, and I bet she’s never taekwondo-kicked a monster’s head into a filing cabinet so hard it exploded, the wuss. Even more so than Resident Evil 7’s IT nerd Ethan, Grace is out of her element here, and Requiem makes a point of stressing it. Gifted a revolver by a passing Leon, she holds the heavy gun angled awkwardly, and upon firing its sole bullet, recoils harder than the muzzle at the death she’s just dealt.

A lighter, scavenged pistol is more her speed, and there are moments – as she skulks around the wings of an ornate hospital, occupied by freshly zombified staff – where shooting down an attacker or two is necessary. Mainly, though, Grace plays the stealth game, crouch-walking past murderous nurses and executives and rifling through drawers for spare rounds when they aren’t looking. Staying hidden isn’t a new tactic for modern Resi games, but between the extended, slow-paced stretches of enemy observation, and how many of those enemies still maintain habits and personalities from their pre-infection life, this is the first time I can recall a certain, twisted form of relationship-building with non-boss mooks. Even if, as in the case of one towering, cannibalistic chef whose gory kitchen served as a nailbiting stealth-horror highlight, that relationship was one of frightened loathing.

I’m less endeared to Requiem’s take on crafting, which tasks Grace with gathering infected blood to build… pretty much anything, really. This makes sense for certain craftables, like an injector that can jam into unaware foes’ spines for an invaluable (if gross) instant kill. Less so for, say, bullets, and because the most common source of blood is defeated zombies, it’s sometimes a case of spending ammo to refill your ick jar to craft ammo.

Luckily, turning enemies into loot bags isn’t enough to downplay the threat they pose to the rookie Grace, whose lion’s share of the preview did well to maintain a consistent, slowly choking sense of dread. Eventually, though, the perspective switched back to Leon, who quickly got busy with the grenades and one-liners.

Can these two playstyles really coexist? It’s a fair question, especially for those of us who slogged our way through the series’ grandest – and failed – attempt at multiple protagonists, Resident Evil 6. That was a turgid, bloated hulk of four disparate campaigns, spanning but separating survival horror, military action, adventure romping, and a spy thriller, while only making time for a couple of short MCU-style crossover cameos per story.

In some ways, Grace and Leon’s respective approaches are even more distinct than anything in Resi 6. But whereas that was, at least in part, a cynical targeting of wider, more lucrative shooter audiences, here it feels like the two parts are actively trying to balance each other, especially as the leads’ stories appear to be more closely entwined. Specifically, and as openly explained by the developers, Leon is intended as a release valve for the stresses of playing as Grace. To that end, this second section with Big L has you swiftly levelling the same monsters that, hours or minutes earlier, had been your sources of torment.

I’m not entirely sold on the nakedness of this catharsis play, but in short bursts – which, at least in this demo, is what Leon’s segments are – I do think it works. Manipulated or not, I still feel very strongly that I wanted to take my new pump shotty, round the corner where that chef had been patrolling, and effortlessly blast him to shreds in an unanswered buckshot volley. So, I did, and it was great.

On that note, it’s a clever idea to have us roaming the exact same play space as both Grace and Leon, instead of funnelling them down fully separate routes. The same rooms, the same corridors, the same desks I’d inched through and cowered behind as Grace, I was now seeing in a new dimension as Leon. Doors stopped being nervy thresholds into the unknown, and became breach-and-clear targets to kick down. Cabinets transformed from sneaking cover to bountiful resupply stations that Leon could pry open with his hatchet (nice bit of dramatic irony here – poor Grace, the ammo was right there). And yes, those zombies, whose tongues had run so roundly in their heads when chasing down Grace, could finally have the tables turned upon them.

I won’t deny the satisfaction of the Leon bits, then, though they do carry risks. The big one being overuse: avenging your own fear is nice, but could wear thin over the course of a full game. Will Grace’s opponents, then-invincible boss types included, maintain their scariness factor if you build up an expectation of getting to dump hollow points into them an hour later? A solution to that could be to keep the transitions between protags inconsistent and unpredictable, but then that might mean playing either hardly any Leon or far too much. Again, I liked what I saw with him, but the thing about breaking tension with kung fu wisecrackery is that it happens quickly – and sticking with the more talented asskicker for too long might make it harder to build the horror pressure back up when it needs to.

Still, as granddad used to say, you can only preview the game that’s in front of you, and this slice of Requiem came across as impressively well-balanced. The full thing’s not far off, either: release day is 27th February.