Resident Evil Requiem is Capcom’s ninth mainline entry in the series, a single-player survival horror game that arrived on February 27, 2026 on Steam, alongside PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. Directed by Koshi Nakanishi, the man behind Resident Evil 7, it drags you back to the ruins of Raccoon City and into the Wrenwood Hotel with a protagonist who is terrified of everything you are terrified of. Its fright comes from helplessness: a nervous FBI analyst, a relentless pursuer, and corridors you can’t afford to run down.
Story and setting
You play Grace Ashcroft, an FBI technical analyst who would much rather be behind a desk than in the field. Her name will mean something to long-time fans. Grace is the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, the sharp-tongued journalist from Resident Evil Outbreak (2003) who survived the original Raccoon City disaster. Alyssa was later found dead at the Wrenwood Hotel, and when a fresh string of deaths turns up with the same signature, Grace is the one sent to confirm whether the cases are linked.
The game is set roughly thirty years after the 1998 outbreak, which puts the calendar at the end of the 2020s. The Wrenwood Hotel sits outside the old quarantine zone, a decaying building that has somehow kept its lights on. Beyond its walls lie the remains of Raccoon City itself, the crater the series has been circling since Resident Evil 3 blew it off the map.
Grace is not alone on the box. Leon S. Kennedy returns as a second playable character, and his chapters pull the camera back towards the overgrown streets of Raccoon City. His sections play faster and louder than hers, which is exactly the point. If you want the full picture of how he got here, our piece on “leon kennedy” walks through every game he has carried since the police station in 1998.
Capcom pitched the story as a requiem in the literal sense: a mass for the dead. Grace is mourning a mother she barely knew, Leon is revisiting the night that made him, and the city is a grave that refuses to stay closed. You don’t need to have played Outbreak or Resident Evil 2 to follow it, but both make the setting hit harder.
How it scares you
The headline mechanic is perspective. Requiem lets you swap between first-person and third-person at any time from the options menu, no checkpoint or loading screen required. This is not a cosmetic toggle. In first person the Wrenwood Hotel is suffocating, your field of view narrows, and every doorway becomes a gamble. In third person you can read the room, see what is behind you, and feel a little more like a Resident Evil veteran. Capcom built the levels so both views work, and I’d argue the intended experience for Grace’s chapters is first person with headphones. You will know within ten minutes if you can handle it.
Grace herself is the second mechanic. She is small, slow to steady her aim, and the animation work sells her panic. Her breathing gets ragged when she runs, her hands shake when something is close, and her light sources are precious. You are not an action hero in her shoes, and the game never lets you forget it.
Then there is the pursuer. The hotel is stalked by a towering, pale figure who hunts Grace across multiple floors, and this is where the game borrows the best lessons from Mr. X in the Resident Evil 2 remake and Lady Dimitrescu in Village. You can hear her coming through the floorboards above you. You can hide, but hiding spots are finite and she learns the obvious ones. Chases are scripted at the big moments and dynamic in between, so you never quite trust a quiet corridor.
Resources follow the classic formula. Ammo is scarce, healing herbs still get combined, and the item box returns with the familiar typewriter save room theme that drops your heart rate the second you hear it. The game is generous enough in the first few hours that you may think it has gone soft. It hasn’t. By the midpoint you will be weighing a single handgun round against a locked door.
Sound design does a lot of the heavy lifting. The hotel creaks, pipes knock, and the music drops out entirely for long stretches so your own footsteps become the loudest thing in the building. Jump scares exist and a couple of them are mean, but they are rationed. The dread comes from waiting, not from things leaping out.
Leon’s chapters flip the tempo. More enemies, more ammo, more room to move, and a tone closer to Resident Evil 4. The contrast is deliberate and it works as a pressure valve. Just when the Wrenwood has you flinching at doors, the game hands you a man who has seen worse and lets you breathe.
Gore is heavy. Bodies in the hotel are not tasteful, the blood-draining imagery around Grace in the opening act is genuinely upsetting, and the mature rating is earned. If you can’t stomach that, this is the wrong entry to start with.
Lore and ending
Spoiler warning
This section discusses the Ashcroft family history, the Wrenwood Hotel’s connection to Raccoon City, and the broad shape of the ending.
The lore starts with a family. Alyssa Ashcroft survived Raccoon City in 1998 and spent the rest of her career chasing what Umbrella left behind. Her death at the Wrenwood Hotel years before the game begins is treated as a cold case until the new killings reopen it. Grace’s investigation is therefore a reckoning with a mother who chose the story over the child as well as a mystery, and the game is careful to make Alyssa neither a saint nor a villain.
The hotel itself is the connective tissue. Its proximity to the ruins is not a coincidence, and its basement levels reveal that the quarantine of Raccoon City never fully ended. Someone has been working inside the exclusion zone, and the pale pursuer who hunts Grace is the product of that work rather than a leftover of the T-virus era. Requiem positions itself as the game that finally answers what happened to the city after the missile strike, and the answer is that it became a laboratory nobody admits to running.
Grace’s own blood is central to the plot. The opening hours show her strapped to a bed, drained and experimented on, and the reason she survives that treatment ties back to her mother’s exposure during the original outbreak. The series has used inherited immunity before, notably with Sherry Birkin, and Requiem leans on that precedent to explain why Grace is both a target and a key.
Leon’s role is to close the loop. His chapters retrace the geography of the 1998 incident, and the game uses him to confirm which characters and organisations from the Raccoon City era are still active. His scenes with Grace in the back half are where the “requiem” framing lands: two people standing over the same grave for different reasons.
On the ending itself, I’ll keep this to what the game states outright rather than fan interpretation. The final act brings Grace and Leon together inside the exclusion zone, the truth of Alyssa’s death is laid bare, and the person responsible for the hotel’s experiments is confronted directly. The resolution reads as a farewell to Raccoon City as a setting rather than a cliffhanger, and the closing scenes make it clear that Grace walks out as a different person from the analyst who walked in. There is a post-credits beat, as there always is, and it points forward rather than back.
Finish the game and then replay the opening hour. Several lines that sound like throwaway dialogue the first time are the whole plot in miniature.
Where it fits in the series
Requiem is Resident Evil 9 in all but name. Capcom dropped the number from the title, the same way it did with Village, but the game sits directly after Resident Evil Village (2021) in release order and in the broader timeline.
| Entry | Year | Protagonist | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil 7: Biohazard | 2017 | Ethan Winters | Mainline |
| Resident Evil 2 (remake) | 2019 | Leon, Claire | Remake |
| Resident Evil 3 (remake) | 2020 | Jill Valentine | Remake |
| Resident Evil Village | 2021 | Ethan Winters | Mainline |
| Resident Evil 4 (remake) | 2023 | Leon S. Kennedy | Remake |
| Resident Evil Requiem | 2026 | Grace Ashcroft, Leon | Mainline |
In story terms, Requiem reaches further back than Village did. Village finished the Winters saga; Requiem returns to the Raccoon City thread and to a character introduced in a spin-off most players never touched. That makes it the first mainline entry since Resident Evil 6 (2012) to lean this hard on existing series history.
If you are new, the cleanest run-up is the Resident Evil 2 remake first, because Leon’s chapters assume you know that night. Outbreak is optional. It is a PlayStation 2 game with offline-only servers now, and Requiem explains who Alyssa was without you needing to have played it. Resident Evil 7 is worth playing before Requiem too, purely because Nakanishi directed both and the first-person dread in the Wrenwood is a direct evolution of the Baker house.
There are two editions of Requiem as of October 2026, a Standard Edition at $69.99 and a Deluxe Edition at $79.99, but both contain the same campaign. No remaster, no director’s cut, no DLC campaign announced that changes the main story. Play whichever platform you own and don’t worry about missing a definitive edition.
Where to play
Resident Evil Requiem launched on February 27, 2026 on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. Capcom develops and publishes it, and it is single-player only. There is no co-op mode, no online multiplayer, and no plans for either that Capcom has confirmed.
The standard edition costs $69.99 on Steam as of October 2026. Capcom’s games tend to hold their price for the first year and then drop sharply during Steam seasonal sales, so patience pays if you are not in a hurry. The PlayStation Store and Xbox Store list the same launch price.
The Steam page carries an age requirement of 17 and a Metacritic score of 92, which puts Requiem alongside the Resident Evil 4 remake as one of the best-reviewed games in the franchise. That score is for the PC version specifically.
Subscriptions: as of October 2026 the game is not included in Xbox Game Pass or the PlayStation Plus catalogue. Capcom has added older entries to both services in the past, so a future appearance is plausible, but there is no announcement to point to.
Steam Deck: the RE Engine has a strong track record on Valve’s handheld, with Village and the Resident Evil 4 remake both running well on medium settings. Check the Steam page for the current Deck compatibility badge before you buy for handheld play, because Requiem’s lighting is heavier than those games. The Switch 2 version is the safe handheld bet, and it runs the full campaign rather than a cloud stream.
If you are building a backlog around it, our roundup of the best “pc horror games” covers what pairs well with it on Steam, and the broader list of “horror games” worth your time this year puts Requiem in context against everything else that scared us in 2026.
If you liked this
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017) is the same director working the same first-person dread, with the Baker family instead of the Wrenwood.
Alien: Isolation (2014) is the gold standard for a single pursuer who hunts you by sound, and it will make Requiem’s hotel chases feel familiar.
Silent Hill 2 (2024 remake) scratches the same grief-driven itch, with a protagonist chasing a dead loved one through a town that knows his secrets.
FAQ
Is Resident Evil Requiem first person or third person?
Both. You can switch between first-person and third-person view at any time from the options menu, and the levels are built to work in either. First person is the more frightening way to play Grace’s chapters. Third person makes the game feel closer to the recent remakes.
Is Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil Requiem?
Yes. Leon S. Kennedy is the second playable character, and his chapters take place in and around the ruins of Raccoon City. His sections are more action-focused than Grace’s, closer in feel to the Resident Evil 4 remake.
Do I need to play Resident Evil Outbreak first?
No. Grace’s mother Alyssa comes from Outbreak (2003), but Requiem explains who she was and what she did. The one game that genuinely helps is the Resident Evil 2 remake, because Leon’s return to the city assumes you know what happened there in 1998.
How long is Resident Evil Requiem?
The main story runs around 12 to 15 hours on the standard difficulty, depending on how much you explore the hotel and how often the pursuer catches you. Completionists chasing every file and unlock should expect more.
Does Resident Evil Requiem have co-op or multiplayer?
No. It is a single-player game with no co-op mode and no online multiplayer. Capcom has not announced any plans to add either.