Resident Evil Requiem: Our Hands-On Impressions After Playing Both First and Third-Person

Not counting remakes and ports, it’s been over four years since Resident Evil Village, the eighth mainline installment in Capcom’s iconic survival horror game series. So after years of rumors and speculation, Capcom formally announced the franchise’s ninth main installment, Resident Evil Requiem with a cinematic trailer that debuted at Summer Game Fest 2025. After the reveal, Den of Geek was invited by Capcom for a special sneak peek of the upcoming game as part of SGF 2025’s in-person Play Days event, which included a look at gameplay from a pre-release build of the game.

For those that missed the official announcement trailer (which you can watch below), Resident Evil Requiem stars FBI Agent Grace Ashcroft, the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, who was a playable character in the 2003 PlayStation game, Resident Evil Outbreak, and its 2004 sequel. Grace is assigned to investigate a hotel linked to multiple mysterious deaths, which also happens to be where her mother died eight years prior. Shots from the trailer also include the bombed-out remains of the major franchise setting Raccoon City, particularly its police headquarters, which was bombed by the military in Resident Evil 3 to prevent the deadly T-Virus from spreading beyond its quarantine zone.

The sneak peek did not appear to be set within the ruins of Raccoon City, but rather an ornate interior setting, presumably the hotel that Grace was assigned to visit and explore. Expanding upon a moment from the announcement trailer, the sneak peek opens with Grace strapped upside-down to a gurney while her blood was steadily being drained into a glass container next to her. After taking a moment to understandably regain her composure, Grace causes the container to crash and break, using the sharpened shards to cut through her bonds and escape, albeit noticing that she’s already lost quite a bit of blood in the meantime as she tries to recover and get to safety.

With this the gameplay portion of the sneak peek begins, starting out from a first-person perspective, echoing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Village. Requiem is directed by RE7 director Kōshi Nakanishi, and the tonal similarities between the two games are prominent throughout the sneak peek, right down to its shadowy interiors, mounting sense of dread, and immersive sound design. Unarmed, Grace searches for a fuse to open a security gate from the portion of the building where she’s confined, having to recover a key to open some of the doors and a lighter to navigate the darker portions of the building and its narrow hallways.

This of course leads to the introduction of a seemingly unstoppable stalker enemy that the franchise is known for, following in the tradition of RE7’s Jack Baker or RE3’s Nemesis. Resembling an enlarged version of the original Resident Evil remake’s hunching antagonist Lisa Trevor, this monster suddenly appears over Grace, casually munching the head off a corpse before turning its attention to our hero and letting out a terrifying snarl—the crooked and blackened teeth at the end of the announcement trailer belong to this creature. With that, the chase is on with the monster taking a bite out of Grace if it manages to get a hold of her.

This is where the similarities with RE7 become especially apparent, with Grace closing doors behind her to slow the creature down before taking refuge in a lit room after locating a screwdriver to acquire a fuse. Like the stabilizers and steroids in RE7, Grace restores her health through a medical injection to her wrist, further bridging the gameplay mechanics between that and Requiem. In the sneak peek, Grace never obtained a weapon, meaning there was no combat gameplay to be seen just yet, but Capcom observed that, as an FBI Agent, Grace has at least received some gun training, even if she’s not used to serving in the field.

At the very end of the sneak peek, Capcom offers one of the juiciest details on gameplay mechanics, specifically that players can switch from first-person to third-person perspectives on the fly. For those more accustomed to the third-person gameplay the franchise is largely known for, that option is certainly there, while immersive first-person perspective from RE7 and Village is available for fans of that approach too.

After more action-oriented entries like Village and the 2023 remake of Resident Evil 4, it looks like the Resident Evil franchise is returning to more outright terror-driven gameplay and tones with Requiem. At the announcement trailer’s unveiling, Summer Game Fest host and moderator Geoff Keighley announced that more from the game will be shared at Gamescom, set to take place in August. Grace Ashcroft is looking to lead the franchise as it returns this coming February, and if this sneak peek is any indicator, fans will be on the edge of their seats when Resident Evil Requiem reinforces the series’ status as the gold standard in survival horror games.

Resident Evil Requiem will release Feb. 27, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC through Steam.