AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem

(1/10) Wrote this elsewhere, wanted to expand on it here. Some speculation/educated guesswork on why Grace Ashcroft &amp; Leon S. Kennedy are the leads in Resident Evil Requiem.

Once RE9 was rebooted in dev &amp; the setting being Raccoon City was decided, I think the way Grace &amp; Leon

(2/10) manifested into the story is actually pretty easy to follow &amp; speculate on.

Raccoon City is infamous with Resident Evil, but there's still many newcomers who might only loosely know it's whole deal. They want a fresh face to experience the horrors of Raccoon City/RE in

(3/10) general, fresh eyes to experience the horrors, both to amplify the horror but also as a welcome for newcomers to the series. This begins the invention of Grace Ashcroft, &amp; as she starts taking form, the team get very attached to her. But to make her stand out among other

(4/10) beloved characters who already have large fanbases with the RE community, she both needs to bring something fresh, exciting, while at the same time being a new face but with a personal connection to Raccoon City. She develops as Alyssa's daughter, her mom being murdered, &amp;

(5/10) she gets to provide a fresh story tone, something very David Fincher or X-Files inspired, but new-to-the-series "Investigative FBI" spin on RE that brings a new flavor to RE it's never fully delved into. And with her they get to reimagine how a "modern new" survival-horror

(6/10)RE game; Many have asked for a "new game" that's like the classic REs, &amp; this allows them to do that while also having new spins on it tonally, story-wise, &amp; with new mechanics &amp; ideas.

But if returning to Raccoon City, it also just makes a lot of sense to have someone who

(7/10) experienced the Raccoon City incident, someone who can see the before-and-after with long-time fans, a sorta' "Returning Home to Roost" moment that a lot of horror media does very well, but Resident Evil's never actually fully done before. And of the RC survivors, who both

(8/10) has the potential for a compelling story in the setting while also be someone fans would be excited to see? While there's several beloved characters that stem from RC, Leon is the character who's had a character arc directly about how he's never gotten over Raccoon City.

(9/10) While most of the others have moved on, he hasn't, plus he has direct connections to the hanging plot thread that the American government has never been fully brought to justice for their involvement with Umbrella &amp; Raccoon City's cover-up. Someone who's familiar with this

(10/10) horror that's never been fully resolved, &amp; now is boiling over, almost like it's been awaiting their return.

And those two sides of the story intertangling into a bigger narrative where they both have to face the past &amp; horrors they're directly connected to.

I think Leon and Alyssa definitely knew each other before she died, since both felt strongly about the cover-ups of bio-terror incidents and government involvements.

(1/??) Resident Evil Requiem's preview embargo lifted, a bunch of sites got to play roughly 3 hours of the game in Rhode Hill Chronic Care Center.
There's spoilers for this part of the game, though Capcom did blacklist mentioning certain things.
Save Room Theme is very RE7-esque:

(2/??) So while there's spoilers for the game, there's stuff people can't mention to keep it a surprise too.

This info is going to be very scattered, because there's a lot to go over, like a metric ton. Will cover the most interesting things.

This nurse from the trailers dies:

(3/??) A really good example of a piece of info Capcom blacklisted from previewers sharing is the identity of the woman Leon talks to over comms is revealed, but previewers say they can't reveal who due to NDA.

Leon was planned as a main character in RE9 since the beginning.

(4/??) The section previewers played in Rhode Hill Chronic Care Center had two Leon sections &amp; one Grace section, but the Grace section was a lot longer than the Leon sections and made up over half the run time. So approximately 2 hours as Grace, 1 hour as Leon roughly.

(5/??) Requiem is not an open world game, it's built in a linear fashion with some back-tracking.

That said, &amp; I will continue to insist this, it does have at least a couple pretty open levels you use vehicle to transverse through, but those are open levels, not open world.

(6/??) Leon's tomahawk axe is confirmed to not break when its durability runs out, but it becomes very ineffective if not sharpened.

There is confirmed to be special "mini-boss" style zombies which have unique personalities, behaviors, &amp; quirks. Two of them you encounter in the

(7/??) Care Center with Grace is a singer zombie who hums a lot &amp; will screech really loud that makes Grace hurdle over &amp; cover her ears stunned if disturbbed, &amp; the chef zombie, who lurches around, does a lot of damage, &amp; very easily irritable &amp; will chase you around for a while

(8/??) &amp; isn't very easy to take down, plus the chef can more dynamically pop up when disturbed in huge mobs to become a problem.

You'll also find the zombies &amp; enemies have physics &amp; interactivity with each other &amp; the environments, one small example of that you can see here:

(9/??) We see when we switch character perspectives, we're given kinda' a timeline thing. Also setting the Rhode Hill stuff on the night of October 8th, 2026.

We see the full first encounter with Leon &amp; Grace, after the Big Mama demo, &amp; see a few things. First, we of course see

(10/??) Leon shoots Big Mama's brains out. And I see a lot of people take that as meaning that the Big Mama's dead. All I'm going to say to that is we've seen this exact sorta thing before (example in the next tweet).

We do see Victor Gideon does indeed have night vision goggles

(11/??) &amp; his Buffalo Bill-isms continue to pile up.

We Leon hands the Requiem over to Grace after Victor locks the place down.

Anyway, the Big Mama thing made me think a bit of this scene from Resident Evil 7:

Which is a great transition to talk about full confirmation on

(12/??) a Crimson Head like enemy, officially called "Blister Heads" according to the devs. @maximilian_ gives a great little talk on the topic here:

We don't have any b-role footage or screenshots of them, just know of them &amp; the zombies come back to life as them if not taken

(13/??) out in specific ways. The devs in an interview confirm if you don't kill enemies in Grace's section as Grace, you can fight them as Leon later, but kill them &amp; they won't be there for Leon later.

It's confirmed zombies can pick up weapons that other zombies have dropped.

(14/??) Nakanishi (director of Rev 1, RE7 &amp; RE9) says in an interview that the "fear level" of RE9 they didn't hold back in Grace's sections, &amp; that there is horror stuff &amp; scary parts in Leon's sections too, but there's also relief from horror mixed in &amp; moments of pure action.

(15/??) He says he thinks its scarier than Village, but not as consistently horror as RE7 as an example, but they didn't hold back in being scary for Grace, &amp; parts of Leon's campaign, just balancing it out also with thrilling moments &amp; relieving sections.

An interesting tidbit

(16/??) is that not only do enemies one doesn't kill pops up for the other, but dropped items as well.

They also say it's "very difficult" for Grace to take out every enemy, in a way having Leon able to come later &amp; clear house means they could lean harder into survival-horror

(17/??) item conservation for Grace &amp; choose where to pick your battles &amp; when to avoid enemies.

Director also says it'll be really interesting to see people replay the game &amp; figure out speed runs due to stuff like this, it'll be very different to past RE games w/route planning

(18/??) An interesting thing is while we saw an Antique Coin in Leon's part in the RE Showcase, apparently only Grace can pick them up, but you can spot where they are as Leon.

We do see Leon's inventory has a currency, which I thought might be coins, so that's of note for sure.

(19/??) It is confirmed like RE:4 there's specific attacks you can avoid by crouching at the right moment.

Nakanishi says they wanted to make "many" chainsaws in RE9, &amp; how they're used by enemies is different. Like some enemies will pick up &amp; throw the chainsaw at you.

(20/??) We see Grace can get a B934 handgun from the dining room.

A fun way some describe sneaking past enemies as Grace are some are very puzzle-ish, doing their past lives jobs with context clues of how to get by. Does remind me of things like Siren or Little Nightmares, but I

(21/??) that as a good thing since I like that sorta' stealth in horror games, &amp; fun brought into the Resident Evil formula where also can just go into a room &amp; fight if you want.

There's a lot of praise for Rhode Hill Chronic Care Center in the previews, for great level design

(22/??) how you go back to unlock new things. Some previewers even saying it's some of the best level design in the franchise, others saying thankfully not as linear as Dimitrescu Castle in RE8 was, etc. Direct quotes on those two statements.

Also comment how RE9 is very funny

(23/??) sometimes, there's some laugh-out-loud moments &amp; absurd stuff they can't spoil, but very dark comedy at times.

Grace can use defense items like knives, though don't think that's too surprising.

We have it 100% confirmed again that Leon is indeed infected with a virus.

(24/??) To get a bit into some of the intentional goofiness of RE9's dark comedy, something that apparently can happen is a zombie gripping a chainsaw can fall on the ground &amp; the chainsaw still rev'd up will snake them along the ground carrying the zombie corpse flopping around.

(25/??) And get in the way of the dead zombie snaking around with the chainsaw carrying them around until it powers off, it'll damage you, but also will damage &amp; cut off the legs of other zombies in the way.

Stuff like that, there's some ridiculous dynamic things that can happen

(26/??) It's confirmed you can get "upgrade vials" through antique coins, to upgrade things like max health, steadier aiming, better damage, etc. Also with antique coins can get a hip pouch for more inventory slots.
Apparently Victor Gideon has a forked snaked tongue. His chances

(27/??) of turning into a snake monster really are just increasing.
Victor upon also seeing Leon for the first time comments they both have "the Umbrella curse", so take that for what you will.
Some examples of "unique" zombie behavior is like the cook zombie going from different

(28/??) stations to prep food, going "NEXT" when he changes stations. Or an area an area any time you turn on the light, a zombie will complain it's "too bright" &amp; go to turn the lights off. As two examples.

Director also confirms they made about 100 unique zombie personalities,

(29/??) put a lot of care to have varied zombies, zombie looks, &amp; "personalities", a lot more than past entries.
Some people notice Grace has a melee option, it's not what people assume. Grace can shove zombies away to give her some space, the melees don't actually damage zombies

(30/??) Apparently there were more zombie personalities at one point in dev, but it became too chaotic &amp; hard to read, so they limited it for better gameplay feel. Some zombies will fight each other, like one zombie personality hates loud noise, near the loud singing zombie,

(31/??) would fight among themselves as an example.

Apparently working on the Zombie AI took a lot of adjustment, they have a lot of dynamic elements, like responding to sound, &amp; also had to fine tune it to have a healthy level of horror &amp; humor. Didn't want things to become too