If Resident Evil Requiem brings back zombies, it will be a mistake

One of the reasons Resident Evil 7 is so good is that it's all, every part of it, 100% horror - every component is designed to raise your tension and make you scared. Certainly, there are nods to a few different movies and folklore tales, but, especially in its contemporary context, when the shadow of RE6 loomed large and the whole series was in danger of becoming irredeemably cartoonish, the tale of the Baker family felt, and still feels, like a reputation-saving breakthrough.

Focusing on the Bakers allows Capcom to find fear in new psychological places. Sitting down to a family meal just isn't the same again after playing that intro; if the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1,000 Corpses haven't already given you a pathological aversion to dilapidated Deep South farmhouses, that scene surely will. Of course, the first time you play it (especially if you're a Resident Evil veteran), the most striking change is the swap from the fixed-camera and over-the-shoulder perspectives into first-person. But that's not what makes RE7 one of the most transformative games in the series. It's the fact that in Resident Evil 7, Capcom finally totally abandons zombies.

Resident Evil 4, released a full 12 years before RE7, marks the beginning of the end for the horror game's trademark, decomposing villain. But zombies still return in Resident Evil 6, and even the Ganados and their RE5 counterparts, the Majini, feel zombie inspired; zombie adjacent. It's not until Resident Evil 7 that we truly see how Capcom can pull from a broader spectrum of horror influences.

And then Resident Evil Village goes even further. Here, even the slow-moving, quasi-humanoid Molded are relegated to walk-on (or rather shamble-on) roles. In Ethan Winters' sophomore outing, the closest thing to traditional zombies are the Lycans, who are neither ungainly nor undead, and instead quick, moldy werewolves.

Village takes RE7's Cadou conceit, a mold-based virus, and uses it to contextualize a workshop of horrific creations, a sideshow of the grotesque. The main event is meeting and beating the four mutant lords of Castle Dimitrescu, and for anyone who's spent the last two decades listening to Albert Wesker explaining and re-explaining his plans, it's invigorating to be in that unfamiliar, unpredictable landscape. What are the rules of the universe? Is the danger sci-fi, or supernatural? Given that neither the T-Virus nor the Las Plagas are responsible this time, and that the threat is something entirely new, there's a thrill in finding out precisely what's going on.

Resident Evil Requiem, then. It's a good trailer. It's grounded, in a way that RE usually isn't, and the police procedural vibes are reminiscent of The Evil Within's first (and best) 90 seconds, before the plot cuts completely loose and the entire world starts to explode.

There are hints of Twin Peaks and Alan Wake 2 as we see Grace Ashcroft working a desk job at the bureau. When her boss calls her into his office, she's flustered. She struggles to make eye contact with him and stumbles over her words. She's a completely different kind of protagonist than the ones we've played before, quite unlike stoic shampoo advert Leon Kennedy or the unflappable Ethan Winters. Here's a character who, before she's even stepped a single foot into the bleak, supernatural nightmarescape of Raccoon City, already has a reason to be afraid. She's not only contending with the literal threat of zombies. That's a good thing.

Quite why Grace's boss thinks it's either socially appropriate or professionally wise to assign her to investigate a murder at the same hotel where her own mother (Alyssa Ashcroft from Resident Evil: Outbreak) was killed isn't clear yet. But what we do know from the trailer's subsequent vignette of disturbing imagery is that we're going back to Raccoon City, and there are seemingly zombies there. This, however, might not be a good thing.

I know how this sounds. It's like groaning "Not football again!" when the new EA FC is revealed. Videogame series are about iterating upon and evolving core principles, and Resident Evil is zombies. It's the zombie game. But with RE7 and Village, Capcom makes bold creative changes. Given the successes of both of those games, it's evident those efforts have paid off. The series' horror remit has become much bigger. There are so many untapped veins of fear Capcom could explore now. Instead of doing zombies again, Requiem could be a horror game about a cult, or dark folklore, or vampires, or Lovecraftian cosmic dread.

And then there's the other problem: all those brilliant remakes. Yes, RE3 Remake is too short and changes too much, but the 2 and 4 remakes have rightly become the high watermarks for modernizing classic games. Capcom has such a knack for knowing which bits to transform and which to leave well alone. RE2 Remake and RE4 Remake also play fast and loose with some story beats, mechanics, and locations, but all the gambles pay off. They feel like the games you loved the first time round, but look and play like contemporary masterworks.

Which is to say, we've already been back to Racoon City lately. Those remakes scratch the itch for a traditional RE experience peerlessly, to a standard that even a new mainline sequel would struggle to contend with because it wouldn't have nostalgia on its side or the north star of an enduring, beloved, existing experience.

So when I say the sights of the RPD building and then what is seemingly a zombie in the Requiem trailer disconcert me, this is why. Clearly, I'm interpolating a lot from a media asset designed simply to announce that a game exists (and is coming out quite soon, on February 27, 2026) and it may well be that Capcom fully intends to expand the boundaries of the series once again, just as it did with RE7 and Village.

Maybe the zombie in the trailer is a deliberate red herring, and the true nature of the evil in residence this time is much more adventurous. I hope that's the case, because if Resident Evil Requiem is about shooting zombies in the RCPD building, instead of something different and bold like the Bakers, it's going to feel comparatively unimaginative - or even out of date.