Can Resident Evil Requiem finally make good on Resident Evil 6’s best and most botched idea?

I love it when a developer takes another swing at an idea they didn’t nail the first time. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has a barren and boring sky to explore, likely because it was made for the humble old Wii. Twelve years and a few hardware upgrades later, Nintendo knocked that same idea out of the park with Tears of the Kingdom.

Which brings us to Resident Evil Requiem, a mainline sequel that has multiple protagonists each playing through their own missions in different horror styles. It’s a tantalising pitch, except for the fact that the last time a Resi sequel had that premise, it was the mess that was Resident Evil 6.

If you’ve never had the pleasure, Resident Evil 6 is a hugely ambitious action epic in survival horror drag. A game with multiple campaigns and a whole ensemble cast of protagonists, and essentially every poor bastard who was working at Capcom at the time in the credits. It also stars the iconic bad boy Jake Muller, a new character designed to appeal to young people. Here he is, appealing to you:

The core idea of having multiple protagonists has been a Resident Evil staple from the very beginning, when the original let you play as Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. Jill got two more inventory slots and a lockpick, whereas Chris, er, didn’t. (Resident Evil was so ahead of its time, it even invented confusing new gender stereotypes.)

The multi-protagonist idea really started realising its potential in Resident Evil 2, where you didn’t get the full story unless you played through both Claire and Leon’s campaigns. You could even leave items and weapons for each other, making your initial playthrough more stressful to give your second run a boost.

Resident Evil 6 pushes that idea much further however, not just introducing differences in the campaign for the different playable characters, but actually sending them down separate storylines exploring very different approaches to horror.

It sounds great on paper. Jake’s story is essentially one long chase as he’s pursued by a Nemesis-like monster. Chris stars in more of a bombastic shooter in the style of Resident Evil 5, Leon’s is supposed to be the only one that even bothers to pretend we’re still playing a survival horror game.

But so little of it works. Jake’s campaign is comically OTT, endlessly throwing undead, quick-time events and explosions at you. I’m struggling to recall a single vehicle in it that doesn’t blow up. When things aren’t exploding, you get Uncharted-style chase sequences. Except—oh dear—they’ve ripped off the wrong Naughty Dog game. So you have to endure dreadful run-towards-the-camera sprints straight from Crash Bandicoot.

Chris Redfield’s campaign, unfortunately, is even worse. Here you lead a squad of useless soldiers in a dismal tribute to Gears of War. Your squad is useless at everything bar blocking doorways I’m trying to get through, and together you trudge through awful Call of Duty fan fiction. Easily the game’s low point.

Leon’s campaign is better, playing like a loose remix of the Racoon City opening of Resident Evil 2 (this time the gun shop owner survives a little longer!). It’s also the closest the game comes to pausing for breath or bothering to try and build some tension. While never as scary as you want it to be, it often lands on the right side of stupid. Leon doesn’t jump the shark, but he does piggyback ride a zombified one.

But even on the rare occasions where it’s working, the three campaigns still play too similarly, just with different weapon loadouts. And all with shooting that’s significantly less satisfying than Resident Evil 4 and 5. There’s really not enough distinction here to make you feel like you’re playing as three different characters, which wastes all the potential that its brilliant multiple-campaigns pitch promised.

Imagine if one of them had been a fun nod to early Resident Evil, fixed camera angles and all. 2023’s otherwise completely forgettable Alone in the Dark reboot has one sole moment of inspiration where it does exactly that. Resident Evil Revelations 2 does some really inspired stuff with its two very different character combinations, so much so that it manages to recycle locations without feeling like a budget compromise (well, mostly). That game proves there’s a great idea here, one which deserves the full mainline Resident Evil treatment.