Resident Evil Requiem offered up two protagonists, two ways of playing its horror game, and two perspectives, with the choice to switch between first and third person at any point throughout the game players could finally decide just how scary they wanted to make things.
If I’m honest, I reluctantly did my first playthrough as intended: Grace in first person and Leon in third. But then as soon as I started my subsequent playthrough I switched to third person throughout. I told myself it was so I could experience all the stumbles and falls that make Grace’s third-person so unique, but frankly I’m just a coward, plain and simple. What’s worse than being a coward, though? Finding out no one else is.
Director Akifumi Nakanishi recently revealed in an interview with Denfaminicogamer that a minority of players switched to third person while playing as Grace: “Looking at the data from about a month after release, we can see some interesting trends. First of all, for the first playthrough, about 90% of people play Leon’s scenario in TPS mode. On the other hand, in the Grace chapter, 60% of players play in FPS mode, while 40% switch to TPS mode.”
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Playing through Grace’s sections in first person was truly horrifying. The basement section took at least five years off my life, what with all the monster jumpscares, flickering lights, and stealth sections; my poor blood pressure will never recover.
I know I’m not the only one to have given in to the appeal of third person (it helps me dissociate). But really the choice whether to go first or third person is just a preference, driven by what other games players have experience with.
“In fact, there are clear differences in this data depending on the platform and region,” Nakanishi explains. “Players in Japan and other parts of Asia tend to prefer TPS games, while on PC, the number of players who play FPS games increases.”
“I think familiarity with the game genres that players are used to playing is a major factor,” producer, Masato Kumazawa adds. “From the development side, the results were largely as expected.”
In this game, we chose to feature two protagonists, Leon and Grace, who have very different gameplay styles.
Akifumi Nakanishi, director
The beauty of having two protagonists in Requiem, though, was that it would push players towards different styles. There was the action-oriented side which favoured third person for its strategic view of the battlefield which made taking on larger groups easier. Then there was the horror, which was largely Grace’s domain, and which worked well with first-person because it made the action feel more chaotic and suffocating.
“In this game, we chose to feature two protagonists, Leon and Grace, who have very different gameplay styles,” Nakanishi adds. “Because we were confident that this would allow us to create a wider range of emotional fluctuations for the player than ever before.”
That it certainly did. Although my range of emotional fluctuations went from B-lining down dark hallways as Grace in first person with my heart in my mouth, to hunting down any and every zombie that crossed my path as Leon with absolutely no fear. There wasn’t much in between, if I’m honest.
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