„Was this actually scary? Because we don't even know anymore.” Resident Evil 9 devs got warped and need players' help

The Resident Evil series is famous for scaring the heck out of players. Of course, different things affect everyone differently. I felt sick when, while playing Village, I saw what was waiting for me in the basement of Beneviento House.

Resident Evil Requiem will, of course, be no exception. In fact, it might be one of the scariest installments in the series. Luckily, being able to switch between first-person and third-person views lets us take a bit of a breather from the nightmares Capcom has in store for us.

Interestingly, the developers can't really say how scary Resident Evil 9 is. Years of working on survival horror games have probably made them so numb or desensitized that they can't really judge their own work anymore, so they have to rely on outside opinions. This was revealed by Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi in an interview with IGN.

That's why Capcom doesn't make it a habit to remove scenes from their games just because they might be too scary. However, Nakanishi revealed that during the development of Resident Evil 9, there was a point in time when the idea of Grace Ashcroft—one half of the protagonist duo, almost certainly alongside Leon Kennedy—sustaining a serious leg wound that could have resulted in amputation was considered.

Ultimately, they decided against this idea. Perhaps it was deemed that gameplay would suffer, as moving the protagonist would become significantly more difficult (and also altered, which could require additional work from developers and consume a lot of money). It's also possible that they abandoned this motif because a similar one was used in the seventh and eighth Resident Evil games, although Ethan Winters was "only" deprived of a hand.

Ultimately, Nakanishi suggested that in terms of scariness, Requiem will be close to the second installment, which can naturally be treated as a good prognosis. In case of doubt, I recommend watching the trailer from the latest Nintendo Direct.

Resident Evil 9 will be released on February 27, 2025, for PC, PS5, XSX/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. The computer setups used to run the game demo at the Tokyo Game Show 2025 give a pretty good idea of how high the PC requirements are going to be.

Resident Evil Requiem

February 27, 2026

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• Overview

• Capcom
• survival horror
• Resident Evil (franchise)
• interviews