Fieldnotes is a weekly column where I drop into a new (or old) game and report back with raw notes, sharp takes, unfiltered, and sometimes unhinged thoughts. This week, I begin my journey in Resident Evil Requiem.
I’ve been waiting a very long time for this one. And it’s finally here! Resident Evil Requiem is the ninth (!) mainline entry in a series that I grew up with and was definitely way too young for when I first watched my dad play the original game. Requiem is a pretty exciting one for one main reason: the return of fan-favorite and sex icon Leon S. Kennedy.
We haven’t seen Leon since the events of Resident Evil 6, and he’s looking much older and more badass in this one. Requiem also introduces newcomer Grace Ashcroft, the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, who was one of the playable characters in Outbreak. The setup is simple. Survivors of the Raccoon City incident are mysteriously showing up dead. Grace, who’s part of the FBI, is sent to investigate these deaths, which also happen to be linked with Alyssa’s own traumatic murder. She soon crosses paths with Leon, naturally, who’s also a Raccoon City survivor.
Who Let this Girl Into the FBI?
Resident Evil Requiem has me hooked right from the very start. The game asks me how old I am, which immediately sets off alarm bells. No video game would ever ask for your age if they didn’t have something up their sleeve. What could this zombie survival horror game possibly gain from knowing my age?
We also kick things off with Grace, who’s a total nerd’s nerd. Our introduction to her is a bit of a silly one, as she’s shown staring intently at her computer screen, not even registering her boss calling her until he knocks on her cubicle. I know it’s because she’s supposed to be focused on her work, but the scene makes her come off as a bit of an airhead. She’s clumsy. She fumbles. She knocks over a pile of papers on her desk when she stands up to follow him. When her boss tells her he wants her to go to the Wrenwood Hotel — where her mom got straight up hacked to death in front of her eyes, by the way — to investigate the latest death, I’m like, seriously? This girl? You trust the nerdy bespectacled klutz to go check out a full-on crime scene? Aren’t you afraid she’s gonna like, I don’t know, trip all over the blood or something?
Anyway, Grace does go to the Wrenwood Hotel. She even fumbles when she’s telling the local cop she’s with the FBI. If I were the cop, I wouldn’t even believe it for a second, lemme tell you.
So it’s worth pointing out that Resident Evil Requiem lets you choose between first-person and third-person perspectives. It’s recommended that you play third-person for Leon and first-person for Grace, the reason being that Grace’s sections are more classic survival horror and playing in first-person really helps to make everything feel scarier. But because I am a coward who barely survived my first playthrough of Resident Evil VII, I shall be playing in third-person, thank you very much.
Even in third-person, Resident Evil Requiem is still plenty creepy, as these games often are in their early hours. Walking through a dilapidated hotel hallway is nerve-wracking enough, and things come to a head when Grace faces off against the cop from earlier, who has now been zombified. Capcom really didn’t pull any punches with the gore here. There’s lots of biting and teeth gnashing and eye stabbing, and we’re still only in the first 15 minutes of the game. Eventually, Grace fends off the zombie, but she gets caught by Victor Gideon, Requiem‘s big bad.
The Name’s Kennedy. Leon Kennedy.
We cut to another location from a few minutes earlier, and we’re reintroduced to Leon. He’s looking a lot older now, but that’s him alright. That’s still our Leon. He’s with the DSO, a counter-bioterrorism agency, and he’s on comms with Sherry Birkin, a fellow Raccoon City survivor. They’re also investigating the mysterious deaths, and it soon becomes obvious that whatever’s killing these survivors, it’s infected Leon as well. Sherry tells him a cop went missing near the Wrenwood Hotel, and it might be worth checking out.
When Leon gets there in his sleek Porsche, he’s just in time to see Victor walk out onto the streets with Grace over his shoulder like a carcass. Mind you, there are citizens on this crowded street. Before I can fully comprehend the absurdity of the situation and question why no one cares about the hooded man carrying the unconscious girl around, Victor makes eye contact with Leon and starts shooting the people around him with an infection gun, turning them into zombies.
This results in an instant outbreak, and Leon tells Sherry to lock down Wrenwood as he chases after Victor. It’s futile, of course, because there are too many zombies and too much chaos. I even get hit by a truck as I’m running, which I’m sure was not an intended part of this sequence. But it’s all good, I only took a little bit of damage.
We lose Victor, but good ol’ Sherry says don’t worry. She finds out that Victor bought a building somewhere in town, so that’s where we’re headed next. I gotta say, it’s nice having Sherry back. We also haven’t seen her since Resident Evil 6, but given her ties to Umbrella and the G-Virus, I always thought Capcom could afford to give her a bigger role in the overarching story. And hey, we already have Leon and Sherry here. Why not bring back Claire and Ada and make it a Resident Evil 2 party?
The Fumbler Returns
Henceforth, Grace Ashcroft shall be known as the Fumbler. For reasons that will soon become apparent.
We go back to playing as Grace, who wakes up in what I presume to be the building Victor bought that Sherry was talking about. She’s restrained on a gurney that’s been flipped upside-down, but Grace is more resourceful than I give her credit for, because she wastes no time in grabbing a nearby bottle, breaking it, and using it to cut through her restraints. She doesn’t even stop when she accidentally cuts herself. What a badass. Still the Fumbler, but a badass nonetheless.
When we take control of Grace again, that’s where the real Resident Evil Requiem begins. Trapped in a large, mysterious building with locked doors and puzzles, I must now seek a way out. This is what Capcom has always done best with the Resident Evil series, and the developers wasted no time in cranking things up to 11 right from the start.
Things are easy at first; you explore the rooms that are open to you, but eventually you’ll find that the lights are out at the nursing station and it’s literally too dark for you to progress any further. No matter. There are other things to look at. There’s a save room (phew), a breaker box that requires a fuse so you can progress, and a lighter so you can illuminate those dark, scary spaces. Oh and there’s also a children’s book about a lady in the dark. Something something, are you making sure you’re staying the in light? Something something, the lady can’t get you where there’s light, but something something, she’s always watching you from the darkness.
Nice. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.
Except, of course it’s something you have to worry about. Because as soon as I step into the darkness, I find a dead body. And then I see a grotesque hand appear from the darkness to grab the body and I see it disappear into bloody teeth. This is where Resident Evil Requiem introduces its first Mr X-like enemy: a large lady monster who can only hunt you while you’re in the dark. And when the items you need are in the dark, well, you can see how that might be a problem.
This section isn’t too terrible, except every time I get spotted and I need to run away, the game turns into an absolute clown show. For starters, Grace stumbles every time she’s running from an enemy. It’s actually funny. She turns around and books it, but before she can take like 10 steps, she trips and falls to the ground for a little bit, slowing down before standing back up and running again. And this can happen multiple times in the same chase.
At first, it was tense. I’m like, oh shit you fell but you need to get back up that thing is on your ass, girl! But after a few instances of this happening, it becomes hilarious. Now whenever she fumbles running, I can’t help but chuckle to myself and wait for her to stand up again. It also feels like she runs slower than Leon, but I can’t confirm this. Maybe it’s the running animations that are making me feel that way, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if she is a slower runner. It would make sense. Again, who let this girl into the FBI?
Eventually I get the fuse and I’m almost home-free, but the lady monster snatches up the Fumbler and it looks like all is lost. Then, cut to black, and we’re back to Leon.
The One Where Leon Lets a Nurse Die
Leon arrives at Rhodes Hill Center, the facility that Victor owns. He’s escorted in by a nurse, who tells him that Victor’s been expecting him. She leaves him alone in a waiting room but comes bursting back in minutes later, saying that chaos has broken out in the building. A very clearly zombified doctor shows up with a chainsaw and he brutally chainsaws the nurse to death, all while Leon is just standing there watching.
Leon, my dude. What’re you doing? You’ve been in three of these games now. You know what an infected individual looks like. You certainly know how dangerous they can be with their freaking chainsaws. Speaking of chainsaws, what is a chainsaw even doing in a medical facility like this in the first place? Anyway, my point is Leon had plenty of time to save that nurse, but instead he chose to stand there and let it happen. Not cool, man.
But I quickly get over it because it’s time for our first real combat sequence with Leon. Before the fight starts, Leon looks at the doctor zombie with the chainsaw, then says, “I think I want a second opinion.” Love it. Classic Leon. Glad the quips are still here.
The zombies are easy enough to deal with, but they become extra dangerous when they pick up the chainsaw, which they can also straight up throw at you. Leon can parry the chainsaw attacks now though, and he can even pick up the chainsaw himself and murder the zombies, which is exactly what I do.
Sadly, this sequence ends way too quickly when I get out of the room and happen to bump into the Fumbler just as she’s caught by the lady monster. But not so sadly, this means I get to watch Leon and Grace meet for the first time, which definitely happened way sooner than expected.
Can I just say that I absolutely love how strong and reliable Leon comes off here? Resident Evil 2 Remake is one of my favorite games of all time, and watching Leon grow up from his greenhorn rookie cop days is honestly a bit moving. Here, he doesn’t even hesitate when he looks out for Grace, asks the important questions, and hands over his freaking magnum as they’re about to get separated because he wants her to be safe. I mean, as a professional Fumbler myself, I would’ve much preferred he handed over his regular handgun because that has more ammo, but I will take it.
Their meeting gets cut short when Victor lowers bars over every window and door in the building, separating Leon and Grace. Leon finally comes face to face with Victor, who notes that the infection has already begun. He chokes out Leon, and we’re back to Grace again.
No Really, The Real Resident Evil Begins Here
That earlier section with Grace was just a little teaser of what’s to come. Now that I’m back in control of Grace, the familiar rhythms of a Resident Evil game are coming back to me. I won’t get into too much detail here because that would just be way too dry, but the next hour was basically spent exploring the east and west wings of the Rhodes Hill facility. There are checkpoints with security levels 1-3, with each level requiring a different wristband. I’m then tasked with exploring the zombie-infested building to solve environmental puzzles so I can get said wristbands and continue progressing.
In true Resident Evil fashion, the puzzles involve ornate jewels and pretty quartz, which can be conveniently slotted into a door to open it up. This is also where Resident Evil Requiem introduces its special zombies, some of whom can’t let go of their past identities and become obsessed with their previous jobs. The cook zombie, for instance, walks around with his giant butcher knife and cuts meat, while the singer zombie literally won’t stop singing and she can also fire off sound blasts with her voice that mess up your aim.
Also in true Resident Evil fashion, the game likes to throw some nasty surprises your way whenever you reach a critical point in exploration or pick up a key item. Zombies might start showing up in different areas, or previously killed/dead zombies might wake up again when you least expect it.
As mentioned previously, this is getting up there as one of the goriest games in the series. There’s so much blood everywhere. Literal buckets of the stuff. And as I was exploring, I found it irritating that there would be prompts on the blood buckets and the game would just tell me, “There’s a large amount of blood here.” Yeah no shit, game. Why do you keep making me click on this? I can see the blood.
Well, as it turns out, the blood does serve a purple. Grace later gets a Blood Collector item that lets her collect infected blood, which can be used to craft items like extra handgun ammo or an injector that lets me stealth kill enemies. Suddenly, I can’t get enough of the stuff.
All of this is to say, I’m having a complete blast with Resident Evil Requiem so far. And as much as I like to make fun of Grace — I mean, the Fumbler — I’m a huge fan of how relatable she is, even if I’m questioning how she made it into the FBI in the first place. I, too, am a fumbler and I’d totally be falling over myself all the time too if I was getting chased by face-eating zombies. Personally, I can’t wait for her to get her hands on a shotgun and maybe a grenade launcher and become an unstoppable superhero by the end of the game. That’s how these things usually go, right?
NPC of the Week: The Nurse that Leon Watched Die
Everyone raise your glasses to the poor nurse who did nothing wrong. She literally just joined the team at Rhodes Hill. She probably doesn’t even grasp the full extent of what’s going on there. She was just doing her job.
The alarm rings, she runs back to the waiting room to warn Leon that something’s wrong, then immediately gets chainsawed to death. Leon totally could’ve saved her, but he just chose to stand by and watch. As much as I love you, Leon, that’s your cross to bear!
