I'm comfortable saying that, at this point ahead of its February 27 release date, I think Resident Evil: Requiem looks pretty scary. The survival horror game demonstrates some classic scary elements in its trailers, such as – but not limited to – fire, blood, a perhaps complicated relationship with one's mother… though, don't try asking its Capcom development team for confirmation. They don't know what's scary anymore.
"We don't even know anymore," Resident Evil: Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi tells IGN in a new interview. "We've made so many of these that we can't tell anymore until someone else plays it."
This is an interesting statement for Nakanishi, in particular, to make – the developer also directed 2017's Resident Evil 7, whose sadistic Baker family was so relentless, and their derelict home on the swamp so claustrophobic, Nakanishi told GamesRadar+ this year that he thinks "some people couldn't handle it, and either couldn't finish or didn't even start" the game.
I suppose this is the plight of the Resident Evil dev. The black-toothed monster that induces a yawn for them may keep you up all night.
"We don't know if something's scary," Nakanishi reiterates to IGN. "So we say, we'll do this, we'll do that, we keep adding on stuff, and at one point we were like, what if [Grace] gets a big gash in her leg, or her leg gets cut off, because that thing attacks her, and oh my god it's so scary, but we talked ourselves down a little bit."
He's at least more convinced that Requiem is "almost an upgrade" of the Resident Evil 2 style of survival horror, instead of a barrage of action like Resident Evil 5.
"I didn't want to have to do that with Resident Evil's ninth title where I just tried to outdo the action in Village and ended up making something I didn't want to make," Nakanishi says.
