Resident Evil: Requiem appears to want to change the series from the inside out. Capcom has already expressed its desire to do something different this time around, but if you were ever to ask me if I’d expect vehicles and open areas, I’d have said you’re out of your mind.
That, however, seems to be the reality. According to Dusk Golem, a reputable leaker particularly interested in Capcom, Resident Evil: Requiem will introduce a wide array of “innovations,” previously not present in most of the series. Though Capcom aims to up the ante in regard to terror and fear, RE: Requiem is nevertheless apparently planning to expand the map as well, adding larger open-level areas and vehicles to traverse them.
“[Capcom’s] been working hard to achieve having good performance on open-level designed areas like Raccoon City, along w/a vehicle to travel around it,” Dusk Golem claimed.
This jump in level design will be followed by appropriate high-tech environmental physics, which, as Dusk Golem says, will be a significant part of some segments of the game.
“There’s been [an] effort to provide more environmental physic systems and interactivity for Grace’s segments where she has to work with the environment more,” they said.
Resident Evil games have primarily been pretty tight-knit, with somewhat open-ended environments that are ultimately linear in nature.
Though you can go in several directions sometimes, the games at their core are fundamentally streamlined from point A to B, usually confined to buildings or other limited areas. Open-level locations are certainly not that much of a novelty to the franchise, but a more open-world-type design certainly is, especially one requiring a vehicle to be traversed.
Other innovations are also apparently in the works, with Leon in particular being the focus. Dusk Golem has said Leon’s combat takes a lot of inspiration from The Last of Us: Part 2, but comes with its own set of innovations as well.
According to them, this could also be the last Leon RE game, with the character potentially not set to appear in any future mainline entries, at least not as a playable character.
I am split on some of these design choices Capcom has supposedly gone for. However, fresh and new twists are a welcome thing when done right, so I’ll withhold any value judgment until I see this stuff confirmed in the game.
And, to add a bit for the very end, I must say I’d love to be able to explore a post-nuke Raccoon City in detail, and the approach above could very well enable that.
