Capcom revealed the nasty new trailer for Resident Evil 9 at Summer Game Fest 2025 after pretending like it wasn't "ready" in a teaser, and almost a year after it announced the sequel during Capcom Next Summer 2024.
In the trailer for the survival horror game we now know as Resident Evil Requiem, harried FBI agent Grace Ashcroft is actively investigating an "unidentified disease," one that melts people's faces off, if the black-and-white crime scene pics on her computer screen are any indication. She's tasked with analyzing a fresh corpse at the hotel where her mother – Resident Evil Outbreak reporter Alyssa Ashcroft – was killed eight years ago.
When Grace gets to the hotel, it seems to be the family reunion from hell she was expecting. She's tied up and left dangling upside down like a whole pig at the butcher, and an unidentified man holed up in one of the rotting hotel's rooms calls her "the chosen one."
Later, Raccoon City is an unrecognizable pile of ash. Slithering monsters and dying people wreak mayhem on both their homes and, presumably, you.
I'm happy to see it. Thanking both God and my lucky stars, I'm also glad to remind you that Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi is in control of this Resident Evil installment. Can you tell from all the screaming?
For someone like me, who plays Resident Evil not for the bombs and bullets, but for the severed arms and bubbling gore, Requiem is a gift from horror heaven. I think the mildewy claustrophobia in 7 is more stifling than it feels in any other game in the 29-year-old mutant horror franchise, and 9 looks ambitious and ready to make it worse.
After Resident Evil 5 and 6 nudged the survival horror series toward hot and messy action – a creative decision detested by many fans – Resident Evil 7 was like 1,000 volts to the chest. It revived Resident Evil, which had strayed so far from its roots, and it took it back underground.
It makes sense, then, that Nakanishi would have found it "really difficult to figure out what to do after 7," as he said during last year's Capcom summer stream. "But I found it," he continued to say about 9, "and, to be honest, it feels substantial."
The footage we saw during today's Summer Game Fest confirms this to be nauseatingly true, and I've never been more excited to get sick.
Resident Evil Requiem is out on February 27, 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Keep up with our Summer Game Fest schedule.
