The next time we clap eyes on Raccoon City, it'll be in Resident Evil Requiem. Set 30 years after the town's destruction in 1998, however, it makes sense that our surroundings will be markedly different this time around.
A thermobaric bomb was dropped on it, after all, in an attempt to stop the spread of the aggressive virus sweeping its streets and "turning people into monsters," to quote Resident Evil 2 co-star Ada Wong. But if you thought Leon S. Kennedy's old stomping ground would be a pile of rubble by now, think again.
"I won't say we went into a physics simulation of exactly how it was affected by the bomb," game director Koshi Nakanishi told us during an interview at Gamescom 2025. "But we were like, 'Okay, well, this is where the bomb landed in the city. Then this would be the blast zone, you know, the shock wave would maybe travel into these areas, and that's how they'd be affected.'" That means we can expect to see a few familiar spots in Requiem – including, of course, Raccoon City Police Department.
Aftermath
Whether the RPD will be a playable zone or merely a derelict, towering monument to what used to be is not yet clear.
"I don't want to go into too much detail into exactly which locations you'll be visiting," Nakanishi went on. "But we did essentially start with the existing design and layout of Raccoon City, as has been seen most recently in Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes."
The aforementioned remakes took us back to the police department and hospital, as well as the mean, zombie infested streets of the city itself. Naturally, most of said streets will likely be pretty badly damaged by the bomb – "I wanted to have a certain level of believability to that, while still having creative freedom to design this new, updated version [of Raccoon City]," said Nakanishi.
"At the same time, you want to keep some of those iconic places, even if it's not necessarily realistic that they wouldn't be reduced to rubble – things like the RPD gate that we've been showing." The purpose of that creative license is simple: to keep locations "recognizable", and offer "something for fans to point to."
It's got a poignancy to it.
Koshi Nakanishi
That said, anyone who played Resident Evil 2 and 3 will know that the repercussions of the Raccoon City Incident were nothing if not permanent. Lives were lost in this town, as much as it represents the site where one of the best survival horror games of all time took root.
"I think it also gives it a sense of tragedy and loss to look at the ruins of something that you thought you knew so well from the past games when they're intact," Nakanishi said of the complex emotions we might experience in Resident Evil Requiem once Raccoon City comes into view. "To see them crumbling and barely there… It's got a poignancy to it."
Poignant, it will be. Requiem not only marks thirty in-game years since the Raccoon City Incident, its 2026 launch also coincides with the series' 30th anniversary. I've no doubt that wandering the derelict bombsite will bring up a lot of feelings in all of us – pride, sadness, overwhelm at the thought of this simple survival horror game having made it so far. But with so much left to find out about the upcoming horror game – including how a mysterious "new system" is meant to put "distance" between the tense peaks and troughs of Resi's classic structure – we can hold tight to this simple fact: we are going home to Racoon City, one way or another.
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