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Resident Evil Requiem was my salvation in more ways than one. Yes, I am still not over how good Leon S. Kennedy looks in tiny black gloves and a harness, but this game proved that he's more than a piece of eye candy. The dude is traumatized, rocking more baggage than Heathrow Airport's lost and found room, and the Resident Evil Requiem ending brings things to a dazzling crescendo, while hinting at a very different landscape whenever Resident Evil 10 rolls out.
Not without a little help from revisionist history books, though. And honestly? I'm not even mad about it. Capcom is clearly sowing multiple batches of seeds here – not only in terms of the future of the mainline series, but for the remakes alongside them
SPOILER WARNING for surprise characters in Resident Evil Requiem!
Old faces
On the Radar with Resident Evil Requiem – surviving 30 years of horror with this action-packed series celebration.
Ever since I finished my Resident Evil Requiem review a couple of weeks ago, I've been hooked on the game's last moments. I've pored over each pixel, absorbing the weirdness of Capcom in all its delicious delights. The more I think about it, the more excited I get.
Requiem seems to have cleared up a lot of questions in my mind. Being the most recent entry in the series, one that sits at the closest proximity on the Resident Evil timeline in terms of when events are taking place, I find myself trying to glean hints of the past from the world's current state.
With Zeno – aka, Albert Wesker 2.0 – somehow cloned after having died in Resident Evil 5, to the huge revelation that the big bad granddaddy of Umbrella Corp had a change of heart in his twilight years, I have the nagging sense that Capcom is doing two things by putting these facts before us.
Number one: they're reminding us of the game's oldest lore, something that might seem hazy for many of us after 30 years of Resident Evil. By doing that, Capcom illustrates point number two: these characters are malleable and might not be how you remember them.
In Wesker's case, this is a good thing. Despite how Resident Evil 4 Remake left on an Ada/Wesker cliffhanger, no Resident Evil fan I know of genuinely thinks Capcom would attempt a straight remake of Resident Evil 5 in the 2020s. To say the overall premise aged poorly would be a grave understatement – but maybe Capcom knows that and is actively working on changing things.
Rewriting history
What if, instead of a remake, Capcom delivered an almost brand new Resident Evil 5? Rewriting elements of the setting or context while leaving key lore hooks in place would be a staggering 180 for the developer, allowing them to rewrite the past and do better this time? Delivering a fresh take on one of its most popular – yet very much of its time – entries would make total sense to me.
It would also make sense as to why Wesker (sorry, Zeno) was brought back for Requiem, and why Capcom bothered to have him show up in the RE4 Remake at all. Rounded off by Ozwell Spencer's role in the game, it could be a perfect moment for Capcom to show us how the once-bad guy started down the road to redemption, adding some layers and dimension to the rather black-and-white image of a palm-rubbing villain many of us think Spencer to be.
I refuse to believe that Capcom would deliver so many surprise twists and turns without Requiem laying the foundations for something truly huge
If the fifth mainline game isn't the next one due a remake, it will simply have to be Code Veronica. I know, I know – we've all been saying this for years. But now there's even more evidence to justify its existence someday. Albert Wesker features in the game, which is considered canon rather than a franchise spin-off despite not being a numbered entry, and the Ashford family's rivalry with Spencer could reveal yet more shocking secrets about the man. Plus, I know how many of you are still bemoaning the lack of Claire or Jill in Requiem, and I do agree that it's high time one of the resident non-evils makes a return to our consoles, too.
Maybe this is all the work of an overactive imagination and pipe dream fantasies, but I refuse to believe that Capcom would deliver so many surprise twists and turns without Requiem laying the foundations for something truly huge. Retconning the innate wickedness of a man like Ozwell Spencer is a bold, fascinating, potentially seismic move, more so than Capcom finding a way to nebulously squeeze Resident Evil Village's Mother Miranda into his backstory.
That attempt fell pretty flat, peeling back far too many layers of lore and losing us in the process. But the events of Requiem rippling into the past could re-frame the remade games entirely – as well as what they once meant to the series as a whole.
From Tofu to the big vampire lady, these 12 Resident Evil Requiem Easter eggs had me pointing at my screen, Leo DiCaprio style.
