When I walked into my interview with Resident Evil: Reiquem director Koshi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazama, I came equipped with a big pile of questions about a character who, as far as we know officially, is nowhere to be found: Leon Kennedy.
I had these questions prepared because the day before my interview, Capcom aired its Capcom Online Program showcase to coincide with Tokyo Game Show. And to eager Resident Evil fans, me, and many of my coworkers, it seemed obvious that we were finally going to get a new trailer revealing Leon’s official precense in the game, as a playable character or otherwise.
But that’s not what happened. We did see a new trailer, but no Leon. And a preview build available at TGS, which I went hands-on with after my interview, was similarly bereft of Leon.
When I brought up the strangeness of my expectations and the resulting Leon Kennedy drought to Nakanishi and Kumazawa, they just laughed.
“We will take on board this feedback,” Kumazawa said.
Fan clamor for Leon has been going on for months now, ever since the game’s first trailer appeared to contain multiple teases for, at minimum, a Leon appearance. But rumors have since grown, with some suggesting Leon might show up in the game as a secondary playable protagonist alongside newcomer Grace Ashcroft. Nakanishi and Kumazawa have attempted to brush those rumors aside, saying that Kennedy is a poor match for Reqiuem’s less action-heavy tone, but the fervor has persisted anyway, and the two are stopping short of saying outright that we won’t get to control him at all, even for just a little bit.
Given all this discussion, I asked the pair if they had any concerns that all the Leon nonsense was distracting from their attempt to position Grace as the game’s star. But they’re not worried. “We’re always happy that people are interested in the game enough to speculate so much,” Kumazawa said.
If, then, the pair are so insistent that Grace is the new face of this Resident Evil story, could Reqiuem server as a sort of passing-of-the-torch between old and new Resident Evil? Not quite, Kumazawa says.
“Although we don’t have firm plans for the future storylines of later titles in the series, I still think passing the torch is probably going a bit too far, because we’re not just going to wipe the slate clean completely in terms of the series lore and history. But at the same time I don’t want to always have to just go back to the well of existing characters to create new games, which was part of the motivation to introduce Grace.”
We previewed Resident Evil: Requiem just last month, and you can read our impressions of what we’ve seen so far right here. You can also check out the rest of my discussion with Nakanishi and Kumazawa, including how Reqiuem came to the Nintendo Switch 2. We’ve also previously spoken to the pair on a number of other topics, such as Raccoon City’s return and the game’s new monster design.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
