Resident Evil 9 Requiem Closed Door Presentation Shows Classic RE Puzzles And A Horrific New Creature

One of the largest surprises of the Summer Game Fest Showcase was the announcement and debut of a Resident Evil 9 Requiem trailer. Shortly after the public trailer was released, we got a chance to visit the Capcom theater to see not only live Onimusha gameplay but also a segment of gameplay from Resident Evil 9.

The gameplay segment opened with Grace hanging upside down and strapped to a hospital gurney. This scene was tense. Lingering on Graces face, and the subject of her attention, while she didn't say anything there was a clear conveyance of everything that was going through Grace's mind as she planned her escape.

This portion of the cutscene was so precise. By pulling on the line from the IV drip in her arm, she was able to tip over and break the glass that was collecting her blood. Using the line again, she gathered up shattered glass to cut her wrists loose. Another free hand and a quick topple of the gurney, and Grace was free.

At this point, the experience shifted into a first-person view. Turning around, Grace began to make her way through a series of corridors. They were filled with the stable Resident Evil fare, tight corners, a door with a sigil that needed a key of the matching design, and a 16-foot monstrous woman that stalked Grace through the halls.

For many in the room the introduction of this monster was quite the jumpscare. After opening a door, Grace had a dead body collapse onto her, inspecting it on the ground a large hand quietly reached out of the darkness and with no effort picked up the dead body before raising it to her mouth and biting the head clean off. Grace's non-reaction through this process is a mix of panic and awe (much like those watching) as she's just trying to take in the abomination in front of her.

This section of the demo shown was structured in equal parts puzzle, as Grace tried to escape this portion of the building she was in, while also doubling down on the idea of wanting to escape from the daunting and monstroust figure that was stalking her.

Within the same diverting hallways, with 3-5 rooms adjacent we got to see Grace find a locked door, return with a key, locate a fuse trapped behind a locked case, obtained a screw driver, unlocked the fuse, and then made her way to a gate that is in need of a fuse.

While there was a lot of movement to and from the different rooms within this portion of the building, each time Grace made it to a key objective, she would be faced with a small challenge, or she would only reach the location while trying to steer clear of the monstrous woman.

We didn't get to see Grace do much to mitigate the oncoming threat, but for this segment of the gameplay, it seemed the idea of Grace's character was to not be the most competent when it comes to combat, but to be able to nimbly escape.

There were a number of cuts between footage while viewing this Resident Evil 9 gameplay, the key information that was missing from the footage was things like the location of the key for the locked door, or when there was some repetitive backtracking.

There were a few moments when it did seem that there were some selective cuts around some additional context. Grace entered a room filled with medical equipment and while she was standing still there were some additional squealching noises. They didn't seem like they were coming from here, but they also seemed too frequent and light, they weren't coming from the giant humanoid creature.

This section had unsettling moment, some of the darkest corridors I've seen in games, and a plethora of jump scares as your way would get blocked by the monster.

Resident Evil Requiem has First Person Mode and Third Person Mode

A very interesting aspect of the gameplay clip, and one that was heralded by applause in the small showing room, was that by entering the pause menu and going to options the gameplay was able to be shifted to third person mode.

Once in third person and running from the monstrous woman Grace found her way to the fuse box, placed it inside, and was able to escape as the demo came to a close. The last thing that remained on the screen was "This is merely the overture to our dark symphony".

The gameplay made me think of early Ethan Winters style gameplay for Resident Evil 7. There was a lot of need to avoid combat, knowing that whatever it was you weren't going to want to take the face on. Grace, with her experience in the FBI, definitely has a lot of knowledge and skill under her belt, but a Resident Evil outbreak is definitely out of her comfort zone.

While we didn't see too much of the menus or additional mechanics when approaching the door without the key we got to see an empty inventory screen that looked like the ones being used in recent Resident Evil titles, and the one time that Grace was hit by the enemy a pulse meter in orange appeared in the lower left.

It looks like the UI will be aiming to be a light as possible, only showing relevant elements when necessary.

Resident Evil 9 Requiem was previewed at Summer Game Fest via a pre-recorded and edited gameplay demo.