Confirming long-held speculation regarding the scope of his involvement, Leon S. Kennedy will play a role as a main character in Resident Evil Requiem for about half of the game. This was revealed from director Akifumi Nakanishi as he elaborated on the main narrative structure of the game in a recent interview, illustrating the relationship between the mainstream hero and the added co-protagonist Grace Ashcroft. The other half of the forthcoming title’s gameplay sections will place players in control of Ashcroft, the former main character in the sequel that was introduced after the announcement of the game.
Nakanishi said that the intentional design for balances in playtime for such characters is overall thematic for distinguishing Requiem into two styles of survival horror gameplay. Leon, now a seasoned veteran of Raccoon City and myriad subsequent biohazard outbreaks, will explicitly be assigned to the game’s more action-oriented sequences. The director stated that, given Leon’s background and experience, his character is unfit for traditional horror elements, and players should not expect the highest levels of fear while with him. Instead, combat and intense action scenarios typical of later entries in the franchise take precedence.
Basically, all resource-scarce, vulnerable portrayals of “the pure survival-horror experience” will be shared by Grace Ashcroft. Nakanishi has also presented Ashcroft as holding a very different spirit from Leon; she has been called both “the biggest scaredy-cat in Resident Evil history”. Thus, one unified story could shift two such tones of intensity against each other for a deliberate transformation of player experience. As Nakanishi described the shift between “jumping into a cold bath after sitting in a hot sauna” emotively and atmospherically:
The announcement must lay to rest the mixed messages and much talk of the industry these last months about Leon’s place, which was made official at The Game Awards 2025. By giving protagonist duties equally to Leon and Ashcroft, Capcom plays off a major character’s popularity while fulfilling the promise to bring back high-tension survival mechanics through the eyes of a character bred specifically for fear. That kind of structure continues the long tradition in the series of multiple views in fully exploring the horrific scope of its narratives.
