Since 2017’s Resident Evil 7, a regular staple of Capcom’s horror series has been the inclusion of an enemy that stalks you. Jack Baker burst through a wall and into our hearts, the world fell in love with Mr. X, and Lady Dimitrescu provoked *cough* her own kind of online adoration. Resident Evil Requiem appears to be keeping up this tradition with its own take on the hulking, relentless pursuer. And so far, from my small 20-minute sample at gamescom 2025, it feels like Capcom has created a new, lumbering foe that more than lives up to the mantle of a Resident Evil stalker.
The short demo takes place at the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center and stars our latest protagonist, Grace Ashcroft, who creeps through the dimly lit and suitably spooky setting armed only with a lighter and glass bottles. While I expect combat will be part of the full game, there are no firearms to be seen in this demo, so there’s an inherent emphasis on caution while creeping around the clinic’s handful of rooms and a single long connecting hallway. If you think that sounds like an incredibly small location to explore, then you’d be right. My sample of Requiem lacked any real kind of exploration and was largely a task of collecting item A to open item B, which allows you to get item C and so forth. All sounds simple enough, right? Well, in classic survival horror fashion, your uneasy confidence is quickly jump-scared out of existence upon the arrival of the as-yet-unamed stalker enemy.
After Grace discovers a lifeless zombie (or “infected,” in her words), a hulking claw lurches into frame to manhandle the corpse. The camera lifts just as the creature plunges its teeth into the zombie’s skull, both demonstrating the beast’s sheer mass and how it has little consideration for the series’ iconic fodder. This new stalker is Lady D tall, with the frame of Resident Evil’s Lisa Trevor, and the vice-like jaw of a Wendigo. She has bulbous eyes, claws for hands, and a hunched posture. Once unleashed, this stalker – like its recent relatives – is persistent, promptly reacting to the sounds, sights, and smells of Grace. And like her Xenomorph stalker cousin from Alien: Isolation, this monstrosity can and will travel above you through the ceiling space, dropping down as quickly as it can scarper up. Basically, she’s relentless and can easily out-manouvre you.
Fortunately, there are a few tools in Grace’s arsenal that can help you survive, the first being the aforementioned glass bottle. As you might expect, they are primarily used as a distraction tool, drawing the stalker's attention to the other end of the hallway and buying you time to slip past. It can also, in theory, be used as a weapon, although I’m not sure I’d recommend it – as with most stalking enemies, you can’t damage or kill Grace’s pursuer.
Perhaps Grace’s most valuable weapon though, as you might have gathered by now, is sneaking. While crouching, you are afforded some moments of mercy, as you take advantage of whatever small pockets of space you can find, be that under tables or behind corners. It’s a useful skill, particularly in the Nurse’s Station room when drawing the attention of the beast is inevitable due to a scripted sequence. It does, however, only buy you a moment to slip by, and even when you reach a safer spot, flicking open your lighter to illuminate the darkness will draw the stalker’s attention back to you. Creep as much as you wish, but your pursuer is always hot on your heels, no matter how carefully you tread.
Interestingly, this new enemy type does have an Achilles heel, though: Light. Or, more specifically, the bright white light of a room’s ceiling lamp (the lighter’s tiny flame didn’t appear to make any difference). When chasing Grace into a well-lit room, the monster’s skin visibly burns, causing her to scream and retreat. Not only does this put some of the power back into your hands, but it’s also a nice interpretation of Resident Evil’s safe room rules. If you’ve ever seen Mr. X’s bizarre backpedalling when he’s confronted with a safe room, you’ll know this change is a welcome one, adding some well overdue logic to the classic gameplay trope that magically blocks the stalker from entering your safe haven.
While there was neither much space nor opportunity to explore, thanks to the small environment and constant presence of the terrifying stalker, what little exploring I did do felt – perhaps to no surprise – very familiar. Like Resident Evil 7, Village, and the series in general, you’re managing inventory slots, examining items, finding strange keys to unlock strange doors, and fitting fuses into circuit breakers. It’s all very traditional and fans of the series will feel completely at home. The first-person perspective of the more recent mainline games also remains, and at the suggestion of both the developers and myself, it’s the optimal way to play a horror sequence like this one. However, following in line with the upgrade Capcom provided Resident Evil Village, you can also play Resident Evil Requiem from the classic third-person perspective. Your choice of camera can be changed on the fly in the menu anytime you wish, allowing you to freely switch and create a different atmosphere. It’s an interesting choice for a non-remake Resident Evil game, and certainly doesn’t feel like an afterthought, even if it may cynically appear to be at first. In a way that perhaps only a triple-A budget game can, both viewpoints are extremely well-designed, with moments tailored for each experience to maximise the player’s fear.
In first-person, the stalker looms larger and feels significantly more imposing, the restricted field of vision allowing for scripted scares to have more impact. During the demo, you’re forced to make noise by moving a cart across the room to create a step to reach your next item of importance. With the more focused first-person viewpoint, mid-action, you’re treated to a giant, claw-shaped signifier of the beast’s impending arrival scraping past the window. It’s a panic inducing moment, and one that loses its power when your hyper-specific point of view is opened up by a wide, third-person camera.
It’s clear that Capcom is aware of this, though, and has made an effort to maintain scares despite your preference. In this short gameplay slice, that ethos was perfectly demonstrated. In first-person, just after the stalker’s introduction, you simply turn around to smoothly run down the hallway as fast as you can, leaving the stalker in your wake – it’s only the sounds of her shambling that follow you that remind you of the danger. In third-person, however, perspective-specific animations have Grace stumble and fall, ratcheting up the tension to make up for the reduced level of threat produced by the wider, vision-granting perspective.
It’s a lovely touch, and something I hope to see a ton more of in the full game - hopefully providing ample amounts of horror despite your perspective preference. My short playtime was such a small sample size of Resident Evil Requiem that it’s very hard at this early stage to know where the ninth entry in the mainline series will fit in comparison to its predecessors. And that’s assuming that the scenario in this demo will even feature in the full game at all – there’s the possibility of this being a bespoke demo, something Capcom has prior experience in with Resident Evil 7’s “Beginning Hour” demo. But even if this is just a tonal example, it’s very hard to not be excited for what horrors Resident Evil Requiem has in store for us when this unstoppable beast arrives early next year.
Dale Driver is an Associate Director of Video Programming at IGN. Be thoroughly bored by following him on Bluesky at @daledriver.bsky.social
