Capcom’s TGS 2025 booth put players face to face with something colder and more intimate than recent entries. Rather than a grand tour of set‑pieces, the demo of Resident Evil Requiem dropped players into a decaying hotel where the quiet is the threat. The lead character, Grace Ashcroft, is an FBI analyst whose training doesn’t erase the instinct to hesitate when the dark ahead feels alive. From the first minutes, the hotel asserted itself. Doors resisted; carpets muted steps; the lighter’s flame guttered as if the room was breathing. The soundscape was deliberate and unsettling: not the orchestral swell of danger, but small textures that pricked at focus – a radiator tick, a chain dragging somewhere unseen, the wet rasp of something that might have lungs. Navigation asked you to think about the space, not just pass through it. A locked service corridor hinted at a loop; a collapsed ceiling forced a detour that felt wrong even before taking it.
Encounters through the demo were measured, with enough firepower to survive mistakes, not indulge them. One hallway standoff became a study in restraint: a slow turn, a single shot, a decision to back away rather than commit. The game lets silence do the work, with those in control feeling the cost of every round because the rooms don’t forget it, and neither does Grace. When you do run, it’s not theatrical; it’s practical, pulling tight corners, buying seconds, choosing a door you haven’t opened yet because the one you know is too far. Perspective shifting is the showcase feature, but it never reads as gimmickry. First‑person narrows the world to breath and proximity, making distance hard to judge and angles feel predatory. Third‑person opens the frame just enough to plan. The switch is instant and purposeful: you use it like any other tool, not a party trick, and the hotel responds the same either way. In chase, the toggle becomes a tactic: cut corners wide in third‑person to keep line‑of‑sight, then snap to first‑person when you need the courage to push through a doorway you can barely see.
A new pursuer defines the demo’s middle stretch: not a bullet sponge, but a presence that moves with intent. You glimpse it first as shape and sound, then as weight, like the way a stairwell complains under it and the way light loses confidence when it enters a room. The encounter never asks you to empty a clip; it asks you to make choices under pressure. Find the service passage, risk the elevator, or barricade a door that buys time but not safety. The best sequence isn’t the chase itself; it’s the seconds after, when the hotel is quiet again and you can hear the metal vibrating where you left it. RE Engine earns its keep through mood and epic atmosphere. Texture tells stories: nicotine varnish on walls, damp bleeding through paint, a corridor whose geometry doesn’t add up when you trace it mentally. Lighting is less “beam” and more “memory of light,” the kind that makes you wonder what the room would look like at noon, and whether it ever sees noon anymore. On Switch 2, the RE Engine proved surprisingly adaptable. Frame pacing held steady even during the demo’s chase sequence, and the lighter’s glow still carved out convincing pockets of light against the gloom. Load times between areas were near‑instant, and controls felt responsive whether in first‑ or third‑person. In handheld mode, the smaller screen actually heightened the claustrophobia, making every corridor feel tighter and every shadow more threatening.
Pacing is the quiet triumph. The demo understood when to let you breathe and when to take breath away. It gave just enough challenge on the puzzle side to give a second thought about routes and resources, yet without stalling momentum. Backtracking felt earned, not punitive; when returning to a room, it was because the space had changed in your mind, not because a marker told you to do so. Grace anchors this rhythm. She’s neither superhero nor victim; she’s professional enough to move forward and human enough to look back. What lands, ultimately, is the discipline. Requiem doesn’t shout to be heard. It trusts small frictions, like a hesitant latch, a corridor that curves more than you remember, a pool of light that refuses to touch the far wall, in order to build pressure one decision at a time.
