Resident Evil Requiem developers have made it abundantly clear that this game will be terrifying; no punches have been pulled. Taking its inspiration from Resident Evil 2, Requiem will put players in the unenviable blood-soaked shoes of Grace Ashcroft, but it wasn’t always meant to be like this.
The first hint that Requiem was first intended to be an entirely different game came from producer Masato Kumazawa (via Press Start): “So looking back on the online multiplayer game, it’s been in development for around six years or so.”
While it’s a surprising origin story, I can’t say I’m surprised. Capcom has been tinkering with the idea of Resident Evil-inspired online multiplayer games for a while now. Some of the games, like RE5 and RE6, had co-op in the campaigns, while Revelations had Raid Mode, which could be played in online co-op. Re: Verse was the most recent attempt at an online multiplayer RE-inspired game, although that didn’t end very well.
“Looking at the game when it was multiplayer, the horror part was very mild,” Kumazawa says. “However, in that build, we made a game that was fun to play. But we looked deeply into this game and wondered if a fan of the franchise would really like this, so we thought they probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much.
“That’s the reason we made it back into a singleplayer game. But because it was fun, we added elements from that build to the final game to ensure it was fun. There are some remaining elements, but we can’t disclose what it is.”
It seems a little wild that there could be remnants of this lost RE online multiplayer game nestled in the cracks of Requiem, and I’m pretty apprehensive as to how it’ll manifest itself. But I guess I should just be thankful that the decision was made to turn Requiem into a singleplayer game. I think we dodged a bullet with that one.