After finally getting confirmation about next mainline Resident Evil game – Resident Evil Requiem – after several rumours, new rumours are now popping up about the upcoming horror title. Known Resident Evil leaker AestheticGamer has taken to social media platform X with a new post indicating that we might see Leon Kennedy taking up the reins as protagonist for Resident Evil Requiem.
According to AestheticGamer, while we didn’t see Kennedy in the trailer, he was still present somewhere in there. The leaker also wrote that Resident Evil Requiem will feature two playable protagonists: Leon Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft. While no confirmation about this has come in from Capcom yet, rumours indicate that we’ll get to see the protagonists revealed over the course of the game’s marketing cycle.
“I’ll say this now before my trailer breakdown: Leon is the main character of RE9 Requiem,” wrote AestheticGamer. “You won’t fully see him for a bit (though he is in the trailer), but in the final game you play far more as Leon than Grace. Become more obvious as marketing continues, into the final game.”
The single trailer that has been released by Capcom for Resident Evil Requiem has been a cryptic one. In fact, watching the trailer with zero context, one would be forgiven for not realising that it was a Resident Evil game until halfway through the trailer, since not only does the game seem to take place quite a bit after the events of previous game, but also because the few notable references to past Resident Evil titles are obscure ones.
One of the biggest indicators that Requiem’s trailer was for a Resident Evil game – aside from the appearance of a dilapidated Raccoon City Police Department building – was the fact that one of the characters is named Grace Ashcroft. While Grace herself is a new character, she is seemingly the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft – one of the playable characters from PS2-era co-op titles Resident Evil: Outbreak and Outbreak File #2.
Alyssa was able to survive the destruction of Raccoon City in the wake of the zombie outbreak at the time, and she continued her research into the shady dealings of Umbrella Corporation, even going as far as writing an expose. The last time we saw anything about Alyssa was back in Resident Evil 7, where a newspaper article with her byline can be spotted reporting about mysterious disappearances in the town of Dulvey Parish, Louisiana.
However, Alyssa was found to eventually have been murdered when she was investigating the Wrenwood Hotel. While the exact timeline of this is currently unclear, it might end up playing a bigger role in the storyline for Resident Evil Requiem, since Alyssa’s daughter Grace is involved in the plot in some way.
Resident Evil Requiem is slated for release on February 27, 2026, and is currently being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Capcom has also confirmed that a playable build of the title will be available at Gamescom in August. In the meantime, check out details about its “lifelike facial expressions” and “high-fidelity sweat droplets”.
