Resident Evil Requiem producer Masatao Kumazawa and director Koshi Nakanishi had indicated that the post-launch minigame for the survival horror game might come out after Golden Week. In the same interview with the Japanese publication Den-Fami Nico Gamer, it was also revealed that an entire chapter was cut from Resident Evil Requiem before its release.
Nakanishi brought up comparisons with 2017’s Resident Evil 7, which also featured a chapter that was cut from the game before its release. “Up to now, I’ve talked in interviews about how Resident Evil 7 had a ‘phantom Chapter 2’ that got cut during development,” he said (via machine translation). “It was supposed to be the section where you move from the guest house to the main house.”
A similar “phantom chapter” in Resident Evil Requiem was cut when, during the process of development, the studio decided to tighten up the game’s overall structure. “Actually, Resident Evil Requiem had its own ‘phantom Chapter 2’ as well,” he explained. “As we lock down the structure of the game, we go through a pretty intense process of deciding things like, ‘Let’s push this scene further back,’ ‘Let’s just cut this entirely,’ or ‘Let’s add something different here.'”
“It’s not like we suddenly remove things at the very end of development, of course. More often, we build a rough version early on and keep revising it over and over. And in that process, it’s actually pretty common for an entire chapter to get cut.”
As one might expect, cutting out entire scenes or chapters might lead to some of the game’s developers getting upset, since they would have worked hard on those parts. However, according to Nakanishi, “as long as the result is good, everyone is satisfied.”
Where this “phantom Chapter 2” would have fallen in the Resident Evil Requiem timeline is difficult to nail down, since the title features pretty solid pacing from start to end. The survival horror game puts players in the shoes of two distinct protagonists—the returning Leon S. Kennedy and newcomer Grace Ashcroft. While the latter’s sequences involve survival horror elements similar to the earlier titles in the Resident Evil franchise, the latter focuses more on action in the vein of Resident Evil 4 Remake. The game has also been structured to allow players to explore many environments with both characters, with one often experiencing the aftermath of the other having passed through.
Nakanishi has also spoken about the minigame that Capcom has been working on for Resident Evil Requiem, noting that it will be single-player and “based on the battles in the main game.” He described it as being made “for those who have cleared the main story and are thinking, ‘I still haven’t had enough fun!’, I think you’ll be able to enjoy this and go ‘Whoa!!’, so sharpen your tomahawk and wait.”
Resident Evil Requiem is available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. For more details, check out our review. Also, take a look at its recent sales milestone, which led Capcom to revise its revenue forecast for the financial year ending on March 31st.
