Resident Evil Requiem: What the discarded version envisioned

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Resident Evil Requiem: What the discarded version envisioned.

If you start Resident Evil Requiem, you're playing a compact survival horror adventure – not the open-world project that Capcom had originally planned for the ninth installment of the series. According to a new report from Areajugones, the discarded version bore the working title Resident Evil Apocalypse and was meant to noticeably rework the series' gameplay.

The report, Areajugones says, is based on information from one of the most renowned leakers of the Resident Evil series. According to the Spanish gaming outlet, the original vision differed from the released Requiem in several significant ways.

What this means for you: Anyone playing Requiem today is seeing only an endpoint – not the path Capcom actually wanted to take.

What 'Resident Evil Apocalypse' had in store

Work on Resident Evil 9 reportedly proceeded under the codename Resident Evil Apocalypse. In this phase, Areajugones reports, Capcom pursued an open-world approach – an open game world in which you move freely between different areas, unlike the previous main entries, which were built more linearly or semi-linearly.

That would have been a break from the recently proven Resident Evil formula, which relies on tight corridors, scarce resources, and targeted scares.

Six protagonists and less horror: three concrete changes

In the headline of its coverage, Areajugones lists several points in which the discarded version was meant to stand apart from the finished Requiem. Three are clearly named:

• Open World: an open world structure instead of tightly guided level design.
• Six Protagonists: the narrative was apparently to be built around multiple playable characters instead of a single main figure.
• Less Horror: the survival horror share was to be dialed back in favor of other gameplay elements.

Areajugones also speaks in its headline of "many other changes," but does not detail them in the available excerpt. Which mechanics, locations, or narrative structures were cut beyond that remains unclear for now.

What remained in the end

What was actually released was Resident Evil Requiem – a game stylistically closer to the series' older entries, placing survival horror front and center. The source at hand does not describe which mechanics, locations, or story elements from the Apocalypse phase ultimately made it into Requiem and which did not.

What you can take away from the leak

If you try Resident Evil Requiem, it's worth paying attention to what Capcom deliberately didn't do. The discarded idea shows that the publisher was apparently looking for not just a new scenario but a fundamental strategic decision for the brand. That the tighter, horror-heavy approach won out fits the series' track record in recent years.

Anyone who wants to dig deeper can find the original story at Areajugones – in Spanish.