Resident Evil Requiem quickly won me over with its premise, and lost me with its ending. The franchise has its fair share of plot holes, retcons, and narrative confusion, but the last 45 minutes of this game is among the most disappointing sequences I’ve played through. The unnecessary retcons and plot holes the ending opens up are mind-boggling, which is a shame because Requiem had the potential to feature one of the strongest narratives in the series.

Resident Evil Requiem started with a strong intro

Requiem opens when an ex-Umbrella madman, Victor Gideon, kidnaps rookie FBI agent Grace Ashcroft in a diabolical scheme to recreate Umbrella founder Oswell Spencer’s dark legacy, the mysterious Elpis. Meanwhile, Leon Kennedy, suffering from a mysterious illness that is affecting Raccoon City survivors, searches for a cure while investigating a string of related murders. After the prologue, Grace and Leon’s paths collide at the front for Gideon’s experiments, Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center.

The Rhodes Hill section is one of the best in the franchise. The mystery box widens as we learn Gideon believes Grace is the key to reproducing Elpis, and infects the staff and patients with a modified T-Virus to keep any pursuers busy as he prepares to leave the facility for good. However, Grace escapes his clutches (with some assistance from Leon), and we explore the facility and learn what Gideon has been up to in the two decades since Umbrella’s collapse.

The long and short is that Requiem calls back to Resident Evil Revelations 2. In that game, it’s revealed that, before his death, Oswell Spencer was attempting to develop a method for transferring memory into a new host. Alex Wesker was semi-successful at doing so using a method of her own design, but it was assumed Spencer never perfected his procedure. However, in Requiem, Gideon believes that incomplete data left behind by Spencer indicates that he did manage to transfer his consciousness to Grace. It’s also heavily implied throughout the game that Grace is one of a long series of clones that were produced under and raised in the Raccoon City Orphanage.

So, we end up with an interesting introduction with a lot of potential. There are a lot of threads to pull on, like whether Spencer is alive, whether Grace is a clone, what’s the deal with Emily and her mutated cellmate, and just why does Leon’s hand look like it’s going to fall off? 

As we proceed through the game, things start to unravel a bit. The biggest issue is that after Leon takes out mutated Emily at the end of the Rhodes Hill section, Grace willingly goes with Gideon and Zeno (not Wesker), which could have been avoided if the ending hadn’t completely ruined pretty much the entire setup we got in the intro.

In contrast to Grace’s narrative, Leon’s story is pretty straightforward. While you spend roughly half the game playing as him, Requiem’s narrative is definitely centered around Grace, to the point where I would say that either Leon wasn’t originally in the game or his sections were imagined as a separate title. The most baffling part of his story is not talking about or mentioning any of the other major characters in the series, aside from Sherry. 

Eventually, you make your way to Raccoon City, nostalgia your way to a brand new lab called the ARK, and up until the last 30-45 minutes of the game, the plot remains on track before completely falling apart at the climax.

But didn’t stick the landing

If we take the whole ending segment at face value, Spencer felt bad about being one of the worst people in human history and wanted to make some sort of amends. To do so, he retroactively hid access to an anti-viral he had already completed at some point before the Raccoon City Incident in the deepest, most secret lab. Grace isn’t actually special; she’s just a normal girl. She’s not even actually the key to unlocking Elpis. Anyone could have watched the video files on the disk Alyssa left behind and deduced that the password was “hope.”

Apparently, Victor Gideon and Zeno have been barking up the wrong tree for over two decades, and killed thousands of people (and who knows how many little girl clones) trying to find someone who could inherit Spencer’s memories. This is all explained away by Victor’s claim that “Spencer’s paper was obviously incomplete.” Victor wants to release Elpis to cause anarchy by upsetting the power dynamics and ending the Bio Organic Weapon arms race, but Grace and Leon oppose this (for some reason).

Leon kills Victor, and the BSAA saves the day. However, in the epilogue, the BSAA soldiers left behind to secure the ARK are themselves killed by a mysterious paramilitary force sent in to recover something. Also, Emily somehow survived Leon shooting her because he “didn’t hit any of her vitals,” they Elpised her back to life (and it even cured her blindness), and she and Grace live happily ever after.

But could have without many changes

The ending feels so detached from the rest of the story that I believe that it was drastically changed at some point. It would have made infinitely more sense if Grace had held Spencer’s memories. The twist of having a player character become an enemy would have been great, and it would have meshed well with Leon’s struggle with not being able to save Raccoon City. He would have either had to come to terms with his trauma by defeating Grace or somehow saving her.

Grace could have been the “chosen one” and carried Spencer’s dormant memories. Perhaps Gideon could have triggered their revival somehow, and Spencer was slowly taking control throughout the game. This could have explained why Grace decided to go with Gideon and Zeno after witnessing the absolute hell they unleashed on Rhodes Hill.

Instead of being “hope,” to save the world, it could have been Spencer’s last hope to defeat his nemesis. Elpis could have been an extremely powerful antiviral meant to reverse Wesker’s virus, with the side effect that it was so potent it worked as a universal antidote for any Progenitor-based strain. So, not only would it render Zeno powerless, but it would also cure Leon. The ending could have had Spencer fully take over Grace (perhaps after viewing a trigger on the disc her mom left behind), enter the correct password, and use Elpis on Wesker as his revenge.

After monologuing for a while, Spencer orders Gideon to kill Leon, and we have the boss fight as normal. After winning, Grace/Spencer could gloat that Leon is going to die anyway, and then Leon could use Elpis on them. Since Spencer’s memory transfer used a modified T-Virus, it would destroy his consciousness, freeing Grace to use Elpis on Leon, and the ending could continue as normal.

I’m not saying my ending would be better, but it would at least let the plot threads the game started with pay off instead of being shoved aside. Gideon and Zeno also wouldn’t look (as)stupid for spending 20+ years doing absolutely nothing. It would also open the series up to more Spencer shenanigans (Grace doesn’t have to be the only person he transmits his memories to) and make for a tighter, more rewarding narrative.