Resident Evil Requiem will give Leon S. Kennedy about half of the game's runtime as the controllable character, according to new statements made by the game's director. Many fans of the horror game series have been waiting patently for the chance to step into the role of Leon again, and Resident Evil Requiem looks ready to appeal to that section of the fan base in a big way.
Rumors about whether Leon would be appearing in the upcoming Resident Evil game have been swirling for a long time, but a solid answer was recently made clear during The Game Awards 2025. There, a new trailer for Resident Evil Requiem confirmed Leon's return to the franchise, though it didn't actually show him until the last minute of its nearly three-and-a-half-minute run, as he comes to the rescue by scoring zombie headshots with his trusty sidearm. That was likely a clever ploy by Capcom to build up suspense during the gaming world's biggest night of the year, and it seems to have paid off, as posts across social media the following day are celebrating his inclusion in the game.
Resident Evil Requiem Producer Confirms 'Characters From The Past Series'
Resident Evil Requiem's producer admits to other character from the past making appearances, but warns to not over-hype or expect too much.
Leon's Role in Resident Evil Requiem Officially Revealed
While The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley clarified that Leon will be a playable character in Resident Evil Requiem, that statement still left the question of how much time players will get to spend with him. Fortunately for his fans, director Akifumi Nakanishi cleared up that issue in an interview with Automaton, stating that about half the gameplay sections will see players controlling Leon, with the other half going to fellow protagonist Grace Ashcroft. Since the game's reveal at a Capcom Showcase in July 2024, Grace had been portrayed as the game's main, and possibly only, protagonist. Capcom's leadership had previously decried multiple leaks about Leon's presence in Resident Evil Requiem as fake news, though that comment was aimed at specific doctored images circulating online and did not outright state that he wouldn't be part of the game.
Nakanishi explained that while Grace will serve players well during the pure survival-horror sections of the game, Leon is more suited to Resident Evil's action game aspects, and that is the role he will be performing this time around as well. Leon has changed a lot over the course of the series, and the director feels his background and take-charge attitude mean he "isn't well suited to horror," so players shouldn't expect to find him uncharacteristically cowering in fear of undead monsters, nor should they expect to experience the game's biggest levels of terror when he's the one they're controlling.
Instead, that role will be handled through Grace Ashcroft's story, and Nakanishi hopes that fans will react well to the duality of the two hero roles as Resident Evil Requiem transitions between two distinctly different styles of gameplay. While the game will have just one unified story, Leon's a hardened, longtime veteran of Resident Evil's biggest horrors, while the director described Grace as "the biggest scaredy-cat in Resident Evil history." Both characters' arcs will provide their own variety of intensity, and he portrayed the shift between them as being likened to "jumping into a cold bath after sitting in a hot sauna."
While some long-running game series are content to stick with just one consistent protagonist throughout, there are plenty of well-loved Resident Evil characters players have taken control of over nearly three decades. While they can't all be considered the main characters of their respective games, there have been more than 20 playable characters throughout the series' run, starting with Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield in the 1996 original and leading up to Ethan Winters in Resident Evil 7 and Village. Leon has been one of the most popular of those characters, however, having last made his appearance alongside Ashley Graham in 2023's Resident Evil 4 remake.
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