This article contains spoilers for Resident Evil Requiem.
Resident Evil Requiem is now in our hands and, as our review makes clear, it’s a massive success. But what’s next for Capcom’s long-running horror series? Resident Evil has settled into a release cadence over the last few years that alternates between new mainline entries and extravagant remakes. With the most recent remake being an overhaul of Leon S. Kennedy’s iconic Spain-set adventure, Resident Evil 4, the next one up on the docket is likely to be Chris Redfield’s co-op odyssey, Resident Evil 5. That would be interesting for many reasons, but to make matters more intriguing, one of Resident Evil Requiem’s third act plot reveals seems to hint at the ways Capcom intends to alter the series’ continuity in a hypothetical remake of the fifth mainline chapter. Let’s take a look at how Requiem may be quietly setting up a lore-altering remake of Resident Evil 5.
Big Spencer
Even people who have never played a Resident Evil game before have probably at least heard of the Umbrella Corporation, the nefarious pharmaceutical company behind many of the series’ biohazardous events. Who they’re less likely to be familiar with is Oswell E. Spencer, the founder and CEO of Umbrella. Although he’s rarely made direct appearances in the games, Spencer could arguably be considered the overarching antagonist of the entire franchise. The first game took place in his mansion, after all, and the series’ dense web of viruses, monsters, and shady villainous factions almost all tie back to Spencer in one way or another because of his initial work with bioweapons.
Resident Evil Requiem brings Spencer back in the spotlight, but in an unexpected way that recontextualizes his place in the Resident Evil universe. Where previous lore depicted Spencer as a megalomaniacal oligarch who wanted to remake the world using weaponized viruses, Requiem presents a more human side of this ambitious scientist.
In the game’s final act, protagonist Grace Ashcroft learns that her mother, reporter Alyssa Ashcroft, interviewed Spencer in his twilight years. As part of their meeting, Spencer explained that he’d been taking care of an orphaned infant – Grace herself – and gave her to Alyssa to raise. He also seemed to express genuine remorse for all the death and destruction he’d caused. Requiem doubles down on this idea with the twist that Elpis, Spencer’s secret final project that the villains have been seeking all game long, is not a new bioweapon like they believed, but in fact an antiviral agent that can cure infections caused by Umbrella’s viruses. In Requiem’s “good” ending, Grace realizes that Spencer wanted to atone for his actions by using Elpis to nullify the bioweapons he once created. She releases the antiviral into the world, and Leon is saved from his T-Virus infection.
The scene of Spencer and Alyssa’s conversation is remarkable because it managed to evoke pity and even a bit of sympathy from me for a character who I know is an egotistical madman responsible for numerous atrocities and millions of deaths. That’s the power of strong writing and voice work. But while making Spencer more sympathetic serves a self-contained purpose within Requiem’s story, the idea that he had regrets before his death carries huge implications for the series’ established canon, especially as it relates to Resident Evil 5’s place in the timeline.
Flashback Attack
Spencer made one of his few in-person appearances in Resident Evil 5, popping up in a flashback cutscene that featured him talking with another recurring series antagonist, Albert Wesker. Spencer is shown as an old man in a wheelchair, barely clinging to life while still espousing his eugenics-minded philosophy. He raves about how he had the “right to be a god,” and reveals to Wesker that he was part of a program designed to create superior beings whom Spencer was to be the master of. Wesker then kills Spencer, saying that he was “arrogant even until the end.”
This is Spencer’s canonical death, although this version of him is incongruous with the revelations in Requiem. But that might not be a problem if a Resident Evil 5 remake reworks this scene and Spencer’s role in the plot to fit with his newer, more regretful portrayal.
Spencer’s death in Resident Evil 5’s main campaign is merely part of a cutscene, but the sequence became more interactive with the Lost in Nightmares DLC. The expansion sees Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine battle Wesker shortly after he kills Spencer, with you fighting in the very same room he commits the deed in. Should this sequence be recreated and integrated into the main campaign of a potential RE5 remake, Capcom would have the opportunity to rewrite Spencer’s final moments so they line up better with Requiem’s reveals. This could be the first moment in the series’ timeline that our heroes learn of Spencer’s real feelings on his legacy. And with the DLC being one of the only parts of RE5 that mechanically feels akin to the franchise’s classic survival horror gameplay, it’s a prime candidate for a level that could be included in a remake that would, presumably, look to reformat the story to better suit the series’ renewed survival horror ambitions.
It makes a certain amount of sense for Capcom to do this, because this very scene has already been the subject of a retcon. The villains’ conversation sees Spencer claim that Albert was the only survivor of the Wesker program, but that turned out to be untrue when we learned about Alex Wesker, who was the main villain of Resident Evil: Revelations 2.
Capcom has already been fairly liberal with its Resident Evil remakes making adjustments to previous continuity. The first game’s remake introduced entirely new characters, the most notable being Lisa Trevor, the daughter of the Spencer Mansion’s architect. Umbrella used Lisa as a test subject, and her mutated body was the vessel from which William Birkin, one of the main villains of RE2, first harvested that game’s G-Virus. Resident Evil 2’s remake, meanwhile, adds a lot of flesh and nuance to characters like Ada Wong, Marvin Branagh, and Annette Birkin.
Most pressingly, Resident Evil 4’s remake ends with Ada stealing the dominant plaga sample (referred to as “the Amber”) and refusing to give it to Wesker, something that very much did not happen in the original game. Since Wesker’s work with Las Plagas created many of the threats present in Resident Evil 5, this alteration (as well as the reveal that Wesker recovered Jack Krauser’s corpse), hints that the context for how RE5’s monsters come to be will be different in the seemingly inevitable remake.
What Does This Mean For Resident Evil 5?
Recent Resident Evil games hinting that the events of RE5 will be different in the new continuity are pretty big clues that a remake of the fifth game is all but assured. While the remakes have been a largely successful creative endeavor, Resident Evil 5 in particular is an interesting subject for a remake. Both its mechanical and narrative relationships to the rest of the franchise are somewhat fraught, and a remake provides the opportunity to smooth over those discrepancies. I doubt that a remake would ditch the co-op campaign – one of the original version’s most beloved and foundational features – but the game marked the point where it was borderline impossible to argue that the series was still trying to be a survival horror game. Resident Evil 4 got away with the shift to a more action-heavy style because it revolutionized third-person shooting and was a masterclass in tension. RE5 doesn’t have the same pedigree and moved even further away from the atmosphere of the early games, something that could be rectified in a remake.
I say this as a fan of the fifth game: it could really use some serious changes. I have played through Resident Evil 5 somewhere north of 20 times, on multiple platforms and with many different co-op partners. It’s an excellent game to throw on with a buddy, and is easy to play as a casual hangout activity. That said, the series’ adherence to the “stop and shoot” mechanic, as appropriate as it is for the classic entries, is not conducive to the fast-paced two-person experience RE5 wants to be, nor is its incredibly primitive attempt at cover mechanics for specific encounters. A version of RE5 that uses the many refinements the franchise has made to its gameplay in the years since the original’s release would let it feel more fresh and dynamic instead of an awkward midpoint between Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War.
More substantively, the Resident Evil remakes have done a tremendous job of improving the franchise’s narrative credibility with stronger writing and more believable performances while not significantly altering the actual plots of each respective entry. Resident Evil 5 could use this more than most, both because it pushes RE4’s carefully considered campy tone a bit too far into maximalist absurdism, and also because the game did not do the best job of navigating the perils of being a horror game with an African setting. RE5 has been a subject of controversy for racial insensitivity since before it was even released, and while your mileage may vary on how big of a problem that is for you, it’s difficult to absolve the game of the accusation. Not even secondary protagonist Sheva Alomar being a heroic figure can eliminate how misguided some parts of RE5 are. It’s not that the story can’t be set in Africa, but the game’s middle chapters with plaga-infested tribal warriors could be easily swapped out for something that feels more in line with contemporary sensibilities.
No matter how Capcom decides to tackle a Resident Evil 5 remake, the alterations in these recent games indicate that the studio won’t be faithfully remaking RE5’s story. Quite how changes to Spencer’s legacy and Ada Wong’s decision will change the direction of any hypothetical remake is not yet clear, so we can’t yet say if such retcons will pave the way for Capcom to better align the game with the creative sensibilities of the modern era, or if it simply means the lore around its story will feature minor adjustments.
We don’t know what the next Resident Evil game following Requiem will be, but whenever the Resident Evil 5 remake does come together, it seems like it won’t be exactly like we remember it.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles, and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
