Category: IGN

Following in the jet trail of futuristic racing games like F-Zero and Wipeout, Fast Fusion’s blistering speed has all the hallmarks of what has made the Fast series so fun since its 2011 debut. Every muscle in my body tensed up as I blazed through its handful of sci-fi courses, boosting my way to the finish line while using the new jumping mechanic to find shortcuts. As one of only a very small handful of current Nintendo Switch 2 exclusives, this is a dazzling technical showcase for the power of Nintendo’s newly minted system – but annoying progression choices and minimally inventive changes to a well-worn formula dull some of Fast Fusion’s shine.

If I had a dollar for every racing series that added the ability to jump as part of its arrival on Switch 2, I’d only be two bucks richer, but it’s still weird that it happened twice. That jump option is also just about the only thing Fast Fusion and Mario Kart World have in common: where the latter takes things in a bold new direction with its open world, here developer Shin’en sticks to what it’s done well since Fast Racing League on Wii. There are a few new bells and whistles to mess with as you tear through its fifteen courses ( three of which were added in its first update on June 26), but this flavor of hypersonic speed will largely be very familiar to anyone who has played past entries.

Fans of F-Zero or Wipeout will also know the drill: Fast Fusion is set in a distant future where the only speed is fast and every road is dangerous. High-tech racing machines careen through obstacle-laden courses at blinding speeds. The Fast series sets itself apart with a unique boost system, where driving over boost pads or through other elements of the course will give you an extra push as long as you switch your vehicle to the corresponding orange or blue color. Making that swap only takes the press of a button and rewards you with a satisfying burst of speed. Fast Fusion knows how good it feels to go faster than the speed of sound, and it leans into it as its highly detailed, staggeringly impressive environments melt into a blur as you carve through them.

You can also collect orbs to fill up an independent boost meter, and switching as you weave between tight turns before boosting through a straightaway to shave nanoseconds off your time adds just enough to focus on without becoming overbearing. But that has always been true of the Fast formula, and Fast Fusion’s jump button breaks from tradition in a smart but ultimately not too impactful way. Shin’en used this change to add more complexity to its courses with alternate paths stacked on top of each other, but I wish the Munich-based studio had leaned into the change even more, as it doesn’t amount to much more than adding small shortcuts and an extra way to dodge some obstacles.

These are still fun, but I feel like there’s just a bit too much rigidity in how and where you can use the jump to put yourself ahead. It has a ton of range, and you can cover some massive gaps with the right timing, but I never felt rewarded by pushing these mechanics to the absolute limit or mastering them beyond jumping where it felt natural or obvious.

The mechanical changes from 2017’s Fast RMX on the original Switch to Fast Fusion mirror the similarly incremental jump in graphical power between these hardware generations, leaning into one or two specific improvements rather than attempting a complete overhaul. This is easily one of the most impressive-looking Switch 2 games available right now, with incredible lighting and gorgeously smooth visuals while playing in 4K docked, but it’s missing some of the initial wow factor that Fast RMX had. Don’t get me wrong, it still looks stunning, but the generational jump just isn’t nearly as exciting or surprising.

Thankfully, Fast Fusion does at least offer a decent selection of different graphics settings, making it easy to favor framerate, graphical quality, or a balance of both. I usually went for the second-best quality setting that promised 4K output and some high-fidelity lighting while maintaining a consistent 60 frames-per-second, but then opted for a higher framerate choice when playing in splitscreen. I love that Shin’en decided to include this option, really letting me juice my Switch 2 for every last drop of processing power it has.

Just like Formula 1 or NASCAR, futuristic corporations have a mechanical horse in the race. Instead of racing bounty hunters and samurai clashing on the track, you’re controlling faceless cars made or sponsored by different manufacturers. That sterile, far-flung futuristic vibe has the same somewhat empty, tech-demo-like feeling you see in those videos of Unreal Engine fan mockups where a beloved character runs around a grey box and the comments are begging some publisher to, “Please hire this man.” But Fast Fusion moves so quickly that you hardly have any time to pay attention to those basic-looking spiky balls rolling around the course unless you’re doing your best to steer around them.

Separated by standard racing stats like top speed, acceleration, and boost, Fast Fusion’s garage has a great selection of vehicle configurations that cater to tons of different playstyles. Maybe you’ll aim for a high boost stat, which rewards you for precisely switching between blue and orange when driving over boost pads or through color-coded zones. Alternatively, a high acceleration stat makes it easier to get your zero-G legs, allowing you to catch up to the herd more quickly as you contend with Fast Fusion’s somewhat punishing wipeouts. I usually went for a blend of high top speed and boost once I got used to each course, dodging obstacles and nailing hairpin turns while optimizing routes that allowed me to boost as much as possible.

Finding that perfect build isn’t easy at first because you start with a paltry three vehicles, and are forced to use the in-game currency won by completing races to expand your stable of zero-gravity racers – and eventually fuse them together. Fusing vehicles results in goofy corporate merger names and better vehicles with improved stats. You’re all but required to unlock higher-grade vehicles and fuse them to compete at the highest speeds and difficulties Fast Fusion will throw at you.

Each fusion is nebulously graded on a lettering system, which I still haven’t completely deciphered even after a dozen hours of racing. But as far as I can tell, it rewards saving up cash to unlock the most expensive vehicles you can and kit-bashing two high-ticket rides together more than anything else. Frustratingly, fusing racing machines removes the option to use either of the original, pre-fusion vehicles. I get this from a flavor perspective, but it doesn’t make sense within the context of an arcade-y racing game where you want to unlock many different options. Fusing and de-fusing cost in-game currency, making its artificial scarcity all the more annoying; this wouldn’t be as much of a problem if you didn’t also need to use that currency to unlock new cups to compete in. To make things even worse, Fast Fusion forces you to unlock the second, third, and fourth cups in each speed class, which doubles as a difficulty setting.

I understand that Fast Fusion isn’t meant to be as forgiving or easy to pick up as a kart racer; gating higher difficulties behind reaching the winners’ podium in every cup would make sense. But obscuring cups I’ve already completed by making me unlock them at every difficulty – while also making me buy nearly every car and then additionally pay to fuse them into better ones – unnecessarily stalls Fast Fusion’s economy. It’s like putting training wheels on a Harley.

Side modes can at least make for fun alternate ways to earn extra cash beyond just repeating the same cup over and over again, like the sudden death-style Hero Mode where your vehicle’s boost and health are linked. That’s neat, but I wish the challenges offered in these other modes had a little bit more going on. Instead, they’re mostly just slight tweaks to a normal race with no change to the courses themselves, which doesn’t alleviate the repetitive grind of unlocking everything.

Compared to 2015’s Fast Racing Neo, Fast Fusion is smaller – but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. Most courses offer clever designs that had me white-knuckling my controller, from a fun series of shortcuts on Yama Crest to dodging tornadoes on Tempesta. This laser-sharp focus on great levels is probably the best and most interesting part of Fast Fusion. Every time I’ve booted it up, I’ve found a new, satisfying way to shave a few seconds off of a lap I thought I’d mastered. Boost orbs make for compelling breadcrumbs in that pursuit, encouraging you to find new ways to approach a turn or hinting at a hidden path or more efficient way to handle an obstacle.

Resident Evil Requiem will feature a return to the series’ “overarching narrative” begun 30 years ago, Capcom has said, following the launch of more recent games such as Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village which focused on events set elsewhere, with fewer connections to past titles.

Requiem not only features the return of Raccoon City, but will also apparently pick up on the current status of the shadowy Umbrella Corporation. The last we heard of that, the company had gone bankrupt. But is it back now, somehow — or did it ever really go away?

Speaking in a interview published on the PlayStation blog, Resident Evil Requiem producer Masato Kumazawa said the game was being designed to to commemorate the franchise’s 30th anniversary next year, when it releases on February 27, 2026, three decades on from the March 1996 launch of the original Resident Evil.

“In recent mainline titles like Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village, the series has explored the broader world of the Resident Evil universe by focusing on incidents involving the Winters family,” Kumazawa said.

“With Resident Evil Requiem, however, we wanted to return to a story that continues the overarching narrative rooted in Raccoon City and the secret machinations of the Umbrella Corporation. As the series celebrates its 30th anniversary, we believe Raccoon City is the most fitting setting.”

While Resident Evil 7 is relatively recent in terms of the series’ overall timeline, it still arrived back in 2017. Think back to when we last saw classic Resident Evil characters outside of remakes, and its clear the series has plenty of fan-favorites ripe for a return.

Another classic Resident Evil story thread that Requiem will link back to is that of spin-off series Resident Evil Outbreak, with new protagonist Grace Ashcroft the daughter of Outbreak’s Alyssa.

“When creating a story set in the ruins of Raccoon City, we felt it was fitting to have a character with a personal connection to the city itself,” Kumazawa continued, referencing Leo- sorry, Grace.

“In this title, which aims to focus on horror, we introduce Grace as a new, relatable protagonist, who is unlike previous protagonists Leon or Chris,” he added.

Kumazawa went on to reiterate what have we heard from other Requiem developers previously, that Grace was specifically chosen as the game’s protagonist because she was someone who still “jumps in fright” when an enemy appears.

But again, Capcom has also stated that Requiem will feature more action-heavy sequences. And perhaps it’s here that fans will get to play as someone like Leon — someone also with a personal connection to Raccoon City — if he is also in the game, as many fans still believe.

“We always thought about making Leon the protagonist,” Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi said during the Capcom Spotlight 2025 broadcast last night, before saying he was a “bad match for horror” gameplay. In a separate developer diary, Capcom confirmed it had experimented with plans to make Resident Evil: Requiem an open-world game, and for it feature online elements, before realising this wasn’t what fans wanted.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

In case you wondered, yes, all the Kojima-related Easter eggs sprinkled through Death Stranding 2: On The Beach were indeed created by game creator and director Hideo Kojima himself.

In a Japanese-language interview with GameSpark, Kojima revealed that even when he begged his staff to include little jokes and secrets for players to find, his team would “pretend not to know” what he wanted.

“All of that stuff was added by me,” Kojima said, as translated by Automaton.

“Even if I said to the staff, ‘Please put them in!’ they would just say, Huh? and pretend not to know,” he added.

Kojima even suggested a location in the game where fans could go to see an example of something he added. “If you look up at the sky at night in a hot spring, you can see a very beautiful sky,” Kojima said. “If you zoom in there, various things will appear, so please play around with it.”

What you find may not be to everyone’s taste, however — “it might cause certain people to cringe hard,” Kojima admitted.

We recently learned that Kojima changed the game halfway through because playtesting results were “too good,” and he doesn’t want his work to be “mainstream.”

IGN’s Death Stranding 2 review returned a 9/10. We said: “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a triumphant sequel that emphatically delivers on the promise of its original.”

Don’t forget, Hideo Kojima is also working on a live-action Death Stranding film with A24, and we recently learned that a Death Stranding anime is in the works, too. He’s also working on a PlayStation exclusive action espionage project called Physint, and called the upcoming Xbox-published OD “a game I have always wanted to make.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Magic: The Gathering has had plenty of Secret Lair crossovers this year, from SpongeBob to Deadpool, and one more is speeding onto the scene next month. Sonic the Hedgehog is getting three individual Secret Lair drops, and we’ve got the exclusive first look at one that’s all about artifacts.

Flip through the gallery below to see all 7 cards in the Turbo Gear Secret Lair drop:

Unlike the recent Final Fantasy crossover, which is an entire draftable Magic set alongside four pre-constructed Commander decks, this Sonic crossover follows the blueprint of similar tie-ins by being limited to three Secret Lair drops. Secret Lair is what Magic calls its series of timed releases that contain just a handful of specific cards with special art, and they are all sold direct by Wizards of the Coast rather than in randomized packs.

In this case, the Turbo Gear drop has six exisiting Magic cards redone with new Sonic-themed art and names, as well as one token card. That includes a few fitting staples of Magic’s most popular format, Commander, like Swiftfoot Boots and Lighting Greaves – because of course Sonic’s shoes deserve their own cards. Also of note, a legendary vehicle called the Weatherlight is here as Tornado, Sonic’s Biplane, and thanks to a recent rules change, you could actually have that be your Commander if you are so inclined.

WOTC says this drop is designed to complement the cards in another one of the drops that focuses on Sonic’s characters themselves. While we don’t have those to reveal, an example given in Turbo Gear’s store description is equipping The Reaver Cleaver, reimagined here as Knuckles’s Gloves, to Knuckles himself. This idea goes hand-in-hand with other crossover drops, like 2023’s Tomb Raider, where the reprinted cards are meant to fit nicely with the new Legendary creatures, almost like a little “build your own Commander deck” starter kit.

The Turbo Gear Secret Lair drop (as well as the other two) will go on sale on July 14 at 9am PT on the official Secret Lair website, and will cost $29.99 for the non-foil version or $39.99 for foil. You better get there on time, too, because they will only be available in a limited quantity – and if other recent crossovers are any indication, they will likely sell out fast.

Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

Details of a developer-only Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 playtest have been accidentally released to all fans on the Call of Duty app. This included details of unannounced multiplayer modes, such as a 20v20 wingsuit option. Whoops.

“An internal, developer-only Black Ops 7 playtest was set to begin this weekend,” explained CharlieIntel on X/Twitter. “[Activision or developers Treyarch/Raven Software] accidentally pushed the message of the day to everyone on Xbox on the Call of Duty app, instead.”

CharlieIntel also attached previously unannounced details about multiplayer modes, Skirmish and Overload.

Skirmish’s description detailed in a screenshot said: “Two teams of 20 fight to compete objectives across a large map. Capture points of interest, destroy payloads, and transmit valuable data to score. Use your wingsuit to flank and reach objectives before your enemy. The first team to reach the score limit wins.”

There’s also Overload, which is described as “two teams of six players each fight to control a neutral EMP device that must be delivered to the enemy HQ for score. Reach the score limit and claim victory by delivering multiple EMP devices.”

An internal, developer only Black Ops 7 play test was set to begin this weekend. They accidentally pushed the message of the day to everyone on Xbox on the Call of Duty app, instead.

— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) June 27, 2025

Developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 — which was announced at the Xbox Games Showcase 2025 earlier this month — is the first ever consecutive release within the Black Ops sub-series. Matt Cox, General Manager of Call of Duty, insisted that “as a team, our vision from the start was to create a back-to-back series experience for our players that embraced the uniqueness of the Black Ops sub-franchise.”

Black Ops 7 is set to star Milo Ventimiglia, Kiernan Shipka, and Michael Rooker, with Ventimiglia portraying David Mason, Shipka as new character Emma Kagen, and Rooker reprising his Black Ops 2 role of Mike Harper.

Earlier this month, Activision pulled controversial adverts placed inside Black Ops 6 and Warzone loadouts, insisting they were a “feature test” published “in error.” It’s worth remembering that Black Ops 6 is a premium, $70 game, and this year’s Black Ops 7 is expected to jump to $80 after Microsoft said that gamers will see Xbox charging $79.99 for new, first-party games around the holiday season.

And don’t forget, Beavis and Butt-Head are now in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Remedy’s Control spin-off shooter, FBC: Firebreak, has topped one million players. While the game is free-to-play for Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus subscribers, the studio called it a “significant milestone,” despite acknowledging “there is still a lot of work ahead of us.”

“As of last night, we have surpassed 1 million players in FBC: Firebreak. This is a significant milestone, so thank you for playing from all of us at Remedy,” the studio said in a post on social media.

“We know there is still a lot of work ahead of us, and we are super-motivated about it. We have a lot of exciting things cooking for Firebreak players! More about that soon.”

Last week, the team identified a problem with “the first hour experience,” saying that FBC: Firebreak’s opening gameplay was not “a great experience due to a combination of things,” including issues with onboarding, poorly explained systems and tools, and “a lack of clarity as to what to do in the Jobs and how to do the work effectively.” The developer also said: “the power fantasy isn’t great in the first hours of the game as starting weapons feel weak, and unlocking higher-tier weapons requires a bit too much grinding.”

“Right now, despite how sparse the story can seem in moments, there’s a lot of fun to be had wrangling erratic monsters in Remedy’s spectacularly absurd bureaucratic setting,” we wrote in IGN’s FBC: Firebreak review in progress. “I’ll be playing more this week and wrap up this review as soon as I’ve tested the limits of Remedy’s chaotic cooperative job simulator.”

Remedy also recently confirmed its plans for ongoing support post-launch, including two new Jobs (missions) coming in 2025. More updates will arrive in 2026, the developer said. All playable content released post launch, such as Jobs, will be free to all players. Players have the option to buy cosmetics, but none of these items will affect gameplay, and there will be no limited-time rotations or daily log-ins, Remedy insisted.

It’s a busy time for Alan Wake developer Remedy, which has a number of projects on the go. As well as FBC: Firebreak, it’s working on Control 2 and the Max Payne and Max Payne 2 remake compilation.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

After half a dozen hours in the earliest moments of the upcoming pirate RPG Sea of Remnants, I was left with tons of questions about how this one will ultimately turn out, whether it was the currently barebones turn-based combat system, the convoluted labyrinth of vendors and upgrade paths that reminded me a bit of an MMO, or the story and dialogue that were sometimes difficult to follow given this early build’s lack of English voice acting or reliable subtitles. But one thing that was never in doubt throughout all of that is just how much this colorful, over-the-top adventure is already absolutely dripping with style that’s so unbelievably hard to look away from, it made me eager to see more in spite of those rough edges. Seriously, the cartoonish characters, exaggerated (and often hilarious) animations, and gorgeous menus are some of the coolest I’ve seen since Persona 5, and even when I didn’t understand everything that was happening, I often couldn’t help but smile ear-to-ear. The version I played is so early and unfinished, it’s still pretty hard to tell if this will deliver in plenty of other areas, from gameplay to technical stability, but there’s plenty of time before the unspecific 2026 launch window to iron all that out, and it already has so much unique charm that I’m officially adding this one to my list of games to follow closely.

Before I get into what I liked and didn’t like in my time with Sea of Remnants, it’s worth mentioning again that what I played appeared to be an extremely early build that was quite unfinished and prone to all sorts of bugs and rocky technical performance. I’m used to playing unfinished products months and sometimes years before they see the light of day, but even by that measure, this one felt especially under construction. Menus and dialogue were riddled with placeholder text, crashes and bugs were quite frequent, and the entire thing hadn’t been optimized for non-Mandarin speakers like myself, which often left things lost in translation. For all of these reasons and more, it was more than a little hard to tell how things will pan out, both from a technical perspective and where gameplay is concerned, since many ideas were clearly extremely unbaked. Keep that in mind as you watch this video.

What I do know about Sea of Remnants is that it’s playing in a lot of the same space as Sea of Thieves, with open-world high seas to explore as a pirate crew and islands to visit, filled with loot waiting to be plundered. But it also distinguishes itself with unexpected elements, like the turn-based combat that happens when you’re ashore, or the RPG/MMO mechanics that accompany it – to the point where I’m not even sure what odd blend of genres the final product is shooting for, and every 30 minutes came with another surprise that added to that confusion, like how, late in the demo, I learned there were hundreds of recruitable companions I could take with me on voyages and build bonds with. And this is all without having been able to see any of the planned multiplayer components in action, as this will all apparently be taking place in an online world where you can interact with other pirate captains.

Unfortunately, a lot of the ideas Sea of Remnants threw at me were pretty hard to get a sense for in this build, like the turn-based combat, where my buccaneer crew and I crossed swords and blunderbusses with rival skallywags and local fauna. While beautifully animated, the bits I played were also extremely oversimplified, either due to the section I played being pretty early on in the adventure, or just because it was quite clearly still a work in progress. As a big fan of turn-based battles, I’m hopeful they can flesh out some of the mechanics here to reach the heights of some of my recent favorites like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, but for now it mostly reminded me of a very stripped-down version of Persona 5.

The good news is that, no matter how unfinished any aspect of Sea of Remnants was, it was consistently and without exception one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time. The humanoid characters (all of which are puppets for some reason) have a ton of personality despite their wooden faces, and their exaggerated animations really cracked me up. And despite having Sea of Thieves pirate vibes, I rarely felt like I knew what was going to happen next, like how after beating a giant ape boss on an island and getting back on my boat to go home, I suddenly found myself under attack by that same monkey out for revenge, who now captained his own vessel and blasted me with cannon fire. Then, even though I sent him to Davy Jones’ locker, my ship was sunk moments later anyway in the most silly cutscene imaginable. I still feel like I don’t really understand what it will feel like to play the final product, as it swings so wildly between juggling an inventory of loot, blasting cannons on a boat, and choosing between very confusing dialogue options with various party members, but even though playing through that confusion was often a little unintuitive, I certainly can’t say it wasn’t interesting – quite the opposite.

It was also really nice to see such a unique setting, because although there’s a lot of typical piracy shenanigans you might expect, there are also really strange concepts peppered throughout that kept me on my toes, like how my journey started out with me finding the moon buried beneath the sea (!?), or how the marionette characters apparently lose their memory whenever they’re destroyed on an adventure, but always find themselves back inside the main island of Orbtopia to begin again. There’s also a really distinct punk vibe throughout the entire world, as everything is covered with graffiti and many of the characters act like reckless teenagers who cut class to cosplay as mischievous pirates.

The big question with Sea of Remnants is if its unmistakably cool presentation and interesting hodgepodge of ideas can actually come together into something coherent, and I truly feel no closer to answering that after more than six hours with it. For now, it’s definitely interesting and distinctive enough for me to anxiously wait to see more, but we’ll likely need to wait a fair bit longer before we can get a better feel for how it’s shaping up – especially when it comes to technical performance and the online aspects that were completely absent from this build.

I can definitely see the beginnings of a vision here though, where the punk aesthetic and killer art style play well with over-the-top ship combat and slower, more tactical turn-based battles on foot to create something really special. Plus, we can always use more pirate fantasy in our lives, and I can already tell that this goofy take on the genre will bring a very fresh perspective. Granted, I have no idea how they’ll make online multiplayer, where friends would presumably come along for the ride, work with the turn-based combat and NPC party members. But hey – if they manage to pull it off it sounds like it’d be awesome, and if they don’t at least it’ll be something unique nonetheless.

Capcom has said that Leon S. Kennedy is a “bad match for horror” amid ongoing speculation he is a yet-to-be-revealed second protagonist for Resident Evil Requiem.

In a fresh look at Requiem shown during the publisher’s Capcom Spotlight 2025 broadcast, the floppy-haired fan-favorite was nowhere to be seen.

Still, his absence was made notable by the fact that Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi offered an umprompted explanation for why Leon, of all past Resident Evil protagonists, had not been picked as this particular game’s star.

“The protagonist this time is an intelligence analyst for the FBI, Grace Ashcroft,” said Nakanishi, explaining that the new character was a good fit for Requiem’s renewed horror focus. “She’s introverted and easily scared, which is a new type of character for the Resident Evil series.”

“We wanted someone that experiences horror from the same perspective as the player,” he continued. “She learns to overcome her fears throughout the course of the story, but she’s also an analyst for the FBI who’s trained with guns, and is able to act with calm deductive reasoning.”

Capcom’s first trailer for Requiem, aired earlier this month, introduced Ashcroft and the game’s returning Raccoon City setting in a manner that only fuelled the flames of fan speculation that Leon would also feature in some capacity. Indeed, fans were quick to spot a number of clues they said pointed to Leon’s presence — including his old truck, still parked outside the ruins of the Raccoon City Police Department.

Is the recent fan speculation around Leon’s presence why Capcom has addressed his apparent absence now? Here’s what Nakanishi said next, on the character’s status in the game:

“We always thought about making Leon the protagonist,” Nakanishi explained, “but making a horror game based around him is difficult. He wouldn’t jump at a bucket falling. No one wants to see Leon scared by every little thing. So he’s actually quite a bad match for horror.”

Is this Capcom ruling Leon out of Requiem? Nakanishi seems clear that the combat-tested Leon would no longer work as the hero of a game focused around horror. But the publisher also stopped short of ruling the character out altogether.

Leon’s status is clearly an important enough talking point that Capcom decided to include discussion of it in tonight’s showing — which still showed only a fragment of the full game. With more than six months still to go, Capcom will of course have more up its sleeve to reveal. Could this all be some kind of ruse, and Leon still be a part of it?

Recent entries in the Resident Evil series have taken different approaches to balancing horror and action — some to better results than others — but it’s worth remembering how popular the Leon-focused, action-heavy Resident Evil 4 remains among fans. Could Capcom still be holding back a look at Requiem’s more action-heavy moments, where Leon would be a better fit? There’s still plenty of time left for the publisher to tell.

Resident Evil Requiem will launch on February 27, 2026 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Capcom has revealed our first look at Resident Evil Requiem gameplay in brief snippets shown during a livestream.

During the Capcom Spotlight event, Capcom showed a small portion of first-person gameplay, heavy on the horror and featuring new protagonist FBI Agent Grace Ashcroft. We see the character slowly move around creepy corridors with just a lighter for company. At one point, we see Ashcroft turn around to see a hulking humanoid creature close in on her from the shadows.

In another clip of first-person gameplay we see Ashcroft explore a grand hallway, this time holding a handgun (as an FBI agent Ashcroft is handy with guns). She’s also able to “act with calm, deductive reasoning,” and we see her inspect a toolbox in the classic Resident Evil up close style to demonstrate.

And finally, we get a very brief look at third-person Resident Evil Requiem gameplay where Ashcroft is, once again, exploring creepy corridors and poorly lit rooms. We see that horrible creature again, casually stomping in the shadows.

During the video, Capcom developers explain how the first-person perspective makes for “tense, realistic gameplay,” whereas playing in third-person via the over-the-shoulder camera lets you see “more of the action.” The third-person persepctive is “great for people who enjoy action-heavy gameplay,” Capcom added.

Resident Evil Requiem lets players switch between first- and third-person through the Options menu at any point during the campaign. Check out IGN’s Resident Evil Requiem hands-on preview for more information.

Elsewhere, Capcom confirmed Resident Evil Requiem takes place 30 years after the missile strike on Raccoon City that occurs at the end of Resident Evil 3, which explains the enormous crater we saw in the announcement trailer. Indeed, the name “Requiem” was chosen because, as Capcom explains it: “This game is a requiem, a eulogy to those who came before.”

There was no big Leon Kennedy reveal, as some fans had hoped for — and even expected. If the Resident Evil veteran is playable in the game, perhaps that reveal will come later.

Resident Evil Requiem launches February 27, 2026, across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. For more, check out all the reveals from Capcom Spotlight 2025.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The June 2025 Capcom Spotlight is here to deliver all of the latest news on games like Resident Evil Requiem, Pragmata, Street Fighter 6, Monster Hunter Wilds, and more.

As promised, Capcom kicked off its latest digital presentation just moments ago, leaving fans eager to see everything it has in store for the near future. With some titles recently showing off updates elsewhere, many are expecting today’s Capcom Spotlight to offer a deeper dive into some of the Mega-Man and Devil May Cry publisher’s most exciting upcoming titles.

We know today’s showcase is around 40 minutes long, so expect a closer look at some of the company’s biggest games. We’ll be collecting all of the announcements you need to know about right here, so be sure to stick around to see all of the biggest Capcom Spotlight news.

Developing…

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).