Resident Evil Requiem’s Worst Story Beat Is All Leon’s Fault

Enough time has passed now that Resident Evil Requiem can be looked back on soberly, which comes with some startling and disappointing realizations. For example, Resident Evil Requiem’s Raccoon City Syndrome is poorly explored, which ultimately deflates the stakes that the story is supposed to have with a dying Leon S. Kennedy, and it’s upsetting that we have no idea where Ada Wong or Claire Redfield are, as they’d also surely be suffering from this infection.

However, Resident Evil Requiem does something with its story that was truly unprecedented when players finish the obligatory third-act laboratory sequences. Here, Resident Evil Requiem’s ending is decided by the player, and the number of players who made the wrong choice when it was suddenly tasked to them is proof that this decision should’ve never been the player’s to make in the first place.

Resident Evil Requiem’s Ending Is Players’ To Choose

resident evil requiem leon virus elpis — *Resident Evil Requiem* Leon virus.

According to RE.Net, as shared by user RE_Archives on Twitter/X, 59% chose to destroy Elpis, while 41% chose to release Elpis in this climactic moment. This is indicative of a big problem with this section: Resident Evil games aren’t generally choice-based games (while some Resident Evil games, like Resident Evil 3, do give players pivotal choices to make, it’s not a consistent element).

Therefore, it’s alarming and weird to suddenly have players make a choice, especially when they don’t make any other story-related choices throughout the rest of Resident Evil Requiem. Plus, if Resident Evil was going to start hurling narrative agency at players, then it feels like a missed opportunity to not let players choose whether to shoot Emily, and the excuse that Leon could somehow know where her vital organs were in order not to fatally wound her is absurd (he also had no reason to kill her right then and there when she became a monster).

The cutscene where Grace watches the tape of her mother, Alyssa, with Oswell E. Spencer is meant to be enlightening and makes the choice that determines the good ending fairly clear. Rather, there’s an argument to be made that it causes even more confusion.

Out of nowhere, players are asked to reconcile with Spencer, one of Resident Evil Requiem’s main franchise villains, apparently having turned a new leaf all those years ago. Why Alyssa would have agreed to upend her entire life to adopt a young girl and become a mother is also unexplored, though it gave Capcom an excuse to draw from even more nostalgia, plucking a character out from Resident Evil Outbreak.

Alyssa had an Easter egg in Resident Evil 7, which could now be considered a tease that her character would be revisited in the near future, and thus, it’s possible that Capcom knew what it wanted her role would be in Resident Evil Requiem nine years ago.

It’s Nearly 50/50, And That’s The Problem

A bloodied and virus-ridden Leon S Kennedy in Resident Evil Requiem's bad ending — A bloodied and virus-ridden Leon S Kennedy in Resident Evil Requiem’s bad ending

Watching the video and seeing that there’s any hesitation to destroy Elpis at all does suggest that releasing it is the right choice, to be fair, but the game doesn’t seem to want to make that choice easy for the player. Hence, most players have gotten a bad ending on their first playthrough.

The goal was to destroy Elpis the whole time, and Leon literally wants Resident Evil Requiem’s Grace Ashcroft to do so, not knowing that releasing it is the best option. Leon says that he trusts Grace at the last possible second, but if players had it baked into their subconscious that Leon wanted it destroyed, it’s not surprising at all that a majority of the playerbase would have deferred to Leon and done what he would’ve done in their shoes.

Additionally, the bad ending isn’t ambiguous about whether it’s the bad ending. It’s basically an excuse to have a non-canon death scene for Leon in Resident Evil, instead of giving players a branching narrative. Suffice it to say, Resident Evil Requiem treats its nostalgia with a lot of heart when it comes to traversing Raccoon City’s ruins and returning to the Resident Evil 2 remake’s RPD, but letting players pick an ending based on odd circumstances and two different protagonist perspectives is a bewildering decision.