At the latest Nintendo Direct, fans were thrilled to learn that three modern Resident Evil titles — Village, Requiem, and Biohazard — would be making their way to the Nintendo Switch 2. However, the developers behind Resident Evil: Requiem revealed that bringing their game to the new console wasn’t initially part of their grand scheme.
I had the chance to speak with producer Masato Kumazawa at the Tokyo Game Show, who shared the surprising journey that led to the Resident Evil series arriving on the Nintendo Switch 2:
When we began planning Requiem, the Switch 2 hadn’t even been announced, so a port for the console wasn’t in our initial roadmap. Once the Switch 2 was revealed, we eagerly started testing game development for it. We believed the Resident Evil series would be a perfect fit. Our first step was an internal port of Resident Evil: Village to assess its performance on the new hardware. The results were fantastic, which gave us the confidence to greenlight a Switch 2 version of Requiem. This success eventually led to the exciting announcement that not just Requiem, but also Resident Evil 7 and 8, would be arriving on Nintendo Switch 2 simultaneously.
It’s hardly a shock that Kumazawa is enthusiastic about his game’s Switch 2 debut. But after experiencing a short demo of Resident Evil: Requiem in handheld mode at Tokyo Game Show myself, I can confirm it looks impressive! When I asked if the Switch 2 version offered any unique features, his response was simply, “no, in a good way.” It’s just the full Requiem experience, now portable. Even from my brief hands-on time, I’m confident Kumazawa isn’t overstating things.
We recently offered a preview of Resident Evil: Requiem. Our ongoing discussions with Nakanishi and Kumazawa also touched on their continued efforts to avoid revealing anything about fan-favorite Leon Kennedy, and their challenges in defining what still qualifies as “scary” after all these years. Additionally, we’ve previously interviewed the pair about various topics, including the return of Raccoon City and the game’s updated monster designs.