In Resident Evil, the scariest thing has always been architecture

“There is blood everywhere.” I walk through the clinic’s dim corridors, guttural sounds echoing in the distance. I switch on lights, slide along walls, assess the situation. Then I attack. I push forward with axes, chainsaws and shotgun blasts. Tension finds release only through action, through splatter and gore. It is a rush before fear returns. “There is blood everywhere” is the line that stuck with me while playing a closed press preview of Resident Evil Requiem, the latest chapter in the Resident Evil saga and the ninth main installment in the series. The blood feels like interior design. It is not just splatter; it is spatial information. It tells you this place has already been violated, that violence has soaked into walls and tiles.

That is when you understand something simple and terrifying: Resident Evil does not scare you with monsters. It scares you with places. Zombies are a consequence. The real trap is the corridor that bends where it should not, the door that opens onto a room that is too dark, the space that looks normal until you step inside and realise everything is wrong, while a piano sound becomes both a siren song and an alarm. As Toshihiko Tsuda, Level & Environment Director on Requiem, explains, the goal is to build incomplete spaces: “we try to reduce the amount of information the player has, so they fill the gaps with their imagination. That gap creates a space for suspense and horror to be born.” Fear comes from what you do not yet know, from what you cannot verify.

Koshi Nakanishi, Level & Environment Director of Requiem

To achieve this, environments are deliberately distorted compared to plausible architecture. Tsuda jokes that any architect would go mad: “if you were designing a normal building, you would have a straight corridor. We put a bend in the corridor. It would be a very strange place to put a corner, but we need that to create blind spots.” Even windows become perceptual traps: “instead of making it fully clear, we make it frosted glass, so the player only sees part of what they need to understand the space.” Terror, in other words, is a problem of information.

I am not playing alone at night with the lights off. I am in a room full of journalists, wearing headphones. Yet when I turn a corner and cannot see what lies beyond, my body reacts the same way. I hold my breath. I slow down. I brace myself. That is when you realise fear does not depend on atmosphere, but on how precisely digital space occupies your attention.

We remember Resident Evil locations before we remember its monsters. Developed and published from the beginning by the Japanese game company Capcom, the series has spent nearly thirty years building its identity on buildings that are not backdrops but emotional machines. From the mansion in the first Resident Evil to the police station in Resident Evil 2, from the village of Resident Evil 4 to the Baker house in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and the gothic castle of Resident Evil Village, the principle is the same: space is never neutral.

Tsuda says there is no written manual, but a shared grammar: “we do not have a manual on paper, but we have a shared understanding across the team of how to create levels for a Resident Evil game that are scary.” A grammar of bends, interruptions, darkness and blind spots. Everyday objects become mental barriers. In the hospital section, they used plausible partitions to create immediate blind spots: “we used partitions all around the environment to intentionally create blind spots right ahead of you, so that things can come out from behind it. Even if they do not, you imagine something might.” Terror lies in anticipation.

In Requiem, the same environment changes depending on who you control. Leon is a veteran: space is an arena. Grace is inexperienced and out of place: every room is a puzzle. The contrast is not about gender, but experience: “we never felt that the gender contrast was intentional. It is more veteran versus inexperienced, cool and collected versus afraid and scared.”

“You are an investigator? So, investigate.” Horror is not only reacting; it is reading space. And in Requiem, environments are combat stages too. Tsuda explains: “these buildings are also the scenes for combat, and the distance between you and the enemy determines whether you can successfully target them or if they will be up close and more scary.” Architecture decides whether you can escape or must fight.

Toshihiko Tsuda, game director of Requiem

Director Koshi Nakanishi adds that perspective changes the quality of fear: “with first person it is like you are seeing through the character’s eyes, you become them.” Third person builds empathy: “you see the characters’ reactions and feel afraid on behalf of them.” Neither is better. “They are different approaches, different qualities of fear.” He calls them “fear of the skin” and “fear of the drama.”

Many recent indie horror games embrace retro visuals, and it works. Titles like Faith: The Unholy Trinity or Fear the Spotlight show that abstraction can heighten fear. Requiem chooses realism. Nakanishi says: “we see photorealism as an advantage, because horror relies on immersion.” Realistic environments support the impossible: “when environments look like a real place, they ground the player. That makes it easier for the player’s mind to accept unrealistic elements like zombies.” It is the classic Resident Evil tension between psychology and gore, investigation and action, but here the synthesis runs through architecture.

Architecture is also time. The team talks about a “tension curve,” designed before everything else: “we design it first and then add various elements to build it together.” Because “there is a limit to how much adrenaline you can experience. If we do not let it come back down, it becomes exhausting.” Fear needs release to remain effective.

Despite decades of archives and iconic spaces, fear remains a human gesture. When asked about using AI, the answer is clear: “we prefer to do it ourselves with our own human intelligence and creativity.” A few days before the preview, I saw a Nintendo 64 copy of Resident Evil 2 in a second-hand shop in Paris, priced at nearly 200 euros. While playing Requiem, I stopped thinking about monsters and started thinking about the police station from that late-1990s game. As if each new chapter were just another angle on the same fear: walking through a building that seems normal until you realise it was designed against you. Maybe that is why, decades later, we remember corridors more than zombies.

Preview played on PlayStation 5, by invitation of Plaion, the Italian distributor.

All images: Courtesy Capcom