Resident Evil Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi has revealed that Capcom was initially unsure whether Switch 2 would be powerful enough to run its new survival horror blockbuster.
In a new Creator’s Voice episode posted to Nintendo’s YouTube channel, Nakanishi said the game’s development team had been “skeptical” about Switch 2’s ability to run Requiem after first seeing its form factor — but quickly decided it would be able to run the full game “as-is” after doing a “triple take.”
“The Nintendo Switch 2 system has improved graphical specs, so we wondered if Requiem could run on it — and it did, with ease,” Nakanishi said. “When we, the dveelopment team, first saw it in our hands, we were skeptical too, so we had to do a triple take.
“We thought to ourselves, ‘Oh, is this really running on Nintendo Switch 2?'” he continued. “It all worked so smoothly that we decided to just go ahead with the game as-is and make it for the system. With specs like these in handheld mode, it looks great.”
Resident Evil Requiem launches this Friday, February 27 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2 on the same day. While many recent Resident Evil games have found their way to Nintendo platforms, Requiem marks the first time since 2012’s Resident Evil Revelations that a new entry in the series has debuted on a Nintendo console at launch.
“It’s been a really long time since we’ve had a new Resident Evil game released on a Nintendo platform on the same day as other platforms,” Nakanishi noted, “so I’m hopeful that this will give people who don’t normally play Resident Evil a chance to try it out. I would be happy if these people could realize things like ‘So this is what Resident Evil is like as a game’ or ‘This is what’s interesting about it.'”
Separately, Nakanishi confirmed that a classic enemy from earlier game Resident Evil: Revelations was actually based on a foe from The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. The armored Scarmiglione, pictured above, moves its shield-like arm to block your aim — a tactic Nakanishi says was copied from Zelda’s knights (technically they’re called Iron Knuckles) who also moved their shield to stop Link’s arrows.
“Actually, when I was making Resident Evil Revelations, there was an enemy called a Scarmiglione who carried a shield, and if you aimed at them, they would move the shield up and down,” Nakanishi revealed. “The truth is, this enemy was inspired by the armored soldier from Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. This is the first time I’ve said that.”
With just days to go until the game’s release, full spoilers for its story have flooded the internet, and Capcom has promised “firm action” against those responsible. The company said it believed the “large number of gameplay videos” now floating around the internet — some of which contain huge spoilers and clips of the game’s finale, which IGN verified as legitimate — originated from copies obtained “through illegal means.” Yesterday, Resident Evil 2 director and famed developer Hideki Kamiya said those who revel in ruining surprises for others “deserve a thousand deaths” and “be cursed to never be able to play games again.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
