WARNING: This article may contain major spoilers for Resident Evil: Requiem. If you haven't played the game, proceed at your own risk!
Resident Evil: Requiem is, for its most part, the much needed conclusion to the story of Leon S. Kennedy, at least as far as his part in the Raccoon City saga is concerned. It is not clear if this will be the last that we see of him or if he may appear again in a future release, but we know for sure, given that the good ending of the game is the absolute canon, that he emerged from this adventure completely healed, both emotionally and physically. Leon is not the only protagonist of Requiem, but he is essentially the most important one, although the game likes to point otherwise, either for character exploitation reasons or following the red herring technique; but I will elaborate on this aspect later.
The 9th installment of the series, released 30 years after the first game ever of the saga, introduces a new co-lead who appears as soon as the game begins. This time the developers, instead of creating a completely new character like they did in Resident Evil 7, dug into the lore's existing population and thus Grace Ashcroft was born: the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, the journalist from the Outbreak series, makes her debut in Requiem as a 25-year-old FBI agent, obviously very intelligent and efficient when it comes to office work and investigation, but not particularly capable in the field of action. This is something that the game makes rather clear right from the start about her, what with her clumsy moves and obvious emotional instability.
Said instability is deeply rooted in a traumatic incident from her past: when she was a teenager, she witnessed her mother's brutal murder in a hotel lobby, something that naturally affected her much more than she could handle. We could decipher that this was also the reason why she pursued a career in FBI, although her specialty is intelligence analysis and it is doubtful whether she actually went through actual training. Maybe she learned a few very basic techniques, but apparently agents of her line of work are not even required to carry a weapon. All this makes her superior's decision to send her off to investigate a new killing that had just taken place in the same hotel where Alyssa was assassinated, quite curious. Why did an experienced high-rank agent think it was a great idea to send a sentimentally weak, traumatized office analyst, completely alone without even one policeman to accompany her, in the exact place where she went through such a tragedy at a tender age? But let's just assume for the time being that her boss was following orders from high above, do-as-asked-and-not-ask-questions kind of orders.
Grace arrives at the hotel one dark, rainy afternoon and starts her investigation, finding strange, ominous messages here and there, as if someone had been expecting her. Unavoidably she recalls the tragic events of that fatal evening, and although the memories overwhelm her, she recalls how her mother hid a folder with documents in the hotel before she met her death. Surprise surprise, the folder is still in the same place, hidden behind a large painting. Makes you wonder how the police who dusted the place years ago, didn't find it back then. It was hidden but not inapproachable, and certainly not in a place a thorough investigation would not include. Anyway, it turns out that the folder contains Alyssa's notebook and a diskette. Just then Grace is attacked by the zombified officer who had been assigned to guard the exterior area of the hotel, and is forced to escape via the emergency exit, where she comes across a weird, unnaturally tall man, who informs her about how he was looking especially for her, speaking mostly in riddles just like how most villains talk in games and movies universally and since forever. The man is the story's main antagonist, Victor Gideon, and, as expected, neutralizes her while chanting some ominous lines about having so much to do from now on. It is partly revealed through this crazy ordeal that it was him who orchestrated the whole crime scene in order to lure Grace alone in the hotel and capture her, so indeed her boss was following orders from high above, because Victor, as is expected and suspected, has ties to people mightier than the government itself. He is gradually revealed to be a high-rank member of The Connections, a secret organization that produces and sells bioweapons.
At the same time, Leon arrives in the area close to the hotel to investigate the new killings, just in time to see Victor carrying a fainted Grace out in the street. The mad doctor starts an outbreak, causing absolute chaos in the streets, while Leon is informed by Sherry Birkin, his new over-the-ear guide, that he can possibly find Dr Gideon in a suspicious Care Center that he is currently running. Meanwhile Grace finds herself bound on an examination stretcher in another place, with a needle attached to her vein and tons of blood obviously being extracted from her body. Regardless she manages to free herself and we see that the place is something like a sanatorium or asylum. Yes, it is Victor's Chronic Care Center. But as a grotesque monster makes its unforgettable appearance, there is no time for tourism for the time being.
Subsequently Leon arrives at the Care Center which is Gideon's sanatorium on the outside, but secretly an illegal lab that carries out experiments on its patients. A bit stereotypical, but I admit I love this trope. Give me an asylum in a video game and what not. As it always happens when our beloved master agent arrives somewhere, everybody soon turns. Same old, same old but we love it, don't we. Especially since now Leon can yield a chainsaw and cut zombies in half. Not for long though, as all the chainsaws in the game have limited life, but it's fun for while it lasts every time. Eventually he exits out at the center's lobby just when Grace is desperately struggling to escape the huge claws of the grotesque monster, fondly called The Girl, that is chasing her. As the two protagonists meet, they exchange a few words but are instantly separated by Dr Gideon, who locks Grace in the lobby and manages to neutralize Leon, just like he did with Grace earlier. Just before this happens though, Leon manages to hand Grace the Requiem, his magnificent magnum, thinking that she will soon be able to leave the sanatorium.
This is essentially where a rather long intro ends, and the main story begins, with incessant action sequences for both leads (although Grace's parts are built more around stealth). In all this, there is a catch, however. Both Leon and Sherry (and apparently all who had been involved in the Raccoon City incident and survived) are now suffering from the Raccoon City syndrome, a dangerous, life-threatening infection that developed over time and now, 28 years later is starting to show its teeth. Somehow this explains how our heroes appeared to not be affected by the virus back then; as it turned out, they were indeed affected - their very slow aging was one of the positive effects - but the nasty symptoms did not appear until much later. We see that Leon has marks on his neck and both he and Sherry exhibit similar marks on their hands, which they conceal with gloves. Leon is in a rather dangerous state, but being a seasoned, master agent he can literally go through anything, for the time being, at least.
Leon and Grace are now trapped in the Care Center, but in different areas. We get to explore most of the building with Grace as she is looking for a way to open the exit gate, which requires three glass cubes decorated with familiar symbols: a star, a sun and a moon. Spencer Mansion vibes anyone? While exploring the place, Grace finds Emily, a little girl who is locked inside a glass cell and has cataracts in both her eyes. Emily's part in the story is yet to be revealed, but for now she holds the clue for the final puzzle piece that Grace needs to open the exit: said piece can be retrieved by solving a riddle written in braille, which only Emily can read. Very symbolically, the piece in question is the star glass cube, and Emily, being the only one who could solve it, was locked in a glass cage.
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After a series of agonizing sequences, Leon finds Grace and Emily in the nearby chapel outside, and a bit later they reunite in the Treatment Bay in the basement where a heavily wounded Emily gets mutated, becomes hostile and Leon has no other choice but to put her down. A devastated Grace, who apparently had found a new purpose in life with rescuing the little girl, throws Leon back his Requiem and abandons him before being able to see that he is very sick, and just in time bumps onto Victor. The mad doctor is not alone now; he is accompanied by Zeno, a slick and cool Wesker clone, who informs Grace that she was the reason for the destruction of Raccoon City.
At this point, and although I had been enjoying the game immensely so far, I had a spontaneous eye-roll moment, wondering how many more times we are going to see the innocent-girl-being-the-clue trope. Just a disclaimer here: I don't dislike the trope, especially when it is cleverly implemented. It was used in The Evil Within 2, which is a game that I love. But really, how many more times are we going to see it? To say that it has been overused, would be an understatement. I get the whole idea of the young girl representing innocence and all that, but seriously now; how many more times are we going to see it. Something different seemed to have been in the works with Jake Muller in Resident Evil 6: Jake was the clue to the cure, and he was a young man, additionally not innocent in the way that the trope dictates. Although he had his story, neither his character nor his traits were explored enough in the game. Otherwise he could have been a perfect alternative counterpart to the trope, and a very welcome fresh option for it.
But in the long run, I did not mind. Like I said, I loved the game so far. Excluding Grace's painfully slow movement, everything else in the game was working greatly. Even Grace as a character, although not as powerful as she was possibly intended to be, makes a nice co-lead, and her parts in the story are very well-organized. Her connection with Emily is an interesting development, as is the way their relationship goes through several stages until the finale. I had a thought that maybe they plan to give Grace a bigger role in possible future releases, even make her one of the main protagonists of a Resident Evil New Era (judging also from the beautiful 30-year anniversary artwork that features her among the iconic leads of the saga). In case they do, I hope they remove that stutter which I understand was meant to highlight her constant terror and awkwardness, but after a certain point gets irritating and seriously distracts from all the tension and the agony that the plot is building up. And hopefully improve her speed mechanics. I don't know how it feels when you play in first person, but in third person it is as if she is in super slow motion mode. You can clearly see how unnaturally slowly she is running compared to a normal, "human" speed, in the game's intro when, during the flashback with Alyssa, at the point where her mother takes her in a rush to leave the hotel, Alyssa is already at the bottom of the stairs while you are struggling to make Grace drag her feet to move a few steps forward.
And that is how it goes for the rest of the game, even when she is relentlessly chased by zombies and monsters, except for very few scripted segments when she goes turbo mode but it comes with a big cost, as she stumbles and falls every second step. Which is funny but not so much when the Girl is breathing down your neck or a huge malformed blob of blood is stomping after you, swearing like a trooper. I seriously cannot relate to this new trend of heroines that are running as if they have lead in their shoes (before Grace, there was Ada in the Separate Ways Remake; before Ada, there was Rosemary Winters in Shadows of Rose, the DLC episode of Village). Are they supposed to be more realistic now, or they are simply getting weaker as an easy and convenient trick to shoot up the difficulty of certain sections? Thankfully there is the revamped Ashley in the remake of Resident Evil 4 who, in spite of her absolute lack of survival experience, not only can run like a normal scared person would, she can also adapt very fast to every new situation, although she is just a civilian, in the end looking like a seasoned commando compared to Grace.
Time seems to have stopped as our hero enters the building, recalling faces, events and dialogues. Everything is just as he left it, he even knows where to find the mechanical jack, on the floor of the Library where he used it 28 years ago to make a path above the bookshelves. Most rooms are unreachable due to rubble, but there is still stuff to look at and reminisce. Marvin's plaque, Jill's hat, Chris's jacket. The statue puzzles, the officer with the missing jaw - now reduced to a skeleton. The stuffed animals in Chief Irons's office. The small red pedestals of the now antique Mr Raccoon statuettes. A vintage typewriter that is not working, near the defunct item box of the past. All this, accompanied by an eery version of the original music theme as Leon wanders around the rooms and corridors. Then there is what is left of Kendo's shop, and its chilling remains. Although there is not much to explore, you can take your time and walk around the spaces as much as you want before moving on.
From the RPD, Leon follows the trail of Zeno and Grace through the Orphanage and the well-hidden underground entrance leading to the ARK, the secret facility of The Connections. Looks like history is repeating itself once again. Once there, Leon and Grace have to make their way further inside, either together or each one on their own, until they reach the place where everything will be revealed and finally put an end to this nightmare. Just before that, Grace witnesses her own shocking revelation: in a video recorded by Alyssa, Oswell Spencer introduces baby Grace to her, confessing that in reality she is no clone holding the secret to his powerful virus but just a normal child that he decided to take in as some kind of redemption for all the evil that he had caused throughout his life. A most unexpected twist, given that all the actions of the villains so far stemmed from the belief that Grace was the original creation of Spencer, the only one able to unlock the super-powerful virus, and whom they had been trying to clone all these years, since they had her DNA, in order to gain access to Spencer's deadly bioweapon.
From the beginning, however, we are given a very big clue. The name of the supposed virus is Elpis, which of course means Hope. Why would Spencer name a lethal virus "hope" when it was supposed to be the exact opposite of it? Well, maybe as a distraction or a bluff. But he never was much into playing games. This clue is, in fact, a majorly important point, that comes into play again in the very end, when Grace is called to make a big decision: destroy Elpis or release it. Instinctively, you would choose to destroy Elpis - but why destroy hope? Especially after having heard Spencer's confession. Incidentally, if you do, nothing good comes out of it - you get a frustratingly nasty ending and you are then aptly prompted to retry by making the only canon choice: releasing Elpis. With doing that, Grace has a sudden illumination by realizing that Elpis is actually a cure: an antidote that can offer instant healing to all infected, and first and foremost to Leon's disease. So after releasing Elpis, Grace manages to save Leon, who is near death at that point, by giving him a proper dose of the antidote, thus putting him back to action, more ready than ever to defeat the arch-villain of the story, Victor Gideon whom we left for dead after the bike chase in Raccoon City, but is now back - not only with a vengeance, but also mutated.
Although the game follows a rather well-known path, its story unfolds in a most fascinating way, something that, for a considerable part, is due to Leon's presence. Our hero being infected throughout the whole adventure until the finale, is a feature which further intensifies the sections where you play as him. Grace's part goes along a similar route with that of Ethan's in Resident Evil 7 and, mainly, Village. She starts off as a clueless civilian who gradually gains experience and becomes more self-aware. The only difference is that, unlike Ethan, Grace does not fight any bosses. Well technically there are a few very strong enemies in the Care Center that you can fight if you want, but they are optional. Other than that, hers and Ethan's paths resemble each other in how they are set, and, up to a point, in how their stories connect with those of the seasoned protagonists, Leon and Chris respectively. Just like Chris, Leon comes from the classic past and lore of the Resident Evil games, carrying a whole load of knowledge and experience with him. Although he was not involved in the Spencer Mansion incident, the consequences of this critically important event affected him vastly, as well as his subsequent personal and professional development.
As a character in his own merit, Leon is not only among the most emblematic of the series, but one of the most consistent as well, especially in how he is presented in the remakes. It is not random that he is able to carry a full game on his shoulders no matter the circumstances, with Grace in Requiem, in spite of her undoubtedly important part in the story and the gameplay, gradually being reduced to the role of a helper mostly. The heaviest parts of both the action and the plot fall on Leon, and to this of course contributes his return to the destroyed Raccoon City and the demolished RPD, sections that carry strong and compelling nostalgia vibes for both the protagonist himself and us old-time players.
So this leads to an unavoidable question: was Grace's inclusion in the story really necessary? The answer is, it was and wasn't, at the same time. Just how Ethan's story was or was not necessary in Resident Evil 7 and Village (although both those games were very good in their own right). On the one hand, I understand the need to introduce "new blood" to hopefully make the story more complex and help obscure the motives of the villains to keep the story going, on the other a whole lore and mythology has been built around these fantastic heroes and heroines, and I am not sure if it will ever be possible to have them moved to the background. From that aspect, Requiem could have worked seamlessly even without the need to bring in a character like Grace. The first time that Leon appears in Requiem, only minutes pass before Sherry informs him about Dr Gideon as a person of interest, and suggests he should go and investigate his suspicious Care Center, without neither of them being yet aware of Grace's existence.
Just imagine the story with only Leon as the protagonist. He would have to explore the Care Center on his own, without Emily's inclusion possibly, because it wouldn't make much sense. Of course Leon being on his own in the Care Center and having to navigate its every inch and its nightmarish basement would mean heavy action, tough combat sequences and even a boss fight or two. Then the clues would inevitably lead him back to Raccoon City and the RPD, and subsequently at the ARK facility. His interactions with Dr Gideon would have been more extended and much more intense, as they would focus on the two characters exclusively; and as for Spencer's change of heart, it could still be the story's main twist, without the need for an extra character to support it. He could very well have created a cure, masked it as a virus, letting others believe it was lethal, then Leon would have been the one to decide whether to destroy or release Elpis, based on events, facts, documents and records that he would have found throughout the game. His extended exploration of Raccoon City and the R.P.D. could also have provided extra info. The Orphanage was already established in the remake of Resident Evil 2 as an important part of the illegal experiments that Umbrella was carrying out; there would have been no need to include the part of the story that involved Grace in particular; because as it turned out in the end, Grace's part mainly served as the mega-twist of her own arc, through which it was revealed that, in reality, she was never special. So it had mostly to do with her as an individual, and much less with the story itself. Because for the villains it would have been one way or the other. But it was for her specifically that this revelation was a shocking twist, only a few hours after having been falsely informed that she had been created instead of having been born. To put it plainly, for nearly half the game she had no idea about either twist; then somewhere in the middle Zeno told her that she was Spencer's creation, which naturally shocked her, and then a bit later she watched Alyssa's recorded video where Spencer was confessing that Grace was never an artificial creation, but just a normal child.
Or was she? How can we be absolutely sure that he indeed confessed the truth to Alyssa? What are the chances that Grace was in fact his creation for real, and he concealed the truth about her in order to stop any potential villainous actions from people like Dr Gideon, Zeno and The Connections? Maybe we will get a confirmation or a disproof in a possible future release, if they decide to include Grace again in a new game or a DLC episode. But with the facts that we have so far, however, the point is that just how in Shadows Of Rose we were back to point zero at the end of the game - with Rosemary starting off determined to rid off her powers then ending up with them enhanced - here too Grace starts off as an ordinary civilian and although she goes through the brief stage of believing she is something more than that, in the end she is abruptly brought back to where she always was.
That said, I think this is essentially the issue with all the newer Resident Evil heroes like Ethan, Rosemary and Grace. Their stories evolve based on what happens around them, instead of them taking things in their own hands. They are not catalytic to the outcome of the stories in the way that the original heroes were. They are just forced to go through trials because they have no other choice. But how Sherry's story played out, for instance, in Resident Evil 2 was almost exclusively based on Claire's bravery and determination, independently of how the wider plot developed. Claire in Code Veronica essentially moved the story forward with how she handled the obstacles that were in her path and how she never lost focus on finding Chris while at the same time taking care to aid Steve. The way Resident Evil 4 concluded was mostly a result of Leon's genious, resilience and readiness in every situation. Grace may look like she plays the most important part by making the final choice in Requiem, but in fact it is a "fake", so to speak, dilemma, since we are eventually forced to go for the canon ending anyway.
Of course this does not mean that all heroes must be the same and act in a similar way. But I feel that the way the original heroes were conceived and presented, they were absolutely self-sufficient and it was them who eventually shaped their destiny and that of those around them, by either causing or preventing things from happening. Grace, Rosemary and, to a lesser degree, Ethan, although they do make choices too at certain points, are mostly dragged around by circumstances and villains who impose themselves on them, and it is as if what their fate is in the end, does not have much to do with their actions and decisions up to the finale of their stories. A blatant example is Emily's fate in Requiem: although Grace contributed greatly to her initial rescue, both her death as a mutant and her rebirth as a healed human being were results of Leon's actions and not Grace's with whom she had such a strong connection.
It was not the same with Piers, Jake and Helena in Resident Evil 6. Those three characters had an organic part in the plot, and their individual stories were directly connected to it. Especially Jake, around whom the whole story essentially was centered, even if it was not always obvious. Grace is supposed to carry an essential part of Requiem's plot, and although she does to some degree, you can't help but constantly think about Leon and how his own arc will develop, simply following Grace as she struggles among monsters and zombies hoping she will survive until her own parts are complete.
Leon's part in Requiem, his growing infection, his return to Raccoon City and the RPD and how his story concludes, weigh immensely more than Grace's. It would be unfair to say that Grace's arc is not interesting enough, but it is Leon that we mostly care about, because he is the hero we know and love, and have been through thick and thin with him all these years, in the adventures where he was involved. In the end of day, we may feel sympathy for a young girl who found herself in a living nightmare, forced to face inconceivably tough situations and managed, through a personal struggle, to make a difference, but our heart lies with Leon, our shining star. For now, what surely will stay with us as one of the most iconic stages of the Resident Evil saga, is his trip down memory lane in the ruined Raccoon Police Department. Even for this sequence only, Resident Evil: Requiem was more than worth it.
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