In 2009, Capcom entered its hubris era. The publisher was riding high off the success of Resident Evil 4 and was ready to capitalize by continuing to transform its survival-horror juggernaut into a full-blown action series. Resident Evil 5 attempted to repeat its predecessor’s lightning-in-a-bottle success with mixed results, but Capcom’s ambitions came crashing down to Earth in 2012 with Resident Evil 6. The game was a notorious misstep that almost killed the series for good until Resident Evil 7 Biohazard restored its goodwill five years later. It’s not the kind of game that typically gets redeemed with endless remasters and remakes.
But after playing through the excellent Resident Evil Requiem, maybe it’s time to put hubris back on the menu. I’m now convinced Capcom could pull off a Resident Evil 6 remake — and I swear I’m not just architecting another Morbius rerelease meme.
Resident Evil 6 was an attempt to give the series a major climax that brought several disparate characters together into one epic saga. The story unites fan favorites like Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield as the aftermath of the evil Umbrella Corporation’s bioweapons research goes global. Leon kills the President of the United States, there are two Ada Wongs, and Troy Baker is there for some reason.
It had a terrible reputation for a reason: The action game turned all of Resident Evil’s dumbest qualities up to 15. The lore-heavy story barely made sense, the corniness was maxed out, and none of it controlled very well. It was Capcom taking all the wrong lessons from its success stories over the years and folding them into one overstuffed attempt to create a big-scale action game that appealed to a wider market beyond horror diehards.
Even though it’s widely considered the series’ worst mainline game by a mile, it still has its apologists. And by that, I mean me. Resident Evil 6 isn’t a good game, but it is a hilarious one. It fully realizes the series’ B-movie ambitions in spectacularly stupid fashion. What other game lets you suplex a zombie to explode its head? The melodramatic silliness was just right, but the experience was always held back by messy controls that made combat much more of a nightmare than it needed to be. Capcom just hadn’t figured out how to transform Resident Evil’s slow zombie battles into fast-paced shootouts.
Over a decade later, Capcom has finally figured that out. Resident Evil Requiem builds on the changes introduced in 2023’s critically acclaimed Resident Evil 4 remake to make for some thrilling action. It’s not just about giving Leon a big arsenal of guns and letting him loose in a Raccoon City filled with monsters. He can parry chainsaws, spin kick heads off, and slice up bodies with a hatchet. The power of the multifaceted system is immediately apparent in Leon’s first shootout in Requiem’s Care Center, where he carves his way through an entire room full of zombies. It’s so hectic and over-the-top compared to Grace’s creeping horror segments that it plays like a gag. It’s downright funny that Leon kicks so much ass.
That’s the energy Resident Evil 6 needs to work. The original is packed with comedic potential that was lost underneath clumsy action; it should be hilarious when a character kills a zombie with a head scissors takedown. Requiem’s Raccoon City segments already feel like a Resident Evil 6 remake in some way, proving that Capcom has figured out how to create gloriously ridiculous action that still controls well. (Just wait until you see the motorcycle chase sequence.)
No one needs a Resident Evil 6 remake, but Capcom has shown that there’s value in revisiting old Resident Evil games. At their best, recent remakes like Resident Evil 2 have been truly transformative and put classic games in a brand-new light. Resident Evil 6 could use a fresh perspective too, bringing out its comedic qualities at a time when Capcom has finally figured out how to make large-scale chaos work in the series. Maybe it won’t be enough to fully redeem a bad game, but it could help us finally appreciate how funny it is that Leon guns down the zombie President in the first minutes of his story.