Now, a repeatable method for finishing the puzzle has been published online — albeit only after datamining work was carried out to reveal the necessary requirements. The solution is bizarre, and there’s still discussion among fans now over why exactly it works this way. But first… here’s what you have to do.
RE9s Final Puzzle SOLVED!!!👀(Huge Game Wide Easter Egg Puzzle) by the datamining tool that’s been solving Call of Duty Zombies Easter Eggs…
This hunt has taken 4+ days & has been driving people INSANE
Warning! Spoilers for Resident Evil Requiem follow:
In a video published to YouTube, Resident Evil fan Kyro says they and fellow player Rantsycancy “spent two days tirelessly working through” Requiem’s Final Puzzle challenge based on a “datamining background.”
Step one requires you to wait 15 minutes at the game’s meat processing plant, where a conveyor belt of bodies are dumped into… well, a meat processor. In the following meat grinder sequence, you then must ensure all zombies die to the grinder, rather than shooting them yourself. All of this is to ensure that enough zombies have been harvested here, something the game quietly counts in the background.
Next, head to the toilets in the restroom area and flush one eight times. This is all you reportedly need to do to spawn Marie’s Doll during the facility escape sequence — the same doll that Gengar Collects accurately reported finding and using to complete the puzzle himself (though he wasn’t sure what he’d done to make it spawn).
From here, the solution resolves as Gengar Collects previously stated. You’ll need to complete the game, start a new save, then have Marie’s Doll in your inventory when inputting the now infamous code sequence into the DNA sequencer machine that players previously worked out last week. And with all of that done, The Final Puzzle is finally complete.
Fans are still working to deduce why this process is the solution to the puzzle. There’s speculation about a note referencing Marie that mentions extracting “a 2.3 millilitre sample from the 524.3 litres of blood collected from 115 infected,” which may be the count of bodies (or bodies not wrapped up) on the conveyor belt. Why you then need to flush a toilet eight times, though, remains to be seen.
For now, however, Resident Evil Requiem’s biggest mystery does at least have a full working solution. Are you planning to give it a go yourself?
IGN’s Resident Evil: Requiem guide will help you every step of the way through RE9. Take note of these key tips and tricks before you get started, and focus on finding these important items early. Plus, our comprehensive walkthrough will make sure you don’t miss a single Bobblehead or file as you try to survive from the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center all the way to Raccoon City.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Resident Evil Requiem released last Friday, and while many players are slicing up zombies as Leon S. Kennedy and creeping around as Grace Ashcroft, players of the Japanese version have noticed something is amiss. Namely, Requiem’s censorship of gore in its home country is being criticized for being immersion breaking and uncreative compared to past games in the series.
Warning! Resident Evil Requiem spoilers follow:
With Resident Evil being one of Japan’s major survival horror series, Capcom has previously come up with creative ways to censor domestic releases to meet the strict requirements of Japan’s CERO game ratings board. As The Gamer pointed out, in Resident Evil 7’s Japanese release, Capcom replaced the decapitated head found in a fridge with a photo of the deceased character. Other times, gory scenes (particularly decapitations) were removed entirely in Japan, including some of Leon’s most brutal death scenes in Resident Evil 4.
In a pre-release interview with Japanese news site Game Watch, Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi commented on the CERO Z (18+)-rated trial version of the game, noting: “While it’s not completely identical to the global version, I think that the content you will experience in (the Japanese release of) Requiem is quite comparable.”
However, many players of the Japanese version have since voiced their dissatisfaction with censorship in the final release.
As one player of the Japanese version pointed out in a (NSFW) Reddit post, Capcom started to show cutting off limbs in Resident Evil 4, implementing a workaround whereby gore and entrails would be blacked-out. With Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom has also opted for blacking out the gore, however, this has extended to covering whole missing areas of bodies in black to the point where it is really noticeable.
For example, in one puzzle in Requiem, you have to find an artificial heart and lungs to place inside a dead body in order to get the Level 2 ID wristband. In the Japanese version, the entire upper body and the heart and lungs themselves are completely black. As the Redditor noted, this “censorship is way more noticeable imo, to the point where it really kills immersion.”
Although many longtime Japanese fans have come to expect domestic releases of Resident Evil games to be censored, many opined that Resident Evil Requiem’s censorship was more excessive or distracting than previous entries. “I get that restrictions are unavoidable but the problem is that it’s gotten worse from RE4 onwards. If the censorship was on the same level as RE4, I wouldn’t have any complaints,” tweeted one user in Japanese. Despite saying the game lived up to their expectations, a Requiem completer noted, “The CERO censorship (blacked-out sections and stuff you couldn’t see) felt so jarring and overemphasized.” Another user added, “It really bothers me that although blood during cutscenes is red, damage dealt to zombies (headshots or severed arms) is black.”
Resident Evil Requiem players on Steam also reported that the Japanese version of the game on PC is censored too, with at least one English-speaking user requesting a refund because of it. Some users on X have recommended that those in Japan who want the full, gory experience should get the uncensored overseas releases on Steam (such as the UK version), noting that they have Japanese language support.
But why is the Japanese version censored in the first place? In order to get a game physically released on consoles in Japan, it has to pass CERO, the country’s ratings board. CERO has five age categories, the highest being CERO Z (18+), which Resident Evil Requiem falls under. However, even CERO’s top age rating has historically cracked down on gore, particularly on depictions of severed body parts, decapitations, and body horror. Previously, The Callisto Protocol’s Japan release was cancelled because developer Striking Distance Studios was unwilling to make the changes demanded by CERO’s rating board, as such censorship would compromise player expectations (according to the studio’s tweet).
For download-only games, publishers can try and get an IARC (International Age Rating Coalition) rating instead, as IARC is supported by many online storefronts in Japan, such as the Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store. However, for physical console releases, games have to pass the CERO board. It’s worth noting that if a game fails to pass CERO the first time, the developers not only have to make changes to the content, but they also have to factor in the time it takes and the cost of paying a review fee again. In addition to the review fee, publishers have to pay a porting fee for each of the platforms they want to release a physical copy on. This makes gaining a CERO rating costly in terms of both time and money (especially for indie developers).
Although Capcom is far from a cash-strapped indie developer, CERO’s strict censorship of gore, combined with Resident Evil Requiem’s close-up, realistic depictions could have prompted the company to play it safe by shading problematic areas in black.
IGN’s Resident Evil: Requiem guide will help you every step of the way through RE9. Take note of these key tips and tricks before you get started, and focus on finding these important items early. Plus, our comprehensive walkthrough will make sure you don’t miss a single Bobblehead or file as you try to survive from the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center all the way to Raccoon City.
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
Reliable video game leaker billbil-kun has revealed the release date and price for Starfield on PlayStation 5 ahead of an official announcement from Bethesda and Microsoft.
In a post on Deadlabs, billbil-kun said Starfield will release on PS5 on April 7, and it will indeed have a physical edition.
Assuming this release date is true (billbil-kun regularly and accurately leaks PlayStation Plus games, so we have no reason to doubt it), Bethesda’s sci-fi game launches on PlayStation two-and-a-half years after it debuted on PC and Xbox Series X and S, back in September 2023.
Billbil-kun also revealed Starfield will launch on PS5 in Standard and Premium editions, as you’d expect, but there’s no early access for the Premium edition.
As for a price, billbil-kun said it will cost €49.99 / £44.99 for the standard edition, and €69.99 / £59.99 for the Premium Edition, with pre-orders expected on March 18. There’s no word yet on when the announcement will be made.
That price is interesting though as it’s cheaper than Starfield’s PC and Xbox Series X and S launch price from 2023. The Standard Edition of Starfield currently costs £59.99 on Steam, and the Premium Edition costs £85.99, so perhaps a price-cut to align all versions is coming soon.
Last month, Bethesda boss Todd Howard confirmed that Starfield is not getting a huge 2.0-type update. “Obviously, we’ve been working on a lot of Starfield content. I can tell everybody we are going to be talking about [the new content] really soon,” Howard told Kinda Funny. “We’re moving into a phase where we’re ready to talk about Starfield. And really show that in the right way, and what’s coming to the game. We’ve been doing a lot of work that we like a lot.”
Howard added: “You know, I’ve seen some of that, so for expectation-setting, I think it’s the kind of thing where if you love Starfield, we think you’re going to love this. It’s updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of meta. Using outer space and things in ways that we haven’t.”
Interestingly, Howard made a point of saying that ”if Starfield is something that didn’t connect with you right away, or you bounced off it, or found it boring in places, I don’t think this is going to change that fundamentally.”
Though Howard was coy about timelines, he did say we may find out more “soonish.”
Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first brand new IP in 25 years, but it was not as well received as the studio’s previous games in the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, and the Shattered Space expansion, released a year later in September 2024, has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam.
Starfield went on to reach 15 million players, but the question of whether Bethesda might walk away from the game to focus on its other franchises has been a running theme since release. In June 2024, Bethesda insisted it remained committed to supporting Starfield, and confirmed at least one other story expansion would come out following Shattered Space. And in an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the developer was aiming to release an annual story expansion for “hopefully a very long time.” That, obviously, hasn’t happened. In August last year, it was reported that Starfield’s second expansion and much-anticipated PlayStation 5 port would now arrive in 2026, following the poor reception to Shattered Space.
Bethesda has confirmed plans to improve Starfield space gameplay “to make the travels there more rewarding” after datamined fragments of code suggested the developer had a more streamlined space travel experience in the works. Based on this datamine, while you may be able to travel between planets within the same system, you won’t be able to fly all the way between systems, nor fly directly from a planet’s surface into orbit, like No Man’s Sky.
In a new video discussing his career, veteran Bethesda developer Tim Lamb confirmed that the studio had been working on Starfield’s space gameplay, and that a new DLC story was still coming at some point.
“I think as it comes to Starfield, I’m really excited for players to see what the teams have been working on,” he said. “We have some cool stuff coming, including free updates and features the players have been asking for, as well as a new DLC story.
“I can’t go into all the details just yet, but I will say part of the team has been focused on space gameplay to make the travels there more rewarding. We’re also adding some new game systems, and a few other smaller delights. There’s also some really interesting stuff coming down the pipe from our verified creators. There’s some fun stuff.
“I just want to say thanks. We really appreciate the support and the enthusiasm. We can’t wait to get it into the hands of our players.”
Last month, Bethesda teased new content for Starfield — at least that’s what fans thought after they spotted a hidden message in a social media video released to celebrate the game’s two-year anniversary.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Resident Evil Requiem looks like a smash hit for Capcom, with record-breaking Steam concurrent player numbers suggesting big sales. But it’s also a hit on Metacritic, where it has the joint highest user score of all time.
Requiem has a user score of 9.5 on Metacritic, which is the same score last year’s breakout hit, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, has. It surged past Metal Gear Solid, The Witcher 3, and Disney Cory in the House’s 9.3 (if you did a double-take at Disney Cory in the House being up there, well… there’s a whole thing about it being on this list that is well worth checking out). Also on 9.3, perhaps more deservedly, are the original Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3.
Website user review scores can be manipulated, of course (Disney Cory in the House shows that!), and not just with games either (Breaking Bad vs. Game of Thrones is a thing). But clearly fans are loving Resident Evil Requiem, which also has an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ user review rating on Steam. IGN’s own Resident Evil Requiem review returned a 9/10. We said: “Like the result of an experiment conducted in an underground Umbrella Corporation lab, Resident Evil Requiem successfully splices two separate strains of survival horror together into the one highly infectious new mutation.”
Resident Evil Requiem’s overall Metascore is 88, which isn’t enough to make Metacritic’s top 250 games of all time. The highest-rated Resident Evil video game is the original Resident Evil 4, which has a 96 Metascore. Still, Resident Evil Requiem is the second highest-rated video game of 2026, behind only Pokemon Pokopia for now.
IGN’s Resident Evil: Requiem guide will help you every step of the way through RE9. Take note of these key tips and tricks before you get started, and focus on finding these important items early. Plus, our comprehensive walkthrough will make sure you don’t miss a single Bobblehead or file as you try to survive from the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center all the way to Raccoon City.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Resident Evil Requiem players have spent the weekend trying to solve the game’s cryptic Final Puzzle, and now a Pokémon fan has provided video evidence they have completed the challenge — despite being uncertain exactly how they did so.
The only problem? Even with this evidence, which really does suggest Gengar Collects has completed the challenge, fans still aren’t sure exactly how to do it for themselves, as it requires the holding of an item that normally can’t be found.
“I don’t even know if it was how it was supposed to be done,” Gengar Collects says in a video that attempts to walk fans through his solution. Essentially, it boils down to him holding an item, Marie’s Doll, and then inputting the puzzle’s now-infamous code sequence. Doing so then granted him the challenge completion — something he also provided screenshots of.
But how to get Marie’s doll? The past few hours have seen a frantic back and forth between Gengar Collects and other fans via YouTube comments, and to be fair, it looks like he’s trying his best to help. A series of screenshots show the location he claims he found Marie’s Doll in (which is different to the doll you find in the cell). Further screenshots show he is playing on Xbox Series X/S, which limits the suggestion he has somehow used a cheat or hack to get the doll item to spawn, where for others it can’t be found.
Yet more screenshots, requested by other players, show a close-up examination of the doll in his inventory. There are no other clues on the item itself — “no name in ink on the bottom of the shoe,” Gengar Collects says, as the doll in the cell has — only more evidence that he is being honest with his claim.
So, what’s going on? Why can no one else find the doll and complete the puzzle? The best working theory at the moment is that Gengar Collects legitimately completed the Final Puzzle, but only after unconsciously doing something during his playthrough that spawned the doll. And it’s this step, now, that fans are rushing to reproduce. (Alternatively, it’s possible the doll spawned due to some kind of bug or random glitch.)
On the upside, fans say they now know the challenge’s ending — and as soon as the doll is obtained, the puzzle can finally be completed. On the downside, Gengar Collects seems equally stumped on what he did in order to be able to pick the doll up in the first place.
Back over on reddit, the work continues. “Inputting the code is the last step, but you need Marie’s doll,” one fan summed up. “That’s the step we need to focus [on].”
“This is just a guess, but could the doll spawning be tied to how often we spoke to Emily?” questioned one fan. “Has anyone tried flushing the toilets using the numbers 204,” suggested another. “This is the room number that Grace and her mom stayed in the hotel.” For more detailed pointers, be sure to check out IGN’s Resident Evil Requiem Final Puzzle challenge guide — maybe you can help solve it?
IGN’s Resident Evil: Requiem guide will help you every step of the way through RE9. Take note of these key tips and tricks before you get started, and focus on finding these important items early. Plus, our comprehensive walkthrough will make sure you don’t miss a single Bobblehead or file as you try to survive from the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center all the way to Raccoon City.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
An extraordinarily rare floppy disk — one of just 50 copies of Tsukihime Trial Edition ever produced — was allegedly destroyed coming through U.S. Customs.
Collector Keripo shared a video of themselves opening the demo floppy disk delivery on X/Twitter, only to discover the disk had been damaged in such a way that it could only have been deliberate. Across the original packaging tape is another labelled “Opened and Resealed By Customs.” It’s unclear if it was courier DHL or U.S. Customs that destroyed the disk.
“My Tsukhime Trial Edition (月姫 体験版) finally arrived, one of only 50 copies in the world,” wrote Keripo on X/Twitter (thanks, Tom’s Hardware). “Only to discover that U.S. Customs had removed all the bubble wrap and physically destroyed the floppy disk. Will file a report, but literally crying right now.”
The tweet includes a video of Keripo opening the package. Getting a peek at the contents, they mutter “Oh my god,” under their breath, before exclaiming: “What the f***! No way. No way. Noooo way. What… they actually destroyed the floppy disk. What the hell. W-w… what the f***.”
This was what it looked like before it was shipped. The sender even took extra care to sandwich it between cardboard paper and use lots of bubble wrap to protect it. Would never have expected US Customs to both remove all that AND intentionally damage the floppy directly… pic.twitter.com/k4tHjIuBZ5
If you’re wondering if the sender/seller could’ve sent it like that, Keripo wrote: “This [embedded above] was what it looked like before it was shipped. The sender even took extra care to sandwich it between cardboard paper and use lots of bubble wrap to protect it. Would never have expected U.S. Customs to both remove all that AND intentionally damage the floppy directly…
“It was actually a friend who helped me buy and ship it. He has his own copy, so he was able to do a scan and confirm its authenticity, including some unfortunate bad sectors. But the value isn’t the content but the physical collectors item, which has been damaged beyond repair.”
Challenged on why they just-so-happened to be recording as the package was opened, Keripo wrote: “When your carefully packaged box containing a historical artifact arrives at your doorstep completely ripped apart and barely held together with ‘Opened and resealed by Customs’ tape, plus makes rattling noises that it shouldn’t when you pick it up, the first thing you should do is whip out your camera and record.
“The video is real, U.S. Customs opened/resealed the box poorly, the item is genuine, not a fake, the package shipped from my friend in Portugal, not Japan, the excess packaging is common for fragile Japanese collector item,” they added.
It’s unclear why the disk was destroyed, but some suggest the demo’s ‘Adult Only’ label may have been the issue, as the law states “all persons are prohibited from importing into the United States from any foreign country […] any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast, instrument, or other article which is obscene or immoral.” What constitutes “obscene or immortal” is determined on a case-by-case basis.
Tsukihime is a Japanese adult visual novel released in 2000 developed by Type-Moon. It has since been adapted into both an anime and manga series. Keripo hasn’t said how much they paid for Tsukihime Trial Edition, but did point to what they described as an authentic auction listing for it, which went for around $16,000.
This is what an authentic auction listing of a Tsukihime Preview Edition looks like. The winning bid here for this 2021 Mandarake live auction was 2.5 mil JPY (~$16k USD). There has been no legit public listing for Tsukihime Trial Edition in over 15 years so this is the closest… pic.twitter.com/xsnQJgiL4x
IGN has asked the U.S. Customs and Border Protection department for comment.
Keripo added that they intended for Tsukihime Trial Edition to be the main attraction at a public Type-Moon museum “featuring all their historical works before they became big.” “Now its even more special as the one-of-a-kind ‘destroyed by U.S. Customs’ edition!” they joked.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Highguard, the free-to-play PvP raid shooter announced at The Game Awards last year and released only for most of its developers to be laid off just weeks after launch, may have failed because it “leaned too far into the competitive scene.”
That’s according to former Wildlight developer and level designer Alex Graner, who told Quad Damage Podcast that developers “don’t strive to create something that doesn’t work out,” throughout development, Wildlight “really leaned into the competitive side of it, and that was always one of my biggest fears as a player.”
“I can only speak to my side of it as a level designer, but when I joined [Wildlight], it was trying to figure out this new, ambitious game, and this team is always pushing the boundaries,” Graner said, as transcribed by PCGN, via Eurogamer. “You don’t strive to create something that doesn’t work out, but it happens, unfortunately. Throughout development, we really leaned into the competitive side of it, and that was always one of my biggest fears as a player.”
“3v3 duos is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it. It requires such a high intensity of communication with your team, and team play, that it doesn’t leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard,” he added.
The issue, Graner believes, is that Highguard had “all these different rules and stages,” which made it difficult for players who don’t already have a team to play with, and particularly challenging for new players.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, you want to loot, now we’ve got to chase this objective, now we have to plant this objective, now it’s overtime… It has all these rules, which I think works at a really high level, but when players are first coming in it’s a lot to grasp,” Graner explained. “On top of all that, because it was 3v3, that kind of game just requires high-skill movement and shooting, which is already a pretty high [bar to] entry as well. So if you just have a few bad games or your teammates aren’t sticking together, you’re just going to get rolled, and it’s very hard to 1v2 in our game.
“It’s all designed to be a team-based shooter. I think that was the biggest thing. People just kind of turned it off because they didn’t have the team.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Another month has ended, and we are now officially in March! Today, there are quite a few solid discounts across the board, including savings on the Twin Peaks Blu-ray, Super Mario RPG, Death Stranding 2, and more. Check out our top picks for Sunday, March 1, below.
Twin Peaks: From Z to A for $43.56
Twin Peaks is one of the most beloved projects of the late David Lynch, inspiring countless creatives across TV, film, and even video games. Currently, the Twin Peaks: From Z to A Blu-ray set is discounted to $52.51. This 21-disc set includes all three seasons of Twin Peaks, the Twin Peaks: Fire Walks With Me film, and over 20 hours of special features.
Super Mario RPG for $35.99
Super Mario RPG is one of the best Mario games on Nintendo Switch, as it brings back the beloved SNES classic in brilliant fashion. This adventure is a collaboration between Square Enix and Nintendo, following Mario, Bowser, Peach, and new friends on a journey to find the seven star pieces. In our 8/10 review, we wrote, “Super Mario RPG is considered a classic for a reason, and this faithful remake makes it easy for anyone who missed it in the SNES era to see why.”
Pokémon Pokopia Out This Week
Pokémon Pokopia is finally out this week, and if you’ve been itching for a new Switch 2 game, look no further. As Ditto, it’s up to you to rebuild the world, team up with other Pokémon to complete tasks, grow crops, and more! Pokopia is shaping up to be a big hit for both Pokémon fans and cozy gamers. Now is the time to lock in your pre-order.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach for $49.99
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is an incredible follow-up to 2019’s Death Stranding that is one of the must-play games on PS5. Sam Porter Bridges is forced to venture out to the continent of Australia as the world continues to face the challenges thrown at it by the Death Stranding, and this sequel packs together a wild, sci-fi story, ultimate gameplay freedom, and some of the best visuals we’ve ever seen. Grab a copy this weekend for $49.99 at Amazon.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for $39.88
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch, and you can pick up a copy today for $39.88 at Walmart. If you played Donkey Kong Bananza on Switch 2 and are searching for another adventure with DK and friends, Tropical Freeze is an amazing choice.
Fantasian Neo Dimension for $24.99
Fantasian Neo Dimension is the latest game from a legendary creator who needs no introduction: Hironobu Sakaguchi. This incredible turn-based RPG is a joy to play through, featuring a great story with music from the all-time great Nobuo Uematsu. Pick up a Nintendo Switch or PS5 copy today and add it to your collection for only $24.99.
Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble for $20
Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble was the brilliant return to Monkey Ball we all hoped for, bringing a wonderful adventure to Nintendo Switch. In our 8/10 review, we wrote, “Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble is a brilliant return to form with the best stages and controls the series has seen in over 20 years.”
Save Big on This Woodkid Death Stranding 2 Vinyl
Woodkid was one of the two main composers for Death Stranding 2, and his work truly shaped the sound and feel of the game. Tracks like ‘To the Wilder’ and ‘Story of Rainy’ elevate key scenes throughout, and you can count on this album being added to your playlist. Right now, you can score the gorgeous 2xLP of Woodkid for Death Stranding 2: On The Beach for $40.49. Don’t miss out on your chance to add this to your collection.
Scarlet 4K UHD Blu-ray Up for Pre-Order
Scarlet is the latest film from renowned director Mamoru Hosoda, and you can pre-order the 4K UHD Blu-ray starting today at Amazon. This film was directly inspired by Hamlet, following Princess Scarlet on a journey of revenge.
Right at the end of Resident Evil Requiem, you’re presented with a choice to seal the fates of Grace and Leon. There are two options, and we trust that you chose wisely, because the outcome of one is certainly much less desirable than the other.
If you’d like to know about the ending you didn’t choose, you’re in the right place. In the video above, you can see both endings play out, and in the text below you can read how it all goes down. So let’s dive in and explain both of Requiem’s conclusions.
The Good Ending
Grace and Leon’s adventure brings them to Raccoon City, the place where all this Resident Evil mess began. While we all know that the NEST secret facility was hiding under the city, Requiem reveals that another lab lies beneath the infamous orphanage: the ARK. There, in the system’s computer files, Grace discovers an unpublished interview with Ozwell E. Spencer – Umbrella’s mastermind – conducted by her mom, journalist Alyssa Ashcroft.
The video reveals that Spencer was eventually remorseful for all the disasters he caused with Umbrella’s viral and bioweapon projects. His push to be a more decent human is shown by his adoption of a baby girl, Grace. Yes, Grace is just a regular girl, and not some genetic key to a virus as villains Zeno and Victor Gideon have suggested throughout the game. And if you pay close attention to Spencer’s wise words, you can read between the lines to work out that Elpis – the mysterious macguffin at the heart of Requiem – is not in fact a weapon, but the vaccine for bioweapons. And so when Grace is given the opportunity to release or destroy Elpis, it’s clear which is the right way to go.
When Grace releases the antiviral, it initially seems like a great result for Zeno – a lightning-fast, sunglasses-wearing, slick haired villain who isn’t actually Wesker, despite all appearances. He believes Elpis is the key to ultimate control, and so swiftly injects it. Unlucky for him, the fast-acting serum quickly cures his existing infections, erasing his Wesker mojo and robbing him of the ability to dodge bullets.
To make things worse for Zeno, an armless Victor Gideon – Requiem’s lead villain and a former member of Umbrella – arrives on the scene and claims that Spencer’s plan for Elpis was genius, as a world without virus-based weapons would surely descend into anarchy. Unsurprisingly, he’s very onboard with the idea of uncontained chaos. Zeno, who reveals his true masters to be The Connections (the secret evil corporation from Resident Evil 7 and Village), is angered by all this, but his rage is temporary: he’s quickly decapitated by a rapidly mutating Gideon.
With a boss fight clearly on the way, Grace gets to work on healing Leon – who throughout the game has been suffering from stage three T-Virus infection – with the Elpis antiviral so our hero can take on Victor. Leon makes swift work of Gideon, despite him now having the ability to wield electricity and tear apart flesh with his newly-mutated arm, although in predictable Resident Evil fashion, killing a final boss once just isn’t enough. Gideon mutates into a hulking monstrosity, finally pulling back the curtain on what exactly our not-quite-human villain is: a Nemesis.
After shooting a fair amount of pulsating biosack weak points and parrying strikes from tentacles, Gideon is finally defeated. And if that wasn’t Resident Evil enough for you, the entire ARK begins to collapse. With no way of escape, Leon and Grace conclude that they’re goners. But, just in the nick of time, Hound Wolf squad rappel in to save the day. Unfortunately, though, their captain – Resident Evil’s other big hero, Chris Redifeld, is nowhere to be seen.
With our protagonists finally safe, Leon informs his handler, Sherry Birkin, that the Elpis antiviral works, and that he has a dose with her name on it (it seems like everyone who was there for the Raccoon City incident is suffering from T-Virus infection). Grace, although free of all the chaos, can’t help but mourn the death of Emily, the young test subject she helped save from Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center before watching her mutate into a bioweapon monstrosity and then get gunned down by Leon. Thankfully, our crack-shot hero theorises she could still be alive because he “didn’t hit any of her vitals”. What a guy!
News reports confirm that every shady Umbrella secret is finally being exposed, including the true motivations behind the missile strike that obliterated Raccoon City in 1998. The Connections are also put on blast by conspiracy theorists, who claim the group is secretly controlling the government and are responsible for Alyssa’s death in an effort to cover up their wrongdoings.
Does Resident Evil Requiem Have a Post-Credits Scene?
If you opt to follow the “good” ending, there is a post credits scene. Set a little while after the events of the game, Grace is back working at her desk as an FBI analyst. A phone call between her and Leon revealed that Emily did survive and now lives with Grace, who is teaching her to read. A photo on Grace’s desk reveals that Emily regained her eyesight, presumably thanks to the restorative qualities of Elpis.
Oh, and if you take a close look at Grace’s phone, you can see Leon’s phone number displayed. It’s 266-555-0173, if you wanna give that a go. Hopefully Capcom didn’t dox our floppy-haired hero.
Grace’s boss arrives at her desk to demand her full report on the events that occurred in the ARK and their wider implications. The complete 60-page document is then made available to read in the bonus menu, confirming that this ending truly is Requiem’s canon conclusion.
In the final post-credit scene, back at ARK, shady soldiers wearing all black and gas masks declare that remaining BSAA forces have been neutralized, and they’re on their way to retrieve the “objective” before Wolf Squad arrives. This no doubt teases what The Connections have up their sleeves for the events of Resident Evil 10.
The Bad Ending
Should you make the mistake of not realising that Elpis is a cure, and decide to opt for the more traditional route of “destroy the thing that Umbrella made,” you’ll trigger Requiem’s bad ending. After typing in the destruction password, ARK begins to collapse, and Leon, being the hero that he is, springs into action, boosting Grace up to a higher platform so she can escape. Zeno, still loaded with Wesker powers, immediately kicks Leon’s arse, and then unceremoniously holds his gun’s barrel to Leon’s head and pulls the trigger. RIP.
Showing no urgency after Leon’s death, Zeno takes one last look at Grace as the platform collapses beneath him and plummets downwards, signalling his apparent end.
Grace, in shock and with no doubt a bit of survivor’s guilt, rides an elevator up to the surface, where she’s greeted by a rescue team.
And that’s it! There’s no fancy credits like in the good ending, and no post-credit scenes. The game just finishes. It truly is an anticlimactic bummer. Unsurprisingly, you’re immediately given the option to reload from the moment Grace chooses what to do with Elpis, allowing you to quickly get on with the canon ending.
Grace’s Report
As previously mentioned, completing the “good” ending unlocks Grace’s final report in Requiem’s bonus menu. This 60-page document details her findings and six decades of Umbrella activity, stretching back to the company’s establishment in 1968.
Two of the company’s co-founders, Ozwell E. Spencer and James Marcus, were ideologically opposed, which caused a number of issues in the direction of Umbrella’s research. While Spencer eventually demoted Marcus, things were already too far gone. The Connections, the shadowy group who Zeno works for, had been funneling funds to Marcus for years, while also placing moles within the company. By the 1990s, Spencer had lost much of his control of Umbrella, and had retreated to ARK to develop Elpis.
Elpis was created in secret, and so The Connections were only able to learn minor details through their network of moles. The only significant leak suggested Elpis had the potential to upset the military balance of the entire world, an idea The Connections interpreted to mean some kind of mind control virus. This was, of course, totally incorrect – Spencer’s creation was an antiviral that would render the world’s bioweapons impotent.
In an effort to secure Elpis, The Connections lobbied the US government to launch a missile at Raccoon City in the wake of the original T-Virus outbreak – not to prevent the virus’ spread, but to disrupt the relationship between Umbrella and the U.S. government. By influencing the subsequent criminal trial against Spencer, The Connections ensured he took all the blame for the outbreak, which in turn led to the dissolving of Umbrella. The Connections could then step in and claim the company’s assets, putting them in control of Elpis. All they then had to do was unlock its safeguard system – a task that led them to Grace, Spencer’s adoptive daughter and, as far as they were concerned, the key to releasing the greatest bioweapon of all.
Grace theorises that Spencer’s motivations for Elpis were peace and redemption for the many horrors he was responsible for. Not that such a goal could stop The Connections, seemingly the real power behind the world’s problems, from turning the ruins of Raccoon City into a hub for the production and distribution of bioweapons. She concludes that it’s the FBI’s role to investigate The Connections, who largely remain a mystery, and bring justice to those who have died because of their actions – something that will presumably take us into the story of Resident Evil 10.
The weekend is finally here, and new deals have popped up! There are quite a few solid discounts across the board, including savings on Super Mario RPG, Death Stranding 2, and Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble. Check out our top picks for Saturday, February 28, below.
Super Mario RPG for $35.99
Super Mario RPG is one of the best Mario games on Nintendo Switch, as it brings back the beloved SNES classic in brilliant fashion. This adventure is a collaboration between Square Enix and Nintendo, following Mario, Bowser, Peach, and new friends on a journey to find the seven star pieces. In our 8/10 review, we wrote, “Super Mario RPG is considered a classic for a reason, and this faithful remake makes it easy for anyone who missed it in the SNES era to see why.”
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach for $49.99
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is an incredible follow-up to 2019’s Death Stranding that is one of the must-play games on PS5. Sam Porter Bridges is forced to venture out to the continent of Australia as the world continues to face the challenges thrown at it by the Death Stranding, and this sequel packs together a wild, sci-fi story, ultimate gameplay freedom, and some of the best visuals we’ve ever seen. Grab a copy this weekend for $49.99 at Amazon.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for $39.88
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch, and you can pick up a copy today for $39.88 at Walmart. If you played Donkey Kong Bananza on Switch 2 and are searching for another adventure with DK and friends, Tropical Freeze is an amazing choice.
Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble for $20
Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble was the brilliant return to Monkey Ball we all hoped for, bringing a wonderful adventure to Nintendo Switch. In our 8/10 review, we wrote, “Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble is a brilliant return to form with the best stages and controls the series has seen in over 20 years.”
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II for $29.99
If you’re on the hunt for one of the most talked-about RPGs of 2025, look no further than Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. This hit RPG is on sale this weekend at Amazon for 50% off, so you can take home a copy for $29.99.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for $39.88
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is one of the best Zelda games on Nintendo Switch. This Presidents Day weekend, you can score a copy of the game at Walmart for $39.88. If you’re playing on Nintendo Switch 2, you can play the game at 60FPS with a higher frame rate in both docked and handheld modes.
Scarlet 4K UHD Blu-ray Up for Pre-Order
Scarlet is the latest film from renowned director Mamoru Hosoda, and you can pre-order the 4K UHD Blu-ray starting today at Amazon. This film was directly inspired by Hamlet, following Princess Scarlet on a journey of revenge.
