The director of Resident Evil Requiem has shared some insights into players’ preferences on camera viewpoints.
The game was released in February and, like many big-budget games these days, makes playing data available to the developer so they can study player behaviour and decision-making.
In a recent interview with Japanese publication Denfaminico Gamer, Resident Evil Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi shed some light into these analytics, specifically with regards to the camera viewpoint chosen by players.
By default, the game recommends that the sections featuring protagonist Grace – which are generally more tense – should be played in a first-person perspective, whereas the more action-focused sections with Leon should be played in third-person. Players have the option to change this if they prefer, however.
According to Nakanishi, the vast majority of players – around 90% – choose to play Leon’s sections in third-person as recommended. This may be because Leon has traditionally appeared in Resident Evil games (2, 4, 6) which were played with that viewpoint.
When it comes to Grace’s chapters, however, only around 60% of players choose the recommended first-person viewpoint, with around 40% switching to third-person for those sections too.
Nakanishi also notes that “there are clear differences in this data depending on the platform and region”, stating that players in Japan and Asia are more likely to play in third-person, whereas the percentage of PC players who chose first-person was higher than on other formats.
Last year Nakanishi revealed that Requiem was set to give players a choice between first-person and third-person viewpoints because players found the first-person view in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard too scary.
“Looking back at Resident Evil 7’s first person perspective, I implemented that as a way to make it more immersive and more scary than ever before, which I think most media and players agreed it was an incredibly scary game, but it was possibly too scary,” he old GamesRadar in August 2025.
“I think some people couldn’t handle it, and either couldn’t finish or didn’t even start it. And that’s something that I look back on thinking that, you know, I want to make sure that people can enjoy this game.
“So if you started the game off in first person perspective, and you’re finding it’s too much, then third person is almost a way to step slightly back from that level of horror and make it slightly easier to deal with by having the character on screen as a kind of avatar of yourself.”
Resident Evil Requiem has sold more than 7 million copies in its first two months, and is currently the joint highest rated game of the year, with both it and Pokémon Pokopia sitting on Metacritic scores of 89.
