Resident Evil veterans are doing a double take. Kazuhiro Aoyama, director of the 1999 classic Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, says he’s puzzled by the apparent survival of Raccoon City and the Raccoon City Police Department in the upcoming Resident Evil 9: Requiem.
In a recent interview with YouTuber Under The Mayo, Aoyama revisited Nemesis’s cataclysmic finale. The original game ends with a thermobaric missile leveling Raccoon City, a deliberate creative choice to close the book on the outbreak’s epicenter. The ending made it unmistakably clear that the city, including the RCPD, was gone—wiped off the map.
While Resident Evil 3 Remake kept that outcome, the presentation softened the blow. Instead of lingering on total devastation, it shifted focus to Jill Valentine’s escape as the city disappeared into plumes of smoke. Even so, the canon takeaway remained the same: Raccoon City was destroyed.
That’s why the glimpses of Raccoon City and the RCPD’s remains in Resident Evil 9: Requiem have raised eyebrows. Aoyama described himself as confused when the topic came up, with Under The Mayo holding back specifics out of professional courtesy, but still calling what he saw interesting. Aoyama even wondered aloud whether time travel might be in play—a wink at the series’ fondness for pulpy B‑movie twists and timeline shenanigans that fans know all too well.
Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi has leaned into that ambiguity. He openly acknowledged that revisiting iconic locations isn’t necessarily realistic, hinting that narrative and atmosphere sometimes take precedence over strict continuity. Speaking at Gamescom 2025, he explained that the team didn’t simulate the exact physics of the missile strike. Instead, they considered where the bomb would have landed, mapped a plausible blast zone, and estimated how shockwaves might affect different parts of the city.
The result is a creative retcon that has sparked debate across the community. On one side are purists who want the series to honor the original destruction of Raccoon City; on the other are players eager to explore beloved locations reimagined for a new era. With Resident Evil 9: Requiem, Capcom appears to be threading the needle—embracing nostalgia and visual storytelling while acknowledging that the logic is, at best, a stretch.
Whether the game ultimately explains away the city’s survival through timeline twists, selective survivability, or simple artistic license, the conversation is already doing what Resident Evil does best: stirring up dread, curiosity, and a fierce desire to see what lurks around the next corner in Raccoon City.
