Leon Could Be 70 and Still Be a Great Character, Resident Evil Director Says

Capcom wants players to know that old age won’t keep Leon Kennedy out of games set after Resident Evil Requiem because he’ll probably “still be a great character” even “when he’s 70.”

Fans were already worried that the 50-year-old survival horror hero may be getting too tired to show up for new entries in the series before his inclusion in the new game was revealed late last year. Following the events of Resident Evil Requiem, it’s safe to say Leon was still in good enough shape to cut through more mutated villains, but Capcom has said that it’s not afraid to bring him back for even more missions in the future.

Game director Koshi Nakanishi touched on the publisher’s love for Leon during an all-encompassing interview with Eurogamer today. When speaking about whether or not Resident Evil could use a fresh round of new characters, he said the team doesn’t feel any pressure to stick to a specific timeline.

“It’s not a cast iron rule that whenever we come up with a new game and we decide to release it here, that we have to exactly age everyone up to match it or anything like that,” Nakanishi said. He added that Capcom doesn’t “feel the need to replace [its most recognisable faces] with younger characters… we don’t really think of it in those terms.”

Still, the question of Leon’s age, specifically, has remained a consistent talking point surrounding the launch of Resident Evil Requiem earlier this year. While Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Ada Wong, and others mostly stick to the sidelines, Leon returned for the latest entry with a more weathered look than before. Nakanishi said he enjoyed how Capcom approached an older version of the Resident Evil 2 protagonist, and even took things a step further by saying that fans could see him return 20 years later in the timeline.

“I mean, I think Leon is really appealing in his current form,” he continued. “And who knows, we could bring him back when he’s 70, and I’m sure he’ll still be a great character.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Resident Evil Requiem producer Masato Kumazawa touched on the response to the recent DLSS 5 AI controversy. For more on Resident Evil Requiem, you can read our 9/10 review.

“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,” we said when it launched for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S in February.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).