Leon Kennedy Stardew Valley clone would be amazing, RE2 director jokes

Surely he's earned a vacation

Resident Evil Requiem is one of 2026's best-selling and best-reviewed games, and it put returning hero Leon S. Kennedy through the wringer. After fighting his way through a hospital overrun with zombies and braving bus-sized arachnids in Raccoon City, the handsomest man in video games deserves to get away from it all for a little while. At least, that's what the director of Resident Evil 2 — and the creator of the game's protagonists, Leon and Claire —seems to think. In a post on X, Hideki Kamiya told a fan who asked about a "continuation of the two grown-up characters" that he'd like to give Leon a gentler experience this time around.

"If I made it, it'd turn into a game where retired Leon goes fishing in the countryside, forages for wild veggies, bakes bread, walks the dog, tends a home garden, drives 50 km to the general store for supplies, invites old buddies over for a barbecue, fixes the neighbor grandma's oven at her request, sells homemade lemonade at the local festival... but that'd be cool, right...?" Kamiya said in the post, via machine translation. The post attracted more than 1.7 million views and 16,000 likes, enough to prompt Kamiya to jokingly reach out to his former employers: "Capcom, there are a lot of voices out there saying they want something like a Biohazard that's not scary, so if you have some free time, please consider making it... I want to play it too..."

Capcom hasn't taken a swing at the farming-sim or life-sim genre yet, but given the company is currently on a generational hot streak, a game like this — especially linked to a beloved franchise like Resident Evil — would probably be a banger. We know Leon would be adept at chopping logs thanks to his hatchet work in Requiem, and he already knows a thing or two about combining herbs. I suspect his transition from STARS to Stardew Valley might be a more natural one than it seems at first glance.

Despite having played an instrumental role in the creation of one of the genre's all-time classics, this isn't the first time Kamiya's spoken out about his distaste for horror games. Back in March, shortly after the launch of Resident Evil Requiem, Kamiya lamented that the latest installment of the series was far too scary. " Instead, he wanted to see a version of the game "where the zombies get all cute, the blood splatters turn into cherry blossom petals, the music becomes this upbeat, feel-good kind of tune, and you can just purely enjoy the puzzles and battles in a fun mood," he wrote on X. "I wanna play it, but it's so scary that I can't sleep alone at night anymore, so I just can't bring myself to play... Think about how people like that feel..."

For those of us who prefer our Resident Evil games terrifying, Capcom isn't letting up on the gas. At Summer Game Fest, the company confirmed that a remake of 2000's Code Veronica will release in 2027 as Resident Evil Veronica. The game takes place shortly after the events of RE2 and RE3, and sees Claire Redfield infiltrate an Umbrella Corporation facility in Paris to search for her missing brother, Chris. The original game did not include any bread baking or errands for grandma, but maybe Capcom will listen to Kamiya's wise words ahead of the sequel's launch.