An industry insider claims that Resident Evil 9 is being created as an open-world game following the improvement of RE Engine for DD2.
While Capcom hasn’t officially confirmed the development of Resident Evil 9, the ongoing rumors and the success of the franchise majorly suggest it is. And if recent rumors are to be believed, the next Resident Evil game could be taking a bold new direction with an open-world format.
Dusk Golem, a well-known figure in the Resident Evil community with a decent track record for insider information, has suggested that Resident Evil 9, or whatever Capcom decides to name the next RE game, is reportedly set to go open-world, a first for the genre.
The source claims that since Capcom enhanced the RE Engine for open-world games like Dragon’s Dogma 2, the company is willing to take advantage of the advanced technology when creating Monster Hunter Wild and Resident Evil 9.
In a tweet, Dusk Golem mentioned, “The only thing I’ll additionally add before going silent & not reading Twitter again for now is part of all three project goals has been to retain the series DNA. DD2 is still clearly Dragon’s Dogma, Wild is still clearly Monster Hunter, same will be true for RE9 w/Resident Evil.”
Well, since the early 2000s, Capcom has regularly launched Resident Evil mainline games around every four years. This trend has persisted even as the company started to remake some of its iconic games. Now, many have been speculating about the release of the next Resident Evil game, which is expected to happen in 2025, since RE Village’s 2021 release. The rumors were further fueled in 2023 when renowned Capcom leaker and YouTuber Dusk Golem revealed that Resident Evil 9 was in fact aiming for a 2025 release.
However, an open-world format would be an unexplored area for the Resident Evil series. Hence, the ways that the company plans to execute this while staying true to the essence of the franchise remain unclear until the game is officially revealed.
Apart from creating Resident Evil 9, there are rumors that Capcom is engaged in many projects set in the Resident Evil universe. One such game is a Resident Evil 5 remake, though there are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding other possible games, maybe spin-offs. However, it’s implausible that any of these speculated projects would see a release until 2025, considering Capcom’s past habit of revealing new games about a year before their launch, which is yet to happen.
As for me, I’m uncertain how an open-world horror game would function, particularly with Resident Evil at the house. However, time will tell how things turn out in the future.
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