Resident Evil 9 will take the long-running series where it has never been before.
Thanks to reliable Capcom insider Dusk Golem, we already know that Resident Evil 9 is in development. That is not a big surprise, considering the continued success of the series. However, it might come as a shock to hear that the title is potentially abandoning the typically linear structure of the RE series to try out a new open world concept.
This was once again revealed by Dusk Golem, who shared some details about upcoming Capcom projects on Twitter/X. They revealed that next to their most-recent hit, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds, Resident Evil 9 will also be an open world game.
Resident Evil 9 Is Apparently Going Open World
While RE games often feature hubs which players can explore more-or-less freely — think of the villages in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil Village, or how the city is structured in the remake of 3 — the series has never had a full-on open world. After already breaking with convention by implementing a first-person perspective with Resident Evil 7 and 8, it looks like Capcom is trying to shake things up once again.
(2/2) take on RE:3 & RE:4 for a remake initiative. Dragons Dogma 2 expanded RE Engine functionality for open world games, the two other games building on this tech is Monster Hunter Wild & Resident Evil 9.
— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) March 22, 2024
According to Dusk, Capcom projects are usually greenlit and developed in groups of three, with each group aiming to extend the limits of the RE Engine, Capcom’s in-house engine used for all of its games. It looks like the developer has used Dragon’s Dogma 2 to “expand RE Engine functionality for open world games”, with the “two other games building on this tech” being Monster Hunter Wilds and Resident Evil 9.
How exactly Capcom will incorporate this new structure is still unclear. However, Dusk Golem emphasized that the goal for the company is to retain the series DNA, so Resident Evil 9 will likely try to remain true to what makes the franchise so popular.