Highlights
- The potential open-world design of Resident Evil 9 could offer a fresh experience with longer gameplay and more player freedom, but also carries risks of straying too far from the series' traditional formula.
- As of right now, there's no confirmation one way or the other if the ninth entry will have an open world.
Over the last 28 years, the Resident Evil franchise has evolved quite a bit. A pioneer of the survival horror genre, Resident Evil continued to thrive well into the early 2000s by producing a number of third-person, fixed-camera adventures, all of which followed the same general gameplay formula. Then, with the release of Resident Evil 4 in 2005, the franchise took a more action-focused approach to horror, adopting a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective. In more recent years, the mainline Resident Evil series has pivoted once again, this time adopting a first-person perspective and focusing on more claustrophobic, personal horrors.
According to some recent rumors, the Resident Evil franchise might be about to undergo another major evolution, this time affecting the series' structure more so than ever before. In a recent Twitter post by leaker Dusk Golem, Resident Evil 9 is said to be building off Dragon's Dogma 2's updated version of the RE Engine, and that could potentially mean that the sequel is going open-world, a premise that both has its advantages and disadvantages.
What Resident Evil 9's Rumored Open World Could Learn from Dragon's Dogma 2
It's been heavily rumored that Resident Evil 9 could be going open-world and there's a lot it could learn from the recently released Dragon's Dogma 2.
The Pros and Cons of Resident Evil 9's Rumored Open-World Setting
The Pros of Resident Evil 9 Potentially Going Open-World
Potentially the biggest upside of Resident Evil 9 going open-world is that it would offer a completely new experience. Over the last few years, the Resident Evil series has gotten into a successful rhythm of bouncing between remakes and mainline sequels.
But with an open world, Resident Evil 9 could offer something completely new. Though Resident Evil Village's more open-ended map gave a brief tease of what an open-world Resident Evil could look like, it wasn't the whole package. Being able to tackle Resident Evil 9's areas and bosses in any order could be genuinely refreshing, and add a nice layer of player freedom that isn't always present in Resident Evil.
Embracing an open-world design would also likely mean that Resident Evil 9 is a tad longer than its predecessors. The vast majority of Resident Evil games can be finished in under 15 hours, and while this is never usually a knock against the series, it might be nice to live in these horrifying worlds for a little bit longer, especially if that means more enemy types, more puzzles, more collectibles, and more rewarding side activities.
The Cons of Resident Evil 9 Potentially Going Open-World
But delivering a compelling open world is much easier said than done. While Resident Evil 9 adopting an open-world structure could offer a refreshing break from tradition, it could also backfire immensely. If Resident Evil 9's rumored open world didn't really capitalize on its new structure, then it might call into question why Capcom even bothered to change the tried and tested formula, and it wouldn't be the first time.
Though Resident Evil 4 was lauded for its revolutionary third-person action systems, Resident Evil 5 and 6 were heavily criticized for straying too far from series tradition, and an open-world Resident Evil 9 could easily elicit a similar response.
This criticism would only be exacerbated by the context surrounding Resident Evil 9. There are already immense expectations for the next mainline entry of Resident Evil as a long-running horror franchise and it might not be the best time for Capcom to experiment with a new open-world formula for the series. Instead, an open-world design might be best introduced in a future Resident Evil spin-off, where there's much less pressure to knock it out of the park right away.
Resident Evil
Resident Evil is a long-running survival horror franchise developed by Capcom. Spread across numerous mainline and spin-off entries, the series is known for it’s third and first-person action horror, zombie-related monsters and references, and challenging puzzles.
Summary
Capcom's survival horror franchise.
