Dynasty Warriors 9, the Latest Version in the Japanese Franchise, Announced and Plans to Take Us on an Open World Romp!
It appears that Dynasty Warriors 8 is about to get a sibling, Dynasty Warriors 9! The newest installment of the series was just announced at Jump Festa 2017 in Japan. No platforms were revealed at that time, but the biggest surprise is that the game will be open world.
A teaser trailer was released alongside the announcement, supposedly the reason we see an 8 instead of a 9 is that the Japanese-English translation has a difference in translation here.
Apparently, the goal of Dynasty Warriors 9 is to have the whole of China reproduced as an open world map. They plan to limit which locations can host battles due to the presence of mountainous regions, but will possibly include famous battle locations from history. Players will also have the ability to wander into villages and have access to all of the previous 83 characters, as well as new character Zhou Cang. Supposedly Zhou Cang is a fictional character from the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, upon which Dynasty warrior is based. He is supposed to be a comical character, that uses the Dai Satsu Katana and will be appearing in the upcoming game Musou Starts.
They also plan to use the mountainous terrain to explore different aspects of verticality. This means that different areas will have different altitudes. It is not yet known how this will factor into gameplay, but the concept does sound pretty intriguing. It will be interesting to see where they take it and how it is incorporated.
As previously mentioned, there is no solid information available yet as to platform accessibility. There also is no set release date, but some concept art did release. Since the developers are affectionately referring to this as a “rebirth” of the series and hoping to have the game line up with the series anniversary, there is going to be some pressure to produce a quality open world game. Especially since the scope there are hoping to achieve is so ambitious.