Dynasty Warriors 9 to reboot the series as an open world experience

Everything is taking the open world direction in video games, even Dynasty Warriors! To date, the series has always unfolded around contained, segmented battles, and it has never it blossomed into an entire map or battlefield, at least, as far as I’ve played.

That will change with Dynasty Warriors 9, as confirmed by Koei Tecmo over the weekend at Jump Festa 2016. The company sounds awfully ambitious with this project, stating that it will star Zhou Cang, a character from the classic Chinese novel Romance of Three Kingdoms which Dynasty Warriors is based on, and it hopes to recreate a map that covers the entirety of China.

Koei Tecmo didn’t confirm a console for the game, but the PlayStation 4 is the most likely target.

Stay tuned for Koei Tecmo’s open world Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, too

The standard of success these days is having an open world franchise to release and build upon every year. Koei Tecmo’s metamorphosis for Dynasty Warriors would be cute if it wasn’t so late in coming.

No, open world Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden games are not happening… as far as we know. But of all of Koei Tecmo’s franchises, Dynasty Warriors makes the most sense since its battlefields have always pushed the expanses of what’s possible for a simple action game.

Dynasty Warriors as a character based, open world action/RPG? I’ve seen stranger things happen.