Dynasty Warriors 9 in the works for PS4, will be open world, adds Zhou Cang
Dynasty Warriors is going open world, and I'm going on a long holiday so I can contemplate this news with some semblance of calm.
Dynasty Warriors 9 was announced this weekend by all three major arms of Koei Tecmo.
Gematsu has gathered together all the available information from Japanese sources, the most important of which is that Dynasty Warriors 9 is an open world game.
Omega Force said it didn't see the point in just doing the same old thing again for this new numbered series entry, which is pretty amusing given the history of the franchise; I do say that with love, though.
The open world of Dynasty Warriors 9 reproduces the whole of China, but due to the mountains not every location will host battles. Famous battle locations like Hulao Pass and Zhongyuan will be highly detailed. Players will be able to wander in and out of villages as they stroll about the landscape.
This is already change enough to have we old series faithful sewating, but Omega Force also said Dynasty Warriors 9 will abandon the traditional control method of Square for attack and Triangle for Charge attack. The basic gameplay concept of 1 v 1,000 will not change, though, and I'm sure the series will retain the ramping difficulty between casual and hardcore modes which Omega Force has always been very proud of.
Finally, Omega Force said the full cast of 83 characters appearing in every game up to Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires will be playable, and there will be a small number of new faces, too. One of these is Zhao Cang, a comedic character who uses a Dai Satsu Katana weapon, and will also appear in the upcoming PS4 and Vita title Musou Stars, which has not been confirmed for western launch.
At this stage we only have the announcement trailer above and some concept art to show for Dynasty Warriors 9, which has not been dated. We also don't have any information on platforms, but as it was announced during a PlayStation broadcast PS4 seems a safe bet. Xbox One is probably on the cards, too.
Don't mind the number eight in the Japanese logo; the numbering discrepancy is one of the artefacts of localisation we're still dragging around today.