Capcom finally gave us a shred of information about the next Resident Evil during the Capcom Next Summer 2024 stream, and while it's not much to go off, it sounds promising if you read between the lines.
"It was really difficult to figure out what to do after [Resident Evil 7]," director Koshi Nakanishi says during the livestream. "But I found it, and to be honest, it feels substantial. I can't share any details just yet, but I hope you're excited for the day I can."
Nakanishi previously headed up Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the first Resident Evil Revelations, and Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, as well as working as a designer on Resident Evil 5. It's undoubtedly an impressive resume, but what makes me more excited than anything else is the idea of Nakanishi using Resident Evil 7 as an inspiration for the next game in the series.
Many players consider Resident Evil 7 to be the game that saved a troubled series. I don't envy anyone who has to follow up on Resident Evil 4 and, while Resident Evil 5 was far from a dumpster fire, both it and Resident Evil 6 paled in comparison to Leon's adventures in the Spanish countryside.
Resident Evil 4 got away with being pretty tame when it came to scares thanks to a great story, protagonist, and action sequences, but the following two games really suffered from a change in focus that swapped horror for action. So when I first rocked up to the gates of the Baker home in Resident Evil 7 and had to withstand hours of getting chased through a house that was moonlighting as a Halloween horror maze, I was morbidly pleased that the series had gone back to terrifying me.
Apart from the fact that the next game would be a mainline entry, Nakanishi didn't reveal anything more about what the upcoming game would look like. So, for the time being, all I can do is cross my fingers that it'll be as scary, if not more, than Biohazard.
There's been quite a few supposed Resident Evil 9 rumours floating around in the last couple of years. The most recent only surfaced a couple of months ago from a known Resident Evil leaker known as Dusk Golem, who claimed that it would be an open world game: "Dragons Dogma 2 expanded RE Engine functionality for open world games, the two other games building on this tech is Monster Hunter Wild and Resident Evil 9," Dusk Golem says in a tweet. Although this probably means that it'll resemble Resident Evil 8's map which is the closest thing the series has gotten to open world so far.
None of this has been proven yet so it's best to just wait and see what the new game will look like once Capcom is ready to share more details about it. Unfortunately, this could mean another lengthy wait is ahead of us, and while it's nice to have this proof of life, I do wish we got to see a bit more about the next game during Summer Game Fest.
All we do know is that by the end of Resident Evil 8's DLC Shadow of Rose Ethan Winters' daughter Rose was ready to embark on a new mission with Chris Redfield, who is now under the employ of Blue Umbrella. So it's looking very likely that we'll come across these two again.
