Leak: Resident Evil 9 was originally an open-world multiplayer game with Leon and Jill, was rebooted in 2021

[KManX89]

SOURCE

Known Resident Evil leaker Dusk Golem shared some new details about the long-awaited sequel in a post on X (Twitter). According to them, development for Resident Evil 9 actually started way back in early 2017, right after Resident Evil 7 launched. Capcom’s expectations for RE7’s sales weren’t met at first, so it decided to go in a new direction for the next main game.

Originally, Resident Evil 9 was planned to be a massive open-world multiplayer game. The early concept had Leon and Jill as the main characters, taking on a story set on a fictional island inspired by Singapore.

This was a big departure from the usual Resident Evil formula and was meant to be “the opposite of RE7.” The project kept moving for a few years, but things changed in a big way once Resident Evil Village came out.

Dusk Golem says that Capcom decided to hit reset in 2021, giving Resident Evil 9 a “heavy reboot.” While Leon is still a major character in the new version, a lot of the original ideas, like multiplayer and Jill’s big role, have been dropped or changed completely.

Interesting. Why Capcom supposedly began work on this before Village is beyond me. My guess is this was originally its own thing and got molded into 9 after Village came out.

It’ll be interesting to see how they incorporate Leon into the new survival-horror mold since you can’t really take control away from the player with the OG characters, anymore after 4-6 and CGI films, which are canon to the games. There’s a reason Chris was strictly a DLC/side missions character in 7 and 8.

I really hope it’s revealed at Summer Game Fest. And I hope they kept Jill in whatever new form it presents itself, she’s long overdue for a new game appearance after 5, which was borderline criminal.

 

[Burton]

The director of RE7 & 9 Koshi Nakanishi said in the 2024 Capcom Next presentation that:
"We are making a new Resident Evil. It was really difficult to figure out what to do after 7. But I found it, and to be honest it feels substantial."

It's interesting that he says it was difficult to figure out what to do after 7 and not after 8, and we know he wasn't involved in 8 so it seems as though he has been working on this new Resident Evil ever since he finished working on 7. This lines up with what Dusk Golem has said about RE9 being in development before or at the same time as RE8.

I could speculate that what Koshi Nakanishi came up with after RE7 did not involve Ethan Winters as the main protagonist, but Capcom wanted to use Ethan Winters again so they decided to make another game that finished development before Koshi Nakanishi's project was finished. It means that RE9 has been in development much longer than RE8 was, so it is probably bigger, perhaps even open world.

 

[Turo602]

So according to DuskGolem on Twitter, Resident Evil 9 originally started development as Resident Evil 8, and what we know to be RE8, originally started out as a spin-off, which he mistakenly said was Revelations 3 in the past. The Revelations 3 starring Rebecca that was leaked long ago has apparently been canceled since 2022.

This is supposedly why RE9 has been in development for so long and started production immediately after 7. While this isn't anything new for Capcom, I do question what the f*ck is going on over there.

While I might not have been a fan of RE7's direction, it was undoubtedly a success and is currently the 2nd best selling title in the series just behind RE2 Remake. Capcom really has to stop with these extreme overreactions and erratic decision-making that has just completely turned this series into such an inconsistent mess.

 

[Ikawaru]

All rumors aside, many of us did point out in the past that many of these prior RE games did need at least one more year of development to truly excel so perhaps Capcom is simply extending their future games to one more year "In the oven".

Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, at Summer Game Fest they will provide some relief to this RE9 Iron Curtain.

 

[Turo602]

All rumors aside, many of us did point out in the past that many of these prior RE games did need at least one more year of development to truly excel so perhaps Capcom is simply extending their future games to one more year "In the oven".

I don't think that's likely. Capcom has a history of messy development, going through many iterations before a game finally takes shape in its final year or so, which is usually reflected in the final product in one way or another.

According to DuskGolem, that's exactly what happened with the Resident Evil 2 Remake, which explains its lesser qualities. It's honestly a miracle the game turned out the way it did, but unfortunately, after so much wasted development, there really wasn't much else they could do.

I've seen a lot of backpedaling on the Resident Evil 2 Remake in recent years which I find absolutely insane because it always comes from the narrow lense of it being a remake and how it doesn’t contain every feature or story beat from the original but completely neglects to mention the time frame of the game's release, the state of series, and the state of the survival horror genre in 2019.

Resident Evil 2 Remake wasn’t simply a remake of Resident Evil 2, it was a brand new iteration of the Resident Evil formula, and from a development standpoint, it was essentially Resident Evil 1 to the group of games that would follow in its footsteps.

 

[Burton]

Dusk Golem has also said that it is the most ambitious RE project to date and it makes sense that if the game has been in development for 7 or 8 years it has something to do with the scope of the project not just messy development (which I am sure also played a part).

 

[Turo602]

Dusk Golem has also said that it is the most ambitious RE project to date and it makes sense that if the game has been in development for 7 or 8 years it has something to do with the scope of the project not just messy development (which I am sure also played a part).

I'm not denying the ambition. RE6 was once the most ambitious game in the series and look at how that turned out. It's clear from the above that the scope of this game was going to be huge and maybe it will still be, just maybe not in the same way it once was. But I don't think this at all reflects some kind of change in Capcom's development philosophy.

It feels completely in-line with how they've always done things. Whatever the final game ends up being, it will have been built off of the bones of prior iterations of the game that got scrapped however many years into its 7-8 year development cycle, while the final product itself would have only really been put together in the last 2-4 years of development.

 

[Ikawaru]

It feels completely in-line with how they've always done things.

We have not had a numbered 'Resident Evil' entry take this long since the interlude between RE3 and RE4, and the differences between these games is night and day (not necessarily for the better, but a major overhaul nonetheless).

Every single numbered game in the franchise from RE4 onward has always had this ~4 year window of release so I think we can assume safely that major changes are underway.

What these will entail and which direction they will go in is completely up in the air because we still don't know diddly squat.

 

[Jonipoon]

If it's a departure from RE7 and RE8, it could only be a good thing (I suppose, but who knows what crazy soup Capcom's cooking).