It feels like we’ve been waiting for Resident Evil 9 for many years, since the big lady had everyone feeling thirsty in Resident Evil Village.

We may very well get details on the next instalment of the franchise this year, but for now, we’ll have to make do with rumours that point to the possible future of Resident Evil.

The latest of these comes from reputable leaker, AestheticGamer1 on Twitter, who has recently detailed that Capcom plans to build on the RE engine that powers the games, perhaps hinting the series could go open-world.

The news has left fans feeling pretty torn on the prospect of breaking out of the confined corridors and streets, and into a wider area.

“I’d believe it. 4R’s sections, especially the village and lake, felt like testing the open world “waters” so to speak,” said Casca_In_Red.

“That’s about as far as it should go, IMO,” replied M4K0V1CH.

It’s hard to imagine a survival horror in such wide open areas, it’s usually the confined environments that elevate the fear of being chased or hunted.

One Redditor is on board, saying, “Dude, the idea of exploring Raccoon City freely and going all through the RPD and the streets of RE3 sounds incredible to me.”

Riverb0at commented, “I feel like RE thrives when it’s more story focused, and I haven’t played an open world game where the story stuck out to me yet,” showing that the audience is split.

Capcom does thrive with open-world games, and they could be cooking with this direction, but ultimately it could water down the ideas we get from the Resident Evil games.

It’s not like the open-world concept hasn’t worked elsewhere, as remembered by navenager, who said, “Evil Within 2‘s open world was awesome, I’d be down with something like that in RE.”

All eyes will be on Capcom to see what comes next for the horror franchise.