"Dynasty Warriors 9" is trying to be as big as its setting, which is in China, as the game has been confirmed to have a huge and sprawling open world ripe for exploration.
The most recent gameplay video for "Dynasty Warriors 9" released by Japanese media outfit Dengeki showed just how expansive the game's new environment is. The video took 24 minutes from start to finish in which a character is shown traversing from the most northeastern corner of the map to the most southwestern corner.
What's more impressive is that some parts of the gameplay video have been sped up, meaning that the video would have been longer and with a consequently longer map travel time. This is big even for a "Dynasty Warriors" game and is actually comparable to the open worlds of other games such as "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim," which is known for its immersively large map.
"Dynasty Warriors 9's" map is also quite diverse in terms of its environments and offers a variety of backdrops for the battlefields. The open world consists of wide rivers, lush forests and vast grasslands where traveling might even warrant mounting a horse or using other means of transportation.
This marks one of the first big changes in the franchise, as the previous titles had instanced levels and maps that could take players out of immersion since each mission has to be accessed via the in-game menu. Now it seems players will be able to walk straight into a mission area to begin or at least fast-travel into it, meaning the players are never out of the game world in "Dynasty Warriors 9."
This could also mean bigger battles now since the map can support a lot of people, most likely artificial intelligence (AI)-controlled combatants. Unfortunately, the exact size of the map was not specified by the developers, so players may have to wait until its release date on Feb.13 to find out, the game will be available on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
