Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors series is due for a massive overhaul with its next sequel, which its creators are pitching as a “rebirth” for the long-running franchise.
Among other new features, Dynasty Warriors 9 boasts open-world gameplay, abandoning the level-based progression structure common to previous series entries.
According to a Siliconera report, Dynasty Warriors 9 will attempt to recreate the entirety of China’s map as it existed during the Three Kingdoms period. Gameplay unfolds in an open-world format and players will encounter new missions and challenges as they explore its miles of simulated landscape on foot or on horseback.
Over the course of their journey, players will stumble upon villages that can be explored for clues and supplies. The upcoming sequel will also introduce Zhou Cang as a playable character, who arrives alongside a cast of 83 returning fighters from Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires. Additional starring characters will be announced as the game approaches its retail release.
Following up on a one-on-one fighting game from 1997, 2000’s Dynasty Warriors 2 introduced a style of gameplay that served as the formula for dozens of Koei Tecmo titles released in the years afterward. Taking inspiration from arcade beat-’em-ups, the series put players in control of Three Kingdoms-era warlords who can level entire battlefields using flashy melee combos and special moves.
The Dynasty Warriors series later spawned the Sengoku-era Samurai Warriors franchise, along with a multitude of spinoff games based on anime and manga licenses like Gundam, One Piece, and Fist of the North Star. An upcoming crossover game, Musou Stars, will see Dynasty Warriors’ starring cast fighting alongside characters from Ninja Gaiden and the Dead or Alive series.
Target platforms and a release date for Dynasty Warriors 9 are not yet known.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.