A Classic Horror Series Might Be Returning After 9 Years, And I Can’t Wait

Dead Rising became a major hit when it launched in 2006 on the Xbox 360. The expansive zombie survival game was a terrific balance of campy action and horrific worldbuilding, all centered around a journalist doing his best to escape zombie hordes, unhinged killers, and army platoons. Embracing the mall setting and giving players all sorts of options on how to survive and protect others, Dead Rising kicked off a franchise that included several sequels and spin-offs over the course of a decade.

It’s been a while since fans have gotten a new entry in the series; 2016’s Dead Rising 4 effectively closed out the series, giving Frank West a seemingly finite ending. While fans got a chance to revisit the original thanks to last year’s remake of the first game, there’s been little official movement on a formal follow-up to that title. However, rumors are swirling that a new Dead Rising is actually in development at Capcom — and the supposed storyline would actually resolve some lingering questions that fans have had about Frank West for years.

A New Dead Rising Might Be On The Way

A new Dead Rising might be in the works, and it could answer some pretty big questions about the fallout of the first game in the series. While the game has yet to be formally confirmed by Capcom, it would be consistent with recent developments from the publisher. It would track with recent developments from Capcom, which has increasingly been looking back to past franchises like Yakuza, Okami, and Onimusha. It would also be following up on the solid reception that Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster received from fans and critics alike. There’s clearly interest in returning to Dead Rising, but Capcom hasn’t yet made any formal announcements about the future of the series.

However, according to reporting from mpst1.com, Capcom has been hard at work on the title for some time. Their sources claim that the game has been in active development since 2023 and will focus on Frank West. The story is still being kept under wraps, but it will reportedly focus on Frank West in the immediate aftermath of the first game. The game is also reportedly set to be centered in Hollywood, with players taking control of Frank after he’s been trapped on a movie studio lot. This is actually a pretty exciting development for fans of the character and the series as a whole

Dead Rising Might Be Approaching A Lost Chapter Era Of The Series

Dead Rising focuses on Frank West, a photojournalist, as he ventures into a quarantine zone that proves to be caught in a zombie outbreak. Although the game had multiple possible endings, the canonical one has Frank survive the ordeal and eventually expose the outbreak to the public. Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 3 both shifted focus away from Frank to new protagonists, but the fan-favorite reporter kept returning to the series in some capacity or another. In the backstory for Dead Rising 2‘s DLC, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, Frank is revealed to have become very famous for this success and even got his own talk show.

However, by the events of the game, he’s squandered his wealth and ruined his reputation, forcing him to take part in a reality show that’s filming when another outbreak occurs. While Frank’s future is already laid out thanks to the events of Dead Rising 4 (which sees Frank become a teacher, a mentor, then an evolved strain of zombie before being cured), the actual events that sent a mega-successful Frank scrambling back into the spotlight have never been fully revealed. A new Dead Rising game set directly after the first game would have to deal with that element of the character’s history, and setting it in Los Angeles would make perfect sense.

Dead Rising Could Follow A True Hollywood Reporter

It’s been almost a decade since we’ve had a new Dead Rising game, and there’s a lot of potential in this rumored title. Dead Rising would work very naturally in a Los Angeles setting. The reported narrative of the game, following Frank and other people trapped on a movie set and trying to survive the maniacal machinations of a director hoping to use an outbreak as the background for his “perfect” movie, would be a natural way to poke fun at plenty of elements of the entertainment industry. The game’s story could deal with the often blurry line between modern reporting and opinion-based entertainment, with Frank struggling to find the balance between his efforts to maintain his fame versus his internal sense of responsibility as a journalist.

A movie studio feels like a fitting escalation of the large but enclosed locations that have made up the other games in the series, and could offer all sorts of natural spaces to introduce new entertainment parodies as the psychopathic bosses that the series frequently utilizes. It could even take on a more somber edge, as players know that Frank is doomed by the canon to eventually lose everything and be forced to go to Las Vegas, playing with the somber undercurrent that’s been a hallmark of the franchise. Dead Rising deserves a follow-up, and the rumors surrounding a potential sequel have me very excited for Frank West’s future.