5 Wild Settings I Want the Next Dead Rising to Be Set In

Capcom has plenty of big-name IP. It’s to the point where it’s not uncommon to see some go into periods of hibernation. Take Dead Rising, which had a solid string of releases for ten years before entering a lull period. It looks like that might be about to change, however, as Dead Rising might be getting a revival. This would make it the first mainline entry for the series in a decade.

While it’s possible the series returns to yet another mall or tries to take a wild tonal swing like Dead Rising 3 before it, I’d prefer to see the self-aware goofiness of Frank West’s adventures become more prevalent. All of these ideas are going to be kind of ridiculous — but that’s also the point. Dead Rising is a series that is most fun when you’re going off the rails, turning a massive shopping mall or downtown Vegas into a gory sandbox, which has also helped the series stand out in crowded fields. If Dead Rising wanted to lean into that go-for-broke mentality and just have fun, these easily exaggerated settings could make for fun worlds to throw players into with Frank West.

An Amusement Park’s Halloween Celebration

One of the most memorable elements of the Dead Rising games was the bosses. The “Psychopaths” were colorful and vicious killers who had lost their minds in the zombie apocalypse. It’s easy to imagine any social situation or location where you couldn’t make new setting-appropriate bosses. Still, there’s a lot of fun potential in adapting a theme park’s Halloween nights, which could give Frank a delightfully goofy set of villains to fight. Theme parks like Universal Studios have been really investing in expanding their Halloween nights with themed mazes — and having Frank West get caught up in such a setting when an outbreak happens would be a natural setting for a wilder sequel.

The items Frank could collect would suddenly turn into gift shop kitsch and amusement park props, leaning into the colorful splatter visuals of the series. The “Psychopaths” could be people in character as classic monster archetypes, letting Frank face off with riffs on classic horror archetypes as a shared gimmick for the bosses. Those events have grown incredibly popular, making it an easy setting to use to excuse crowds of zombies and survivors. It’s an escalation of the mall, keeping the principal gameplay but expanding it in a new way.

Frank West: Zombie Reporter

One of the lingering threads in Dead Rising 4‘s DLC could be an easy setup for a flip on the typical Dead Rising formula. The DLC, “Frank Rising,” sees Frank brought back as an empowered zombie following his apparent death in the base game. Empowered with new abilities, the DLC gave players control over that variant of Frank before he was eventually cured of his infection. If Capcom wanted to revive the series and continue it instead of starting fresh with a reboot, bringing that element back for a new game could be a lot of fun. However, it would need to be more than just a retread of “Frank Rising,” which pitted the player against random undead crowds and hordes of soldiers as a super zombie.

The trick might be in flipping the script on the usual horror story and having the zombified Frank be the prey in an urban environment like New York City or Chicago. If someone discovered Frank is turning back into a zombie, he’d become a massive target for the government or a group trying to prevent an outbreak. This would allow Frank to have his power set from the Dead Rising 4 DLC and keep the horde elements of the original games without just being a retread of the countless zombie waves seen elsewhere in the series. Making Frank the only zombie and putting him on the run from human mobs could be a really fun (and wild) flip on the zombie genre as a whole.

Dead Rising: Space

Dead Rising benefits from having an enclosed area for the player to maneuver in — take the Willamette shopping mall from the first game, where the almost always overwhelming number of undead kept the action tight. Forcing the player to adapt and maneuver through cramped stores and sudden crowds was a great way to bring tension to the gameplay, something that a space setting could accomplish.

Potentially reporting on a story that takes him into space — there’s an easy parody of billionaires obsessed with space travel sitting right there — Frank could find himself trying to navigate a space station and dealing with a fresh outbreak among the crew. This could offer a whole host of new satirical edges, given the franchise’s use of government organizations and private companies as a source of the outbreak, all while delivering on an isolated sense of horror that the other games in the series could only ever occasionally reach.

Dead Rising Goes Back In Time

Dead Rising has always had a gleefully campy side that feels inspired in part by the early films of Sam Raimi. Raimi’s original Evil Dead films have had an overwhelming influence on horror for decades, with Frank West’s gruff and snarky personality owing to sharing a little bit of creative DNA with Ash Williams. Seeing Frank thrust into his own take on Army of Darkness could be a wild way to continue to play with that inspiration and would make for a very different take on the series.

Without a modern setting to use as a toolbox for weapon improvisation and adaptation, Frank (and the player) would be in a more tense race for supplies. Frank, attempting to capture evidence of his adventure or keep track of his story in the medieval era with a slowly dying camera, could add new stakes to the photography game mechanic. This would require taking Frank West into a more supernatural direction, but it would be an entirely new kind of situation for Frank that would offer a unique break from the other entries while retaining the over-the-top tone that’s always been at the heart of the series.

Let Frank West Team Up With Leon Kennedy

Capcom has already had some huge zombie properties outside of Dead Rising, most notably Resident Evil. Both properties have been featured in Capcom crossovers, highlighting their connective tissue even if their distinct tones and gameplay styles wouldn’t easily translate one-to-one. However, with Resident Evil Requiem‘s fusion of Leon’s action-packed gameplay and Grace’s survival horror proving that the publisher is okay with blending genres, there might be room for Dead Rising‘s bigger action to cross over with Resident Evil‘s tighter scope.

A proper crossover between the two properties could highlight the personality difference between Frank and the more serious Resident Evil cast, while also letting Frank poke a little fun at the weirder and wilder aspects of the horror series. Conversely, letting someone like Leon Kennedy or Chris Redfield loose on a Dead Rising-style horde of the undead just sounds like a lot of fun, taking the satisfying absurd action of Resident Evil‘s biggest games to the next level. It might be a wild crossover to imagine — but it would also be a fun return for the series that doesn’t just try to take players back to the mall.