7 and 8 were so damn good while still having that metroidvania / resident evil feel to the world. Lots to explore but not a sandbox. They felt like every room was a bespoke experience as opposed to an open world sandbox which is going to have so much dead space to fill with copy pasted assets that have just been scattered about by algorithms.

Not every game needs to be a sandbox or open world. We have enough gta clones.

Making everything a sandbox erodes your games identity and uniqueness.

Really hope they don’t do that.