Capcom has revealed Onimusha: Way Of The Sword.
As unveiled in The Game Awards, Geoff Keighley revealed that the game is being produced by Capcom’s Osaka studio, which is also where the company itself is based. Implicit there is that the people who made the original Onimusha games were also involved in this new title.
Capcom has provided this description of the new game on its official website:
“Fight through bloodbaths of intense swordplay action. Explore the historic Japanese capital of Edo-era Kyoto, twisted by malevolent clouds of Malice. With every stage cloaked in mystery, danger and intrigue. Battle against monstrosities from the underworld known as Genma in a tale of dark fantasy.
Follow the tale of a samurai who wields the Oni Gauntlet, a mystical artifact that grants its bearer the power to slay Genma. Through gritty, blood-soaked brawls, he searches for his reason to fight. What fate awaits at the end of his path?”
They also revealed on the website that the game is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam, but it did not provide a release date.
Onimusha: Way Of The Sword will be the first AAA console quality title in the franchise in 18 years. Capcom did use the IP for a browser game, Onimusha Soul, in 2012, a VR game, Onimusha VR: Shadow Team, this year, and it also remastered Onimusha Warlords in 2018.
Capcom’s return to the Onimusha franchise comes at a time where the action RPG franchise has been largely redefined by Western developers, but it’s not just them. The standard that was set by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, may already be arguably redefined by this year’s Black Myth Wukong, or at least we know a few people will say so.
In any case, we hope Capcom sees clearly that they can’t do just another throwback to their classic franchise, the way Ys Net tried with Shenmue 3. Not only are expectations higher, but the norms and standards have also shifted a far distance, to the point that a game feeling old fashioned is a critical talking point.
The example Capcom should be following here will definitely be The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nintendo was certainly at a crossroads when they decided to shift directions and making an open world fantasy title, at a scale that they hadn’t produced a game before.
But then, Capcom has ramped up their spending on making AAA remakes of their Resident Evil games, to huge success. So we don’t think they would hesitate to spend the money. The real risks that Capcom would have to be willing to take are in terms of Onimusha’s creative direction.
So we certainly hope classic Onimusha fans understand that this won’t be the same game they played from the PlayStation 2 era. But we hope that they can reinvent Onimusha in a way that will get the interest of modern gamers, and also make those older fans happy.
We don’t think that Capcom necessarily has to make an open-world Onimusha or a Soulslike/ maso-core Onimusha, but it definitely means they’ll need to do something more than just dropping a name their old fans recognize.
