Onimusha: Way Of The Sword interview – ‘We’re standing on the shoulders of giants’

GameCentral speaks to the developers behind the new Onimusha game, about how to revive a dormant franchise and Japanese cultural soft power.

We thoroughly enjoyed our hands-on with Onimusha: Way Of The Sword last month, a soft reboot of the series that is almost always described as Resident Evil but with zombie samurai. It’s not just zombies but that remains a pretty good summary of what the game is about. Naturally, this new entry looks and plays very much like the Resident Evil remakes, which is a great starting point for any game.

Intended as a soft reboot of the series, what we played featured some very satisfying sword combat, some enjoyably weird monster designs, and excellent graphics. It doesn’t have a specific release date yet but we’re really looking forwards to it, so naturally took the chance to talk to producer Akihito Kadowaki and director Satoru Nihei at Gamescom last month.

Interestingly, despite being long-time Capcom employees, neither worked any of the original games, or their remasters, so they’re coming to this new game with fresh eyes. Given the last mainline entry was 19 years ago so will many players, but we don’t think they’re going to be disappointed…

GC: How do you restart a franchise like this? One that was well known in its time but almost forgotten now. Practically speaking, what do you do when someone turns around and says they want a new entry?

AK: As a team you get together and you look at the previous games, which, as you say, are from quite a long time ago, and you decide what from those games you want to bring forward and keep in the new one. And then what you want to add to that.

GC: How much do you want to play up the relation to Resident Evil, which is obviously similar in terms of basic gameplay but has no direct connection?

SN: We didn’t really consider Resident Evil at all in the ideation of the game, because we were mainly pulling from the previous Onimusha titles on their own. So the things that we wanted to focus on were the eerie setting – it needs to be dark and grim – but we didn’t really think too hard about the similarities with Resident Evil at all.

GC: I’m not sure if the original games would be considered horror games at all, but one of your key decisions must’ve been how much to lean into that aspect?

AK: We didn’t approach it from the idea that we’re creating a horror game. We didn’t really think of it in terms of how horrific do you want it? Or anything like that. But that said, in the stages, in the levels as you play through the game, there are little horror moments that are in there, which may look, to a degree, like they could be a little bit Resident Evil inspired. But it was all about what works for this title.

GC: Sword-fighting was clearly a big focus, and I think it works great. But how did you decide how far to go in terms of the complexity and difficult? It felt a lot like Sekiro Lite at times, to me.

AK: In terms of whether there was any influence or similarity to Sekiro, it’s not something that we looked at at all while we were making the game. But we did think about how to separate from other games in the sword-fighting genre; what we could add or change to make it more exciting.

So elements such as being able to deflect enemies into environmental objects, deflections putting you into a boosted state – which is called the Blazing State – allowing you to do more damage… all that kind of thing was designed to separate us from other sword-fighting games and make the whole experience of sword-fighting action more distinct for the player.

GC: There’s a great sense of physicality to the action. What were you looking at in terms of inspiration, from other games and media?

SN: In terms of general research we played through quite a bunch of games with sword-fighting in them, but we were very much looking at previous games in this series and seeing how we could push forward those aspects of the series that are unique; and things such as being able to cut through enemies, cut them in half, to get that really visceral effect. There’s also influence from samurai movies.

GC: What about the difficulty? Existing Onimusha fans will be getting on a bit now so does that encourage you to make it more difficult that normal, or are you more interested in attracting a younger audience?

SN: We set out, at the start, to make sure we weren’t just trying to make one of those impossibly difficult games. You know, the ones where you just get bodied in one shot and die and you have to keep restarting again and again. So that was the baseline. And from there the idea was that as many people can enjoy the game as possible.

So we tried to modify and set and tune the difficulty levels, to ensure that people who like action games and people who are new to action games… regardless of where they sit in the fanbase, all of them can enjoy. That’s the goal that we set out for.

GC: What I played was very linear and didn’t have any puzzles, so does the game become more open-ended as you progress?

AK: In terms of linearity, it’s quite linear. But it’s not just ‘go through the stage and finish’. There are puzzles that you need to get through, to get through the stages, and you can explore within the stages to find areas that are not required to get through the game, but will provide more of an experience.

GC: What about the portals from the original? I think they offered up survival minigames and the like.

AK: We haven’t brought that aspect back from the original games, but we have added different ways to get that kind of experience.

GC: It’s interesting how deep the game gets into Japanese history and mythology. I think back to the original games and how Capcom put Jean Reno in Onimusha 3, because the games weren’t selling well in Europe. I’m guessing that’s not a concern this time round.

AK: Rather than trying to bridge the gap there, we’ve taken something [Japanese history and mythology] that we really want to put into the game and show to the world, and have people know about it. We want to get that out and have people play it and go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that’ and introduce that to the world through the game.

As an example, in the playable demo, you pick up the dark mass and you get a vision of the past. But the content of that vision is based on a real legend, from Japanese history, and we’ve actually got quite a lot of those in the game. And that’s the sort of thing that we want to introduce to the world.

You can only take those stories and use them if you use Kyoto as the basis of the game. And then you can put that as a package and go, ‘Look, how great is this!’

GC: So, can I confirm that Jean Reno is not in this game?

Both: [laughs]

AK: I think he’s interested in it, but we haven’t spoken to him.

GC: I bet he’s pre-ordered already.

Both: [laughs]

GC: It’s interesting how Japan is really the only country other than the US that can make a game that’s so steeped in its own culture. There might be games made in Spain or the UK or Brazil but only the smallest indie titles make it obvious what their country of origin is.

AK: It’s certainly something that feels good to have. We feel like we’re surrounded by elements that we can bring into the game. Obviously, the monsters are based on yōkai in some cases. And even the fact that we’re based in Osaka gives us an advantage, because Kyoto, where the game is set, is just up the road. You can go there and look at it with just a short train ride.

So we definitely feel like we have a lot to draw from, and a lot that can potentially be enjoyed overseas, even though we’re pulling it from our own culture. We’re very lucky.

GC: Video games give Japan this sort of cultural soft power. I suppose it might not be obvious, from your perspective, just how different your situation is from developers in other countries.

AK: We’re standing on the shoulders of giants here, with previous developers demonstrating Japanese culture, and as a result we’re able to build on that knowledge and continue putting out that culture.

GC: OK, thank you very much for your time.

Both: Thank you!

Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 2026

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