Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the latest game to grace the cover of Game Informer, and after playing it for a few hours, experiencing never-before-seen parts of it, it’s one of the more titillating releases on the horizon for me. It helps that it’s the first Onimusha game in 20 years, reviving a franchise that many others and I considered abandoned by publisher-developer Capcom. It also features one of Japan’s most celebrated samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, as the protagonist – a bold but exciting decision in a series with some beloved leads.
While using Musashi, a legendary samurai in Japanese history, seems like an obvious choice for an Onimusha game, Capcom chose the historical figure because of his life (and the stories about it) and how it could connect to Way of the Sword mechanically.
“In terms of picking Musashi for the story, obviously we wanted to have a samurai as the lead, and when we were thinking about famous samurai and the masters of the sword, Musashi’s name came up,” director Satoru Nihei tells me. “But looking more into his background and the elements of his real history, where he would use any means necessary to claim victory or use the environment around him, these are things we thought would feed in very nicely to the gameplay to introduce new elements into it. And then also, Musashi is a hero that wants to rise to the top on his own strengths, so him being paired with the gauntlet, this power that he doesn’t want, we thought it would provide an interesting contrast to the previous heroes we’ve had in our Onimusha series.”
While he isn’t using his famous dual-sword stance in Onimusha: Way of the Sword, as he’s portrayed in his 20s here and hadn’t yet developed that combat style, Musashi’s real-life stories are already evident in their inspiration for Capcom’s action game. Speaking to environmental “help,” we’ll call it, Musashi has no problem picking up a pallet of wood, for example, to use it as a shield for incoming arrows. And of course he’s going to kick it toward surrounding Genma to gain an upper hand – there’s no honor when fighting a demon, right? He can also kick large wagons into a cohort of enemies for a surprisingly damaging entrance.
There are explosive barrels I utilized when fighting Genma in Dokyo’s underground lab in Kyoto, and though all of this was just a taste of using what’s around me in combat, I can already imagine the other boons in each stage I’ll use to defeat enemies.
Dokyo
When I ask Nihei how Musashi compares to other heroes of the Onimusha series, it’s his reticence to use the Oni Gauntlet. Onimusha: Warlords’ Samanosuke uses his gauntlet to rescue a princess; Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny’s Jubei uses his newfound demon powers to stop Nobunaga (again) and get the girl; Musashi just wants to get the dang thing off his wrist. It’s why he kills demons using it – he suspects the only way forward is through (hordes of Genma). Ultimately, using the gauntlet gets in the way of his quest to be the best swordsman in Japan, with Nihei likening it to an athlete using steroids and performance-enhancing drugs – Musashi wants to prove he’s the best on his own merits alone.
Musashi is based on deceased Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune’s likeness; Mifune famously portrayed the samurai in director Horishi Inagaki’s 1950s Samurai Trilogy, which consists of Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954), Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple (1955), and Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (1956). That tracks with the aforementioned Samanosuke and Jubei, with the former played by Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro and the latter modeled after late actor Yūsaku Matsuda.
All this said, I’ll be diving deeper into Capcom’s iteration of Musashi, including how it went about using Mifune’s likeness, in upcoming stories. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (as well as a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel too, so keep the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub bookmarked to ensure you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
Anything else you want to know about Onimusha: Way of the Sword? Let me know in the comments below!