Onimusha Rumblings Within Capcom
Some more interesting news comes from Capcom. On top of revealing more characters for Street Fighter V and extending work on Deep Down, it appears that there has been a bit of talk about possibly bringing back the Onimusha franchise into prominence. According to Producer Yoshinori Ono these talks are happening at the higher levels at the company.
Onimusha started as another evolution of Capcom’s love affair with pre-rendered backgrounds with static camera angles and 3D polygonal characters shown over them. This was first seen in Resident Evil and would later be the framework of the Dino Crisis games. Onimusha took these techniques and set them in a fully 3D mystical feudal Japan setting with a more action oriented focus. It was successful enough to warrant the creation of three sequels and a few spin-off titles.
It is curious this successful series has not seen another title since Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams in 2006. the first entry sold over a million copies worldwide and its lifetime sales total over two million. There have been discussions on how to bring back such an iconic series, but they never materialized into a working project. Yoshinori Ono has his hands full with Street Fighter V, but he recognizes what the Onimusha franchise means to a lot of gamers out there.
Here’s a snippet of his exchange with Daily Star Online:
“Capcom as a company know we have many brands, IP’s and series that are beloved by players around the world and we always have fans asking us, when is this or that game coming back.
I’ve spoken internally with people who made Onimusha with me originally and talked about maybe how interesting it would be to revisit that series. But fans should know that we’re not further down that road than the discussion phase.
Right now, I’m so focussed on Street Fighter V that I’m not really in a position to start that same level of battle that I had getting Street Fighter IV made. All I can do for now is reassure fans that conversations are happening at high levels.
We realise the need for different series to maybe come back into the forefront and although there’s nothing to talk about right now, I’m sure in the future there will be news on variety of series that will keep the fans happy.” ~ Yoshinori Ono (Producer, Capcom)
The idea of Onimusha coming back in a way is surely an enticing proposition. However, it is far too soon to to know when this reboot or sequel will become something worth showing to the public. Considering how much effort and manpower Capcom is putting behind the latest Street Fighter title, it could be a long while to wait for anything tangible on another Onimusha game.
