After a 20-year-long hiatus, Onimusha: Way of The Sword will be the first new mainline entry in Capcom’s iconic action series since 2006’s Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams. With a release scheduled for 2026, the upcoming game will follow the story of legendary samurai Musashi Miyamoto, exploring a dark-fantasy-inspired Edo period Japan. In a joint media interview attended by AUTOMATON, director Satoru Nihei and producer Akihito Kadowaki talked about why they decided to base Onimusha’s new protagonist on the real-life Musashi Miyamoto.
“To be completely honest, at the beginning of development, we didn’t plan to have Musashi Miyamoto as the protagonist. The main character was supposed to be a ‘nameless samurai.’ However, since we were aiming to expand to the global market, we wanted to make the most appealing parts of the game easier to convey. After consulting with Nihei, I came to the decision to borrow the name of the legendary Musashi Miyamoto,” Kadowaki explained.
It seems like the shift from an unknown warrior to one of the most well-known samurai in history perfectly fit Capcom’s idea to make the new Onimusha “a game that everybody on the globe can enjoy”.
“We recognize him as an extremely popular figure. He appears as a character in numerous eminent works of fiction, and The Book of Five Rings, which he wrote, has been translated and is being read overseas,” Kadowaki explained. Anyone with even a little interest in Japanese culture and history has heard of the name Musashi Miyamoto at least once, and the devs at Capcom hoped that having the legendary samurai as the protagonist could make the title more approachable for new players outside Japan.
On a related note, after settling for Miyamoto as the main character, Nihei turned to Japanese classical cinema in order to find an actor whose appearance would match the legendary samurai’s demeanor – and eventually settled for late actor Toshiro Mifune, an international star best known for his roles in many critically acclaimed Kurosawa films. From there, it took Capcom 2 whole years just to get permission to use Mifune’s likeness as Miyamoto, but according to Nihei and Kadowaki, it was definitely worth the wait.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is scheduled to release in 2026 for PC (Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X❘S.
Related articles:
Onimusha’s almost 20-year hiatus was caused by a lack of resources as Capcom stretched out its assets across multiple IPs
