The narrative of Onimusha: Way of the Sword is not connected to previous Onimusha games or the Onimusha Netflix show, Capcom has confirmed.
“This is a completely different world from the previous games,” producer Akihito Kadowaki confirmed to GameSpot during an interview at Summer Game Fest Play Days. “The main reason we wanted to do that is we wanted not only the fans of the series, but also new players, to start at the same place with the story. Everyone can experience the same thing at the same time.”
Up until now, all mainline Onimusha games have been connected narratively since Onimusha: Warlords kicked things off in 2001, often having their protagonists fighting demonic Genma and a possessed Oda Nobunaga’s forces. Capcom even went through the effort of remastering the first two games in the series in the 2020s, so it could be believable that it was prepping players to understand the series’ overarching narrative and lore prior to its continuation. That’s not the case, though, as the only real connection is that players are still fighting Genma and Kadowaki admitted that Way of the Sword’s development was separate from those remaster efforts.
Players will control a new protagonist named Miyamoto Mushashi, whose face is modeled after actor Toshiro Mifune and who wields an Oni gauntlet that gives him special powers. That all may sound familiar to those who watched the Onimusha series on Netflix last year. But once again, Kadowaki denied any sort of connection between the show and new game, even though they both feature the same character modeled after the same real-world actor. “There’s absolutely no connection with the Netflix animated series,” Kadowaki bluntly confirmed.
If you are planning on playing Onimusha: Way of the Sword when it launches for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime in 2026, you at least don’t have to worry about this franchise’s past, as it’s a clean slate narratively.
