At Thursday’s Game Awards, two of the biggest reveals were new entries in the Okami and Onimusha franchises. It’s the first new title in either IP for 18 years, although there have been a few ports and remasters released over the years. The good news doesn’t stop there, though: Capcom has stated that it wants to continue bringing back its older properties and rebooting them.
According to its recent press release, Capcom “is focusing on re-activating dormant IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently.” In this case, “recently” is a vague term. We’re approaching two decades without a new entry in either franchise, but these are both good places to start.
Capcom says it wants to broaden the range of titles it produces and make more money “by leveraging its rich library of content … in order to continuously produce highly efficient, high-quality titles.”
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If you aren’t familiar with Onimusha, it’s an action game that puts you in the role of a swordsman with supernatural powers and tasked with fighting endless waves of monsters. Capcom goes on to say that it hopes players look forward to a chance to “hack and slash” through hordes of foes.
Okami, on the other hand, is focused more on art than combat. You play as Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess, who has taken on the form of a wolf. You fight your way across Japan in search of Celestial Brush powers that can help you advance farther into the game. It’s a colorful experience steeped in Japanese mythology, and it’s good to see the franchise earning another entry.
Capcom conducted a survey earlier this year asking players what franchises they would most like to see return. It’s no surprise that Mega Man, Dino Crisis, and other beloved games made the cut. For a long time, it seemed too much to hope these series might return, but now Capcom has dropped the barest hint that nostalgia might win again.