Oninaki Devs On Inspirations, Weapon Count, And Imagined Gruesomeness

Oninaki Producer Ryutaro Sasaki, Director Atsushi Hashimoto, and Creative Director Takashi Tokita recently sat down at E3 to discuss the upcoming action title from Tokyo RPG Factory, including their inspirations for the two worlds, how many weapons are in the game, and making the game even more gruesome than previous games via imagination. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]

Here are the highlights:

How many weapons are there in the game?

Ryutaro Sasaki, Producer: “We haven’t announced it yet, but there are more than you can count on both hands.”

Hashimoto-san, do you have any weapons in particular you like or would recommend?

Atsushi Hashimoto, Director: “Let’s see… My favorite weapon is among those not announced yet.” (laughs)

“I would recommend the katana. It’s the first weapon you play with so it’s made to be easier to use, but it feels pretty good to use it. For those who want more heavier, deliberate action there is the axe, and the preferred weapons even among the development staff are quite split. In that sense, each weapon has managed to bring its own personality.”

How did you decide upon the theme of going back and forth between the Living World and the Beyond?

Hashimoto: “Going in order, we first had the idea of going between two worlds. It started off jokingly as going between the worlds of I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear, but swapping through worlds as the story progresses was genuinely interesting. And so when it came to the game theme, it sorted flowed into discussing, “Hey, wouldn’t the theme of life and death fit into this system? If we have to go back and forth, then how about a theme of reincarnation?”

What are your thoughts on the world and the story?

Hashimoto: “When deciding the direction of the game, Tokita-san mentioned, “Let’s make it even more gruesome, and I did keep that in mind when creating it. I say gruesome, but that’s limited to the story and shocking scenes that will stir the imaginations of players, rather than actual gruesome portrayals.”

Takashi Tokita, Creative Director: “During the Famicom, Super Famicom, and PlayStation days, games couldn’t really portray everything, so we couldn’t spoil the players with cutscenes that protrayed everything, and instead left it to the players’ imagination.

Now that games are able to portray things better, there are lots of cases where developers pay too much mind to complying [with regulations] and pull back on their vision, but I wonder if they’re able to make interesting games like that. Thus with this game, we are paying no mind to showing as much as possible, and instead balancing it out after polishing the game. In this respect, it’s quite close to how games were made back then.”

Oninaki releases in Japan on August 22, 2019 for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. The game will release in the West in Summer 2019 along with a PC version coming via Steam.