Yoshinori Ono, creator of the Onimusha series, revealed in an interview with the Daily Star that he has “spoken internally with people who made Onimusha […] about maybe how interesting it would be to revisit that series”.
As you may notice, the language Ono uses is vague, making it clear that there are no concrete plans to make the game as of yet. He confirmed this, stating that “fans should know that we’re not further down that road than the discussion phase”.
The last proper game in the franchise, Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, was released in 2006, but apparently didn’t sell as well as its predecessors. This prompted the risk-averse Capcom to lock the series in the same basement where it keeps classic Megaman and white-haired Dante. Onimusha briefly reemerged in 2012 in the form of a browser game called “Onimusha Soul“, but the game never took off in the West and had little in common with the PS2 titles.
While it’s important to heed Yoshinori Ono’s advice and keep our expectations low, it’s good that the Onimusha name is being mentioned at all in 2016, and with any luck we’ll see a sequel or reboot some time in the next few years. One can only hope that Jean Reno is involved.
