Onimusha: Way of the Sword’s director has explained some of the major inspirations behind the samurai action game, and let’s just say, peak respects peak.
Speaking to FZ (via machine translation), Capcom‘s Satoru Nihei, director of Onimusha: Way of the Sword and Onimusha series producer Akihito Kadowaki were asked to choose one game which inspired their work on the game, and while I’m sure most would expect the director to say something like Sekiro or Ghost of Tsushima, Nihei explained that it was actually Super Mario Odyssey.
He explains that Mario is an action game that is very easy on the surface, but once you go deeper, it becomes more dynamic and challenging, which Nihei praises as something Nintendo, as a developer, excels at. He notes that every action in Mario Odyssey corresponds to a reaction to counter it, and that the way this affects Mario’s controls was something Nihei focused on bringing to Onimusha’s control scheme to enhance its tactical feel.
Kadowaki, on the other hand, after mentioning Silent Hill f – which you can somewhat feel in the world design – cites the Gundam series. He explains that, with the universe packed to the gills with charismatic characters, this is something Kadowaki aimed to bring to his work with Onimusha. And given how memorable and diverse the personalities of Musashi, Okuni, and Takamura are, I’d say you can definitely feel that shine through.
From a non-game-development perspective, I believe every game should look to something like Super Mario Odyssey for inspiration. Yes, the central game, challenges, and adventure are all brilliant, but Mario himself is what I actually mean. No game has aced how good it feels to have a character and simply move around in the world quite like it; the only exception is Donkey Kong Bananza, from the same development team.