During my world-exclusive hands-on preview of Onimusha: Way of the Sword in Capcom’s headquarters in Osaka, Japan, I interviewed the animation director, Hiroshi Yugen, about creating the incredible sword-fighting animations for the game. When the star of the game is the legendary sword master, Miyamoto Musashi, a warrior who won over 60 duels during his lifetime, you’re going to want to get these animations right.
“When we get to making action in our games, the first step is always kind of self-study and learning about how to do these things and how to use these things,” explains Yugen. “And then we proceed to the stages of design and motion capture. [So I] sat down and spoke with the director, and we [decided we] really wanted to focus on creating this very realistic, grounded sword action for the game, and so from the very beginning, the main goal was first to research the depths of swordplay and how to do that.
“We figured it was best to speak to experts in the field, and so we were introduced to motion capture artists and action stunt coordinators at a studio called Katsugekiza Motion Capture Studio. So we were paired together with an expert who knows about sword fight choreography and has provided that kind of service for a lot of different famous movies and dramas.”
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But what was the process of shooting the animations for Way of the Sword? I’m shown footage from Capcom’s state-of-the-art motion capture studio in Osaka that has over 150 high-tech cameras for tracking and recording motion. A full team of stunt actors is suited and armed with faux weapons, and they’re all taking advice/direction from Yugen in between action takes for a scene where Musashi is attacked by a group of ninjas.
“So the first step is taking the action and the game design specifications, what we want to achieve with the action in the game, and explaining that to the actors and sword fight choreographers in the studio, so that they have an idea of what we’re looking for,” says Yugen. “So what I’m explaining in this video is the rules of the game and how things work on a mechanical level. So I was explaining to them that they need to approach from the right-hand side for the particular animation that we’re going for.”
I then watch as the team of stunt choreographers and sword technique experts act out the fight, which can be seen in part in the above Way of the Sword preview video. I’m no expert with the sword, or a martial arts expert, but it is obvious these guys know what they’re doing.
“So essentially, what you just saw there,” says Yugen, “was them basically rehearsing the action that we explained to them. So we take this temp recording, and then we can see that instantly within the engine itself, and then we can review and revise bits.”
This last bit really blew my socks off. Mere moments after the fight had been motion captured, the fight just wasn’t ready to watch back on film, but it was actually injected into Way of the Sword’s game engine, Capcom’s upgraded RE Engine, so the actual recorded animations could be appraised looking like how they would do in the game.
“With the rehearsal takes,” continues Yugen, “we can take those and iterate until we get to a form of it where we’re quite happy with the creation of the action that we’ve captured. And as with what we saw before with the rehearsal take, once we’ve recorded that, we can see it instantly within the engine. We can review the motion there.”
I ask if it is Yugen who is responsible for making the final decision on what take is good to go.
“So ultimately the decisions all come down to the game’s director. He’s the one that gets the final sign-off. But even from the actors, there are cases where we’ve been happy with the performance, but the actors themselves are not satisfied. They’re like, ‘No, no, no, that wasn’t right. I’ve got to do this again.’ And so there are many cases where they will keep doing more and more takes until everyone is satisfied.”
It’s evident that a dump truck-load of expertise, care, and attention has gone into Way of the Sword’s animations, and judging from how awesome many of my fights were during my hands-on preview of the game, I think it fair to say that it has been time well spent.
For more insight into Onimusha: Way of the Sword, be sure to check out the video preview above as well as pick up the next issue of PC Gamer magazine, which has a world-exclusive deep dive feature on the game and also includes a huge A1 Onimusha poster.