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.
