Oni

Imagine taking Virtua Fighter, dragging it out of the arena, throwing it into a free-roaming 3D world, handing everybody guns, and then coating the whole thing in anime attitude. That gets you pretty close to Oni, Bungie West’s upcoming third-person action game.

And yes, this is Bungie we are talking about, so there is reason to pay attention. This is the same company that gave Mac gamers Marathon, a shooter that meant to them what Doom meant to PC players. Then they turned around and made Myth, an RTS that dumped the usual resource-gathering routine and replaced it with tactical battles, 3D terrain, and enough blood to make a battlefield look properly miserable. Bungie has a habit of taking a familiar genre and giving it just enough of a kick in the teeth to make it interesting again.

With Oni, they are taking aim at the third-person action-adventure genre, the same general territory made famous by Lara Croft. But this does not look like another “find the key, pull the lever, jump across the suspiciously placed platforms” exercise. Oni seems much more interested in close-quarters combat, gunplay, and letting players beat the living daylights out of enemies with style.

You play as Konoko, an anime-inspired heroine with a growing list of martial arts moves. Fighting is not just some backup option for when you run out of ammo. It is one of the main parts of the game. Punches, throws, kicks, and combo attacks are supposed to become more powerful and varied as the game progresses. In other words, you are not just some acrobat with pistols. You are a walking problem for anyone dumb enough to get close.

The combat sounds like a mix of Metal Gear Solid style hand-to-hand encounters and more traditional third-person shooting. Konoko can fight up close or use ranged weapons, with aiming helped by a red-dot laser sight. That combination is what makes Oni interesting. A lot of games promise variety, then give you three guns and a jump button. This one at least sounds like it wants the player to change tactics depending on the situation.

Graphically, Oni has a clean, sharp look that reminds me a bit of Shogo, only with more detailed characters and environments based on real-world buildings and urban spaces. Bungie is claiming the levels will be laid out in a more logical way, with less nonsense key hunting and fewer puzzles that only make sense because a level designer ran out of coffee. That alone could be a major improvement. Wandering around for twenty minutes looking for the blue keycard is not gameplay. It is punishment with textures.

The animation tech also sounds promising. Bungie is using interpolation to make character movements blend more naturally from one animation to another. That may sound like marketing sludge, but in a game built around martial arts, it matters. If the combat looks stiff, the whole thing falls apart. Nobody wants anime kung fu that moves like a department store mannequin having a seizure.

The anime influence is not subtle, and it is not supposed to be. The character design, story, action, and overall visual style are leaning hard into that direction. That gives Oni a distinct personality, which this genre badly needs.

The story follows Konoko as she battles an evil crime syndicate while uncovering secrets about her own identity. Bungie appears to be treating the story as more than an excuse to move the player from one fight to the next. If they pull that off, Oni could have something a lot of action games still struggle with: a reason to care.

Multiplayer is also planned, letting players choose different characters and fight using both hand-to-hand combat and gunplay. The big question is whether Bungie can get it working over the internet. With all the movement, melee combat, and animation data involved, that may be asking a lot.

Right now, Oni looks like one of the more interesting action games on the horizon. It has style, it has a smart developer behind it, and it is trying to do more than copy whatever sold last month. The entire game is going to live or die by its controls and how well the melee and shooting systems fit together. If those feel clumsy, all the anime style in the world will not save it.

But if Bungie gets the controls right, Oni could be something special.