(Image credit: Capcom)

Onimusha: Way of the Sword has received universal praise for its combat animations, which somehow manage to look natural and fluid no matter what angle or direction hero Miyamoto Musashi has to swing his sword to parry an incoming blow. In a post-launch interview, I asked Capcom how—beyond doing a ton of work across Onimusha's lengthy development—they managed to raise the bar for this sort of action game.

"Starting the project six years ago, we felt it was important to have that detail to sell the power and the excitement of the action, so it's something we really focused on," said director Satoru Nihei.

"Even at that starting point, we knew it was something that Capcom, as a company, have as a great strength: We have a lot of assets and tech available to us that allow us to create these varieties of actions. That's something we really felt we could leverage to make the game really stand out that a lot of other places can't really copy.…