''Oni'' is a
third-person action video game
An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, and platform ga ...
developed by Bungie West, a division of
Bungie
Bungie, Inc. is an American video game company based in Bellevue, Washington. It is a studio owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company was established in May 1991 by Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones afte ...
, and published by
Take-Two Interactive
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City and founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993.
The company owns two major publishing labels, Rockstar Games and 2K, which operate internal ...
. Released in 2001, it was Bungie West's only game. Gameplay consists of third-person shooting with hand-to-hand combat, with a focus on the latter. Originally planned just for the Mac OS and Windows, a
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on ...
port was concurrently developed by
Rockstar Canada
Rockstar Games Toronto ULC (trade name: Rockstar Toronto; formerly Imagexcel, Alternative Reality Technologies, and Rockstar Canada) is a Canadian video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Oakville, Ontario. The company was e ...
. The game's style was largely inspired by ''
Ghost in the Shell'' and ''
Akira'' and shares the same genre, being set in a
cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and ...
world.
Plot
The events of ''Oni'' take place in or after the year 2032. In the game, Earth is so polluted that little of it remains habitable. To solve international economic crises, all nations have combined into a single entity, the World Coalition Government. The government is
totalitarian
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
, telling the populace that what are actually dangerously toxic regions are wilderness preserves, and uses its police forces, the Technological Crimes Task Force (TCTF), to suppress opposition. The player character, code-named Konoko (voiced by
Amanda Winn-Lee), full name later given as Mai Hasegawa, begins the game working for the TCTF. Soon, she learns her employers have been keeping secrets about her past from her. She turns against them as she embarks on a quest of self-discovery. The player learns more about her family and origins while battling both the TCTF and its greatest enemy, the equally monolithic criminal organization called the Syndicate. In the game's climax, Konoko discovers a Syndicate plan to cause the Atmospheric Conversion Centers, air-treatment plants necessary to keep most of the world's population alive, to catastrophically malfunction. She is partially successful in thwarting the plot, saving a portion of humanity.
Gameplay
''Oni'' is a third-person action game, focused on melee combat mixed with some gunplay. The player can punch, kick, and throw enemies; progressing into later levels unlocks stronger moves and
combos
Combos, officially called Combos Stuffed Snacks, are cylindrical tubes of cracker, pretzel, or tortilla, available with various fillings.
History
Combos Snacks, created in the early 1980s, are a snack food distributed by Mars, Incorporated, and ...
. There are ten different guns in ''Oni'', including handguns, rifles, rocket launchers, and energy weapons.
Power-ups
In video games, a power-up is an object that adds temporary benefits or extra abilities to the player character as a Game mechanics, game mechanic. This is in contrast to an Item (game), item, which may or may not have a permanent benefit that ca ...
such as "hyposprays", which heal damage, and
cloaking device
A cloaking device is a hypothetical or fictional stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Fictional cloaking devices have be ...
s, which render the player invisible, can be found scattered throughout the levels or on corpses. Since the player can carry only one weapon at a time and ammunition is scarce, hand-to-hand combat is the most effective and common means of defeating enemies.
There are multiple classes of enemy, each with its own style of unarmed combat. Each class is subdivided into tiers of increasing strength. As in Bungie's earlier ''
Marathon
The marathon is a long-distance foot race with a distance of , usually run as a road race, but the distance can be covered on trail routes. The marathon can be completed by running or with a run/walk strategy. There are also wheelchair div ...
'' titles, tiers are
color-coded
A color code is a system for displaying information by using different colors.
The earliest examples of color codes in use are for long-distance communication by use of flags, as in semaphore communication. The United Kingdom adopted a color c ...
, in this case by green (weakest), blue, and red (strongest). Also color-coded are the levels of health each opponent has, indicated by a flash when the player strikes or shoots them. Green flashes show the opponent has high health, red flashes show the enemy is near death.
''Oni'' does not confine the player to fighting small groups of enemies in small arenas; each area is fully open to explore. The fourteen levels are of various sizes, some large enough to comprise an entire building. Bungie hired two architects to design the buildings.
The ''Oni'' engine implements a method of interpolation that
tweens key frame
In animation and filmmaking, a key frame (or keyframe) is a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of a smooth transition. These are called ''frames'' because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film ...
s, smoothing out the animation of complex martial-arts moves. However, frame slippage is a common problem when multiple
non-player characters near the player are attacking.
Development
The game's universe is heavily influenced by
Mamoru Oshii
is a Japanese filmmaker, television director and writer. Famous for his philosophy-oriented storytelling, Oshii has directed a number of acclaimed anime films, including '' Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer'' (1984), ''Angel's Egg'' (1985), ...
's anime film ''
Ghost in the Shell'', with some additional influence from ''
Akira'' and the works of
Kenichi Sonoda
is a Japanese manga artist and animation character designer.
Professional career
Born in Kumamoto, Kumamoto Prefecture, Sonoda moved to Tokyo in 1984, at the age of 21, and began work at Artmic, an anime studio. During this time, he worked on ...
.
The original plan was for Konoko to be a cyborg like ''Ghost in the Shell''s Motoko Kusanagi. The explanation for her superhuman abilities was changed to be more organic with the addition of the Daodan Chrysalis concept by design lead Hardy LeBel.
''Oni'' was originally expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 1999. Advertising was targeted towards that shipping date, and the game won E3's
Game Critics Awards
The Game Critics Awards are a set of annual awards held after the E3 video game conference since 1998. The awards are given to products displayed at E3 with the title Best of E3 of their category.
Format
The nominees and winners of the awards a ...
for Best Action/Adventure Game in 1999. However, development difficulties caused the release date to be pushed back continuously. The acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft in 2000 then led to the transfer of the ''Oni''
IP to Take-Two Interactive (which owned 20% of the studio prior to Microsoft's acquisition). Since Bungie's employees were moving to the new office location in Microsoft's headquarters or leaving the company, work on ''Oni'' had to be completed as quickly as possible. Due to a lack of time to resolve issues with the
multiplayer
A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...
code and to finish the levels intended for use by multiplayer mode, this functionality was omitted from the released version.
A sequel was in development at
Angel Studios
Angel Studios is an American video streaming service, media company, and film distribution studio. The studio uses equity crowdfunding to finance its original productions by offering individual investors the opportunity to purchase shares in ...
for two years before being cancelled for unknown reasons.
Music
Half of the music was composed by
Martin O'Donnell in collaboration with
Michael Salvatori
Michael C. Salvatori (born 1954) is an American composer best known for his collaboration with colleague Martin O'Donnell for the soundtracks to the ''Halo'' video game series. Salvatori became acquainted with O'Donnell in college; when O'Donnel ...
. Other tracks in the game, which had already been implemented before O'Donnell and Salvatori joined the project, were composed by the music company Power of Seven, which specialized in electronic music genres such as techno and ambient. The Power of Seven team consisted of founder
Paul Sebastien
Paul Sebastien, born Paul Sebastien Skrowaczewski, is an American musician, producer, composer, marketing officer and businessman. He is best known for the being the frontman of the techno group Psykosonik, where he has been involved with singing ...
, as well as composer Brian Salter and
Kim Cascone
Kim Cascone (December 21, 1955) is an Italian American composer of electronic music who is known for his releases in the ambient, drone, industrial and electro-acoustic genre on his own record label, Silent Records.
Biography
In 1989 Casco ...
, who served as a sound designer for the game; the team had previously worked together at
Thomas Dolby
Thomas Morgan Robertson (born 14 October 1958), known by the stage name Thomas Dolby, is an English musician, producer, composer, entrepreneur and teacher.
Dolby came to prominence in the 1980s, releasing hit singles including "She Blinded Me ...
's audio technology company
Headspace
Headspace may refer to:
*Headspace (company), an online healthcare company specializing in meditation
*Headspace (organisation), an Australian non-profit organization for youth mental health
*Headspace or ullage, the unfilled space in a container
...
. O'Donnell, who served as the game's audio lead, decided to keep the tracks Power of Seven had already composed, while composing roughly the same amount of music himself. Select tracks from the game were made available on
MP3.com in 2000, a year before the game was released. A soundtrack CD of the game's music was bundled with purchases of the game at
Best Buy.
Reception
The game received "average" reviews on both platforms according to the
review aggregation
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
.
Some reviewers were unimpressed by the minimal detail of the environment graphics, the lack of intelligence on the part of the AI in some situations, and the plot, which was occasionally criticized as underdeveloped. The game's difficulty in combination with a lack of savepoints was sometimes cited as a negative.
The absence of
LAN-based multiplayer, which had been demoed at hands-on booths at
Macworld Expo
Macworld/iWorld was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally ''Macworld Expo'' and then ''Macworld Conference & Expos ...
s during ''Oni''s development, but removed before release due to stated concerns over latency issues, contributed to some lower scores from reviewers.
Some of the game's content was cut as well. This included the "Iron Demon", a large mech shown in-game in one trailer. Also, many of the weapons featured in the trailer and the game cover were not in the game.
On the positive side, ''Oni'' received the most praise for its smooth character animation and large array of fighting moves, as well as how it blended gunplay and melee combat. Thus, reviewers gave ''Oni'' mostly average-to-good scores in recognition of the enjoyment factor of the game. Jeff Lundgren of ''
Next Generation'' said of the PlayStation 2 version: "It may have been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait. In fact, in a number of important ways, this is the game ''
The Bouncer'' should have been."
In the United States, ''Oni'' sold 50,000 copies by October 2001.
Anniversary Edition
The "Anniversary Edition" was made by fans and the community, based on years of research, and enhances the retail copy of ''Oni''. The first official release of the edition was made seven years after ''Oni''s release, hence the original name of the project, "Seventh Anniversary Edition".
Notes
References
External links
Oni Central community portal*
{{Authority control
2001 video games
3D beat 'em ups
Action video games
Beat 'em ups
Bungie games
Classic Mac OS games
Cyberpunk video games
Dark Horse Comics titles
Dystopian video games
Feral Interactive games
Gathering of Developers games
PlayStation 2 games
Rockstar Games games
Science fiction video games
Single-player video games
Take-Two Interactive games
The Omni Group
Third-person shooters
Video games about ninja
Video games about police officers
Video games adapted into comics
Video games developed in the United States
Video games featuring female protagonists
Video games scored by Michael Salvatori
Windows games