Music and Audio

Audio in Onimusha: Way of the Sword is treated as part of the game's atmosphere rather than as background accompaniment. The development team has discussed the score, the main theme and the game's spatial sound work in some detail, and the soundtrack is being prepared for release alongside the game.

A Score That Follows the Fight

The background music is built to shift between three modes rather than looping a single track per area. Non-combat music, combat music and dedicated tracks for the game's Formidable Foes are blended together so that the score matches both the location Musashi Miyamoto is in and his state of mind at that moment.

The stated goal is that the music never pulls the player out of the moment. In practice that means the score is deliberately dynamic, running quiet in some stretches and turning emotionally charged in others, instead of signalling every encounter with the same cue.

The Main Theme

The main theme, heard in the fourth trailer among other places, is written around Musashi's journey. The development team describes it as tracing his flashbacks to the days he spent with his companions, then moving through his inner conflicts, sorrow, pent-up anger, resolve and growth.

The chorus running through the track carries a specific fiction behind it. The lyrics were written from the perspective of the Oni clan, as their inner cries, because it is the Oni who sing them. The full version plays within the game rather than only in marketing.

Soundtrack

Capcom confirmed during development's final stretch that a soundtrack was being prepared so the tracks could be released in full. An in-game Mini Digital Soundtrack is included with the Premium Deluxe Edition, which is a smaller selection rather than the complete score.

3D Audio and Spatial Design

The spatial audio work is unusually literal about its source material. Rather than modelling reverb synthetically, the team recorded inside real Japanese temples and captured multi-channel impulse response data, including height channels so sounds can be positioned vertically as well as around the player. On PlayStation 5 this feeds the game's 3D audio, which matters in a game set largely among temple architecture such as Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

Voice

Way of the Sword is also notable within the series for letting ordinary Genma speak rather than reserving dialogue for named bosses, which changes how much characterisation the audio carries during regular encounters. The game ships with fourteen supported storefront languages, a subset of which carry full voice acting.