During this evening’s State Of Play livestream, Team Ninja announced their next game. Rise Of The Ronin is an open world game set in Japan in the wake of country opening its borders to the West, with the trailer showing hang gliding, horse riding, rooftop stealth, and combat involving both swords and guns.
It’s also referred to as a “console exclusive” for PlayStation, which means it’ll probably come to PC.
Here’s the announcement trailer:
At the time of writing, there’s very little information available about Rise Of The Ronin other than what’s in the trailer above. I do really like that trailer, though. There looks to be a lot of variety in the combat, from stately clashing of samurai swords to bombastic grapple manouvers and swift transitions between blades and bullets.
The sweeping opening shot of the trailer does a good job of showing what’s interesting about the time period, too, as a traditional Japanese street gives way to more modern buildings and US flags. The game is set in 1863, ten years after Japan opened its borders for the first time in 200 years, and shortly before the end of the Edo period in 1868.
Team Ninja are no strangers to Japanese warriors, either, with a history that involves Ninja Gaiden games and more recently Nioh 1 and 2. The latter two came to PC after their initial console release, and in his Nioh 2 review Ed praised its “brilliant combat and huge depth.”
I’ll update this story if we receive official word of a PC release, but for now it’s aiming for a 2024 release on PS5.