Team Ninja: How Ninja Gaiden and Nioh connect to Rise of the Ronin

22.05.2024 - 15:15 / blog.playstation.com / Team Ninja / Matthew Perry

Many of you who have already played Rise of the Ronin may have noticed some elements of our previous works such as Ninja Gaiden and Nioh from Team Ninja. Today we’re excited to share some of the behind-the-scenes development stories for the first time. Plus we share details on an upcoming game update.

The Iga-Ninja Armor is one of Rise of the Ronin’s connections with Ninja Gaiden, an action game from Team Ninja.

From a very early development stage, we have discussed with PlayStation Studio’s XDEV team our desire to include costumes from the Ninja Gaiden series. When considering which costumes and weapons to implement, we’ve agreed on the costume of the main character, Ryu Hayabusa, as an iconic and recognizable costume for an in-game armor design.

Historically, ninjas are said to have existed during the Bakumatsu period (late 19^th century), which is the setting for Rise of the Ronin so there is a high degree of affinity with the worldview of these titles.

One of the combat styles, Hayabusa-ryu, was initially implemented at the same speed as in the original, but the attacks were so fast and extremely powerful that we struggled to adjust them to match the game speed of this new version for Rise of the Ronin. 

In addition to Hayabusa’s iconic moves, such as the Izuna Drop, we also incorporated as many of Ninja Gaiden’s techniques as possible, such as his Ultimate Technique. 

Rise of the Ronin marks the first appearance of Ninja Gaiden-related content on PS5, so re-creating these features in high-resolution 4K format was a challenge. The distinctive costumes of the Hayabusa-ryu ninja, such as the raptor-inspired headgear and sleeveless armor, were newly designed with the image of reconstructing them with weapons and materials from the end of the Edo period. We believe that this fits seamlessly into the worldview of this game and hope that our fans of the series will enjoy these references.

As it has been nearly two months since the release of Rise of the Ronin, let me give you a bit of a spoiler, that William, the main character of Nioh, appears as a hidden boss in this game. We decided to have him appear early in the planning stage, as we thought it would be a pleasant surprise for those who have played the Nioh series.

As the game is set in the late Edo period when Japanese and Western cultures started mixing, and many Westerners such as Commodore Matthew Perry appear, so I believe the appearance of William wearing armor was implemented in a way that didn’t feel out of place.

Regarding the combat style Nioh-ryu, we initially had an idea of making the three stances that are characteristic to the series, upper, middle, and lower, into independent styles, but since the controls would have been too