Oni

File:Oni box art-front.jpg

This is about the game. For the Japanese demon, see Oni (demon). For the Halo entity, see ONI

Even though the final logo is a stylized "ONi", the name of the game is generally spelled "Oni".

Oni was developed by Bungie West, a division of Bungie Studios, and released in January 2001. It was Bungie West's first and only game, as the studio was disbanded after Oni's release when Bungie joined Microsoft.

Development

The concept for Oni was devised by Brent Pease, whose primary influence was Mamoru Oshii's animé film Ghost in the Shell¹ (adapted from Masamune Shirow's manga series). Designs for Konoko and Commander Griffin can be seen to resemble the characters of Motoko Kusanagi and Daisuke Aramaki. Early development even presented Konoko as a cyborg, which, together with the tech-crime-fighting context amounted to near-plagiarism of GITS. In August of 1999, Hardy LeBel was brought in to revamp the story^2,3. The final version of Oni abandons the cyborg heroine and instead introduces original concepts such as Daodan and SLDs.

For a complete list of credits as well as links to interviews with key members of the Oni team, see the Credits page.
For a complete list of companies involved with Oni's development and distribution, see the Rights page.

Hype

The earliest online hype was deeply rooted in the existing Bungie community, notably Marathon fans⁴. As the Oni project gained popularity, a dedicated online community emerged in the form of Oni Central and its forum.

Interviews conducted with the staff of Bungie West promised various ambitious features, along the lines of smart AI, realistic level architecture, moveable furniture, battles with a large mech (the "Iron Demon") and Internet gameplay.

Trailers and screenshots were analyzed eagerly for evidence of Oni's ground-breaking features. Two trailers were made for Oni early in its development (the links lead to pages analyzing the footage):

• E3 1998 (fully CG, authored in 3D Studio Max; no in-game footage)
• E3 1999 (in-game action only this time, but still pre-beta)

At E3 1999, Oni received the Game Critics Award for "Best Action/Adventure Game", even though the game was still in pre-beta stage at that point.

Ultimately, the game would look quite different from most of what was seen in the trailers. Characters were altered in appearance, and levels were redesigned and re-textured. The Pre-Beta Content article provides many before-after comparisons.

Despite (or maybe because of) the game's late release and a number of canceled features, there were a few promotional actions around and after the release, including artwork produced by Lorraine Reyes McLees and a 4-volume comic published by Dark Horse.

Release

After a few months of beta testing, Oni was released much later than originally expected -- on January 26, 2001 in Europe, and January 28th in the U.S. The PS2 version, ported by Rockstar, came out on January 29th in the U.S., and March 9th in Europe.

Oni's storyline is fairly straightforward, although it has been called "understated". Because the story takes place over about a week and a half in the game's timeline, there is little room to develop the characters or setting, although large amounts of additional information are to be found in consoles scattered throughout the levels. (The Chapters page links to plot summaries by level, and the Console Quotes page lists all the text from the game's consoles.)

The developers achieved a unique blend of gunplay and hand-to-hand combat, with fluid controls and a camera that ensures that the action is always visible. Gunplay is fairly standard for the action genre, with some added emphasis on realism (Konoko only carries one weapon at a time, and a gun's ammo is tracked consistently whether it is being handled by the player or an enemy).

The melee component of the game is particularly complex, using over 2000 unique animations, and is frequently the main element that fans point to when praising the uniqueness of the gameplay (the short list of games with comparably deep melee includes GUNNM, Lugaru, and State of Emergency). Also see the Gameplay article for more information.

Oni also uses a custom graphics engine optimized for handling realistic architecture, and the levels were designed by actual architects, giving them a much more realistic feel than many game worlds. The actual texturing in the game is minimalist, a style chosen to try to match the look of animé, which was not just a visual influence for the staff, but a story-telling influence as well.

Reception

The overall consensus of the critical reviews was that the game was good, but not great; Oni has a metascore of 73/100 from critics, but a 9.5/10 from the website's voters. See the Reviews article for a list of links to reviews.

Professional critics tended to dislike the ambitious melee element, complaining of counter-intuitive or unresponsive controls (if they found the game too hard), or the easily accessible basic combos (if they found the game too easy). Some reviewers were unimpressed by environment graphics that were not as rich as other games of the time (the simple look of Oni was partly due to the attempt to mimic animé backgrounds, and partly a result of the game mostly taking place in offices and other realistic settings).

Upon Oni's release, many felt cheated because the game did not deliver on all of its promises (a not uncommon issue in game development). The most notable shortcoming was the absence of LAN multiplayer, which had been demoed at a hands-on booth at E3 1999, but removed before release on account of concerns over latency issues.

Some of the previously announced features were missing, such as smart gunfire dodging and alarm behavior on the part of the AI. On Oni Central Forum, Design Lead Hardy LeBel blamed this on former AI programmer Quinn Dunki, saying "She made a lot of boastful claims about what the AI would end up being able to do that she couldn't deliver on". Interestingly, some smart AI behaviors have in fact been found in Oni's engine, whether they were coded by Dunki or her replacement Chris Butcher; however, some of the code is disabled or not utilized by the game's mission scripts.

Some of the game's content was cut as well. This included at least one entire level, and the highly anticipated Iron Demon, the large mech shown in-game in the 1999 trailer. In fact, gaps in the numbering of the game files indicate that at least five chapters were cut before release, although, besides the one level that is known to have been cut, the other missing levels may have simply been test environments, or content that was consolidated into the remaining levels.

Finally, (owing to time constraints) Bungie did not hold to their usual practice of releasing modding tools for their games; this, coupled with the lack of multiplayer, meant that Oni's replay value was not obvious. It was left to the fans to create their own modding tools, after investigating the inner workings of the game on their own. For information on the ways in which the engine has been patched by fans, and disabled code reactivated, see A History of Oni Modding and the list of Windows Oni and Mac OS X Oni patches.

Post-release

When Bungie was bought by Microsoft in 2000 (though not merging offices until 2001), they sold Myth and Oni's IP and publishing rights to Take-Two Interactive. At first, Take-Two intended to make an Oni 2 (for PS2), but the game was canceled at an early stage of development, possibly because Oni itself did not meet T2's expected sales quotas.

The acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft also coincided with the dissolution of Bungie West as Bungie moved their main office to Redmond. Some Oni developers moved to Bungie's new office and worked on the Halo series, while others ended up at independent game studios: Giant Bite (Chu, Evans), Tyrant Studios (LeBel).

The future of the property

Take-Two has been selling off some dormant franchises to outside developers, although there is no evidence that Oni is one of them. With the recent "separation" of Bungie and Microsoft (MS still having much leverage as a publisher), there has been fervent speculation about Bungie returning to their older franchises (since, after all, Bungie could buy back an IP from Take-Two if they desired). In an interview, Bungie's CEO, Harold Ryan, was asked specifically about Oni:

4Players

Since we're on the subject of strong franchises: is there perhaps a chance to bring back Oni?

Harold Ryan

(laughs) Oni isn't currently one of those projects we're looking at, but one should never say never.
We'd be happy to work with the individuals who made Oni.

One thing is certain: the current Bungie staff has little in common with the Bungie West that produced Oni (there are eight members⁵ still working at Bungie at the time of this writing). There is probably little sentimental or monetary incentive for Bungie to produce a sequel.

However, there are fan projects which may or may not become unofficial "Oni 2"s.

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¹Pease discusses his role as Oni's creator and GitS' influence on the game here.

²Hardy mentions his role as script doctor here and here.

³The time of Hardy's entry into the Oni project is mentioned in this interview, which contains other interesting tidbits such as some words from him about the cancellation of multiplayer.

⁴Oni discussion on the Marathon Story Page. Bungie fans first started talking about the newly-announced Oni (and the E3 1998 trailer) back in May-June 1998, unaware that it would not release for another two and a half years.

⁵The eight employees from Bungie West that still work at Bungie are Butcher, Dunn, Wu, the McLees, O'Donnell, Sinclair, and Staten.