Matt's Oni update for October 27

As promised, here is another weekly update on Oni by Matt Soell himself:
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Matt's Oni Report - October 27, 2000

Another week passes and Oni looms ever closer. There's not much to say at this point because the team is speeding toward that light at the end of the tunnel, and thus too busy to chat with me. So this will be brief, but brevity at this point is good. There's not much left to do. :-)

- By now you should all know that we've got a final candidate for the PC version and a Mac beta.

- You've also heard that my little [censored] secret from a couple weeks ago is in fact the Oni series from Dark Horse. We were really glad to get Dark Horse on board and we're really looking forward to the books.

- Some Bungie folk up here in Redmond have opined that one of the levels in the game is actually frightening. You'll know it when you play it.

- The Scarecrow wanted a brain. What would a brain want? Discuss. ;-)
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Matt confirms that the PC version of Oni has gone Final Candidate whilst the Mac version reached beta.

Scarecrow? Brain? Discuss it on the forum!

Interesting details revealed by Marty O'Donnell

Marty dropped by in the hotline server hl.bungie.org and engaged in some chit-chat with the regulars there, some interesting stuff was brought up:

• Amanda Winn-Lee will be doing the voice for Konoko (Amanda did voice work for anime such as Gunsmith Cats, Neon Genesis Evangelion and a whole lot more)

• Marty and Joe Staten will make vocal appearances
• Marty confirmed January release date

Thanks to Forensic and Bachus for posting logs of this chat to the forum.

Gathering of Developers makes it official: Oni in January

A press release sent out by Gathering of Developers, publisher of Oni, had the following item:

Oni
Oni is a third-person 3D action/adventure game developed by Bungie Software. Oni tells the story of Konoko, an elite cop and one-woman SWAT team whose approach to fighting crime is a devastating combination of rational calculation and fighting fury. She is also a woman divided and haunted by oni ('ghosts' or 'demons' in Japanese). Oni seamlessly blends hand-to-hand martial arts combat and gunplay into a single, new full contact 3D-action hybrid. Oni will be available in January 2001.

So that makes the month of January an official release date. Don't be spending all your Xmas money before Oni hits the shelves!

Oni comic!

Yes, it's true! JCal at Stomped sent me an e-mail pointing me to an interview with the folks at Dark Horse, who will be publishing the comic!

According to Stomped, Dark Horse will be publishing a three-part miniseries based on Oni and "the first issue should hit the stands around the time the game debuts for the PC, Mac and Playstation 2." The first issue is scheduled for February 14, 2001.

New Oni advertising underway?

Hippieman posted the following on the forum:

has everyone seen all the sudden cool Oni Posters? Its great, I see Oni all over Software Ect, even in Target they had a big 4 footer! And its all over the magazines, this will rock.

Great news, seems like the ads us Oni fans were waiting for are slowly coming around!

Matt's Oni update for October 20

Matt has sent in his weekly update for Oni:
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October 20, 2000

- The build on my machine now is Beta 20, but we'll have b25 by day's end.

- Gameplay got pretty solid in b20. It's hard to quantify in technical terms; the game is just more fun to play now. Things work properly and the little things that frustrate you are dropping out one by one. When three different guys are alternately trying to beat you down or blow you up, and you're running/jumping/punching/shooting/flinging them off a ledge like any other awesome anime heroine, it's just a lot of fun.

- Some of the bad guys are now smart enough to shoulder roll over a weapon and come up holding it, rather than standing still and bending over to pick it up.

- Four words: chaining eleven-hit combos. You have been warned.

- Marty is down in San Jose again, getting the remainder of the sound together. After Marty showed off one of the fully-scored ending cutscenes, Michael Evans was heard to remark "It's just like watching an action movie."

- Still a few bugs to work out. My fave is the one where all the walls turn into breakable glass, but the randomly appearing office furniture can be pretty amusing as well. Obviously neither of these would be especially funny in the final game, and both are well on their way to extinction. In fact, according to the mighty Chris Butcher, the Oni team is feverishly debating what the post-beta development step will be named. Omega? Gamma? Blamma? (Feel free to make suggestions on the forums. ;-)
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Some great stuff in this week's update, stay tuned for the next development update from Matt!

Matt posts huge progress report

And this will be regularly done by Matt Soell, woo! He posted some good info so head over to his forum post for the goodies. Thanks Matt!

Oni PS2 ad up for you to see

ps2.ign.com beat me to it; they posted a scan of the Oni ad seen in Electronic Gaming Monthly. You can check it out here.

(Thanks for the heads up, Dan!)

Have you seen this desktop picture before?

I sure haven't, until yesterday night that is, when I discovered it via Oni fan aneep. So Christmas is still a while away, who cares! This humourous image is a great discovery!

Thank aneep for being able to make this gem public (sorry for not paying attention when you mentioned it in a forum post some time ago! :)

Oni not a hybrid disc?

John Willoughby and Benjamin Carroll both sent me e-mails with interesting news that they received from Amazon:

Greetings from Amazon.com!

We have contacted the supplier to place an order for "Oni" (item #B00003OPDW).

The representative that we spoke with indicated that this item will not be released as a hybrid version under item #B00003OPDW. For this reason, we have cancelled this item from your order.

"Oni", however, is now being released separately as Mac and PC versions. The Mac version of this item is listed on our site under item #B00004ZB7O and the PC version is listed under item #B00004Z0MH. The price for both of these versions is $39.99.

Why would the two different versions be seperated? Is that Gathering of Developer's way of handling games? Could they have done this to perhaps see how many PC users and how many Mac users buy the game? That could be a possibility.

What would be really sweet right now?

It's very obvious that there hasn't been any new Oni material in a long time, and most if not all "new" previews contain recycled material. Something new should be on its way very soon though...

The new poll concerns itself with the question of what would be really sweet right now: new screenshots, new info, a new trailer or all of those together. Let's hear your vote at the Poll!

Archives sorted out a little

I took the time of sorting stuff out in the Archives, and redoing the index page for it. I added some missing links to the page and created a new section for Scans. Enjoy!

Oni GURPS in the works?

Marathon's Story had an interesting item in yesterday's update: a possibility of an Oni GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System). Check out Marathon's Story for more on this.

(Thanks Hamish)

I found some screenshots...

...at Take 2's German website. You could say they're "new" because they haven't been posted up at a gaming news site or in a magazine (except the one on the left which you can find on this page of Gamer's Republic which I scanned in May).

Hope they're appreciated. :)

No save film option in Oni

Sadly, the feature that would enable you to save films of gameplay in Oni will not be in the final release, Matt posted this news on the forum. Other interesting tidbits can be found too.

A bunch of new fan art

I received six new fan art images from (Kenshiro) which you can find in the fan art section of the Archives.

Thanks Kenshiro!

SpieleCity previews Oni

The German game website SpieleCity posted an Oni preview which doesn't really contain new info but is a good read anyway. No new shots either.

I translated the preview which you can read right here.

(Thanks, Blue's News)