When honor is all that you live for, when it is ingrained in your soul throughout your life, when it is what defines your identity as a samurai, the question is will it ever leave you?

Honor is constructed on the foundation of a code of honor, a reference to evaluate your every action. For the samurai, their reference is the values of their lords and clans. The better they serve, the higher the honor.

What if they lose their lords? What if they lose their references for evaluating their worth and measuring their honor? What if they become ronin?

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We will be releasing a few comics in order to further introduce you to the game world and the characters.

The first one, an introduction to Tale of Ronin is ready now, enjoy!

The great comic artist, Frank Miller, has a very interesting quote about the ronin. He had done extensive research about samurai culture for Daredevil and later on worked on the Ronin comic series.

Frank Miller: “The aspect of the samurai that intrigues me most is the ronin, the masterless samurai, the fallen warrior. … This entire project comes from my feelings that we, modern men, are ronin. We’re kind of cut loose. I don’t get the feeling from the people I know, the people I see on the street, that they have something greater than themselves to believe in. Patriotism, religion, whatever — they’ve all lost their meaning for us.”

The human side of the masterless Samurai is very much based on a main conflict between ninjo and giri. Their conscience and their duty. Their compassion side and the right way set by Bushido.

A Ronin is faced with such struggles daily as he has a new life now, a life as free as the birds in the summer sky.

Their most important psychological weapon, zen, made them fear nothing during combat and be the fierce warriors they are but the same concept is making them question the foundations of Bushido, mainly filial piety.

This will be experienced in Tale of Ronin as one of the main themes of the game’s narrative.

The Ronin novel explores this type of conflict very elegantly.

Among the deadliest weapons ever used in man to man combat has been the Katana. A sword that would resolve the outcome of a battle in one or two slashes. The aim for each fighter is to find that small opportunity to land the blade properly on the opponent. A huge mind-game on top of the physical activity.

Modern Kendo displays the essence of Katana fight very elegantly.

The aim of the combat system in Tale of Ronin, Hachiman, is to model this aspect of the Samurai fight and unlike the usual process in turn-based RPG games where you would…

There are a lot of timeless classics from Japanese cinema that are huge inspirations for Tale of Ronin.

Our team recently watched Seven Samurai again and we once again bowed to the mastery and art of Akira Kurosawa. There are rarely movies 3.5 hours long which can pin you to your chair.

Here is the original trailer:

They work hard everyday, farming and surviving, making enough to be able to feed themselves and pay the taxes to the Daimyo.

Always following their customs and very suspicious about outsiders.

Bandit raids leave these peasants helpless and wish for support from the warriors that might be able to help them, the warriors that are not owned and can freely choose, the Ronin.

One very important aspect of Samurai sword fight is combat stance. There have historically been numerous styles of fight each having a unique stance for sword fighting.

We have been working on the idea of stances to be used in the combat system of Tale of Ronin, Hachiman.

Different Ronin belong to different schools of swordsmanship, some of which master their own styles and stances.

Selecting actions for combat follows selecting the appropriate stance first.

This video shows the basic popular stances: