Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
It’s been a very, very long time since anything noteworthy came out of the Tenchu series. Developed by Acquire and published under FromSoftware in Japan, the ninja assassin games were a rollercoaster of solid stealth murder and gadgetry that sadly died off after the lackluster launch of Tenchu: Shadow Assassins in 2009. More than a decade later, the IP still remains with developer Acquire, and though nothing is in active development, the studio’s president recently revealed he would be open to the idea of a Tenchu revival on next-gen systems.
Acquire president Takuma Endo spoke to the possibility of a new Tenchu title in a recent interview with Famitsu, as reported by Gematsu. According to the interview, while Acquire refreshed the copyright on the Tenchu “Stealth Assassin” trademark in 2018, it was mostly for legal reasons. That said, Endo also revealed that there is some interest in bringing the series back to life, especially with the launch of next-gen systems.
Endo specifically stated that any attempt to revive Tenchu would likely mean rebuilding the game completely from the ground up.
“It is difficult to make a new Tenchu work right now,” Endo stated. “But I would like to recreate it from scratch for the PS5 generation if there is a possibility. The “Stealth Assassin” trademark lays the groundwork.”
It’s most certainly not as though the interest is lacking. We saw a couple similar-styled games in recent years, one of them being FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which was not only a much-beloved title in 2019, but also originally built as a Tenchu sequel before being repurposed slightly. Ghost of Tsushima also successfully employed a number of Tenchu elements well in its stealth and gadget-based combat.
It seems as though Acquire would happily bring Tenchu back into the gaming conversation on modern consoles. If they do, we’ll be happy to see what that looks like. Stay tuned for more details as Shacknews follows this topic.