What you need to know
- Koei Tecmo announces the first story details for Dynasty Warriors: Origins, an upcoming prequel for its long-running Dynasty Warriors franchise.
- In this game, you play as an original amnesiac protagonist who will bear witness to the events leading to the war between the Three Kingdoms and fight alongside or against iconic Dynasty Warriors characters.
- Dynasty Warriors: Origins will launch in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.
On July 25, 2024, Koei Tecmo announced new information regarding the story premise for an upcoming Xbox game and upcoming PC game called Dynasty Warriors: Origins, set to release in 2025 for consoles and PC.
As the title implies, this game is a prequel to Dynasty Warriors, a long-running series of third-person hack-and-slash titles with light real-time strategy elements based on “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” a romanticized historical retelling of China’s Three Kingdoms period.
In Dynasty Warriors games, players assume the role of legendary heroes from Romance of the Three Kingdoms and relive famous battles and wars from the novel in an exaggerated fashion where you single-handedly take on thousands of enemies on-screen using over-the-top martial arts moves.
However, Dynasty Warriors: Origins will have players take control of a new original protagonist and experience a new story set a year before the Yellow Turban Rebellion (one of the most memorable battles of the Dynasty Warriors series).
Our protagonist is a wandering amnesiac martial artist with no name searching for his lost past. On his journey, the protagonist encounters a village suffering a terrible famine where a long-haired man named Zhang Jiao is lending aid to the villagers and a bearded warrior named Guan Yu denouncing the unjust government for abandoning its people. After seeing how far the country has fallen, you, Guan Yu, and Zhang Jiao join forces and lead an army to wage war against the corrupt government to restore justice, peace, and prosperity to the land.
Dynasty Warriors: Origins story is planned to be a realistic, cinematic, narrative-rich adventure that recounts the events of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in greater detail than previous Dynasty Warriors games and with a higher emphasis on character development.
This cinematic approach will also apply to gameplay. While Dynasty Warriors: Origins will feature the series trademarked “1 vs. 1,000 action” hack-and-slash gameplay, there will be a higher focus on working with allies. There will be moments where you will switch control between the protagonist, Guan Yu, Zhang Jiao, and other characters you will meet in the story to take on mighty enemy officers or command them to march together to improve the morale of your soldiers and bulldoze through massive enemy armies.
In addition, since Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a prequel, this game will provide an excellent introduction to the series’ memorable characters and lore for newcomers who have never played a Dynasty Warriors game before or know anything about Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
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Experience the events that kick off the epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga in Dynasty Warriors: Origins
Dynasty Warriors is a popular hack-and-slash franchise that’s been around since it debuted on the PlayStation One in 1997. However, it should be noted that the original Dynasty Warriors title was a fighting game, and the series made the genre shift to hack-and-slash titles when Dynasty Warriors 2 was released in 2000 for the PlayStation 2.
The Dynasty Warriors has sold 22 million copies across its mainline and spin-off titles like Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi. It’s even managed to create spin-off Dynasty Warrior titles based on popular anime series like One Piece, Fist of the North Star, and Berserk, and even other videogame franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, and Fire Emblem.
Personally speaking, as a longtime beat ’em’ up/hack and slash fan, I enjoyed partaking in a few Dynasty Warriors games here and there, like Samurai Warriors 2, One Piece Pirate Warriors, and my personal favorite, Hyrule Warriors. These are simple and casual-friendly action games where you kick back, relax, and beat hundreds of brain-dead bad guys into oblivion using insane super moves ripped straight out of an anime superhero show to help you chill out after a long day at work.
From what’s been shown off Dynasty Warriors: Origins so far, it looks promising. The over-the-top gameplay is still present, except now there will be literal thousands of enemies on-screen to contend with, thanks to next-gen technology. In addition, past Dynasty Warriors games never prioritized the narrative as heavily as Dynasty Warriors: Origins is aiming to be, so it will be interesting to see if it manages to pull it off and get new audiences invested in the series’ characters and lore.
Will Dynasty Warriors: Origins breathe new life into the Dynasty Warriors franchise and become one of the series’s best Xbox and PC titles? Join Guan Yu and Zhang Jiao in their crusade to discover when Dynasty Warriors: Origins launches on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam in 2025.
