Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is Team Ninja’s foray into a Sekiro-style deflection-based game. Even though this game is a new IP from the acclaimed developer, it still oozes familiarity with the developer’s previous game i.e. Nioh. This leads us to wonder whether Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has been designed with the same engine as Nioh. If not then what is the engine used for Wo Long?
The engine used for creating Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is called Katana Engine. It is a proprietary engine developed in-house by Team Ninja.
Related: Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Vs. Sekiro (Ultimate Comparison)
Team Ninja Engine History
Team Ninja has created some of the most prolific games in terms of challenging the players’ skills to their limits which includes Nioh and most importantly Ninja Gaiden. In the past, this developer has used the same engine to produce multiple games spanning various gaming generations.
This engine was called the Team Ninja Engine. It was used to develop Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive, and Nioh. Although it is a dated engine, it is quite flexible when it comes to world creation, fluid animations, detailed combat mechanics, and relatively modern graphics.
However, the last part seems to be the most lacking component of this engine, where fans have deemed the Nioh series as a PS2-era style of game graphics-wise.
Shifting to the Katana Engine
Now that their new game, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, is getting released on modern hardware, they could not rely on this antiquated piece of software hence a new engine needed to be developed.
Consequently, a new engine was produced by Team Ninja internally dubbed the Katana Engine (as seen in the credits from the game in the picture above). This was used to develop Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. The engine is pretty robust with good optimization on both the PC and the consoles.
The Katana Engine is Team Ninja’s proprietary software. Weirdly enough, Nioh and Wo Long are very similar from the graphical presentation and gameplay standpoint yet they are made on totally different engines. Team Ninja must like their games to be somewhat homogenous.
What Engine Does Sons of the Forest Use?
The new game does seem fairly old-school when it comes to the graphics. But, the gameplay, and smoothness of the experience are exceptional and shouldn’t go unappreciated. It has all the modern gaming bells and whistles like; resolution and performance modes on the consoles, and a slew of graphic settings on the PC like ultrawide screen support.
For the type of games they construct, graphics are trumped by sheer gameplay much like FromSoftware‘s game developing philosophy, which Team Ninja is clearly ripping off taking inspiration from.
Katana Engine did a great job realizing the vision of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. The flow of the combat is perfectly encapsulated in this game. We just hope that Team Ninja would start upping their game in the graphics department. They have the gameplay fine-tuned to excellence, just the graphics need to be brought to the new-age polish.