2025’s Dynasty Warriors: Origins, which has just celebrated its first anniversary, was generally considered a big success and a much-needed evolution of the long-running hack-and-slash series. Later this week, the Visions of Four Heroes DLC and its Nintendo Switch 2 port are launching, and a recent interview with producer Tomohiko Sho has teased what might be coming next.
We’ve known for some time Dynasty Warriors: Origins sold quite well, with Koei Tecmo itself confirming on February 2025 the game had crossed 1m sales during its first month on sale. On top of the aforementioned DLC and Switch 2 port, the general assumption (though it hasn’t been confirmed) is that developer Omega Force is already looking at developing a sequel. Now, Sho has revealed during an interview with Famitsu (with the relevant excerpt translated by RPG Site) that a single follow-up might not be big enough to tell the whole story the devs want to tell.
The producer has been sitting on those thoughts for a while, it seems: “I thought of making a duology where we would depict up until the Battle of Wuzhang Plains. But as we ended the development, the game depicted up until the Battle of Chi Bi with much more density than we guessed… In that case, if we maintain this density in the sequel, it would be impossible to depict up until the Battle of Wuzhang Plains (strained laugh). That’s why in the middle of the development, I ended up thinking that we would have to make it into a trilogy.”
Traditionally, Dynasty Warriors games have covered (repeatedly) a very large portion of the Chinese Three Kingdoms period, starting with the Yellow Turban Rebellion in the 180s and taking players to the Battle of Wuzhang Plains in 234 AD. More recent games took us a bit further in order to also tell the Fall of Shu Kingdom in 264 AD. It all involves heroes (as well as villains) sending hordes of soldiers flying with all sorts of weapons, but at its core, it’s a massive historical drama.
With Origins, the main pitch from a narrative perspective was to spend more time with each part of the larger story. The game goes up to the Battle of Chi Bi / Red Cliffs in 208 AD. The expectation was to have the rest of the period covered in just one sequel, but looking at the density of the content and intertwined story arcs, we’re inclined to support Sho’s tentative decision to go bigger and longer. Two more entries instead of one would also allow Omega Force to better iterate on the many changes to Dynasty Warriors’ traditional combat system and the RPG layer that added much-welcome depth.
“I kindly want you to buy this DLC, and I want even more people to play the base game,” the producer added, suggesting a final decision hasn’t been made and encouraging fans to vote with their wallets.
