There needs to be a free roam Tenchu game.

[Travalanche]

I know many of you will say Assassins Creed (I love the Asscreed series and have played almost all of them) but it's not the same.

I am somewhat of a Tenchu fanboy I won't lie as it was one of the first PS1 games I ever played and I was like 9 or 10 when I played it. I have such fond memories of playing it with my cousin and at the time the game was great as it was~~~

-bloody
-excellent game mechanics
-an intriguing story
-features that hadn't been done before like the hook claw that was reused in Assassins Creed for instance.
-smooth graphics (for the time)
-a good soundtrack

I just adored the game and put in so many hours it was ridiculous, it was also the game that most improved my gaming skills in general as before playing Tenchu 1 I was just your average casual gamer. At first the game was challenging but I began to learn from my mistakes and get better and better at dispatching enemies.

Later on Tenchu 2 came out and was even better, everything in the original was improved upon and we were given a level editor,

-The ability to swim an even breath while hiding underwater via a bamboo chute while waiting for enemies to pass so you can gut them, but the game had sharks which could eat you and I'm not kidding. (not many games had this at the time if any),

-replay value as you get 3 characters

-great boss fights

Okay, enough about the past let's move on. The Series has steadily grown into obscurity due to it not really advancing much after the second title and even I thought the last iteration named Tenchu Z was mediocre at best.

What we need is an open world Tenchu title and I'm not joking. Nothing of the sort has been done before and it would be totally brilliant.

The world would be based near the end of the Samurai era with basic firearms and bows still in use, cannons would be strategically placed along a feudal lords palaces windows and guards would patrol the streets spear-in-hand.

You would be allowed to make a ninja via a character creation screen and pick your starting stats such as Strength, agility, and endurance and allocate them as you wish along with a few starting perks such as improved swimming, double jump, extra inventory space, etc. You could approach the game as you wished depending on your build, if your a stronger ninja then you'd be able to use daisho with a Katana/wakizashi along with flintlock rifles and deal more damage and parry attacks more effectively turning you into a Ronin archetype, if your more agile you'd get bonuses to stealth and take a single handed tanto and throwing star/trap approach turning you into a stealth assassin. And if you went with a more defensive build you'd get access to higher health, healing items (meat buns), and bows along with a dai-katana taking a more balanced approach.

Your gear would be based on your stat allocations and hybridization would be possible but gimp you to an extent forcing you to use slighly lower level gear such as if you were an agility based build with a bit of strength you could use weaker strength based gear if you'd like to as well as agility stuff.

The world would consist of a single town and surrounding forest as a hub and when accepting a mission you are instanced into a small area as your mission zone, you can only bring a certain amount of items with you depending on your perks and the missions would be completely open-ended. There would be plenty of shops and bars along with lots of clutter for sightseers, there would also be achievements for say... using said bars to get drunk on Sake (giving a blurring/stumbling effect) while doing a mission for a few laughs. You could replay the missions at higher difficulties for set items and cosmetic gear as well as money you could use for new stuff such as weapons, clothing, or items for completing missions.

You would also be given a house that could be upgraded via money earned from missions and your AI companions would wait around in a Mass Effect style and could be used on certain missions (such as battlefield missions).

As I said the missions would be open-ended and you could join whichever of the 2 major factions you wanted or take a rogue route where you'd play them against eachother in the smaller missions which would lead up to large scale battles that you could orchestrate from the shadows in a more stealth-based Dynasty Warriors fashion by silently killing commanding offers from the shadows, trapping the battlefield beforehand, or rushing into combat if you'd prefer.

If you assisted a certain army to victory you could then approach their leader in secret from stealth (who's army would be in a weakened state) and extort him for information (which would give you some lore or information about upcoming missions or money, you could even kill him afterwards or decide to support the NPC further and work to become a leading commander for the faction if you follow their ideals.

Throughout the world there would be collectibles that would offer unique benefits but lower stats than regular gear (sort of like Deadric quest rewards) and they would appear in random locations promoting exploration of feudal Tokyo. They could perhaps allow you to trick an enemy into following you, turn you invisible for a few seconds after entering stealth, provide flaming arrows or explosive ammunition, or allow you to summon a dog to lure an enemy away from a post but they would take up a vital inventory spot and only one could be used at a time.

Finally the environments would be destructible within the instances, you could potentially blow a hole into an enemies fortress via (antiquated) gunpowder grenades and get straight to the boss although this would surely prompt surrounding enemies to your location but you could then have your AI companions hold the enemies off while you head for the boss or you could disappear and then head to the now lesser guarded main entrance for a quick assault dividing the ranks.

The possibilities are endless.

This may sound like an awful lot but it really isn't, most of what I had brought up has already been implemented in games reaching as far back as GTA San Andreas and the world destruction aspect was implemented with Geo-mod in Red Faction Guerrilla quite a while back as well.

This would provide a totally new experience that the gaming industry is really lacking right now and the game could easily be given DLC and I think would be a great success and the revival of a nearly dead series.

I just think this game would be a complete blast to play as the replay value would be phenomenal, the game world wouldn't even need to be as big as Skyrim. Hell, it could even be the size of Shenmue and many people would be satisfied as long as it had the points I made in its repertoire.

So what do you guys think, I believe this concept would be something to consider and if I were a multi-millionaire I myself, would partially fund it even if I made no profit at all.

[Thuro Pendragon]

Never heard of it.

[Red Guardian]

I felt that Tenchu Z tried that. To be a free roam game, I mean.

FromSoftware pretty much destroyed the franchise with the downloadable from LIVE and the DS game. The series should've never left Acquire and K2LLC's hands. Unfortunately I don't think we are going to a see a new Tenchu game anytime soon. It's probably for the best though...

[Travalanche]

Tenchu Z was just a hub with selectable missions really. I personally enjoyed the game as the gameplay itself was very smooth and just solid overall, the missions were a mixed bag but overall decent if not on par with Tenchu 2.

[Red Guardian]

Tenchu Z was quite good, if you ask me. I still play it from time to time. I just wanted more cut-scenes and more boss variety. The fights were always one-on-one and we had like 4 cut-scenes in the entire game...

Spoiler:

I also wanted to kill Shigi. Didn't liked how he ran away at the end of the game.