Sekiro Shadows Die Twice: Why I’m Excited

“It wasn’t Bloodborne 2 after all”

Last semester I took a class on East Asian Literature.  Despite popular opinion, it wasn’t because I’m a weeaboo, but rather because I wanted to explore the writings of cultures other than my own.  At least, that’s what I’m going to keep telling my brother until he believes me.  But I did have other motives to take that class, in addition to getting three credit hours and a gen-ed; I wanted to learn about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an upcoming action-adventure RPG by FromSoftware, the same people behind masterpieces like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and The Adventures of Cookie & Cream.  And judging by what I’ve seen and heard, Sekiro looks like it’s going to be damn good; it may even give the original Dark Souls a run for its money.  The game is promised to be stuffed with content, buttery smooth, and like every FromSoft game, indiscriminately challenging.

Sekiro is the most recent FromSoft game (besides the weird PSVR exclusive) to take place in what is ostensibly our world; instead of having the player travel to mysterious, ruined cities like Anor Londo or Yharnam or Detroit, Sekiro takes place in 1500’s Japan, an interesting setting that I’ve only seen a few other games use.  The setting looks gorgeous and memorable, and I look forward to being able to hop around from roof to roof using the grappling hook that has apparently replaced my arm.  It’ll be like Spider-man, but with a katana.

I am incredibly excited to hop into this game and fly about, crashing against enemies and blasting them with fire and steel until they fall before me, or more likely until I fall before them.  I hope to kill ingeniously, as the game’s subtitle says I should do, even though it’ll most likely end up being me botching an assassination and flailing about until I get poked by an ogre or something.  But perhaps what I’m most excited about is getting a chance to read that sweet, sweet item lore.

Every FromSoft game that I’ve played has the same interesting format of story-telling; cram as much nonsense as possible into cryptic dialogue and hide all the real answers in optional side-quests and the descriptions of items.  This makes the games purposely obtuse and difficult to read, but it’s also what makes them so rewarding; part of the fun of the game is puzzling out who the hell Gwyn is or why I have to kill this big spider thing.  I can practically guarantee Sekiro will have similar levels of mystifying world-building, and I can’t wait.

Now, it seems like every video game journalist and their sister has written a think piece about what makes the lore and gameplay of Dark Souls so compelling, and hell, I just about summed up most of it in that last paragraph.  My personal favorite game explainer makes a living on analyzing the story of these games in order to make them more decipherable to the rest of us.  So I don’t want to beat a dead horse and tell you how great the writing is, even though I just did that.  Instead, I want to present to you what I hope to see in that new writing.

During that East Asian Literature class that I mentioned five hundred words ago at the beginning of this article, we read traditional texts from Japan, China, and Korea, which is apparently what some scholars consider to be East Asia.  Although I was hoping for scary stories and mythology to prepare me for the release of Sekiro since a lot of the game seems to be based on Japanese folklore and mythology, we didn’t talk as much about that sort of stuff.  Which is fine, since I’m sure there’s an entire other class I could take devoted to that exact subject, anyway.

What we read instead was mostly historical dramas or romances, in both prose, poetry, and theater.  That makes sense; the most impactful writing is usually the most human in content.  It’s hard to read a book if you don’t really see anything recognizable in the characters.  And these historical pieces also helped us to understand what life was like back then, in a world both spatially and temporally distant from our own.  The tale of the Heike and the 47 Ronin taught us Samurai values, Chunhyang and Hong Kiltong taught us about pre-modern Korean government, and the Tale of Genji taught us not to be a dick to women or their jealous spirits will kill everyone you love.  We did a lot of work on that one, and it’s more meaningful than I make it sound, I swear.

My favorite works, perhaps not surprisingly, were the ones that gave me what I had initially hoped for; magic, monsters, and outlandish trickery. The best work for that was the Journey to the West, or as its most popular English translation is called, Monkey.  It’s one of the four great Chinese novels, and is a cultural touchstone even in modern China.  But most interesting is the fact that it’s also a religious text; it is, to a certain extent, a Buddhist handbook.

Besides learning about all these stories from pre-modern East Asia, we also got a pretty strong grounding in the religious contexts of those countries.  The big three religions, Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism informed everyday life and literature in the same way that Christianity cultivated European medieval texts.  And while none of those three religions were initially massive pantheons of mythology like Greece or Rome, popular society changed the way their were viewed.  So, Buddhism changed from having no major god-figure to instead having dozens that coexist with deities of both Confucian and Daoist origin.  They form a complex hierarchy of beings, each with separate stories and abilities, that were a treasure trove of endless fascination.  And it’s what sets the basis for Journey to the West.

Journey to the West is most comparable to something like Don Quixote and Pilgrim’s Progress.  It’s an episodic adventure story drenched in religious symbolism, meant to be simultaneously both great fun and an instruction on how to achieve Salvation.  But what makes it so fun to read is that the majority of the text is stories of Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy, the main characters, battling evil monsters and warlocks in order to save their master, Tripitaka, from being eaten.  And gee, can the monsters be weird.

How does this relate to Sekiro, though?  Well, we already know that Sekiro takes place in feudal Japan, an age that was reliant on Buddhism to keep some sense of structure, and an age that was heavily influenced by the neighboring Chinese.  We even see traces of Buddhism in Sekiro already, in things like the corrupted monks and the demon Buddha sculptures that serve as checkpoints.  So it’s conceivable that monsters and gods from works like Journey to the West or Japanese mythology at large may crop up, and that’s what I really want to see.

What I’m really hoping for is that Sekiro delves deep into the crazy history that is both Buddhist and Daoist mythology.  From Daoist monks having magic powers that can alter reality to Buddhist demons with the ability to spit fire, freeze water, and shape-shift, I want to see it in Sekiro.  There’s so much there to work with, and even though Journey to the West was a Chinese text, there’s still so much that must have trickled over into Japan.

No one, least of all me, has to to tell Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of Dark Souls and Sekiro, how much he has to work with.  He already knows.  And I’ve only just scratched the surface of Buddhist mythology; my class didn’t talk at all about the Japanese deities and ghosts that exist separate of Buddhism and Daoism. Things like local spirits, dragons, and the like that may play an even more prominent role in Sekiro than Buddhist stories.  Though I mostly want to see the Buddhist ones because that’s what I know, and when I see them I can say, “hey, I read about that,” and feel proud about paying attention in class.

That’s part of why I’m so excited about Sekiro, I think.  It has the potential to tap into so much lore that already exists; so many stories, practically unknown in the west, that could liven up the game and make it far more original than the usual medieval European swords-and-sorcery we see in most RPGs.  And not only that, there are real historical events and people that Sekiro might dig into, too.  But for the fantastical stuff, trolls, giant snakes, magic paper, it’s already all there, and there’s so much more promised.  I can’t wait to sink my teeth into what may be many westerners’ first experiences with Japanese mythology.  And like other FromSoft games, it’s going to be visceral, indecipherable, and bloody brilliant.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is going to be released on March 22^nd, 2019 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.  That being said, I won’t be able to play it for a while since my primary computer is actually just a toaster hooked up to some lemons and alphabet blocks.  But all the same, I can’t wait.

Oh, and as a side note, happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I know it has nothing at all to do with this article, but it was MLK day when I got this all written out so I wanted to give a shout-out. He fought the good fight; and while it may not be my place to fight, I can still do what I can to support from the sidelines. Everyone can do something.