I finished Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions) yesterday. I will once again talk about the story in detail as I did in the last post. Yet again:
*SPOILERS*
I mentioned in the last post how I thought things with my uncle would go after killing the Khan (as they call Khotun Khan)–and I will say that they got the ending with the uncle right. Yes, I’m going to go into spoilers yet again–not that it’ll be very surprising to most people who played the game.
I said that I would reconcile with my uncle because that’s the way it would have happened in a Western game (and, yes, this game was done by an American developer). Since they had done so much of the story very Westernized, I assumed it would be the same with this as well. Instead, they had Lord Shimura show up to aid in the last fight against the Khan, but then he sends a message to Jin that he (Lord Shimura) wants to talk to him (Jin). They meet and walk around, talking and reminiscing. As they did this, it slowly dawned on me that they were not going to reconcile. The grave countenance of my uncle tipped me off that this was going to end very differently, indeed.
I suddenly realized that he was going to kill me. Or rather, he was going to try to kill me. Because I had betrayed him, and while he did help me (ostensibly) with the Khan–I’ll get to that in a minute–he wa still the jito of the area. He could not countenance me defying a direct order because that just would not do.
I could undrestand that (as the player, and as an Asian person), especially during feudal times. There was a rigid hierarchy that had to be followed and while I was way more on Jin’s side than on his uncle’s, I could at least understand why Lord Shimura thought the way he did. He wasn’t wrong as much as he had a different way of looking at things. He thought it was better to die with honor than to win through trickery, and while I don’t agree with him, I can see his point of view.
I’m not going to rehash my issues with the big moments of the second act, but I do need to talk about the end of the third.
I will say that I should have taken a break after the second act. And then the third. I am in the DLC now, and…well, I’ll get to that in a bit. Also, I have included the trailer for it below.
Back to my uncle. As I said, credit where credit was due. Sucker Punch went for the more authentic ending after a bunch of missteps along the way. Oh, wait. Let’s talk about the Khan first. Before I talk about that, though. ,I have to mention something that irritates the fuck out of me in this game–and in most others. Whenever I have to walk and talk with someone, they walk….so……damn…….slow. I can jog at a brisk pace most of the other time, so why the fuck can’t I do it while I’m meeting and greeting?
Especially in the third act, I was conscious of everything that took my time away from finishing the game. I was actively avoiding the random skirmishes dotting the map because I was bored by that time. I just wanted to see the credits roll.
Going after the Khan, I can’t even really tell you anything about it other than it made me sigh heavily. I hated the addition of the hwacha (turrent fire projectiles) and the absolute hordes of Mongols in almost every major fight from the end of the second act onward (can you tell how much I hated the game from then on?). I’m sure they wanted to simulated an actual invasion/ambush/etc., but it was so fucking tedious.
My M.O. turned out to be run past all the enemies to get to the hwachas first and then archers. In addition, as I said, I had a difficult time telling which way to go, so I had to swing the camera around wildly as I was trying to fight off the hordes. If my allies were with me, I had to worry about them dying because then I would have to revive them, but that actually just happened once.
When I got to Khan, I knew it was going to be a duel. I hate the duels because they take away all my ghost tricks so I can only use my sword. I get why they do that thematically, but it always irritates me when a game deliberately hobbles me to add false tension to the encounter.
I had my resolves saved up so I could do the Dance of Wrath twice and the Heavenly Strike more than once. In fact, the duel was fairly easy–which, of course, meant it wasn’t the only thing I had to do. He started running for his ship, and I had to stop him from leaving. That meant fighting him and a bunch of his men on the ship. There were archers I couldn’t reach (or at least, I couldn’t fgigure it out), but at least I got my ghost techniques back.
I’m pretty sure the game periodically sent in new goons, too. So basically, I had to run around and try to get rid of the adds while also fighting Khan. Oh, and the camera is shit when there were more than three enemies on the screen.
I used lock-on less regularly as the game went on because the camera was just horesshit. I used almost all of my ghost weapons in this fight, and I just ran around cursing as I would randomly hit Khan. I say randomly because I couldn’t distinguish him from his minions especially when there were so many just cluttering the screen. I turned what should have been an epic duel into me running around the ship in circles, cursing at the top of my lungs, getting one hit in when I could.
I really felt let down by the Khan fight because it felt so padded. As much as I don’t like the duels, it really should have just been me and Khan duking it out. But it’s just another in a long line of things that annoyed me from the end of the second act on.
I’m thankful that the last part with my uncle was done well. We had a heart-to-heart chat, and then we had the duel. When I got him down to the last hit, he asked me to give him an honorable death. I could actually choose whether to kill him or let him live. I told him he would be remmbered as an honorable warrior, and we mend our broken fences. Then, I kill him as a son to his father (we actually speak those words), and it was a touching moment.
I did a bit of clean-up, and then decided to go into the DLC. It told me I was going to being doing a bunch of tales, which I inferred meant that I would not be able to go back to the main game while doing the DLC. This was, indeed, correct, and they iced my horse once again (or at least, I lost him in the storm). That really irritated me because they had iced my bestest horse already. They didn’t need to kill Kaze, too.
Of course they didn’t acually do that because it would have been a bit much to leave me without a horse in the DLC, and they added a cool charging ability (another ghost technique) to boot. Except, now it takes so much to get skill points, I don’t know when I’ll be able to max out the skill.
I think I’m going to take a break. I’m really weary of more of the same. We’ll see if I hold tight to that.