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    Home Unlabelled Sekiro - A core tenet of a Shinobi is to overwhelm the enemy with relentless attacks and deflections.

    Sekiro - A core tenet of a Shinobi is to overwhelm the enemy with relentless attacks and deflections.

    September 21, 2020

    Sekiro - A core tenet of a Shinobi is to overwhelm the enemy with relentless attacks and deflections.

    A core tenet of a Shinobi is to overwhelm the enemy with relentless attacks and deflections.

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 10:23 AM PDT

    NG+10 got me like

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 04:33 PM PDT

    familiar looking place in avatar: the last airbender

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 07:18 PM PDT

    I'm fucking shaking.....

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 05:52 AM PDT

    Don't think that's how fishes in this game are supposed to be like

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 07:02 AM PDT

    Honestly, screw whoever made you get 125 skill points to get all the skills

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 01:06 PM PDT

    Gorgeous and Awesome game. Proud owner of the Platinum

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 04:27 PM PDT

    Isshin literally rising from the grave just to shove his spear down my throat

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 04:46 PM PDT

    Plot question speculation station

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 07:03 PM PDT

    I've played this game waaaay too much, and on my muscle-memory replays I started to have more questions about the whole story. I love the world, and all the mystery in it. So many things fit together really neatly, but there's also a lot that's unexplained. There's sort of a sense that Sekiro is just a soldier, and the people driving the plot (Isshin, Emma, Owl, and Genichiro for the most part) have more of a sense of what's happening in Ashina than he does.

    Some stuff is obviously supposed to just stay a mystery (like how a huge dragon god showed up and started peeing immortality into the water), but other things that seem more mechanical are still unresolved. And this makes me think about them! It's the mark of great story-telling that I keep revisiting this world. Some of the questions I still think about are:

    Why does the temple help the interior ministry re-take Ashina?

    The temple clearly work with the ministry at several points -- they send "rats" (spies) to scout Ashina before the invasion; they sent fighting monks to raid Hirata Estate in the memory segments; they tried to take the Gun Fort (who is allied with Ashina); and finally the temple "rats" show up in force during the actual invasion.

    Some possible answers I can think of include:

    • The ministry is offering something to the temple that they really want; this could be:
      • Money (they do love money)
      • Resources they need for continued research (they need that Epstein hook-up for their experiments)
      • A promise of isolation (they really like to keep to themselves for the aforementioned research). This is the also main thing that makes it odd that the temple would even want to help the Ministry -- do they really expect that a centralized Shogunate that knew about immortality swamp water would just give the temple a pass, and that they wouldn't try to take it for themselves? Does a lifetime diet of meth candy rot your brain, or do giant centipede parasites make you really gullible?
    • They were tricked by Owl somehow, maybe with one of the above promises
      • Owl is clearly behind a lot of the Ministry machinations in the region, sort of acting like an inside man for them. He organizes the raid on Hirata, and at the same time steals the everblossom for his own personal plans (of being the warrior-God of Japan). It stands to reason that he brokered the alliance with the Temple as well, perhaps

    What was Owl's plan with the Everblossom?

    Owl cut the everblossom at some point just before the raid on Hirata, and kept both the original branch (now dried out), and a memory bell that allows for some Buddha-powered time travel to go back to get the fresh one.

    This is very convenient for us, since it gives us the means to enter the Fountainhead Palace, and gives us the means to complete the Severance ritual. What use would Owl have for this, though? Why did he go through all this trouble?

    I wonder if there are other rituals that we never learn about that include the use of this branch. Owl clearly wants immortality for himself, so the most obvious methods of obtaining that could be:

    • A ritual that severs the bond between Kuro and Sekiro, or that transfers it, or something that enables a second bond to form for Kuro
    • A ritual that transfers the dragon blood from Kuro to Owl directly, making him the new Divine Heir?

    What was the relationship between Genichiro, Isshin, and the Black Mortal Blade?

    We know that Isshin in many ways seems to approve of what Genichiro is up to. In some dialog between Isshin and Emma, we hear him talk about how Genichiro will "show up at some point". When she notes that he will give up his humanity, Isshin says that he "would expect no less of his own grandson".

    This to me seems to imply that Isshin approves of the use of the immortality swamp mud.

    Even further, Isshin seems to imply that there is a relationship between Genichiro's machinations and Isshin's activies: in another piece of dialog, he says that Genichiro "can only swing the [black] Mortal blade a few more times" (presumably because immortality swamp water, not matter how well filtered, is never as good as drinking from the source), at which point "the Tengu is no more".

    I might be mis-reading here, but this sounds to me like the Black Mortal Blade isn't' some new piece of equipment that Genichiro pulls out of his ass for your final showdown where he without warning uses it to cut a gate to the underworld in his own neck. Somehow he's been using that thing to keep Isshin's life unnaturally extended already.

    Emma also mentions in the first dialog with Genichiro that it "is a miracle that he [Isshin] is still with us". Is that miracle the sneaky swamp mud and black blade slinging of Genichiro? We know you can use it to bring the dead back to life; can you also use it to prevent death through another ritual?

    Why was Isshin so strongly opposed to using the blood of the Dragon?

    If Isshin has been sending Genichiro off to do Buddha knows what with a lethal piece of occult equipment (the Black Mortal Blade), and taking filthy dragon swamp water to immunize himself from its effects, it makes sense that Genichiro would want to stop with all this nonsense and get the real Dragon Blood before he and Isshin both die of TurboDragonCancer.

    Why is Isshin pushing so hard against this? It might be that he's just too tenderhearted to the lad Kuro, and hey, we all love Kuro, but this is a guy who waged a bloody coup to retake the lands of Ashina, for what seems like mostly religious purposes rather than hometown pride.

    Isshin mentions during one of his drinking sessions that the people of Ashina "were Heretics". Since there's not a lot of dogma around proper swamp water drinking and colorful sword usage in Shinto (at least not that I'm aware of), I have to assume that he means heretical in the sense of getting up to very unnatural things. Does this unnatural activity also have a dark side? Is Isshin aware of some eventual curse that direct exploitation of the Dragon Blood would lead to? Is there something related to the Dragon Blood that could be even worse for Ashina than a return to Shogun rule, and the abolishment of their "religion"?

    What is responsible for the decay of the Fountainhead Palace?

    The timelines in Sekiro are very vague, but it seems like at some point in the far far past (at least an "age" by Senpou Temple reckoning), the big fancy Dragon showed up and made himself at home in the hills of Ashina. Soon after, an Okami settlement at Foundtainhead Palace was made, using architecture and fighting moves that seem pretty reminiscent of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (i.e. Chinese). There was some kind of war between the Okami and Ashina people, but after the war there seem to have been normalized relations together with traditions like the Dragonspring Pilgrimage, some kind of trade, and visitation like the type taken from Mibu Village.

    At some point, Ashina was conquered, and the traditions of the Ashina people were suppressed (at least outside of Mibu Village). Then, during the Sengoku Era, Isshin launched a successful rebellion that shrugged off Shogun rule and re-established the traditions of the Ashina people, and it seems in some way re-normalized relations with the Fountainhead Palace.

    The evidence for the re-normalization comes mostly from the fact that Takeru and Tomoe came to stay at Ashina Castle. Then Takeru got sick, and spent the next years or decades trying to find a way to suicide himself.

    Some questions that come up for this for me are:

    • Did the Okami people always look like Lovecraft-ian fish people?
      • I think they probably didn't, given that Isshin talks about how hot he thought Tomoe was (an effection clearly shared by Genichiro). Similarly, Emma talks about Takeru and Tomoe a bunch and never mentions how hard it was to treat Tomoe since she had scales and gills or anything like that
      • If the fish look is a new thing, could it be that it is symptomatic of some overall decay at the Palace?
      • We also have two clear examples of regular people starting to look like fish people after contact with Fountainhead the place or the waters: the carp caretaker, and the priest in Mibu village when you give him the waters of the palace
    • Why has the Palace been mostly flooded, with crumbling buildings falling into the water?
      • One of the fish feeder daughters mentions that "these days" the back way to the Palace grounds is underwater, implying that wasn't always the case
      • Strangely (or maybe overlooked-ly), the tallest structures near the front of the Palace Grounds seem to have watermarks on them that are way higher than what makes sense given how much water could pool around the rock wall to the waterfall. This might just be a design asset re-use thing
      • There are broken carts, broken windows, caved-in roofs, and the like all over the place. We are definitely supposed to get a sense of decay in this place. The interior of the Palace Grounds main building is smeared with what looks like fish mucous. The fish nobles themselves love to use their fancy Chinese flutes to suck up youth and vitality, and the resident lizards have also taken to youth sucking rather than poison spitting.

    My theory is that somehow the initial conquering of the Ashina people set some kind of downward spiral in motion. Maybe when Ashina was conquered, the Okami people attemped an isolationist strategy, damming the fancy Dragon waters off (perhaps initiating an unwanted flood of their Palace) and shutting down travel from Mibu village (denying them a vital source of labor, and perhaps food, in the process?)

    This would explain why Takeru was so keen to GTFO and stay at a normal place like Ashina castle. And maybe without the Divine Heir physically present at the Palace, decay intensified. With no leadership and still no way to trade for food, maybe the residents started to drink the dragon water ("Waters of the Palace") to stay alive, and went through a physical changes that made them the youth-sucking fish people of Sekiro's day.

    How did Tomoe and Takeru die?

    Takeru was no fan of the Dragon Blood, and was hell-bent on getting rid it. In the process, he wrote down a bunch of diaries of his research, and revealed his thoughts and wishes to Tomoe (who was inclined to share them with her protege Genichiro).

    It was clear though that while Takeru was sick, there wasn't an obvious way to end his suffering. It's possible he died of pneumonia as a complication of low-altitude life, but I think another scenario might have occurred: I think he or Tomeo managed to find the Black Mortal Blade.

    While this blade didn't allow them to complete the rituals that we get to do with the Red blade, they might have attempted them anyway (it was clear they were trying them already with some standard steel swords), with deadly consequence. Or maybe they just noped out of this cruel Earth on purpose as soon as they got that fancy black piece of destruction, in the hopes that with a crumbling Palace and no children of Takeru's it would end the Dragon Curse.

    If something like this happened, it would explain why Genichiro already had the Black Mortal Blade, and why Isshin knew about it.

    How did Kuro get the Dragon's Blood?

    One of the big mysteries that a lot of people have mentioned is how Kuro ended up with the Dragon's blood. His only predecessor was from Fountainhead Palace, and they were clearly not related (similarly, we know that Kuro did have parents, since he was asking for them during the Hirata raid, but they don't seem to have had any immortal dragon powers).

    My theory is that they were related. We know that there was a period of normalized relations between the Fountainhead Okami people and the regular people of Ashina, and I think diplomatic bonds were especially tight between the Fountainhead and Hirata.

    For instance:

    • The only carp fanboi outside of the Fountainhead Palace is at Hirata
    • Similarly, carp live in three places outside of the Fountainhead Palace:
      • Mibu village (their source of labor and closest neighbors): a bunch
      • Hirata Estate (their close diplomatic allies?): a good amount
      • Ashina Castle (the dominant power in the area): one fish

    I think that at some point this relationship was made official with some kind of wedding between nobility of the Fountainhead Palace and the nobles of Hirata.

    I would go further, and say that this lineage was the entire point of the raid. In the timeline I suspect, the following events happened:

    1. The Shinobi of Ashina (including especially Owl) assisted Isshin in his rebellion, and obtained places at court
    2. When the rebellion was successful, relations were once again established and Takuer came to stay at Ashina Castle (somehow -- it's not clear if there was another way to the Fountainhead before Takeru came down; he might have burned the easy bridges back on his way)
    3. With the palace in decay and with Takeru overall full of exitential angst, he started researching how to end the Dragon curse, and at some point Tomoe found the black mortal blade and they planned together to do some ritual that would result in their deaths
    4. Owl read through all the diaries (he's a neaky shinobi), realized that the dragon blood would find the next heir in the nobility of Hirata, and got to work on his plan to get that sweet blood for himself:
      • Owl got his loyal adopted son in the service of the most impressionable Hirata noble in the line of succession for Dragon blood (the youngest)
      • Owl at some point contacted the Ministry to supply him with manpower for a raid on Hirata, and brokered an alliance with them and the Temple, ostensibly for his own material benefit, but really to get him in control of Dragon's blood
      • Owl stole the everblossom branch in preparation for his raid and the plans he would need to put in motion after
      • By luck or through manipulation, he managed to time his raid on Hirata with the Dragonspring Pilgrimage, which also happened to be very close in time to when Takeru offed himself. This mean that Owl could kill Kuro's parents, leaving him the sole eligible dragon blood heir
      • The events of the game start

    The biggest hole in this logic is that Emma seems to indicate that Takeru and Tomoe died "long ago", which sounds to be like longer than four years. The problem though, is that Emma and Genichiro themselves aren't all that old, and they clearly have personal memories of these people (and they only could come to the castle after the rebellion). Even more obvious, Kuro is not very old.

    Maybe another explanation is that Takeru and Tomoe did die awhile ago (say 15 years ago), but the Dragon Curse only sets in at birth or conception -- so you can't inherit it like a title during life. That would make the scheming even easier for Owl: everyone is surprised to learn that after Takeru died, a new child of the Hirata nobles was born with Dragon blood rather than some unknown Dragonspring noble as had always happened before. Then Owl starts reading through Takeru's old diaries and ponders how he can get that sweet Dragon blood bond (and Genichiro starts thinking along similar lines after his adopted grandfather has him drinking swamp water so he can use the black blade to keep his grandfather around and kicking...)

    submitted by /u/nicholsz
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    You spin my head right round

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 11:36 AM PDT

    Beating Bosses with Chin [PART 1] by MASTER OF ASHINA

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 11:07 PM PDT

    How tall is Sekiro?

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 05:43 PM PDT

    So, was doing another play through of this game. How tall is Sekiro? Is everyone else normal size and he is just a proportionate little person? Or is he a normal 5'8 human and everyone else is crazy tall?

    submitted by /u/dhargrove89
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    Thought, some of you might enjoy that

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 10:27 AM PDT

    Corrupted monk art work I made (shamelessmakerYT)

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 11:03 AM PDT

    I’m still shaking from it, but any tips for ng+ this is my first play through

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 09:59 AM PDT

    Fait Of Ashina If Reborn Ishinn defeated Sekiro

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 09:35 PM PDT

    How do you think the story would go if Ishinn bested Sekiro? Ishinn is immortal now and seemingly very resilient, do you think he'd overcome the Invading forces like Shura Sekiro did? And if so how do you see him dealing with Kuru lying there, Emma and the whole situation?

    I personally think Ishinn may consult with Kuru about breaking immortality but would not go through with it until he destroyed the invading forces as per Genichiro's wish. But after succeeding how might Ashina fair? Perhaps Ishinn would seek to make peace and let Ashina act as a seperate state?

    submitted by /u/ThunderLife92
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    I have no idea if this has been posted yet, but dear god this is amazing

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 09:02 PM PDT

    As someone who struggles with the more recent Souls games and can't parry consistently, should I give Sekiro a try?

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 11:46 PM PDT

    I really love the Soulsborne series, they are my favorite games right now. However, I've been too scared to jump into Sekiro. FromSoft games have already become progressively harder for me with each new release and Sekiro just seems like it takes the crown. Gameplay videos suggest fast moving enemies and lots of parrying which I'm not good at.

    Can you guys give me some feedback wether I'm correct with my assessment? It would be a shame if I skipped this game for no reason but since it is still 50€ I don't want to waste my money and time either

    submitted by /u/Loldimorti
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    Prosthetic upgrades question

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 11:43 PM PDT

    Hi, I bought the game the other day and once I got the hang of the combat and stopped trying to play it like a souls game i am enjoying it even though its definitely a lot harder than bloodborne and dark souls in my opinion

    I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the upgrades that you can do for your arm

    Are there any that you would recommend going for?

    Currently stuck on genichiro ashina at the dojo so I'm not sure if there is any upgrades that would help me beat him as I haven't purchased any yet

    submitted by /u/Nomorealcohol2017
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    So...

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 05:15 PM PDT

    Had to restart the game since I decided to side with owl,FML.I had just beat genichiro and the guardian ape.

    submitted by /u/litterboxmayhem
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    Sekiro - True Corrupted Monk.

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 03:26 PM PDT

    My thoughts on Sekiro and video games

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 10:57 AM PDT

    I have been kind of burning out with playing video games. I sit in front of my computer screen most days with nothing in mind; no game is appealing. I end up playing overwatch for longer than I expected and not really having any fun. I think these days too many games are dedicated to instant gratification, like all mobile games, fast paced FPS games where each round is only around 30 mins, etc, where the whole point is to keep the player invested for as long as possible. These games have their fun, but end up being shallow experiences for me.

    I have come to the conclusion that I must force myself to play sekiro once again. I avoid it because of how tedious and unforgiving it is, but I am starting to realize that I have been conditioning my brain to need fast paced action instead of the long struggle that is sekiro. Hopefully I can learn to enjoy video games again. Sorry if this is a pointless post, I just thought you guys might be able to relate to this.

    submitted by /u/ShefBoyRD1
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    A real life monk from the senpou temple

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 01:19 AM PDT

    Just beat the game for the first time, it's amazing!

    Posted: 20 Sep 2020 05:55 AM PDT

    The level design, the characters, the bosses, the lore, all of it comes together to make a truly magnificent game. Some of my favorite moments were beating Lady Butterfly and Isshin, entering the Fountainhead Palace and realising that the Demon of Hatred was the Sculptor when I took the time to read the descriptions of my skills. Obviously I'm now going to go get all the endings in NG+ runs, but know this r/Sekiro: Sekiro is the first game I've ever played where I don't hate anything about it. Some of you may have seen my post on r/DarkSouls2 going over the things I loved and hated about the game, but I don't need to do that here. I may have some little annoyances with the game, but they are all very easily ignored when looking at this masterpiece as a whole.

    submitted by /u/Karma_X_Kai
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