Wow, it's almost as if the game being made by Americans accidentally highlighted the imperialist and oppressive elements of samurai culture without a complete lack of criticism towards it. Even Kurosawa would be disappointed (typically featured the peasants and poor samurai as the primary heroes/survivors in his jidaigeki), Kobayashi is just laughing from the grave)
Really though, I guess we haven't learned from Spec Ops: The Line
Harakiri has the best dramatic tension and samurai duels of anything in the chambara genre. Unsurpassed film.
And it is unsurpassed in its stark as fuck absurdist portrayal of budshido's rigidity.
No other director would have dared to do The Human Condition as a 10+hr movie in post-war Japan
I still haven't watched The Human Condition. Waiting for Criterion to do a Blu-ray release, but my resolve falters just a bit more each year. Eventually might give and make a weekend of it.
If you can stand to watch it without special features, I uploaded it here
The game's complete lack of awareness and how everyone treats you as a special boy even though there is nothing special other than being better than average with a sword.
I wish you had a magic sword or the resolve mechanic was acknowledged in story as a reason why you're "special".
It's like the part of the story about WHY anyone would put up with Jin and why he's the hero was cut out.
probably the best in-universe explanation is just that he's the son of a lord and thus everyone want to lick his samurai zori
Really fantastic article. The point about the Mongols being only Mongols in the game is especially well put. Live under Mongol rule was, as a general rule, better than life before it—they opened up massive trading routes and cross-cultural mixing that was unheard of at the time, and let locals live peacefully so long as they a) did not initially resist and b) occasionally provided corvée labour/paid their taxes. The biggest historical inaccuracy for me—aside from the lie of Bushido, of course—is that most peasants would care that their rulers were Japanese or Mongol or whoever. The average farmer on Tsushima probably gave a rat's ass about who their daimyo was. Taxes would be the same, oppressive rule would be the same, etc etc. That so many peasants in the game were clinging to an anachronistic Japanese nationalism was confusing, as nationalist fervour was definitely a much later creation.
The average farmer on Tsushima probably gave a rat’s ass about who their daimyo was
This exactly what the game seems to fail to recognize, oppression is the same to them (a basic notion even highlighted in Seven Samurai)
I forgot I was on this and not reddit and was like "damn r/games is surprisingly left wing"
Same, it's also "historically inaccurate" . The game is set in the 13th century and features Haikus, which were only popularized in the 17th century. Completely unplayable, I don't want any historical inaccuracies in my fantasy samurai game 0/10 IGN
/s
The colors are so bland, and the "kurosawa mode" is better achieved in Sekiro
Kurosawa mode is just a grayscale filter. Kurosawa films aren't gray. They're black and white
The sekiro mod is nice too because it swaps the in-game music for jidaigeki soundtrack pieces (from Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, and Samurai Rebellion)
Oh sorry, did I say bland, I meant garish and distastefully ugly
they look vibrant and pretty to me
dunno how you can swing from "they are bland" to "they are garish" tbh
Misspoke, the gameplay looks bland, the colors look garish, story looks fash, my bad
fair enough, gameplay looks kinda fun to me and i dont do the whole masturbatory "politics in videogames" thing
I'm really disappointed by what I've seen so far, that it's basically Call of Duty: Bushido
Didn't phase me, but I've been listening to eat the rich pod while slicing through enemies in that game and barely paying attention to the plot.
I kept waiting for the Politics side of the plot to kick in and start saying Imperialism is bad. Never happened.
I need to update people on how dumb most of the game is.
Act 2 has the dumbest central conflict/climax.
spoiler
___The khan blows up a bridge killing a lot of samurai. Uncle says “we’ll fix the bridge and attack at dawn!” Jin points out the khan will do it again and more soldiers will be slaughtered. Uncle shouts “lol so what?!” Jin suggests sneaking in/anything other than betting the enemy will run out of bombs.
Jin sneaks in, does a poisoning. Uncle finds out and is really angry about the terror and fear Jin caused by killing people with poison abs sneaking instead of by having a mass suicide charge.
