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Audio interface troubles resolved! Had an impressive gauntlet of nonsense to run for two straight weeks but I've finally got a mixer that doesn't have insurmountable problems this time. Should we be able to record a part or two this week, the LP will resume on Saturday. It's a major one, so I'm sorry to have to keep putting it off. In the meantime, Jacob, his partner CJ, and I streamed some Jackbox the other night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOAPivS1D0M
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Mar 1, 2020 09:56
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| # ? Jun 9, 2024 08:57 |
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This Let's Play finally convinced me to buy the game and now I'm on the final boss and I really need you to finish this because I'm pretty sure it's impossible....
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Mar 3, 2020 05:35
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Great LP, happy that you fixed your tech issues. I'm happy I found this since I kept hearing how much everyone loved Sekiro without any elaboration of why they loved it. The only thing anyone would say about the game (other than that they loved it) was that it was hard as balls, which left me confused why so many people liked it so much. Watching this LP, I can see why. The environments and levels are fantastic, it's a well-realized 3rd-person metroidvania with a ton of vertical mobility- probably something that's never been done before. The lore is deep but also only as present as you need it to be. It still looks hard as balls so I won't bother playing it but I appreciate that someone else is.
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Mar 3, 2020 23:33
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UnSmith posted:This Let's Play finally convinced me to buy the game and now I'm on the final boss and I really need you to finish this because I'm pretty sure it's impossible.... The thread in Games is talking about said final boss on the last page; ask in there with what's giving you trouble and people like me will fall all over themselves to offer advice solicited and not
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Mar 4, 2020 01:04
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 The LP returns with the first and darkest of the endings. The game pretty clearly tells me I made the wrong decision.
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Mar 7, 2020 21:02
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You can keep the friendly shinobi in the Lone Shadow fight alive by deathblowing and re-Pupeteering him, that restores his health. He's quite useful for drawing the miniboss' attention.
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Mar 8, 2020 00:23
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It was very wrong decision, yes. Worst dad.
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Mar 8, 2020 08:43
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NHO posted:It was very wrong decision, yes. On the other hand, the idiot got a good stabbin', and we got a kick rear end flaming arm AND another rad sword, so it's impossible to say if it's good or not,
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Mar 8, 2020 16:00
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I kinda like my "bad" endings to be "welp, I guess that's that!" and finding out on the true/good route just how bad that really ended up being in retrospect. The DS game Rondo of Swords was interesting because there a major A/B path split halfway through. The Good A/Good B are wildly different, but the bad ends in both routes seem waaay worse when you see the results of the good endings. On the other hand, you have say, Bloodborne, where the "bad" ending is arguably the best one for your character than the "good" ending or the true ending 
Bellmaker fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Mar 8, 2020 |
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Mar 8, 2020 18:35
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As blatantly a bad idea as it is, it's nice that they give you the choice. But have I been really not paying attention or has the subject of Shura, or us getting posessed by it, really come up before now? Also I was half expecting the sculptor to turn up and go all dragonball z on you or something. Given that Sekiro is so much a love letter to samurai/ninja movies, it's fitting that there are so many great fights against other people with swords, as opposed to fighting things that don't have swords.
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Mar 9, 2020 11:24
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Crazy Achmed posted:As blatantly a bad idea as it is, it's nice that they give you the choice.
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Mar 9, 2020 13:26
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Crazy Achmed posted:As blatantly a bad idea as it is, it's nice that they give you the choice. But have I been really not paying attention or has the subject of Shura, or us getting posessed by it, really come up before now? The little old lady you meet near the Tengu talks about it- apparently Gyoubu was a potential vessel. Also, Isshin, Emma, and the Sculptor all talk about it if you give them the right drinks.
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Mar 9, 2020 15:32
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So I guess in this ending, Sekiro becomes a Japanese equivilent of Jason Vorhees. At least until his arm breaks, but that's still a harrowing thought.
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Mar 9, 2020 19:22
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I don't think this ending was particularly well done, with Sekiro just going demon all out of nowhere. He could have just been shown to serve under Owl as the man who he chose to be loyal to in the end. And even if you wanted to have this be a bad ending, what you could have done instead was show Wolf performing ritual suicide after helping Owl achieve his goal and have the final shot be a dying Sekiro kneeling down next to the bodies of Emma and Isshin as the estate burns around him. At least, that would be how I'd have written it. The demonic transformation in the end makes it framed like this was a choice between good and evil, when really it was set up as a choice to ask the player which of Sekiro's two masters more deserve his loyalty. Dominicius fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 10:03
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If you choose the other option Sekiro speaks up and it's clear there's a distinct difference between Owl and Kuro. Sekiro is loyal to Owl because that's the Code, but he chooses to follow Kuro's plan because he thinks that's genuinely the right thing to do in his mind. Imo it's this conflict that causes Sekiro to become Shura if he decides to abandon Kuro, literally the only person that he truly believes in
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Mar 10, 2020 10:27
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Dominicius posted:The demonic transformation in the end makes it framed like this was a choice between good and evil, when really it was set up as a choice to ask to ask the player which of Sekiro's two masters more deserve his loyalty. The fact Shura is not really well-defined doesn't really help in this situation, but going Shura is presented as going out of (self-)control and giving into bloodlust, something that doesn't seem too far-fetched when you're a killer who just got the only code he lives by twisted and broken. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 10:41
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anilEhilated posted:We don't have all the info on Owl and the Dragon's Lineage yet. I think it makes sense for the pursuit of it to corrupt Sekiro See, that is where the problem stems from, because I was never under the impression that Wolf was pursuing the Dragon's Legacy until apparently he was? I thought the clash of loyalties was the driving conflict in that scene, which is why I believe ritual suicide would have been a much more fitting conclusion for Wolf forsaking Kuro.
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Mar 10, 2020 14:45
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Wolf isn't pursuing it, Owl is (and has been for a while but that is spoiler territory). Wolf is pledging himself to his cause (however short-lived it turns out to be) in this ending and he has already achieved (limited) immortality. At the end, there's nothing really left of him - he betrayed his master, killed his father, broke his code; all he has is rage. I think the important part here is that Wolf has access to some part of Dragon's Legacy already, which is what keeps bringing him back when he dies. This kind of power can and will corrupt (as we saw at Senpou with the centipede monks) and breaking his oath to Kuro just pushes Wolf over the edge. Not sure if any of that makes sense, tbh. Your interpretation may be just as valid or more. e: I keep getting the name wrong: Dragon Blood. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 18:53
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Still catching up, but just got to the point where you got the Senpou esoteric text. Senpou Leaping Kicks, and the extended version, High Monk were some of my favorite combat arts in the game. High Monk was pretty much my standard from my 2nd playthrough on. It works as a powerful sweep counter, and is just a nice attack string that also closes some distance with the enemy. E: Also, easy way to beat the 2nd Guardian Ape fight, you can actually just run up to the ape bride and throw 4 or 5 firecrackers. Each one will do a huge chunk of posture damage, and you can get a super fast deathblow off. Sacrificial Toast fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 20:22
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Can we wind back and talk about how the Guardian Ape managed to get a mate while being an undead abomination carrying around his own head.
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Mar 11, 2020 00:03
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Morrow posted:Can we wind back and talk about how the Guardian Ape managed to get a mate while being an undead abomination carrying around his own head. She’s a ghost of his actual mate. You can find her bones up where she jumps down from and if you kill the Guardian Ape first she just fades away. Also little tidbits about the Shura ending. Kuro is almost certainly not dead, but I suspect wishes he was, because Wolf’s immortality is based on Kuro’s blood and cannot be taken back. As you may recall, Emma is blind, and of course Isshin is literally dying; they’re collectively one of the hardest fights in the game and part of that is they have an almost unique moveset. Isshin uses some of the Ashina Elite’s moves but otherwise he and Emma have a very unique stance, reflecting their relative physical weakness compared to Genichiro who presumably uses the same stance Isshin used to use. Considering how Isshin developed the Ashina style, the fire moves are things he likely learnt from fighting Orangutan to save him from becoming Shura. Also, this Isshin can do something literally no other enemy in the game ever intentionally attempts, which is he can sidestep to dodge your sword. The implication of this ending is that Wolf never actually cared for these people, he just enjoyed killing and they provided an avenue for it. Basically they’re playing up his emotional distance as a form of psychopathic bloodlust for this ending. Leading him to become a demonic killer of everyone who stands before him. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Mar 11, 2020 |
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Mar 11, 2020 00:13
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Lord_Magmar posted:The implication of this ending is that Wolf never actually cared for these people, he just enjoyed killing and they provided an avenue for it. Basically they’re playing up his emotional distance as a form of psychopathic bloodlust for this ending. Leading him to become a demonic killer of everyone who stands before him. This makes a twisted kind of sense if you extrapolate that the only thing keeping Wolf from murdering everyone around him was the Iron Code. Take that away and... well you see what you get.
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Mar 11, 2020 01:41
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Albu-quirky Guy posted:This makes a twisted kind of sense if you extrapolate that the only thing keeping Wolf from murdering everyone around him was the Iron Code. Take that away and... well you see what you get. Pretty much, forsaking Kuro for Owl means forsaking a child’s trust just to attain power and more enemies to slay. There’s also information Wolf currently has that the player may not have worked out yet that explains why this ending goes the way it does after killing Isshin.
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Mar 11, 2020 02:26
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There is also repeated talk about karma, and how you take on the karma of those you kill. Wolf has killed...........a lot of people. This ending can be seen as Wolfs karma catching up to him, much like a certain event later on. Anyways about the boss fight: its secretly a three parter of the same boss. You see Emma and Isshin use the exact same stance and moves, except Isshin kicks up three notches. And id belive the fire moves are all about Isshin doing whatever he needs to win his fights. Its how hes lived and won for all these years. Also where is it ever said that Emma is blind? Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Mar 11, 2020 |
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Mar 11, 2020 05:49
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I might be confusing her with the sculptor but I’m sure that she asks to see your face when you first meet her and she is implied to be feeling it to see it.
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Mar 11, 2020 06:17
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Isshin using fire moves is fun because the implied in-universe explanation is that he swings his sword so hard that the air pressure fans the flames.
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Mar 11, 2020 06:21
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Lord_Magmar posted:I might be confusing her with the sculptor but I’m sure that she asks to see your face when you first meet her and she is implied to be feeling it to see it. I am pretty sure it is the sculptor who is blind as he never makes eye contact with anyone, even when adjusting Wolf's prosthetic arm. Those massive cataracts are also a pretty obvious giveaway. Even when she is looking at Wolf's face, she outright asks about a "white mark" by its colour. She also has various ingame poses where she is looking at and inspecting specific things very closely. Though it wouldn't surprise me if in some translations Emma is implied to have bad eyesight regardless. This is old-timey japan, and nobody knows glasses are a thing yet.
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Mar 11, 2020 06:39
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Yeah, bad eyesight might be what I was interpreting, she can see colour but not detail or only see things up close. Because it’s definitely implied she needs you to do something for her to see your face properly.
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Mar 11, 2020 07:08
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Granted, she is a doctor, and she might have just been doing her job by getting in close and feeling around Wolf's scalp by whatever definition of medicinal diagnosis existed for the time. Things may have changed from that historical period, but I'd imagine attention to detail has been a constant, personal space be damned. Either way, the only character in the game that has proper access to eyewear is the See No Evil Monkey, and even that might just be metaphorical. Emma's characterization is interesting to me. It's clear and obvious that the archetype she was supposed to be the yamato nadeshiko, but despite the common stereotypes of demure femininity, there really isn't a good one-to-one way of communicating the specifics of that in English. Despite the weirdness in translation in specific parts of the English script, I actually liked Emma's English VA over her original Japanese VA. The Japanese dub had her so demure and soft-spoken I literally could not hear a single thing she was saying over the comparatively deafening volume of the environmental ambiance. Meanwhile, her English performance sounds like the only thing the VA felt she could rely on for her characterization was "oh, she says she's a doctor," and just leaned into that for everything.
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Mar 11, 2020 09:20
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Wait, it's been a while but Wolf is an orphan adopted by Owl in the intro sequence, right? I figured that choosing to side wirh Kuro would be more of a "you're not my real dad!" moment. [edit]Also intensified by Owl being abusive enough to pretend he was dead for ages, then turn up and pull the "hey son, remember I'm your dad, let me try to emotionally blackmail you into letting me take over the province/country for my own selfish gain" Crazy Achmed fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Mar 11, 2020 |
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Mar 11, 2020 11:33
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Morroque posted:I am pretty sure it is the sculptor who is blind as he never makes eye contact with anyone, even when adjusting Wolf's prosthetic arm. Those massive cataracts are also a pretty obvious giveaway. Ah so the ghost monkey gets glasses but Emma doesnt Very fair
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Mar 11, 2020 11:59
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they're ghost glasses anyway, they'd just fall through Emma's face
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Mar 11, 2020 12:50
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You kind of have to believe that Wolf's already on the verge of becoming a Shura at this point. Killing's all he's really ever known, and all that's holding him back are his loyalties to his master, and to the iron code his supposedly deceased father taught him. Now his father reappears after having deceived Wolf and tells him to betray one of his loyalties. Accepting that decision already betrays a major lack of compassion, and after that, well, just one more to go and he can just kill whoever he wants.
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Mar 11, 2020 22:28
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Emma's just near-sighted with very good reflexes to deflect shuriken.
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Mar 11, 2020 22:39
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RareAcumen posted:Emma's just near-sighted with very good reflexes to deflect shuriken. Or was prepared for betrayal and acted on sound cues, but this is a good point against ocular weakness in Emma your not wrong. Also yeah, the next episode will spell out the last bit of knowledge for why this ending goes the way it does. There’s something wolf knows (potentially subconsciously) that the player has the ability to figure out right now but has not had it be explicitly stated.
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Mar 12, 2020 04:23
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Sacrificial Toast posted:You kind of have to believe that Wolf's already on the verge of becoming a Shura at this point. This is, in fact, very true.
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Mar 12, 2020 05:18
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In a way, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is just another exploration on the themes of violence that have been explored in Undertale.
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Mar 12, 2020 05:24
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RareAcumen posted:In a way, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is just another exploration on the themes of violence that have been explored in Undertale. The games are virtually identical if you think about it
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Mar 12, 2020 11:57
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"Please, for the sake of my son... turn back" "No." Sekiro does not give a gently caress.
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Mar 12, 2020 12:16
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| # ? Jun 9, 2024 08:57 |
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 The Iron Code is easy to break when you fight with STEEL. Plus: the most bizarre and glorious cutscene in the game.
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Mar 14, 2020 20:02
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