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Dzhay posted:It seems to be mostly made out of cliffs and ghosts. I don't know why anyone's so keen on conquering it.
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Apr 6, 2020 11:23
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People outside of Ashiina are obsessed with not dying too.
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Apr 6, 2020 13:19
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paragon1 posted:People outside of Ashiina are obsessed with not dying too. Mostly they're unaware of the whole "it mostly doesn't work unless you don't mind becoming a walking infestation in the process" thing, I suspect 
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Apr 6, 2020 15:34
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Ciaphas posted:Mostly they're unaware of the whole "it mostly doesn't work unless you don't mind becoming a walking infestation in the process" thing, I suspect "No, I can figure out a way to do it right—those guys didn't do it scientifically/with pure motivation/with absolute faith/to pursue enlightenment, so I will clearly succeed where everyone else failed."
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Apr 6, 2020 17:10
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Albu-quirky Guy posted:I thought Soulslike by Square was FFXIII, which is why everyone hated it. I have no idea where you'd get this impression, the mechanics of FF13 bear no resemblance to Dark Souls (any more than any other FF game, anyway). The closest thing Square has made to a Soulsy game is playing Kingdom Hearts on hard mode, which... yeah. It's an RPG with a lock-on mechanic and you can do some interesting things with a parry/guard but that's about it.
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Apr 7, 2020 08:47
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bewilderment posted:I have no idea where you'd get this impression, the mechanics of FF13 bear no resemblance to Dark Souls (any more than any other FF game, anyway). I suspect he meant thematically in the "everything is hosed and your attempts to unfuck things only make them even worse; how the hell is that even possible!?" kind of world, rather than the unforgiving souls mechanics that have spread far and wide through gaming lately.
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Apr 7, 2020 13:58
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Good game.
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Apr 11, 2020 07:27
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 Dance with me
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Apr 11, 2020 20:01
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Considering the origin of the dragon, namely it's appearance and the 7 pronged sword it uses, it's probably Korean. When I first saw it I was reminded of one of the Korean legends I know about, King Munmu of Silla. King Munmu reunited the Korean peninsula and turned his attention to fortifying the sea from possible invasion from Japan. Unfortunately he grew ill. In his last will he (in addition to abdicating his throne to his son) wanted to be cremated with his ashes scattered into the eastern sea so 'he could become a dragon and thwart foreign invasion.' It's said that his son (King Sinmun) had a dream where his father said 'blow on the bamboo flute to calm the heavens and earth.' When he awoke he rode out to the sea and picked up a magic bamboo flute from there, with it being said that blowing on the flute would call upon the spirit of King Munmu, who would appear as a giant dragon to push back enemy troops, cure ailments and bring rain. And in the game both the nobles and the miniature dragons used flutes to do zany things. It's neat.
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Apr 12, 2020 01:23
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I think the young person you find before fighting the dragon is supposed to be Lord Takeru.
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Apr 12, 2020 01:26
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Always got major spirited away vibes from the dragon. This fight is always fascinating in just how surreal it is.
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Apr 12, 2020 02:04
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At first I was thinking "god Sekiro's a jerk, why not just talk to the dragon and ask politely for some tears", but then again those lesser things with the flutes are surely ascended nobles, right? And we already know they're all assholes who would try to murder anyone on sight who stumbled into their cloud-realm.
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Apr 12, 2020 02:26
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paragon1 posted:I think the young person you find before fighting the dragon is supposed to be Lord Takeru. Lord Takeru never made it back to the Divine Realm from my understanding, he and Tomoe were buried in Ashina having failed to create the Incense for whatever reason. Oh also, kind of neat thing about the Lizards that most people don't know. If you backstab them and use the imbuing ninjutsu you get different special swords. The Green Lizards give you a giant poison sword, and the White Lizards give you life steal (which suggests they're the origin of the vitality draining nobility). Personally the Dancing Dragon Mask is super pointless, because you're better off buying abilities especially because it's really hard to max out the abilities even through NG+ cycles. Like sure in a challenge run it gives you options for spending experience, but that sort of challenge run doesn't want the damage bonuses. The other guy is a treasonous bastard because the pot nobles both hate the other, and neither of them are truly aligned with the actual Nobles as far as I can tell. Given the corpse at the bottom of the Lake I'd say this is a repeated thing. There's an interesting theory I read about the Divine Child and the Rice which is that it's actually Centipede Eggs, and until now they've been alive. With her now creating "Fine Snow" they're frozen to death. This is not really likely but an interesting link to how the Centipedes in the Senpou Temple. Also, my favourite thing about the Divine Dragon is that this is the Moonlight Greatsword reference for Sekiro, it's a giant deformed pale dragon wielding a magical glowing sword that shoots beams. Also you can parry the wind blasts, this is super important to remember, and if you find yourself missing lock onto the dragon and Sekiro will generally aim at it with the lightning. You sadly cannot Mikiri Counter the wind thrust. Thus, you carve open it's tear ducts to take it's tears. Also here we go, Isshin finally keels over dead from his old age and so the Interior Ministry are attacking (because they're afraid of a 70 year old man).
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Apr 12, 2020 02:42
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Lord_Magmar posted:
They were right to be.
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Apr 12, 2020 02:51
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I like how Sekiro and Quest 64 have the same mechanics. You can always go back to the NPC for a bare minimum.
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Apr 12, 2020 08:30
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So the Divine Child was blinded by eating the snake viscera, and also . . . frozen? Frozen inside? Did she get turned into part snake herself, and now she's cold blooded?
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Apr 12, 2020 15:45
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Precambrian posted:"No, I can figure out a way to do it right—those guys didn't do it scientifically/with pure motivation/with absolute faith/to pursue enlightenment, so I will clearly succeed where everyone else failed." paragon1 posted:They were right to be. 
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Apr 12, 2020 17:07
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I love the Divine Dragon encounter, especially as a dramatic climax to the arc of preparing for immortal severance. The difficulty of the gameplay is scaled way back, so you can put on a good pair of headphones and sink into the visual and (beautifully-mixed IMO) aural spectacle. Whole thing feels cathartic in a way
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Apr 12, 2020 17:10
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Ciaphas posted:I love the Divine Dragon encounter, especially as a dramatic climax to the arc of preparing for immortal severance. The difficulty of the gameplay is scaled way back, so you can put on a good pair of headphones and sink into the visual and (beautifully-mixed IMO) aural spectacle. Whole thing feels cathartic in a way
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Apr 12, 2020 17:17
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So I note that the Divine Dragon is missing an arm (you can see the little stump where it's other one should be on that "shoulder" section of it's body), just like Orangutan and Wolf. I mean CLEARLY there is a thing here about missing arms but I don't get the meaning. Perhaps because it is has a connection to the sakura blossom tree that Lady Tomoe brought with her from the Divine Realm (which it's fought it) maybe the now dead tree growing in Ashina is from is the arm that is missing, severed and taken by her. Makes sense because the Anti-Lighting technique needed to fight the dragon, which Wolf learns from the scroll in Ashina castle would have been developed by Lady Tomoe because she was an Okami who fought using it (which is why Genichiro uses it too having being taught by her). We know that the Immortal Severance route is based on Tomoes quest to cure Lord Takero of the Dragons Heritage so more evidence she likely has had an encounter with the Divine Dragon herself. Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 14, 2020 15:50
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Always specifically left arms, too. Dunno if there's any special meaning there, though.
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Apr 14, 2020 16:10
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Generally the left arm is thought of as connected to the heart (see also, heart attack symptoms) and compassion, while the right arm is connected to martial prowess (due to righties being much more common than lefties). No idea if they were going for this, but it does fit the theme of compassion eroding in the wake of increasing war.
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Apr 14, 2020 17:02
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Ciaphas posted:Always specifically left arms, too. Dunno if there's any special meaning there, though. I don't know how the game ends but this has been bothering me too, it sticks out to the point where I'm expecting it to become something obvious and important during the ending.
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Apr 15, 2020 06:38
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No one's brought it up but I read somewhere of a theory that the Old Dragons of the Tree represent the Dragon Rot, and how Wolf killing them and having them replaced by healthier looking tree-dragon people is like cutting off the dead branches of a tree to save it. In the beginning of the fight the Divine Dragon/Tree looks withered and dead, and the Old Dragons look sickly and coughing up poison. It's only after Wolf kills them that the Tree blooms again with life.
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Apr 15, 2020 16:23
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The tree decaying might be the root cause () of the whole mess of weirdness going on in Ashina. The sickness was literally in the water.
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Apr 15, 2020 20:41
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 One of the hardest bosses, if not just outclassed by the final boss. Looks like good weather for an umbrella.
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Apr 18, 2020 20:01
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ThornBrain posted:
... wait, your Wolf didn't recognize who DoH was when talking to the NPC afterward? I distinctly remember the conversation going different for me and now I gotta google (edit) Hey, I remembered something right for once!  There is indeed slightly different dialogue there, if you hit every single eavesdrop between the Sculptor and Emma prior to beating the Divine Dragon.
Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Apr 18, 2020 |
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Apr 18, 2020 21:55
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There's a precious bait (and wreckage from the Palace) in a pool in the Guardian Ape's arena. Based on what she's wearing (specifically the gauzy shawl/scarf-like thing), the woman resting on the Divine Dragon's gravestone appears to be a tennin, sort of Japanese Buddhism's version of an angel or nymph. You can make the Shigekichi of the Red Guard fight much easier by using the spear to strip his chest armor off, although it takes two pulls to do it. You can also start the fight from the stairway idol, clear out the stairway area, sneak up on the alarm guy above Shigekichi, use the Bestowal ninjutsu, plunging attack to take off the first health bar, then just wale on him with your giant blood sword until it runs out.
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Apr 18, 2020 23:09
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As someone who bought this game based on watching you play it, I can confirm that as of the latest patch, you can still delightfully cheese the DoH. I gave up after about....10 tries. Because by this point I was loving done with the first playthrough. I have no idea how you'd cheese both him AND Gyobu, but thankfully I didn't have to find out.. Also I'm looking forward to your last boss fight. It was nightmare inducing for me.
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Apr 19, 2020 00:50
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Ciaphas posted:... wait, your Wolf didn't recognize who DoH was when talking to the NPC afterward? I distinctly remember the conversation going different for me and now I gotta google You also have to talk to the sculptor after the last eavesdrop where it’s revealed Emma has promised to strike him down if he becomes a demon. Where he basically asks Wolf do it instead to spare Emma that pain, and out of fear she might not succeed. As far as the Shura and then Demon stuff it’s basically what’s happening to Wolf in the ending if you agree with Owl. Likely for the Sculptor it was the death of Kingfisher which led him to fall into bloodlust and anger, Isshin stops the spread of Shura and this leaves the Sculptor empty of all but rage. When the war reaches it’s zenith he falls to that rage and becomes the Demon of Hatred, an embodiment of dead souls burning to strike down the Ministry that slaughters them.
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Apr 19, 2020 04:55
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You should do a supercut of that groin ball just jigglin set to Eye of the Tiger, because it wobbles like Rocky punching a speedbag.
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Apr 20, 2020 02:36
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So I just watched through all of this over the weekend and had a couple lore questions (which maybe don't have definitive answers): 1) If Genichiro became immortal from drinking the Rejuvenating Sediment, what did he need Kuro for? 2) Was the Fountainhead Palace and everything resulting from it always bad, or has it gone bad after previously being good? The whole setup seems like something that would have gone bad extremely fast, but it seems to have only happened over the past few years (assuming things were normal when Isshin conquered Ashina). Also, one of the old women in the Fountainhead Palace says the doors of the palace used to be open but now they're closed, which makes me think something bad happened to cause them to close. Or am I misunderstanding how long the Fountainhead Palace has been around? Did it start with Takeru? 3) I had thought when we got the Temple that all the bad stuff was caused by the Senpou monks' pursuit of immortality, but if the Fountainhead Palace was always bad then why were the monks ever good in the first place? What made them decide to go after immortality like they have?
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Apr 20, 2020 03:27
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The Rejuvenating Sediment causes cheap, knock-off immortality like Mibu Village in the Ashina Depths; Kuro has the kind of genuine immortality that everyone is trying to imitate. As for how long things have been bad? I feel like the current state is the result of decades or more of steady decline rather than something that happened quickly.
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Apr 20, 2020 03:52
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My impression was that the Fountainhead and its waters have been around for a long time, but it's only in the past few decades that things went bad: people (like Genichiro and the monks) started to abuse its powers and try to induce immortality through artificial means, and the waters overflowed and caused all sorts of problems downstream, e.g. in Mibu village. That's why the Palace is flooded and in ruins, and the doors are closed. Whether these two things are connected isn't really clear.
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Apr 20, 2020 04:03
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Kuro's immortality pact is the 'best' one out of all the options, at least for the person who's immortal. Everything else kind of sucks. Mostly because it involves bugs living in you or you turning into a fish. (Or maybe living as a weird zombie ghost thing.) Ostensibly he can grant that pact to multiple people at once, so y'know. A squad of immortal warriors is a lot better than a single one. There's not a lot said about the Sediment in game, just that Emma's teacher Dogen researched it (and likely provided a stepping stone for the Senpou Monks to work with.) One of the themes of the game is that immortality (or the search of) corrupts. The Fountainhead Palace and Mibu village are sort of mirrors/bookends of each other. Both were perfectly fine places until they got a taste of the waters and then went bonkers from it. Mibu village got the worst of it because they're near the end of the river (thus they're all undying zombie ghost things) while the Nobles of the palace got really obsessed with the fish that lived in the river. The bad thing that caused the palace gates to close was probably the Nobles going all cannibalistic on each other in the palace (as seen when Wolf opens the side door.) That was probably pretty recent considering the mess and that they were still at it. The Fountainhead Palace has certainly been around since Takeru's time. Mibu village had a whole tradition of 'brides' getting picked up by Giant Straw Man to be dropped of there before they went insane. As for the Senpou Monks, like Mibu village and the Palace Nobles, they got a taste of immortality and decided to pursue it instead of Nirvana. Unlike Genichiro or Dogen though, they didn't settle for second best. They used second best (the centipedes) to further their development of the Divine Child, basically another Kuro. Except instead of granting immortality, she grants rice instead. I imagine they went 'welp, this is our only success out of however many hundreds of other children we tried this on. Nirvana's probably not an option anymore. I guess centipedes are pretty cool.' and then they sat around forever until Wolf shows up and maybe Mortal Blade's them. 1 doesn't have a definitive answer, while 2 and 3 have pretty strong thematic ones.
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Apr 20, 2020 04:08
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I had assumed the cannibalism was a result of the gates closing and now theres nothing to eat.
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Apr 20, 2020 04:41
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The gates were locked from the inside. Where all the Nobles were chowing down. That implies a 'no one cares' or 'ate the gatekeeper' scenario. Especially since the side door worked fine and wasn't locked.
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Apr 20, 2020 05:38
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My theory's still that the Fountainhead Palace was running a very orderly immortality pyramid scheme, where they used the promise of immortality to get everyone beneath them to serve the tranche above. So the big fish get fed by the nobles, the nobles get brides from Mibu, and so on. The old ladies mourning their father, the big fish guy, makes it seem like they recruited servants by promising they would get to live forever. The system started to get messed up, though, with the region's instability, and the people on the lower tiers realized they could just kill the people above them to move up the ranks. So the Pot Noble assassinates the fish, the nobles start murdering each other, the Temple starts murdering kids to skip the line, everyone starts killing each other as the whole thing goes to hell. From the murdered fish at the bottom of the lake releasing centipedes into the river, the "murder your way up the ranks" thing probably has been secretly how this has always worked, but they kept themselves fairly orderly until recently where the whole system finally collapsed all at once when the water overflowed. Kuro, I think, is separate from this, since his Actual Immortality means he doesn't need anything from the people beneath him, while the imperfect immortality that comes from the runoff of his Actual Immortality makes people violent and possessive as they try to get closer to the real deal. Precambrian fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Apr 20, 2020 |
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Apr 20, 2020 06:09
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There’s a caste of nobles and a caste of warriors at Fountainhead Palace, and no caste of laborers to grow food or repair the more dilapidated buildings.
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Apr 20, 2020 06:19
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Takeru, and therefore Kuro, are almost definitely related to the Fountainhead Palace, because they’re the Children of the Dragon’s Heritage, and we just fought said dragon. If I had to guess, the Dragon is newish and the cause of everything going to relative poo poo. As it’s roots spread into the fountainhead it changed the waters and that led to everything else.
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Apr 20, 2020 07:08
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