Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice may be a bit of a departure for From Software, but, like all the studio's recent work, it's resurrected the discussion regarding difficulty in video games.
Most commonly expressed, there is a fear that lowering difficulty levels would somehow detract from the quality of the game. A lot of the discussion around difficulty is simplistic, to say the least. It's often as simplistic as "git gud". Today I'd like to examine difficulty and a game's sense of challenge specifically through the lens of disability. Disabled gamers adapt to challenges every day, so why stop at games?
The way I see it, an easy mode designed with disabled gamers in mind should basically group various accessibility options together to allow disabled gamers to enjoy the same experiences as other players. Game designers want people to play their games. Accessibility enables challenging games to be made playable by removing the unnecessary barriers forced upon us. It's not making the game easier, but rather tailoring the experience to the broadest range of players.
I'm not sure where the hivemind is at re: Shrek, but I'm quite averse to him. Maybe as I age and attain greater emotional intelligence, I'll be able to deconstruct my ill-will towards Shrek. Is it the dopey smile? Is it his association with Smashmouth? Whatever the reason might be, I'm happy he's now modded into Sekiro as an enemy.
Thanks to modders Dropoff and Katalash, you can now replace the chained ogre mini-boss with Shrek. It's quite well done, as you can see in the below embedded Tweet:
I haven't finished Sekiro and never will, so seeing one of the game's early difficulty spikes suffer the indignity of being Shrek pleases me greatly. You can check out the mod here.
No expansions have been announced yet for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but FromSoft's previous games, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, have received important story expansions. They tend to tie up a lot of dangling story points (while delivering some exceptional boss fights and beautiful new areas), and Sekiro certainly has plenty of mysteries to explore. Let's take a guess at some new places a Sekiro expansion could go. Fingers crossed there's one in development!
Warning: the following contains a ton of spoilers for all of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
You hear about Tomoe quite a lot throughout the game, in ability descriptions and booze chats, and in Genichiro’s second form when he uses Tomoe’s lightning techniques. She was a powerful warrior, almost able to outclass Isshin, and she either found a way to reach the Fountainhead Palace or originated from there. She appears to be dead during the events of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but as the Hirata Estate area shows, From games can easily travel through time.
Dark Souls and Bloodborne's expansions both served as prequels. There's clearly a lot of history between the Owl, Lady Butterfly, Isshin and Tomoe that a Sekiro expansion could really dig into, but Tomoe is the most mysterious of the bunch. Was she a human who managed to reach the Fountainhead Palace, or one of the Okami? Why did she teach Genichiro her arts, and what was her clan like? What was her relationship to Takeru and why did he take the branch to the mortal realm? An expansion could tie a few of these questions up, and Tomoe would probably make for a great boss fight.
To the era of Isshin's prime
If you side with the Owl when he asks you to betray the young lord, you learn that Isshin and Emma are obsessed with killing Shura. Shura are individuals who have fallen into a killing frenzy and are on a path to demonhood. If you reach one of the longer endings you discover that the Sculptor's visions of rising flames were a prophecy forseeing his transformation into a fiery demon of hatred. In the Shura ending Sekiro's left arm catches alight and he goes on to kill thousands throughout Japan.
This is interesting because Isshin makes several references to having faced Shura before. He's also credited with building the Ashina clan up and squashing rebellions during his prime. Who were the shura that Isshin hunted in this era? In the main game you can wheedle a few secrets out of him if you give him enough booze, but I'd take an expansion that explores his past in more detail.
To the west
In one of Sekiro's endings the Wolf leaves Japan with the Divine Child and makes for the west to "the birthplace of the Divine Dragon". That's a great setup for a sequel, but an expansion could cover it too. The setup has obvious parallels to Journey to the West. Could we see Sekiro travel to China?
'The west' is rarely mentioned in the game, except for one curious description explaining that the Divine Dragon came from the west and put down roots in Japan (perhaps because of the area's rich earth, which supposedly attracts gods). Before you fight the dragon's full form you chop through dozes of corrupted, vomiting dragons of the old tree. Is their dragon's sickness caused by the infestation you fight throughout Sekiro, or did the dragon bring it from the west? Why did the dragon travel to Japan in the first place? Why is it, too, missing its left arm?
An expansion could also do more to explain how the Divine Heirs work, and reveal how immortality, the Palace waters, carps, and Fountainhead nobles all fit together. Failing that, an expansion could always go deeper into the Divine Realm, which would mean more gorgeous palaces and cool gods to fight.
For more on the game, check out our roundup of the best Sekiro mods, and catch a glimpse of the upcoming Sekiro manga spin-off, which looks excellent.
I'd love to know what passers-by would make of the sight of this bunch creating this video. It recreates a couple of Sekiro's outstanding boss fights and features an idol made of people.
I love the attention to detail, like the state of the poor near-dead NPC, and the moment when Sekiro flexes as though the player has just tapped block while running around. Sekiro fights Lady Butterfly in what looks like an abandoned parking lot, and Gyoubu Oniwa rides a boxy horse, even managing to copy the boss' attack patterns.
I award additional bonus points for real life Shinobi candy, and very good use of authentic Sekiro UI and sound effects.
We're still obsessed with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Samuel's Sekiro brain levelled up when he fought Genichiro, and I've been searching for more great mods for our best Sekiro mods roundup. If you want to know what all the fuss is about, check our our Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review.
Haha, that was funny last week wasn’t it! Remember how we did that whole bit where I had left RPS, but then I was still stuck writing Steam Charts? Heh, they do some good goofs at this site. Anyway, let’s… [looks straight into camera]
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's Hanbei the Undying is a handy NPC, sticking around to let you beat him up as you hone your skills. As his name suggests, he can deal with a lot of punishment. He's also the subject of a new spin-off Manga that's in the works, starting on May 27.
Sekiro Gaiden: Shinazu Hanbei looks like it will fill in some of the cursed warrior's history, mostly with blood. Check out the extremely gory sample below.
Like its predecessors, Sekiro is light on exposition and it makes you work for every scrap of story. Much easier to just put your feet up and ready a grisly comic instead. It's being supervised by FromSoftware and Monster Hunter: Flash Hunter's Shin Yamamoto is on art duties.
It'll launch on the Comic Walker website on May 27 and it's also been licensed by US-based graphic novel publisher Yen Press, which also teased the story.
"The Sengoku Era…A time when losing a battle meant losing it all. The Sword Saint, Isshin Ashina, aims for world domination…That is, until he encounters a certain Samurai…"
A few weeks ago, a purple swordsman bullied me relentlessly in Sekiro. Most players have probably met him: he's near the bamboo thicket slope idol in the Hirata Estate flashback sequence, not long before you fight Lady Butterfly. I was probably slightly too early in the game to take him on, but kept throwing myself at him all the same. At the end of a long evening of trying, I quit Sekiro in a huff, decided this was yet another From Software game I'd never crack, and prepared to move on to something less stressful.
Except, I didn't quit Sekiro. I went back to the game a day later, and I persevered. This Sengoku period-infused grim setting—where the pervasive obsession with immortality is decaying everything—was too compelling for me to walk away from. I recently found that purple swordsman again and killed him the first time. He was a piece of piss. That's because I'd already beaten the game's Genichiro Ashina boss—and like a lot of players, I define my time with Sekiro as pre and post-Genichiro. He teaches you the game by kicking your ass over and over again. I understand things about the game now that I only thought I understood before that boss fight. It took me at least 30 attempts to beat him. I skipped that cutscene preceding the duel a lot.
I imagine Genichiro Ashina is the biggest separation point for players who give up on the game and those who persevere to the finish. I'm far from done with Sekiro—I just beat Snake Eyes Shirahagi this morning in the Ashina Depths before work, and I haven't killed anything that requires Divine Confetti yet—but I can't see any further difficulty bumps making me give up at this point. The Guardian Ape took me four or five attempts to beat. Sub bosses that would've taken me tens of attempts before are now taking three or four tries. Instead of getting angry with enemies like I did with the purple swordsman, I just reconfigure and calmly try again.
Genichiro Ashina, you broke my brain. But you saved me.
Turning point
If this boss fight wasn't as well-designed as it is, I don't think the player's journey through Sekiro would hold together as effectively. This trial-by-fire teaches you how to parry and dodge properly, but it does so without the player necessarily realise they're learning through failure—only afterwards did I discover that parrying had almost become second nature, and not a move where I'd frequently flub the timing. This fight slowly transforms you into the precise, deadly wraith that the game needs you to be.
In its second phase, the fight stops being a straightforward duel, and Genichiro starts throwing lightning strikes at you, which you can either deflect or dodge. This part of the fight is about teaching you to expect surprises in Sekiro—say, if a poo-throwing ape happens to come back to life with no head—and to acclimatise on the fly against new threats. It's the model the rest of the game is built on.
I don't have much of a history with From's games, which is why I'm surprised Sekiro has swept Devil May Cry 5 aside in my Steam library and dominated my spare time this year. I've seen people say it's harder than previous Souls games, or Bloodborne—but personally I find Sekiro much easier to grasp. I understand its parry system, which I didn't in Bloodborne. There aren't many abstract systems to figure out and no equippable items, and the stats are so simple that you can focus on swordplay and move sets.
After Sekiro, I'll probably go back to those games, and see if anything I've learned will help me out. I finally understand the appeal of From's games, past the videos breaking down lore and extra-tedious discussions about difficulty, and get that these are singular works. FromSoftware has made a whole bunch of games that are roughly in this vein now—but it's the twists on Sekiro versus its other works that have made it specifically appeal to me. It's a masterful sword combat game, which is something I've always been looking for, going back to the Jedi Knight series.
I can't wait to see how else the developer plays with this template in future—and hopefully it'll pick up many more converts like me along the way.
In many ways, FromSoftware games are inextricably intertwined with speedrunning and challenge runs. Perhaps it's the fact they're designed to be difficult that makes series veterans long for an even greater challenge, or maybe players create almost insurmountable obstacles purely for the sake of their viewers' entertainment. Either way, Dark Souls and Bloodborne have retained their relevance for years post-release thanks to these self-sacrificing runners. It's no wonder, then, the speedrunning scene in Sekiro is already shaping up nicely.
Souls veteran LobosJR has been running FromSoftware games for years, even having completed runs without healing or levelling up. Although he's a talented speedrunner, he's perhaps best known for his challenge runs, during which he outlines a strict list of rules he must abide by. One of the most iconic examples of this was when he completed Dark Souls using only his character's fists.
"What I love about From's games are their core combat mechanics, and Sekiro has taken these to the next level," Lobos explains. "By basing the combat on 'deflecting', the equivalent of parrying in Souls, fighting has evolved to fast-paced back and forth with an enemy... mastering the combat is trickier than ever, and trying to learn enemy AI is more intriguing."
Sekiro's Great Serpent appears several times throughout the game, so you'll have plenty of chances to feast your eyes on Thomas' eerily unblinking face. You don't get to hear his theme tune, sadly, but he will blow an amusingly squeaky whistle just before he attacks.
Don't expect much in the way of animation work: this really is just a replacement for the front portion of the snake, so Thomas will jerk and twist in unnatural ways, but it's good for a laugh or two.
To install it, first grab the Sekiro Mod Engine here and then follow the instructions on the mod's Nexus page.
If you're looking for something slightly more serious, check out this mod, which adds on-demand elemental damage to your katana. For more, check out our roundup of the best Sekiro mods.
Another day, another Thomas the Tank Engine mod - this time, for the PC version of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
While we've already seen Thomas' terrifying visage pop up in a number of unexpected places - including Fallout 4 and the remake of Resident Evil 2 - now he's playing understudy for the Great Serpent in Sekiro.
The mod - called Thomas the Snake Engine, naturally - is available now via Nexus Mods (thanks, PCGN). It even includes the chilling toot-toot of his whistle.
