A Shinobi, his young master
and the man who separates them...
this is how Sekiro begins.
Busshi: "So you're awake..."
"Looks like death is not your fate...just yet."
The old man speaking is named Busshi,
who is a hermit in an abandoned temple.
While the player-character was unconscious,
the teaser trailer for Shadows Die Twice took place,
and Busshi fashioned for us a new limb.
This prosthetic arm is called "Ningishu".
Or as the hermit puts it
the perfect fangs for a one-armed wolf.
Busshi: "You'll learn to appreciate its worth".
And so we're aptly named "Sekiro"
the wolf who is one half of a pair.
It's really clever wordplay
as the missing half of a pair
could be referring to the arm we lost
But it could also be referring to the young lord
that was taken from us in the beginning
in both senses of the word
We play as a character who is defined by his missing half...
so I felt it's only fitting that we split this video in two:
just like the name Sekiro,
one video for the story of our missing Lord,
and one video for the gameplay Implications
of our prosthetic arm,
because this arm can be fitted with many different attachments
and we know of five so far.
So first: the axe.
It's thrown into our own hand here
to crush the guards of shield-bearing enemies, you know,
just like in Dark Souls 3,
leaving them open to a critical strike.
But our second attachment
the one after this is far more innovative
It's a grappling hook
and if I had to guess
I bet we lock on to available roofs and ledges with R3
You know, just like we lock on to enemies
because later in the trailer
We see the character lock onto an enemy and
do a grappling hook attack onto them as well
So as game-changing as it is to grappling hook an enemy
and dash onto them
it has even more implications
when you think about level design
because it opens up this level of verticality to the maps
that we've literally never experienced in 'Souls' before
It's gonna be so sick,
because when you think about it
'Souls' is really limited by ladders and fall damage
But in the time it takes you
to climb a ladder in Dark Souls,
you would have already scaled that height in Sekiro
and had extra time left over to leap off of the ledge,
ambushing an enemy far below all in the blink of an eye.
So just really huge gameplay implications there
but moving on.
The third attachment has us
swiftly unsheath a steel conical hat
as a sort of emergency temporary shield.
This implies that some attacks can't be deflected
with our sword
and we'll talk a little bit about that later.
But the fourth attachment you might have missed:
you see it when our character scatters small fireworks before the horse
startling it
a better angle of this move is
actually seen in this screenshot here
where you can actually see the firecracker blinding an enemy.
And finally, the fifth attachment.
It's not actually seen in the trailer
but I doubt anyone's gonna be surprised
by what this cannon attachment does.
It reminds me a lot of
Guts' hand cannon arm from 'Berserk' actually,
and thinking about this prosthetic arm,
it is good to know that they're still going strong
with their 'Berserk' inspiration.
So if it isn't blatantly obvious already
Sekiro is clearly 'Souls-like'
it's surely the game that Miyazaki said
would 'comply with the expectations of fans
in a straightforward manner'.
It has all the tell-tale signs,
it's got a nameless protagonist
for character customization;
it has an emphasis on difficulty that kills you;
and it also has combat that's been tweaked
just enough to make it distinct from other titles.
And I think I've figured out what makes it largely distinct
from Souls and Bloodborne
(although I could be wrong)
but, think about Bloodborne for example:
what's at the core of its combat?
It's the insanely quick dash ability.
And what about Dark Souls?
Well at the core of its combat for most players is
the fact that its shields
can block the majority of damage.
And then look at Sekiro:
the dash is certainly slower than in Bloodborne and
and Samurai were
that they were abandoning the shield matter
around that point in history.
So what's left
is swordplay:
deflection, counter-attacks and
the concept of giving no ground to your opponent.
The trailer has tons of examples of this
and I've actually never seen a Souls-borne gameplay trailer
with so much parrying,
which to me is evidence that we're going to be experiencing
a sort of swordplay that is on a higher level
than in previous titles.
And it's really likely, I think, that the swordplay is
enhanced with the ability to use specific attack moves
almost as if you would use a spell or a weapon art in Dark Souls
So we'll talk a bit more about that now.
Notice how the player's sword glints in certain moments.
And have you noticed that red ancient Japanese text
seen here:
and off to the side here as well?
So it's totally up for debate what these mean,
but I feel like they indicate that
our character might have access to
special abilities, skills and attacks,
some of which might only be possible
by a successful deflection or two,
because he only ever uses them
after he deflects an attack twice.
And the opponent's we face
are just as capable of this as we are:
notice how the opponent's sword glints
right before he attempts this:
this double-handed dive attack onto the player
and this attack is coupled with a red symbol,
which you can see is generated from his character,
not ours.
So it's difficult to identify what this character says
but the symbol seems to serve as a visual warning
and it looks a lot like
an ancient Japanese symbol for 'danger'.
And I could be wrong,
but I believe that it's an alert
to sort of help you in fast-paced combat,
to assist you in recognizing
when you're about to be hit by a special attack,
and these attacks
might have to be blocked with this special hat shield,
or dodged, as the same symbol
appears here in the fight with the horseman
and the player dodges it there in response.
For those with a keen eye,
you would have noticed that
another of these symbols actually goes off
in the trailer when the player is resurrected.
It seems that he really does have to die twice,
and it's almost as if this passive resurrection ability is
activating along with this symbol.
In this situation,
what I'm pretty sure is going down is
the enemy believes that Sekiro is dead
and Sekiro, the one-armed wolf,
capitalizes on this, running really low
and stealthy behind the giant,
finishing him off with
what seems to be a a back-stab attack.
And it's easy to look past this
but look at the way that he's running here
and here as well.
Look at him crouching below these floorboards
and skirting this wall to avoid detection.
To me,
it seems clear that there is a stealth ability in the game
so this absolutely fits in with the ninja flavor of the game
and just think about it
if you had some sort of way of looking around corners
this could enable amazing stealth gameplay.
One of the tag-lines of the game is 'kill ingeniously',
so here's hoping they let us.
I mean this guy definitely has his strategy sorted!
I guess that's...one way to apply pine resin!
Actually a few Chinese historical dramas
have depicted their executioners
coating their blade like this before a kill,
although it's difficult to identify exactly why they do this.
So it's at this point
we definitely need to address a few leaks
that dropped a few weeks ago.
Before this game was even revealed as 'Sekiro' at E3,
a lot of what leaked
actually ended up being in this trailer.
Mainly the interaction between the main character
and the Hermit who gives him a new arm.
So the fact that the leaks got this right
obviously lends credence to the rest of what they go on to say:
for example before we talked about abilities
and I talked about them a bit more confidently
because the leak suggested
that the diverse abilities existed in the game
outside of just traditional weapon movesets.
The leak also suggested that
the game mostly takes place in rural locations
which seems to be the case from the trailer.
But it also suggested that there is a larger city to explore as well
One question I have:
how are we supposed to travel between cities ?
Please tell me that we can travel
and fight on horseback!
And while people are currently freaking out
that the game won't be Multiplayer at all,
the leak suggests that the game will at least have a unique PvP system,
where you sort of enter the world of someone else
under the guise of an enemy
and you take control of that enemy within the level
with enhanced abilities.
So from the enemies we've seen, that could be
this Samurai
the horseman
or even the huge murakumo wielder.
I can see that happening.
From memory, this was also supposed to be a mechanic in Bloodborne,
where you invaded other people's worlds as a more traditional beast,
but it was scrapped.
Sekiro also supposedly features a day-and-night/dynamic weather system,
which was itself supposed to make it into Dark Souls 3,
and to this day there's still code in Dark Souls 3
that shows evidence of a day-and-night cycle.
One can only hope that with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
they get to deliver the full brunt of their ambitions with this game,
and this is kind of the perfect time to talk about it...
the elephant in the room, and the company
that will allow them to maybe fulfill all of their ambitions:
Activision.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is published by Activision
Not NAMCO BANDAI or Sony as before.
I don't think anyone saw this coming:
my first thought when seeing this was relief,
absolute relief.
First because this meant
Shadows Die Twice wasn't going to be
a PS4 exclusive title as expected,
which is great
because console exclusives suck.
They're really bad for consumers:
they pointlessly limit the amount of people
who can enjoy these amazing games, and
not to mention being able to have this game on PC
does wonders for the YouTube community.
For me, for example,
it allows me to make better-looking videos
It allows me to make them faster with amazing camera angles
and way more creativity.
I was also relieved
because publishing through Activision meant that
this game was a new IP
and From Software thrives with new IPs, everyone knows that,
look at Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne.
The universe that From Software crafts
in the first episode of a franchise is
always more exciting than their attempts to
sort of build on existing stories
and inevitably recycle elements of them.
So if From Software is happy with the amount of money
that Activision is throwing at their project
then I'm happy with it too.
I mean, I will be really, really wary of
any hint of casualization or
monetization going forward
but I seriously doubt that
From Software would compromise on those values now of all times.
Because, think about it,
From Software is courting at least three publishers here.
They are courting NAMCO,
they're courting Activision,
they're courting Sony,
and games under Miyazaki
have delivered time and time again.
So if you're a developer in a position to
court three publishers for the best deal,
there's a pretty good chance they got the best deal
so good for them, I guess!
Now I kind of just want to know
if they'll put it on the Blizzard launcher!
So, to sum up: what don't we know about the gameplay?
We don't know what the in-game currency is,
considering there's no souls or blood echoes,
and I have no clue
what's going to be used as a checkpoint marker
without bonfires or a dream.
We don't know how to invest in our own character or level up,
nor do we know how exactly
Sekiro keeps coming back to life
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised
if they rethought the entire death mechanic a little bit.
The way he comes to life mid-combat
made me wonder if you could design 'Souls'
without checkpoints,
or true death,
just the ability to keep on getting up somehow and persist.
Anyway, what we do know is
there is a hell of a lot of story, already, like seriously
there's a lot on the Japanese website
that we've translated,
and I'll see you in part 2 for that
because it sounds like a fascinating world
and I can't wait to tell you why.
So thanks for watching guys and take it easy!