#snowbunny asked haoppo didn't answer here

[watch-grok-brainrot]

it's the 28th!! there is not much time left of the year, is there? i'm gonna send you a couple more asks than usually probably, just for the sake of it. to get out things like this before the reveal where i'm gonna get back into being a shy introvert idiot!! so i've been playing my new game, ghost of tsushima, and it's!!!! good lord, the graphic of the game is stunning (for the most part, the horses look a bit weird sometimes but still cute) and the main character is such an interesting character? basically jin sakai is a samurai, the opening scene is a battle where almost eighty-or so samurai die. his uncle, lord shimura, who raised and trained, him is captured by the mongol leader kotun kahn. jin gets saved by a thief called yuna, she rescues him after the battle when she looks for things to steal from the dead bodies. when jin wakes up he basically gets his armor back with yuna, she sold it to a merchant in order to buy medecine, he goes straight to the castle where they keep his uncle. as you would expect, he doesn't succeed. instead he gets thrown off a bridge, it's fucking high and even jin doesn't know how he survived that fall. (we also get some flashbacks every now and then, apparently his father was killed protecting his people and jin blames himself because he was a coward who was too afraid to fight (he was a fucking kid and i-). so the game goes on and we help jin fight against the mongols and free the people of tsushima, he makes allies for when he takes back (his uncle's castle i believe?) the castle where his uncle is being held. which i already did by now, so the next step is getting back this other castle, (jin's castle? or his uncle's? it's from one of them) the description says that "whoever reigns the castles reigns the island," so this is kinda bad. 50% of the time i'm really just trying to figure out the fighting system with jin's hidden weapons (ajksks it's a bit complicated but i think i've got it?) and idk questioning what honor means. that's a big topic of the game. at the beginning of the game we get a flashback, his uncle asks jin what honor means. he replies with "his father's words," so his uncle asks again. jin's reply is "protecting people i guess, those that cannot defend themselves." but then later the game tells us that the things he does is not deemed honorable, which is probably a cultural thing? he attacks from the shadows if necessary, if it means saving the lives of the people he wants to protect, to take back his homeland. but his uncle teaches him that only cowards strike from the shadow, that's it's dishonorable and not something samurais do (which is probably correct idk). so yeah maybe this game is making me questioning what i think honor is and to what extent honor is worth someone's life. if it means tossing honor and tradition aside and instead saving a life, isn't that worth it? isn't that the most honorable thing you can do, putting your pride aside and saving a life? it kind of reminds me of red dead redemption 2, where arthur keeps questioning what morality means, what loyalty is. they're outlaws, they kill people but their motto is "we shoot people who need shooting, we feed people who need feeding." and "vengeance is an idiot's game". rdr2 is about a found family falling apart, realizing that maybe they don't fit together. about morality, loyalty, love, righteousness, forgiveness and the consequences of one's actions. gots is about a lot of these things too, so maybe that's why i'm so fascinated with these games.

i know i'm rambling and you probably don't care but.... i don't often get to ramble about this so please, bear with me. when i say rdr2 is about these topics, then i mean that arthur goes through a lot of bullshit. the game keeps telling us, even at the beginning, that arthur is a very mentally unstable person who has a lot of issues, his anger being one of them. we know that arthur acknowledges that because he talks to one of the girls in their gang, i think it was either mary beth or tilly, that (when you go around and kill people) he feels like he's going crazy. he's questioning why he keeps letting his rage take the better of him. lets just say this boy has some serious issues. (not saying he has almost zero self esteem but maybe i am saying that) the closer to the epilogue you come, the more you see arthur questioning himself, his life, his family. arthur is not a good man, he knows that, but he's not a bad one either. he's just trying to survive in the world that he was thrown into when he was barely a teenager. the only life he has known is being an outlaw but he realizes that he cannot continue this path, it's not possible anymore. his gang his being hunted from every side, the only way out is going north and he knows they're being expected to go there. dutch van der linde is basically his dad, together with hosea, and arthur is his obedient watch dog and errand boy. until he isn't. arthur does a major development throughout the game, from not doubting the man who raised him to openly standing against him even at the cost of his own life. arthur is.... it's hard to explain because there are so many little moments where he grows and questions himself, his worldview and who he should put his trust into. bluntly said, arthur gets sick at pretty much the start of the game, we just don't know it and neither does he. but when he knows, the little changes he has over the course of the game get bigger and more apparent. he's running out of time, he has been since a few months and it helps him realize what he wants. helping people, it makes him happy even if he doesn't want to admit that, so that's what he does. righting, or at least trying, his wrongs even if he knows that people won't forgive him. that maybe he doesn't deserve to be forgiven, it's still better knowing that he tried to make up for his past actions even if it's too late. arthur is.... he's doing the right thing by the end, well if you go with the good-arthur version if you go with the bad-arthur he is still kind of better than his past self. to summarize it a bit, dutch goes kinda crazy. micah (another gang member) spies for the agents hunting them at one point and manipulates dutch, making him even more greedy and angry and the man really lost his mind after hosea got killed. dutch has always been the one more questionable out of the two of them, but he had a codex he followed. he forsakes this codex even if he doesn't realize it. he keeps on killing and killing and killing, dragging innocent people into this and putting his own men in danger. arthur snaps, realizes that maybe dutch isn't the person he thought he was. i'm really dragging this out aren't i? arthur and john, his brother in all but blood, together with john's kinda-wife abigail, their son jack, sadie and a couple of other gang members flee at the end of the story. because they realize that this is not a life they want, that dutch has changed since they first met him and that he's not the man they used to know. and it's really hard to explain but arthur's ending hurts. it hurts so much but it's the exact moment the game built up to, his death.

this is part 1/2. will answer on pt 2.