ObscuraJournal 11/19/25

I've been at the 90% mark in Ghost of Yōtei for about a week now. I tried to get to the final boss battle, but the path ahead of is treacherous. I learned the hard way speeding through the story doesn't mean you deserve to get to the end.

That's kind of like writing, if you think about it. It's like "story" as well. Stories get the endings they deserve only through the perseverance of the characters. You can't tell the story and give it the ending it deserves without going through the process. Even if you start "at the end", you still have to reverse engineer the process to make it all work out.

So I've been leveling my character up. Hitting bamboo strikes, seeking Alters of Reflection, learning new techniques. The skill trees were pretty bare when I made it to the end section of the game. Now, there are a few skills I'd still like to level up, but those trees have fruit dangling from the limbs. Atsu is a formidable opponent now in all of the other weapons other than a single katana.

This has been taking up a lot of my spare time. Time that could be used for writing. I know this, and refuse to feel guilty about it. This game is a worthwhile excursion because it is a story of many stories, and I love how the pieces fit. Sure, it's not as deep an experience as some games are with the storytelling, but yet, for all its simplicity, I love that it uses such a universal plot-line as revenge and gives us a character who slowly realizes it is not as sweet a dish as she imagined. There's growth here, each mission bringing Atsu closer to the realization that it's dangerous to be consumed with vengeance, that getting revenge is turning her into the very thing he hates the most.

Classic themes, man ... they cut the deepest.

I'll be back tomorrow with a little romp about repurposing in the arts by way of The Mars Volta and Pink Floyd.

peace&love