OR: IMMORTALITY IN SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE
by Bryn Gelbart

I think about death too much. I recently found myself hung up on the genealogy of the Earnshaws and Lintons in Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Of the characters in the novel, the villain Heathcliff lives the longest, dying at the ripe old age of 38. At 25, I felt near death and began to question the morality of our increased mortality. What cost does our greatly increased life expectancy come at?

On a long enough timeline it is easy to see that life expectancy has greatly increased since the 18th century for all, due to advances in medicine and technology. But in the past half century, we have seen a disturbing grotesque change.

The myth woven into the fabric of American life is that the fruits of capitalism have increased life expectancy across the board. It has been proven that the hyper-capitalist structure of society over the past 40 years has increased disparities in life expectancy. As medical technology advances, it does so to benefit only those who can afford it. From 1980 to 2010, the wealthiest American men gained six years of life expectancy on average while life expectancy for the poorest Americans remained the same and in some instances has declined.

This is where I begin to consider Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, a game starring a deadly shinobi during the Sengoku period of feudal Japan. Eventually he has to choose whether or not to sever the link between the mortal and divine realms. It’s an easy choice to make, but the journey is an uphill battle.

In Sekiro, Sekiro – the titular shinobi -can revive himself, but only at the expense of risking spreading the deadly Dragonrot disease. Unlike many other in-game punishments, Dragonrot does not directly affect the player, but will slowly infect the world’s NPCs, locking the player out of completing optional quest lines until they use a Rot Essence – an item that acts as a  band-aid, temporarily restoring the world state.

There is no regard for the bodies Dragonrot is destroying unless the player chooses to have sympathy. It’s possible to beat the game without using a single Rot Essence, letting players treat the life force of the NPCs as a renewable resource. It is not. In progressing through the game, Sekiro is using the life essence of people across the land to maintain his unnatural resurrection abilities. And it’s not just him.

In a mid-game exposition dump, young prince Kuro explains how the nobility of the Ashina clan plan to use this immortality to win the war and gain absolute power. Both Sekiro’s father the Great Shinobi Owl and the Ashina nobility wish to steal Kuro’s divine blood to attain immortality. The only solution is for Sekiro to completely sever the link between the mortal and divine realms.

While the lore is not emphasized as much of FromSoftware’s previous work – Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is as much a straightforward action game as it is an RPG- there is still an intentional complexity given to the notion of immortality. Regardless of if they seek it or not, those who attain immortality in Sekiro are cursed.

One of the early characters the player encounters is Hanbei The Undying, a warrior cursed with immortality who offers his body to be a training dummy. Hanbei’s side quest ends with him admitting to Sekiro that he is ready to die. Once Sekiro acquires the Mortal Blade, a late game upgrade needed to sever immortality, the player can grant this request. It is the most melancholy moment of the game, but a vital one to understanding the game’s meditation on immortality.

The grotesque forms of the Ashina nobles that the player sees in the game’s boss fights are the result of an internal rot, achieved from years of searching for power. For these characters, the curse manifests itself physically. This motif of grotesque imagery reflects the internal recurs throughout FromSoftware’s work. In Dark Souls, it is a result of the pursuit of power, in Bloodborne the pursuit of knowledge. In Sekiro, the pursuit of Immortality, like wealth, is a means to an end. The end is never the end, but always more.

In our hero, a freelance murderer who upholds an Iron Code, we see intention does not matter as much as action. In breaking the code Sekiro breaks the cycle of generational decay, but loses his father figure in the process. Sekiro is perhaps best considered an anti-hero, but he has no intention of seeking immortality – it was thrust upon him. And still, his complicity in spreading Dragonrot – his dedication to his profession and code – color him as a negative force. His intention is as self-serving as the Ashina clan’s quest for power, even if it is not as blatantly evil. But it is complicity, nonetheless. You as the player must choose to acknowledge Sekiro’s wrong-doing and make it right as best you can.

Like many FromSoftware titles, Sekiro is a game about cycles and giving the player agency to break them. The original Dark Souls is not entirely dissimilar, disguising itself as a hero’s journey the story ends with the all-powerful gods tricking the Chosen Undead into continuing a cycle wherein the old gods maintain power. The thematic focus of these games are about power, and how beings who have it will stop at nothing to maintain it – at the expense of everyone under them. Common bodies exist to be stepped on, broken and disposed of in order to serve the greater good – the needs of the few.

So Sekiro operates as a power fantasy. Giving the player the choice to stop this cycle. Choosing to side with the Owl ends the game quickly – a couple short boss fights and it’s all over. The Immortal Severance ending, as well as the more complex endings, require fighting extra bosses and following specific steps that most players won’t stumble upon. Once the Iron Code is broken there’s no longer a set of rules for the player to follow. You have to figure it out on their own now.

If you buy into this metaphor, you’ll find the reality of wealth inequality made literal and poignant. It is taking lives. The rich grow richer and the longer they live the richer they grow, at expense of the poor and the dead. Dead from not being able to afford health coverage, not being able to find work that provides insurance due to the sheer amount of essential jobs that simply are not required to provide it. Right now, in fact, there is a disease slowly killing off tens of thousands and we have seen just how ineptly the wealthy respond. Sacrifice your grandma to create more wealth.

What the rich must sacrifice to bring equality to society, and equality to life, is something unnatural in the first place. Having 1 billion dollars is financial immortality. It should not exist, but the structures that capital has been building for generations are in service of making this concept not only palatable, but sought after. The greatest evil of the power of both wealth and immortality is the fear it creates within the beholder. Immortality is by definition unending. There is no losing it, only holding on forever until everything else is gone and it’s just you. You alone with all the money and power in the world.