We need to talk about the Tomoe story line [SPOILERS]

[nomatter]

In my personal opinion I think the story telling for some side quests is outstanding and not talked about enough. Let's just look at the Ishikawa Side Quest Finale: All the revenge fueled blood thirst that Ishikawa had? Just gone in a second. Why you ask? Well, Tomoe left a letter that kinda said "too bad I'm gone, better luck next time and f*** off". This is exactly the kind of accomplishment and surprise I expect after finishing a long side quest story line.

[LazyAmerican]

I do hope this is satire or something lol...most of the story telling is rather abysmal and very cliche but I do think Shimura and Jin dynamic was done very well especially in the end.

[Harris]

Yeah, that's the first problem with them. They are down-to-earth and plain boring compared to the main story where you cut heads off Mongol generals.

Second problem is there's no replayability to them - most like Ishikawa and Masako are "who dun it-s" and furthermore they're linear quests with near zero player agency.

Third problem is the warrior monk, unlike others, is only introduced in the second area. It doesn't really work because by that time all the cast is already known and I didn't feel like getting to know another one.

Fourth problem is spreading the quests between 3 areas, which can create quite a distance if you're a thorough player who doesn't move to the next area before 100%-ing the previous ones. Which understandably removes the tension or even makes you forget what you were doing.

Fifth problem is there's no romance, like we can't even get laid with Tomoe after all the hard work. Not even as fade to black. I mean, Gothic 2 allowed that, and that was 22 years ago.

Sixth problem is all side quests are formulaic: talk to NPC - ride to a location - investigate - kill some dudes.

Seventh problem the quests can often be done in any order and feel too standalone as opposed to being a part of the greater whole.

Eights problem is the game taking itself seriously at all times and there being no room for quests to provide comic relief.

So when it comes to side quests (not the procedurally generated "daily" ones) Odyssey leaves GoT in the dust.

[Ingel Riday]

Hm. I respect your opinions.

On my end, I liked most of the "Tales of X" side quests. I thought Yuna's quests did a good job building up her character and, in a way, lending credence to Shimura's warnings. Jin cares deeply about Yuna and he does terrible things to please her and/or help her. You know, like committing literal war crimes. His brutal actions towards the Mamushi brothers (who abused the heck out of Yuna as a child) and the Black Wolf, who sexually violated Yuna and Taka, terrify the local people and make them afraid of the Ghost. The people in the region don't look at Jin like he's a hero; they look at him like he's a demon. This is what Shimura actively tries to avoid as a samurai. When he warns against Yuna's influence, this is the kind of thing he's warning about. Awesome. Good storytelling.

I also liked Norio and Ishikawa, especially the latter. The Ishikawa / Tomoe relationship is kind of a foil of the Jin / Shimura relationship, and I love it. I also love that in the end, Ishikawa is grateful for an excuse to NOT kill his student. He doesn't want to, and he takes the out VERY fast. A nice parallel to Shimura, who has multiple outs he could take, but is too duty-bound to pursue any of them.

Kenji is neat, too. He's the comic relief some of you guys were looking for.

Only one I loathed was Lady Masako. She's basically a foil of Jin, but too much so. You never get a chance to really see her when she isn't driven feral by vengeance and bloodlust, so she's just unpleasant from beginning to end. Every quest is her murdering a target, with almost every target seemingly having a good reason to hate her.

The merchant's children, who she ruined because she thought their father had tried to cheat Lord Adachi. The former headsman of Kuta Village, who she ruined because she thought he was hoarding grain. The peasant girl barely half Masako's age, who Masako pursued romantically and had an adulterous, creepy love affair with... which ended with Masako accusing the girl of being a thief and having her exiled (albeit to spare the girl Lord Adachi's wrath). The monk Junshin, who Masako tries to brutally murder based on the flimsiest, weakest "evidence" known to man. So on, so forth. Even Jin starts to openly view Masako as an unreliable narrator, questioning whether or not these people truly wronged her family in the past or deserved her harsh punishments (leading Masako to try to KILL HIM when he stands in the way of her murdering Junshin).

I respect having a character who gives into despair and blind rage, because it better highlights Jin's good traits and his solid, sane core. But jeez... Masako is just an endless font of crazy and unpleasantness. By the end, I could see how a group of people could detest her so much that they'd literally axe-murder an entire samurai clan to try and get rid of her. Probably not the sentiment I was intended to have. *shrug*

[Mu'Ammar of Carthus]

Originally posted by LazyAmerican:

most of the story telling is rather abysmal and very cliche but I do think Shimura and Jin dynamic was done very well especially in the end.

I think that ending is actually the absolute worst part of the story and everything else is rather competent.

They could've had one ending that's both tragic and believable, instead they offered one choice that wasn't very tragic, and one choice that wasn't very believable.

[W.R. Winter]

I did laugh out loud when I first finished this side story, back when the game first released. every single Ishikawa quest is punctuated by the need to kill Tomoe; anytime Jin says something that might even HINT at another resolution, Ishikawa comes down on him like a ton of bricks. and in the end all it takes to disarm him is a metaphor about arrows and teaching. what a poser.

an ending where we see Ishikawa's resolve weaken, but he still ultimately kills Tomoe, would've been far more elegant. instead it's one big joke.

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

Only one I loathed was Lady Masako. She's basically a foil of Jin, but too much so. You never get a chance to really see her when she isn't driven feral by vengeance and bloodlust, so she's just unpleasant from beginning to end. Every quest is her murdering a target, with almost every target seemingly having a good reason to hate her.

completely disagree btw, always looked forward to the next Masako quest. probably my favorite character next to Norio, who's a more balanced and spiritually grounded portrayal of grief.

[Ingel Riday]

Originally posted by W.R. Winter:

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

Only one I loathed was Lady Masako. She's basically a foil of Jin, but too much so. You never get a chance to really see her when she isn't driven feral by vengeance and bloodlust, so she's just unpleasant from beginning to end. Every quest is her murdering a target, with almost every target seemingly having a good reason to hate her.

completely disagree btw, always looked forward to the next Masako quest. probably my favorite character next to Norio, who's a more balanced and spiritually grounded portrayal of grief.

I'm glad that her character worked for you, dude. :-) Just wasn't my cup of tea. I found myself increasingly eye-rolling at her. Made me grateful that Jin voices skepticism multiple times throughout her quests. He goes along with most all of Samurai-Karen's plans anyway, but at least he tilts his head from time to time and looks at her funny. "You had proof that he was hoarding rice?... The merchant claimed that Lord Adachi was in the wrong about the deal. Was he?"

[W.R. Winter]

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

I'm glad that her character worked for you, dude. :-) Just wasn't my cup of tea. I found myself increasingly eye-rolling at her. Made me grateful that Jin voices skepticism multiple times throughout her quests. He goes along with most all of Samurai-Karen's plans anyway, but at least he tilts his head from time to time and looks at her funny. "You had proof that he was hoarding rice?... The merchant claimed that Lord Adachi was in the wrong about the deal. Was he?"

as a reminder the accused rice hoarders, etc. contributed to her entire bloodline being literally wiped out in like 2 days. not even a "my parents are dead!" it's multiple generations (not just the men, but the women, and the children too). and as matriarch of the clan that was her raison d'etre. so rolling your eyes and calling her a Karen is kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid, to put it very lightly. no offense.

the way I see it, she has a lot of killing to do before her karma starts to blacken.

[Ingel Riday]

Originally posted by W.R. Winter:

as a reminder the accused rice hoarders, etc. contributed to her entire bloodline being literally wiped out in like 2 days. not even a "my parents are dead!" it's multiple generations (not just the men, but the women, and the children too). and as matriarch of the clan that was her raison d'etre. so rolling your eyes and calling her a Karen is kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid, to put it very lightly. no offense.

the way I see it, she has a lot of killing to do before her karma starts to blacken.

Oh, you meant plenty of offense. Own it and have some courage, man. It won't bite you.

Anyhoots, I'm well aware that the conspirators wiped out her entire bloodline. I stated as much in my first post (reading is hard, I know). That's the thing, though... how bad did they have to hate her to agree to such a thing? What did she do to send so many people into such a hideous blood-frenzy of cruelty and malice?

The game makes the answer clear enough: she condemned each and every one of the conspirators to ruin and misery. Sometimes she did it out of blind ignorance (her sister). Sometimes she did it based on flimsy evidence (the purported rice hoarder and the merchants). Only sometimes did she do it with clear good cause and irrefutable evidence (the wife beater). Oh, and she didn't just ruin the initial offenders, either. Masako dragged down descendants, too. She brought whole bloodlines down into poverty and ruin. But hey, it's okay... because she is utterly convinced of her own righteousness and sound judgment. Who are we to doubt her sagacity?

Except... our own character, Jin, openly doubts her. There is no indication in the game that we are meant to view Jin as an unreliable narrator. He's shown to be very lucid and perceptive, and he starts noticing patterns in her behavior. Very negative patterns, which the Jinshin rampage and attempted Ghost-slaying bring into stark clarity.

So yeah, I rolled my eyes at her. The game's writing, as much as I enjoyed it, never established a pre-fall Masako that the audience could sympathize with. It never made clear that her judgment was EVER fully sound or fair, or that she was actually a good person at all. She was an adulterer who passed harsh judgment on many people and dragged both them and their children into the dirt, got her brutal comeuppance, went insane from it, and ... we gotta help her, because we need a 58 year old grandma's martial prowess if we're going to take back Fort Kaneda (guffaw).

She was my least favorite side-quest character. I never enjoyed my time with her, and I found it increasingly hard to give her a benefit of a doubt as time went along. I'm not convinced her judgment or temper were any better BEFORE the Adachi massacre, and the game gave me neither cause nor reason to believe so.

Edit addition: Also, to be blunt, I was overjoyed to whoop her in Quest 8 of 9. I would have hated fighting any of the other side-quest characters, but it felt cathartic to finally take the lunatic to task. Again, probably not how the game wanted me to feel. She needed more time in the characterization oven. Maybe some more ambient npc dialogue about how she was the King Solomon of Tsushima, dispensing reason and justice with an even hand. As is... yeah, she made me think of a Karen. "That monk must be evil! He won't willingly tell me where people are, because he's convinced I'm going to axe-murder them without due process. TRAITOR! REEEE!!!!! Go talk to him Jin, so I can learn where they are and axe-murder them. That monk will get his later."

So likable.

[W.R. Winter]

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

Anyhoots, I'm well aware that the conspirators wiped out her entire bloodline. I stated as much in my first post (reading is hard, I know). That's the thing, though... how bad did they have to hate her to agree to such a thing? What did she do to send so many people into such a hideous blood-frenzy of cruelty and malice?

it doesn't matter what she did because nothing justifies the minor ethnic cleansing she suffered. you are morally challenged.

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

He's shown to be very lucid and perceptive, and he starts noticing patterns in her behavior. Very negative patterns, which the Jinshin rampage and attempted Ghost-slaying bring into stark clarity.

so lucid and perceptive that he helps her at every stage. great point.

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

and ... we gotta help her, because we need a 58 year old grandma's martial prowess if we're going to take back Fort Kaneda (guffaw).

this I do agree with but the same goes for Yuna. and really it goes for every character except Shimura, maybe Ishikawa and funnily enough maybe Kenji. the story calls for mobilizing faceless peasants, not developing relationships with a handful of randos. so it's more of an overall problem with the game's storytelling.

[Ingel Riday]

Originally posted by W.R. Winter:

it doesn't matter what she did because nothing justifies the minor ethnic cleansing she suffered. you are morally challenged.

Nope, I'm not. Thanks, though. I love your ad-hominem attacks. They're very charming and are totally the right tact to take when trying to convince someone of your argument. Bravo.

You do hint at one of my biggest problems with the Masako writing, though. What happened to her family was truly heinous and hideous. Normal people would never engage in such a thing, unless they were driven into a frenzy of pure hatred. What drove them there? Were they just pure scum to the nth degree, or was she that awful a noblewoman? Even that maid she took advantage of joined in on it!

This isn't about justification, by the way. I'm not saying they were justified in slaughtering Clan Adachi. I'm wondering how much of it was them being pure scum and how much of it was her driving them to insanity. I'm wondering sources of motivation.

Again though, we never get an answer. The game never shows us Masako before her fall. We just see her crazy, wrathful, quick to judgment, and cruel... and have to assume she wasn't all those things beforehand. By the time I got to the Jinshin quest, I couldn't suspend my disbelief anymore. Neither could Jin, apparently... but we needed her. For some reason, an aged granny weighing less than 110 pounds can best half a dozen mongols at a go. Worth her weight in gold.

so lucid and perceptive that he helps her at every stage. great point.

We needed her. See above. Jin didn't have a lot of choices but to go along with it and be her murder hobo. The one time he openly argues... she tries to MURDER HIM.

this I do agree with but the same goes for Yuna. and really it goes for every character except Shimura, maybe Ishikawa and funnily enough maybe Kenji. the story calls for mobilizing faceless peasants, not developing relationships with a handful of randos. so it's more of an overall problem with the game's storytelling.

Yuna has great assassin instincts and ideas. Shimura would get us reinforcements from abroad. Ishikawa's sniping is awesome. Kenji had an entire band of warriors who, if they hadn't turned on us, would have given us a HUGE edge in Act 2. They all made sense to me. Given her warrior goddess powers and sheer raw superhuman granny-strength, Masako makes sense as well. I just find her utterly unpalatable.

Again, even a few ambient dialogue lines would have helped. If I knew she had been an actual good person pre-invasion and had made a LOT of good calls, I would have felt remorse during her whole quest chain. King Solomon, brought low and made a snarling beast, devoid of his reason and bereft of his mercy. A mere animal now. "If not for the grace of God, there goes I [i.e. Jin]."

Instead, I got "crazy woman" who gives me no reason to think she was ever anything else. That's why I didn't like her quests. She was the only one who didn't work for me.

Rambling too much: incidentally, Yuna's 4 quests are a revenge arc as well... but I got to know Yuna. The game showed us the soft parts she hides under her stoicism, her love of Taka, and the genuine goodness about her. What she was before her fall. I did cruel things for her, but she never gave me cause to doubt her. To wonder if she was actually just a bad person, too, who happened to get on the receiving end for once in her life.

[W.R. Winter]

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

This isn't about justification, by the way. I'm not saying they were justified in slaughtering Clan Adachi. I'm wondering how much of it was them being pure scum and how much of it was her driving them to insanity. I'm wondering sources of motivation.

yes it is. you're shifting the blame from the perpetrators to the victim. "what did the battered spouse do to make her partner beat her? normal people don't fly into a rage for no reason like that. she must've done something really awful to provoke that kind of response." so instead of dealing with the actual crime and the people responsible, we're speculating on how it was caused by the victim's actions. that is de facto apologia and justification. if you weren't morally challenged I wouldn't have to explain that to you.

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

Yuna has great assassin instincts and ideas. Shimura would get us reinforcements from abroad. Ishikawa's sniping is awesome. Kenji had an entire band of warriors who, if they hadn't turned on us, would have given us a HUGE edge in Act 2. They all made sense to me. Given her warrior goddess powers and sheer raw superhuman granny-strength, Masako makes sense as well. I just find her utterly unpalatable.

you're missing the point which is that in a war effort any one person's prowess is irrelevant. Tsushima operates on story logic where a handful of deep and multilayered characters make the difference. in reality what matters is Shimura's ability to lead men, Ishikawa's ability to transfer his prowess to many soldiers via training, and Kenji's ability to procure goods during wartime. Yuna is a thief and a lowlife whose contribution boils down to pointing at Jin and saying "Ghost!" literally anyone could have done that.

and yes, it is highly amusing that your takeaways from this game were Masako=crazy/cruel and Yuna=genuinely good. I guess some revenges are sweeter than others.

[Ingel Riday]

Originally posted by W.R. Winter:

yes it is. you're shifting the blame from the perpetrators to the victim. "what did the battered spouse do to make her partner beat her? normal people don't fly into a rage for no reason like that. she must've done something really awful to provoke that kind of response." so instead of dealing with the actual crime and the people responsible, we're speculating on how it was caused by the victim's actions. that is de facto apologia and justification. if you weren't morally challenged I wouldn't have to explain that to you.

Your straw-man argument doesn't work. (Neither does your ad-hominem, but so it goes).

We're given multiple examples of Masako ruining families for entire generations. We're also given multiple examples of Masako having questionable, if not outright terrible judgment. It begs the question of whether her decrees were at all fair or reasonable in the first place. She's not just some innocent spouse being beaten mercilessly by a fiend. Your attempted argument isn't relevant.

Would her decrees being malicious justify her victims visiting evil upon her family members in turn? No, but I would have liked to know. To know who exactly I was dealing with. To know what exactly motivated the people we're hunting. To know if this incredibly unpleasant person I'm stuck with was ever anything better than what she is now.

Was she a good person done wrong, or a bad person who finally got a mouthful of spiteful cruelty and couldn't take it? I wish the game had bothered to elucidate the matter. As is, I didn't enjoy her side-quests. I also don't enjoy you cherry-picking sentences to respond to, attacking me repeatedly with ad-hominems, and being a total prick. You're a very unpleasant person here, and I bet you aren't any better in real life. I pity you.

you're missing the point which is that in a war effort any one person's prowess is irrelevant. Tsushima operates on story logic where a handful of deep and multilayered characters make the difference. in reality what matters is Shimura's ability to lead men, Ishikawa's ability to transfer his prowess to many soldiers via training, and Kenji's ability to procure goods during wartime. Yuna is a thief and a lowlife whose contribution boils down to pointing at Jin and saying "Ghost!" literally anyone could have done that.

You're utterly wrong here, too. The prowess of military leaders and advisors can make worlds of difference in conflicts. Yuna's contributions are numerous, and come from her ability to out-think the Mongols. She comes up with a lot of great tactics and strategies throughout the game that make a big difference. Unlike Masako, who charges in like a comical bull and survives because of plot armor, Yuna proposes psychological warfare tactics, hit and run maneuvers, and other useful ideas that the charming-yet-historically-inaccurate Samurai in this game don't even consider.

Yuna's mind is worth its weight in gold. She also happens to have a lot of great personality traits that offset her flaws. She's clearly not the best person in the world, but she's given moments of lucidity and you get to see that she wasn't always a prick. She also admits to personal failings and making poor decisions in the past. She never portrays herself as JUST a victim done wrong, unfairly maligned by the world. She knows things are more nuanced than that.

You never get to see any of the above for Masako. I found it tedious.

and yes, it is highly amusing that your takeaways from this game were Masako=crazy/cruel and Yuna=genuinely good. I guess some revenges are sweeter than others.

See above. You're misrepresenting what I'm saying and putting my words in my mouth. I expect no better, though. Enjoy cherry-picking and insulting me with your next post. I hope this is just how you behave on the internet, but who knows?

[W.R. Winter]

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

Your straw-man argument doesn't work. (Neither does your ad-hominem, but so it goes).

do you have a reddit account?

[Ingel Riday]

As a little personal anecdote to the above, I knew a CEO whose wife was known locally as "Hang-Em [Steinbeck]." (Making up a last name here. Not interested in outing anyone).

She was a judge, and she was very self-righteous. Gave the harshest sentences that she could legally give whenever possible. Threw people away for decades. Prided herself on it, and was convinced in her own sagacity and justness.

Never did anything illegal. Never did anything that would cost a judge his or her seat. Just gave the harshest penalties possible whenever possible, and exalted in them. Was convinced in her own judgment. Always believed she was in the right. (emphasis emphasis emphasis, haha).

She and her spouse had incredibly intense home security. Motion sensors, flood lights, reinforced windows, etc.. They lived in fear that one of the condemned would get out and come for blood. Truth be told, the fear was not unfounded. Lots of people felt very angry at her, and oh yeah... they'd pull some Adachi stuff if they could. Made me personally nervous to be around Steinbeck, honestly. Never wanted to seem too close to the family.

Would the condemned have ever been justified in slaughtering Steinbeck's family? No, never! But would I like to know exactly where their motivations are coming from, especially if I'm helping Steinbeck hunt them down like dogs? Sure would. And if the writing wants me to genuinely like Steinbeck, establishing that her punishments weren't self-righteous, harsh, and cruel... but actually fair and reasonable would REALLY HELP THINGS. Would take me from "you were horrible and beastly to them, but they still didn't have the right to visit revenge upon your loved ones... I guess I'm helping" to "you acted fairly and honorably whenever possible. I will avenge you!"

Again, Masako's writing did not work for me. Beaten' on a dead horse, though.

[W.R. Winter]

taking that as a yes