GOTY-winning game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is getting an anime adaptation, as announced at this year’s Gamescom ONL. The show is called Sekiro: No Defeat, and will ostensibly follow the plot of the game, even bringing back Japanese cast members for characters like Wolf and Genichiro.
Sekiro: No Defeat is a Crunchyroll original series, and will be exclusive to the streaming platform.
Most Sekiro fans would agree that its story is great, but the gameplay is king. Indeed, Sekiro's melee combat, which is built on the back of its parrying system, is fine-tuned to an absurd degree, making it one of the best sword-fighting gaming experiences on the market. Such aspects may be difficult for Sekiro: No Defeat to properly adapt: how can one translate the emotional and psychological power of gameplay to the medium of television? This is a potential obstacle facing the anime, but this shift in presentation could actually elevate certain other elements of Sekiro's gameplay, especially those that are relatively weak in the game itself.
Sekiro: No Defeat Has a Golden Opportunity to Flesh Out Dragonrot
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's Dragonrot Is Interesting, but Ultimately Ineffectual
Put plainly, Dragonrot is a mechanic that punishes the player for repeatedly dying. In-universe, it's a sort of spiritual sickness that arises from Wolf's cycle of death and rebirth, a physical side effect of the character's unnatural immortality. Crucially, the player themselves doesn't become afflicted with Dragonrot; rather, it's the NPCs of the game that suffer the consequences of Wolf's dying. When a Sekiro NPC contracts Dragonrot, any quest-related dialog from them will be blocked, prompting the player to cure the disease if they wish to continue a given side-story or mission chain.
This is a rather clever way to punish the player for failure without being overly frustrating or unfair, at least in theory. In reality, Dragonrot is fairly underwhelming, serving as more of a temporary roadblock than anything else. Inexperienced Sekiro players are the least likely to delve deep into FromSoftware's obtuse quest design too, and since these are the players who are most likely to die repeatedly, the system can ultimately feel a bit poorly measured. Dragonrot doesn't lead to anything substantive, narratively speaking, and it is perhaps the most clumsily implemented element of Sekiro's otherwise impeccable design.
Dragonrot accumulation will also reduce the amount of Unseen Aid Sekiro players receive, though Unseen Aid is a similarly trivial mechanic, without much widespread impact.
Part and parcel of this underwhelming execution is the fact that Dragonrot never really evolves into something meaningful in the game's main story. Again, it mostly serves as an additional punishment for failure, rather than an important part of world-building. But it's an interesting concept nonetheless, and since Sekiro: No Defeat doesn't have to worry about gameplay, perhaps it can do something cool with the idea.
Sekiro: No Defeat Should Double Down On Dragonrot Lore
When Wolf repeatedly resurrects, he is effectively double-dipping into the shared life force of all humans. Thus, Dragonrot is a direct result of one's life force being drained by the player. This blend of tangible, visceral worldbuilding and more nebulous spiritual elements is characteristic of FromSoftware's storytelling style, and has the potential to be just as captivating as anything in Bloodborne or Dark Souls.
Since the anime adaptation is called Sekiro: No Defeat, there's a strong chance that resurrection will continue to play a role. After all, "no defeat" could very easily refer to Wolf's inability to die, and immortality is at the heart of the Sekiro story, so it seems like a reasonable inclusion. In that case, Wolf's immortality, and its consequences, could be powerful narrative building blocks, rather than canonized game mechanics.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 90 /100 Critics Rec: 96%
- Released
- March 22, 2019
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Violence
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Publisher(s)
- Activision
WHERE TO PLAY
Carve your own clever path to vengeance in the critically acclaimed adventure from developer FromSoftware, creators of the Dark Souls series.
In Sekiro™: Shadows Die Twice you are the 'one-armed wolf', a disgraced and disfigured warrior rescued from the brink of death. Bound to protect a young lord who is the descendant of an ancient bloodline, you become the target of many vicious enemies, including the dangerous Ashina clan. When the young lord is captured, nothing will stop you on a perilous quest to regain your honor, not even death itself.
Explore late 1500s Sengoku Japan, a brutal period of constant life and death conflict, as you come face to face with larger than life foes in a dark and twisted world. Unleash an arsenal of deadly prosthetic tools and powerful ninja abilities while you blend stealth, vertical traversal, and visceral head to head combat in a bloody confrontation. Take Revenge. Restore Your Honor. Kill Ingeniously.
