The Hungry Spirit: Ghost of Tsushima And Grief
I owe you an apology.
I’ve been meaning to stop by, I really have. It’s not like I’ve forgotten. But, things keep happening. Time as ever continues to grind forward without so much as a moment’s pause. Every second out of the hour glass is precious.
Remember the first time you said that? I do. Even in the shifting desert of minutes and hours that compose this shambling flesh, I see that grain bright amongst the rest. There’s many others beside it. We made a mountain of them together. Didn’t we?
Every second is precious. Every day is a blessing. Yes, I very much remember the first time you said that. On my worst days, it comes to the forefront of my mind.
I suppose then that’s why I finally came.
I was reminded of you.
I brought your favorite smokes, and a bottle. I know it’s not the big kind like you enjoyed, but I still have to drive home. I’ve many grains yet to pass through that old hourglass. You told me yourself. So, we’ll go half on this airplane bottle. Fair enough?
Fair enough.
But yeah, I was reminded of you recently. More than I usually am. Do you remember how we used to talk about video games we played together? You with those endless war simulators, and me with whatever I had enough pocket change for. Heh, change you provided more often than not. The coins that rattle in my pocket are mine alone now, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss that old feeling of going into a game store with you. You were always so proud of me, and I was with you.
I loved you then.
I love you still.
Wherever you’re at, I hope those words ring within your ears true even now.
What? Nah, I’m okay. It’s just my allergies. Damned eternal summers we have now with global warming and-okay, okay. Let’s not get started on politics. I don’t know how long this one moment will last. And I’ve so much to share with you.
So.
Video games.
Do you remember what you told me about them?
We Make Our Heroes
Ghost of Tsushima is, at its surface, samurai cinema given a grand stage. It’s a stunning and glorious love letter to Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai that George Lucas’ own attempts with Star Wars could only produce a shade of. There’s thousands of small touches, like Jin leaning down to touch the grass as he rides his horse, that breathe life into the world while adding an emotional heft missing from other titles. Play is rewarding, kinetic, layered and nurtured in realism and believability. Yet it doesn’t eschew Japanese folklore either-rather, it claps its hands upon the shoulders of oni, fox, and tengu with respect.
This review isn’t about any of that.
Ghost of Tsushima has earned every single Game of The Year award and accolade. Period. I cannot and will not debate the merits of what is obviously a carefully crafted and gorgeous title. If you were wondering if I gave the title my seal of approval and nothing else, there you go. Go buy it right now. It’s great.
This review isn’t about that, but rather a central, constant focus of the narrative. Something that came up regardless of who the player talked to, what quests they focused on or what they had Jin say.
Death.
More specifically, grief.
Ghost spends almost it’s entire narrative run time exploring the spaces before, during and after both. It’s a samurai game, sure. But without so much as a scratch at the surface layer narrative we’re directly confronted by the anguished cries of the dead and dying. The screams and cries of those who survived death, begging to be with their loved ones.
And later, the shout of triumph when they overcome the vice tightening on their heart.
I’ve played many titles about dealing with death. Death of families and friends, death of the self, death of the ego. Yet none of them forced me to confront the gnawing realization I’ve ignored for years like Ghost of Tsushima did. It’s something I’ve sworn I was past. Something I wrote about, spoke about, even gave tribute to in an audio just to banish. Yet the teeth of grief eat away at my mind still. A hungry specter demanding my precious time, my heart, my very soul.
Heroes aren’t born. There’s no star sign, no divine birthright into being the “right person”. No gods above to kiss our heads or stay the reaper’s hand. Heroes are those that are confronted by the tidal wave of realization that comes with mortality-and persist regardless. That’s what makes Jin Sakai a hero. It’s what makes the supporting cast heroes.
It’s what makes us, as the players and captive audience, many of us who have dealt with death, grief and the profound longing to return to a time before we were hurt, heroes as well.
For we may be wounded. We may cry out. We may beg whatever passes for a god for a second longer.
But we always, always get back up. We keep going.
We keep fighting.
You told me that exact thing.
Remember?
Of The Blade And The First Step
“When we fight, we face our enemy head on,” says Jin’s uncle, “and when we take their life, we look them in the eye. With courage. With respect. This is what makes us samurai,”
This line is dropped first in the trailer that premiered for the title, and later as Jin remembers the teachings his uncle gave him. Teachings that are dashed, but not forgotten, as the reality of the Kahn’s invasion unfolds before him.
I think back to this line a lot when I think about you.
Here, take what’s left of my shot. I don’t want it.
But that line, when I heard it while I was playing, I thought about you. You never said the exact phrasing but something incredibly similar.
“You’re a LaCroix,” you’d said, having just taken a drag off your Marlboro. “And you know what that means? That hard head of yours can break down any wall, anybody. Don’t be afraid of fear itself. Instead, make it scared of how brave you really are,”
Both lines striking the same chord through the thin veil of time, decades between them. Both are right in their own way. And both tackle the concept of death-be it our own or others-in very much the same way. To fear our own mortality is to give it power over us. To fear that will inevitably come to pass weakens us, breaks our resolve and our courage.
To fear death is to march into the tides of cowardice itself, letting them wash over us until we’re nothing more than a stain on the beach. All that time, all that effort for naught. We can’t fear our own death then, or we’ll find ourselves as shades well before the hour comes.
I don’t remember the last time I was truly afraid of dying. You made sure I was well aware of how fragile this tenuous flesh of mine really was. That’s why you trained me to shoot, to throw a punch, to “people watch” as you called it. Much like Jin Sakai, that fear and revulsion I felt at the idea faded away. I think by the time I was a teenager, I’d learned that stone-faced bravado both you and Jin’s uncle preached as virtue.
It’s easy to abolish the fear of our own death.
But gods above. God is it hard to abolish that fear towards those we care about.
The moment it happens, all of that courage towards the idea-you realize it’s fake. It’s fluff you tell yourself to make it through the day. You begin to question if you ever truly were that person at all.
Ghosts pulled the rug out from under me that way. The scene in which Jin marches up the hill, surrounded by his father’s allies. The pause right before he reaches the funeral pyre, and he says “I’m not ready”.
It was too close to home. Way too close.
I don’t know if you watched your own funeral or not. If you did, I hope we did it right. But pulling into the church that day, I felt myself start to hyperventilate. My partner at the time saw, and gripped my knee. They were trying to be reassuring but it flat out just didn’t work. I kept repeating the same idea in my head ad nauseum. If I went through with this funeral, then all of this was real. You were gone and my life would proceed forward without you.
I wasn’t ready.
But there was no other way.
We parked the car and I jumped out without a word. I saw your grave, with you already buried within. I walked towards it as my heart pounded in my ears. My legs, god my legs, I’m surprised I got them to move at all. Then I saw the head stone. I read it.
A gentle breeze rattled the leaves above, and a voice in my head said “That’s not him. It’s just a shell,”
For the first time in that entire drive.
I could breathe again.
I walked towards the church, with each of your friends bowing their heads. Telling me they were always there.
As Jin’s torch touched his father’s pyre, so too did my words at the funeral say goodbye one last time. The breeze blew at my neck as I left the church, and I had a funny thought that it was you.
Bravery in the face of death, be it our own or those we care for, is something we like to pretend is a learned behavior. We’ll go through the steps of hyping ourselves up as these unmovable stoics. Then it happens, and we realize how incredibly fragile and human we truly are. The only true way to face death itself and what follows isn’t with stoicism, but the innate understanding that true courage in the face of it comes from knowing how to heal.
That healing, however, is a process. A long one.
It’s rarely peaceful.
A Vengeful Spirit
“They were just CHILDREN!”
I tried to stop her. Rather, Jin did. But we couldn’t. As Lady Adachi’s blade rose, that moment seemed to stretch on towards an unknown horizon. So you try to say the right thing. You try to calm her down. The blade comes down all the same, right into the chest of an informant that could have lead to her families murderers.
After, you walk with her to their graves.
You listen to her weep for her family. Her children, some not even tall enough to walk on their own. You make a promise to her, but a conditional one. You’ll hunt the killers together, but only if she tempers her anger. Only if she allows you the chance to help.
Lady Adachi, last of her clan, rebuffs you at first. She doesn’t need you. She has anger, and it’s enough. But in time, it grows to be too much. Anger alone won’t provide the path forward. She relents, and together you travel Tsushima with focus. As you work together, you realize something.
She’s a mirror for Jin himself. What’s more, she’s in a breathing stage of grief.
Death, regardless if it’s tragedy or by old age and with dignity, is quick. We’re here and then gone, oblivious to the fallout of what happens after.
You weren’t, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Grief itself though is anything but. It’s thousands of different facets of emotion that could take you a lifetime to work through. A succession of deaths only compounds grief to the point of insurmountable weight. A burden so dense that, once the tears dry, all you feel is anger. At everyone, at everything. A blind rage to push away those that mean well, and those looking to exploit your state. To prove that you aren’t broken while hiding every moment that you are. That rage, it needs a target after all. Otherwise you’re screaming until your throat bleeds in the dark.
You hear that anger every time Jin dismounts his horse to have a showdown with mongols. “Face me!” turns into “SEND YOUR BEST!”. If you win the duel or not is irrelevant-the blade is drawn and seeks to drink. The spirit consuming the mind of clan Sakai and Adachi must feed.
I was no different when you left.
In all the things you told me about death and the courage I’d need for it, you failed to mention those that would exploit your legacy. All those occasional “friends” and people who knew you in passing. They were so quick to say how much I looked like you, how you were a good man.
Then they’d ask for something. Sometimes it was intimate details of how you passed. Sometimes it was enormous personal favors. Sometimes it was simply to bask in my grieving, to feel as though they had truly accomplished something. But it was when the vultures came, people you had cut entirely out of your life for all the obvious reasons, that’s what broke me.
Someone had to be the loud voice for mom. Someone had to escort people to the door. And in one case, someone had to lift another off their feet and threaten to beat them to death. I’m glad that the last one believed me. I was so sick after they sped out of the driveway, slinging gravel everywhere that I vomited. To have been that close, to feel that real and palpable rage flowing through every thought.
Gods above man.
I held my hand only because that’s not what you would have wanted.
Anger in grief comes with a sweet tongue. It tells you that everything you’re feeling is right. To give in, if only for a moment, is to feed it forever. To lash out not only at the specter of memory, but those that mean you well. Your friends. Your family. In the end comes the second tragedy, one not of those around us but ourselves. We die a little inside, rotted away by our fury.
I was so close.
So was Jin when he spat “The Khan deserves to suffer”. So was Lady Adachi as her blade pierced through. But even vengeance cannot stifle the tears that flow after, or the suckling of the ghosts in our own mind.
The lesson that anger teaches as a stage of grieving is actually that of letting go. That, if we’re to feed this menacing specter, we will dwell with it for all eternity emaciated. A shade ourselves of what we could be. While the rage may come, it’s as an ebbing tide-and we are left with the consequences of what it makes us do.
Throughout Ghost, Jin is given choices. To be the outstretched hand of help, or the palm that grips the blade. One would think that Lady Adachi would benefit the most from the latter, but no. No, the moment she truly begins to heal comes as Jin plays a song that reminds her of her family at the top of the hill. A moment not filled with shouting and blood, but quiet repose and memory.
A few weeks after you left, I got in my car. I turned on the radio, and through the speakers the host said a special dedication had come on. Within the first few chords I felt my heart seize. I gritted my jaw, and tried to hold in the tears that were coming. Then I thought of the first time I heard that song, and why you said it was about us. So I did what you and I had always done when it seemed to play. I went and got a beer, and a burger. I drove to the top of a hill you used to take me too. I sat there and listened to the world and watched the grass sway below. The wind graced my shoulder when I was done, and I knew it was time to go. I think, all these years later, it was that moment I realized anger was going to kill me if I let it.
I breathed in.
I let go.
Even if you weren’t here, I had that song. I had those memories. I had you in mind and heart, surrounded by the legacy you left behind and the people you touched. Every single one of them-even the assholes-called you a good man.
That I was just like you.
Of Clan And Name
Shut up, I already told you, it’s my allergies. Look, I gotta get going soon and I haven’t even told you the part that reminded me about you. It’s the entire reason I love this game so much.
There comes a point in Ghost that Jin has to return home. Back to the stronghold of Clan Sakai for a very, very specific reason.
He’s getting his father’s armor, and seizing the legacy of what it means.
In other games, this is often done with a dramatic accompaniment. There’s rising strings and woodwinds signifying what an intense accomplishment this is. After all, it’s the moment your hero turns into a legend. It’s supposed to be dramatic.
Ghost eschews tradition in favor of Jin entering a quiet room, guided by a woman who has taken care of him all his life. As she shuts the door, Jin is left with his father’s armor before him and silence. He walks forward a few paces and falls to his knees as memory comes washing over him. Hours of gameplay lead to this very moment, and Jin pauses.
When he reaches forward, his father’s mask falls from the armor stand and he jumps. Yet a moment passes, and he emerges from the room with only his eyes visible. Clan Sakai’s logo is proudly emblazoned upon his chest. He goes outside, and the caretaker who has looked after his home for so long jumps. She says the wrong name, and then realizes who is before her.
Death, particularly that of close family, comes with the question of what those left will do. To follow the path before them, or to make their own. The truth is, grief makes us rudderless in that instance. Sometimes we follow a legacy because the path has been cleared for us. Sometimes we refuse it for all the right reasons, and not. But sometimes still, we embrace what was left for us and make it our own. To carry on the virtues passed down in hopes of passing them down one day ourselves. Jin isn’t his father-but he, like the man before him, is honorable. Kind. Empathetic. He wears the armor of clan Sakai not simply in memoriam of his forebears-but as a flag raised high of all the clan, including his uncle, taught him.
Through Jin, Clan Sakai molds it’s virtues into The Ghost, a symbol of hope for the entire continent.
Do you want to know why that’s my favorite scene?
Why does it remind me so much of you?
After the funeral. After all the guests and vultures. After all the hugs and tears and pats on the back.
I went home. She’d called, and she wanted me over. She had been cleaning, she said. She had some things to give me. I went not for the material goods, but for her first. For you.
The rifle sat upon the table, brass and beautiful. Right on top of the leather saddle bag I’d bought for you when I gave it as a christmas gift. You had told me you had one just like it and had sold it to buy diapers for me as a babe. It had only seemed right that year to give you the same rifle all over again. The way you had laughed and hugged me when you got it.
I still remember that day. A shining moment in the hourglass for us both.
Yet, even given all the good memories that gun gave me, all the countless afternoons of us shooting together, I paused.
I couldn’t touch it. It felt off, so very off. That was yours. I wasn’t supposed to have it. Then she came, and patted my shoulder.
“Jack, honey. He wanted you to have it when…” she said, only to trail off. I smiled, and squeezed her hand.
“Yeah, I know ma. I know. I-I think I’m gonna target shoot a bit. Make sure it’s okay,”
“Sure thing. If you need me, I’ll be in here, okay?”
“Sure thing ma. Love you,”
“Love you too Jacky. Always,”
She walked out to go busy herself, or at least give the impression that she was so she could cry quietly. The room was empty, save for me and the rifle. When I lifted it, it felt so much heavier than it had.
But I found some bullets. I went outside to the range you and I had built together.
I shot until the box was empty, right about when the sun was just an orange semi-circle on the horizon. It didn’t heal the ache in my heart, but it sure did help.
When I went inside, she was at the oven pulling out biscuits. She looked up and said “Ron? Oh, oh god son. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
“-Ma, it’s okay-”
“I just-you look so much like him and I-” she said, and I heard in her voice the tears were coming. I put the rifle on the table and walked around the counter. I put my arms around her and just let her go.
“Hey,” I said, “It’s okay. Shhhh, it’s okay. I know. I know. And you know what? I couldn’t imagine a more handsome bastard to resemble,”
When I said that, she laughed. She finally pulled away, and was smiling again.
You taught me that, you know. That quick wit, those punchlines. If it hadn’t been for you, she would have just kept on crying. She wiped her eyes, and tilted her head towards the table.
“You know what I realized?”
“What’s that, Ma?”
She sniffled, and said “You and him. You can still have your talks together. Just like always,”
It was my turn to smile as I looked over at the rifle.
“Yeah, I guess we can. I guess we can,”
She’d always called it that. When we went out target shooting, or just cruising. “Our talks”.
You and me, we never did stop yammering at each other did we? Even with all that’s happened.
Embracing the legacy you left behind for me, turning it out and taking away the bad to seize the good…I’ve wondered sometimes if this was the path you would have wanted me to take. If it was what you laid out for me.
Then I realized the only thing you ever wanted for me was to be my own person. To stand tall, and be proud of who I am. To say “I’m a LaCroix” with my full chest.
To embrace a legacy or not, to forge ahead on our own, in the end? It’s a non-question. We carry on regardless, the sins and triumphs of those parted just as much a part of us as the ones we make on our own.
That’s why that particular scene is my favorite.
In playing through it, I realized what you had truly wanted.
Goodbyes Aren’t Forever
The bottle is empty. The smokes are soon to follow. The sun is setting, and the wind is at my back once more.
It sure has been good talking to you again. I think we both were long overdue for it. I was a bit worried video games were too goofy of a topic, but you know? You were always happy just to hear my voice.
I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry, I’ll bring more drinks and more to smoke. Hopefully my allergies won’t bother me so much then. And hey, in the meantime-if you’ve got a way wherever you are, give that game a try. It’s well worth it. Maybe you’ll think of me too when you do.
Until then.
I’ll say what I did the very last day you were with us.
I miss you, Pops.
I wish you were here.
-j