"It is said that an infested body marks the undying..."
"Soldiers and townfolk alike died by the thousands. Very few survived Ashina became the setting for the most tragic massacre of the Sengoku era, and, for a long time after, it was said a demon lurked the land..."
—Shura ending narration
This IS a FromSoftware game after all, if they taught us anything, there's never enough room for some very disturbing stuff that would keep you awake.
Unmarked spoilers ahead
- Seeing Sekiro's arm being cut clean off by Genichiro, while brief, is a little too realistic for its own good. The full product goes more in length of the aftermath, passing out and nearly dying of blood loss.
- The Long-arm Centipede mini-bosses. Good lord, if it's not enough that these things are aggressive, their design alone will leave you with night terrors, with their creepy slasher smile. Sleep well....
- The Guardian Ape manages to be pretty intimidating from the get go, seeing as he doesn't seem too bothered by that giant sword stuck in his throat. His sheer size along with his speed makes him a brutal opponent. Eventually you manage to chop his head off and the fight seemingly ends. You even get the standard victory message. Then he stands back up, grabs the bloody sword you just cut his head off with and picks up his still severed head to continue the fight! He actually pulls off a legitimate Jump Scare mid battle!
- Occasionally, he'll put his head back on the stump to let out a hideous, unnervingly human sounding shriek, which is a dangerous area of effect attack that inflicts Terror. You and us both, Wolf...
- The way the Ape moves in its second phase deserves mention simply because of how unnatural it is: it flops and slithers on the ground, then goes flying into the air and lands in a tangled heap of limbs, then is seemingly lifted off the ground by its sword arm and sent crashing forward. Its movements bring to mind a marionette, and with later revelations it's proven that this is exactly what the Ape is: a puppet of flesh and bone, on the strings of the centipede infesting it.
- The Headless near the Ashina Outskirts is terrifying to fight, especially when one is new to the game. Imagine stumbling by chance into a secret path, trying to explore it until you end up in a pitch black cave where a headless bloated corpse roams. Even worse this corpse is Nigh-Invulnerable, creates an aura that impedes your movement and teleports around to strike you from blind angles.
- All the more so since, for a new player who is playing blind without spoilers, if they make a wrong turn early on this could easily be their first experience regarding the darker supernatural aspects of the game. Up until now, the closest the player has seen is the chained ogre and that could be explained away as anything other than supernatural. With the Headless, however, it is something blatantly, undeniably mystical, and extremely dangerous. It fights in a bizarre fashion, with seemingly easy to parry attacks that still damage and inflict Terror, disappears and reappears at will, and deals ridiculous amounts of vitality and posture damage to an early-game player. For a new player who stumbled into this by accident, it's almost guaranteed to be a Hopeless Boss Fight and the player can easily be destroyed in seconds before they fully realize what is going on.
- The scare chord-ridden soundtrack that plays when you encounter these yokai is the stuff of nightmares and likely will make you question what you've stumbled upon the first time you hear it.
- There is also the Shichimen Warrior, a ghostly apparition clad in a purple aura that menacingly dances and hops around. They are fought in dark rooms where just about your only source of orientation are the eerie, glowing orbs they summon. It also constantly teleports in order to strike you down with energy beams from elsewhere in the room.
- There are five Headless in the game (technically six as one is a Dual Boss) and three Shichimen. The Headless, however, at least have a backstory. They're warriors who died defending their countries in such an undignified way that they became revenant/ghost/ghouls and are basically undead versions of kappa, ripping people's souls out (of their asses, no less). The Shichimen Warriors, however, have no lore whatsoever and there's only one obscure as fuck reference whereas "shichimen" translates more or less to "seven-headed dragon".
Where they come from, what their ceremonies are there to accomplish, their origins, or motivations are all unknown. They are just there to kill the player and look creepy as hell, jobs that they are VERY good at.
- The start of the Blazing Bull fight is highly unnerving if you don't know it's coming. You enter a seemingly ordinary courtyard with a few soldiers, the first of which grants you a suspiciously easy backstab. You can then eavesdrop on the other two soldiers, who are discussing some live weapon that can't distinguish between friend and foe once it gets mad. Approach them and the stables behind them explode with a massive bull with a burning log attached to its head charging out and going on an immediate rampage.
- O’rin of the Water. You were warned about the sound of a shamisen. In the woods, you hear a woman crying and a shamisen. After speaking with her, she reveals she is upset over having lost sight of her beloved. She seems off, but otherwise upstanding compared to the village before her. Then no matter what you do, she starts to suspect you are responsible for her love going missing, and she draws her sword while becoming translucent — revealing her ghostly nature. This music plays.
- The Demon of Hatred. What becomes of the Sculptor when he can no longer run from his repressed rage. Because his arm was cut off by Isshin to stop him from becoming Shura, he cannot become a proper Shura, but he’s still an absolute nightmare, a deformed monster of pure hatred that does nothing but kill everything around it in blind rage.
- Just his introduction is horrifying. Or rather, the lack thereof. You simply enter the battlefield where you fought Gyoubu to see this thing absolutely decimate a group of soldiers.
- The fact that the Demon of Hatred wasn’t even a proper Shura, and still manages to be one of the most powerful foes Sekiro ever has to take down. How powerful was a real Shura?
- The fact that whatever is left of the Sculptor inside the Demon of Hatred, is fully aware of the monstrosity he has become, but cannot do anything to fight back. Killing him is unquestionably a kindness.
- The Shura ending. Sekiro succumbs to his inner demons and becomes a Shura, being stated to having killed soldiers and civilians alike, causing the worst massacre of the Sengoku era, a time that is legendary for being one of the most violent conflicts humanity has ever seen and the single bloodiest period in Japanese history. Worse is that for the rest of his life, he roams the land in search for people to kill. And remember, at this point, Sekiro possesses TWO Mortal Blades, as if his current Crimson one wasn't enough. What nightmare would Sekiro create after this point? He could even slay the entire world if he wanted.
- Fields of bodies, mountains of dead.Down Dragonspring river, our country bled.A fiery god, demon wolf in red.
- When Sekiro succumbed to Shura, he would kill everyone he encountered, including his Lord, Kuro. As Kuro is a special case of immortality, he cannot be killed by just slashing him with Mortal Blade, as this requires a special ritual with special item before the killing blow can be dealt. Well, Kuro might not be dead, but this might be the case of a fate worse than death itself.
- Hacking the game to allow free cam during the cutscene makes it worse. Interestingly, FROM animated Genchiro's severed head being placed by Owl next to Isshin's corpse. You can't see the head in cam locked version of the scene. The only hint that it happened is that Owl is carrying the Mortal Blade Genchiro wields in the other endings. Owl must've claimed it off of Genchiro and used it to behead him.
- The Corrupted Monk, a bizarre, extremely tall nun in a jeering hannya mask. She has unsettling, flowing movements, she cackles constantly, and she can cover her arena in a fog and kill you from any angle with shadow clones. Oh, and in phase three, a giant centipede pops out of her head
- The Great Serpent is one of most terrifying bosses, where you have to hide from it and try to sneak past as it is simply not possible to fight head-on due to its sheer size.
- What's worse is that there is a second Serpent in the Sunken Valley Passage.
- The somber, creepy flute playing of the Nobles in the Foutainhead Palace makes the otherwise gorgeous area feel a lot more sinister than it really is. Even worse, until you kill all of them, you'll hear it constantly.
- After defeating Genichiro for the third and final time, he'll slice his neck open with the Black Mortal Blade, summoning Isshin at his prime, who messily pulls himself out of his grandson's body. He emerges like a crab shedding its old skeleton.
- The Abandoned Dungeon is a dark, damp hallway full of roaches and "patients", who are more akin to zombies. They are failed subjects of resurrection/immortality science that can reanimate themselves once as a result.
- Senpou Temple seems like a relatively peaceful, serene area at first. Sure, there are creepy monks that attack you on sight, but the scenery is gorgeous. You can find dozens upon dozens of colorful pinwheels spinning throughout the level. There's a single white pinwheel you can also find. Later on, you discover that the pinwheels represent the children who died as those monks attempted to create an artificial Dragon Heir. The white pinwheel represents the single survivor, the Divine Child of Rejuvination. DOZENS AND DOZENS of children were killed in the monks' mad quest for immortality.
- In addition, the Monks of the temple discovered a way to gain immortality by using gigantic centipedes to infest their bodies, rotting them from within, but granting immortality. You can find several of their higher-ranking monks that have grown a gigantic, writhing centipede several meters long within their own bodies, but have become rotting, immobile corpses themselves. And until later in the game, you simply cannot kill them.
- Look closer to the fires that are lit in the Temple Grounds, they are fueled by bones.
- There's also the fact that hidden in any hard-to-reach spot or anywhere Wolf might hide, the ground is littered with dead bodies with their hands tied behind their backs.
- If you think that getting infested with centipedes was horrible, then prepare for the inhabitants of the Fountainhead Palace, who are horrifying Fish People, half-human half-carp. They've consumed so much of the Fountainhead waters that their wish to become immortal is becoming a reality, as they are becoming carps that supposedly can then turn into dragons. Worse, there's a giant human-faced carp swimming in the pond in the middle of the palace, and one of the NPCs notes that the nobles are obsessed with the giant carp, suggesting that this carp was once another inhabitant who's become much more successful in their quest for immortality.
- Mibu Village. Thanks to the water supply getting contaminated by the Fountainhead Palace, everyone has gone crazy and turned into monsters. It's like a Zombie Apocalypse that has no end since the villagers just keep coming, some of the transformed villagers even bursting out of the ground to grab at your ankles.
- Even worse? The battle theme for both Mibu Village and the above mentioned Abandoned Dungeon is "Thirsting Horde", a terrifying tune that really does bring to mind the thought of zombies shambling towards you, eager to rip you to pieces...fitting given that's effectively what's happening in these two areas.
- Even worse? The battle theme for both Mibu Village and the above mentioned Abandoned Dungeon is "Thirsting Horde
- Dragonrot is a pretty terrifying disease. The more you die, the more characters become inflicted with it. Although it does not progress to fatality, it nevertheless turns characters into coughing, wheezing messes who seem to be on the verge of death. Not only are you indirectly responsible for their affliction, the game states that you are stealing their life essence in order to survive your repeated deaths. Few characters are safe from Dragonrot; harmless merchants, a childlike monk, and elderly women are not spared from Dragonrot. The "Rot Essence" items you receive to mark a characters affliction are terrifying in their own right; Dragonrot is represented as a swirling, ominous Giygas-like cloud hovering over the afflicted.
- Though the characters do not die from Dragonrot in-game, Emma states early on that Ashina has suffered a Dragonrot epidemic before, and unfortunately there was no known cure at the time. As such, everyone who had Dragonrot died from it. While gameplay won't see them die, from a story perspective, those people are doomed if you do not or cannot save them...
- Your introduction to it once you acquire your first Rot Essence is pretty scary as well as heartbreaking. Upon dying, you find yourself reawakening in the Sculptor's hut, eerily enough much like you did after your arm was cut off....but this time is different, you awaken to the Sculptor hacking and coughing and generally sounding like he's dying....and his response to you all but convinces you that he is on VERY limited time unless you do something, fast...
- The Dragonrot Sample, no matter who you get it from, is disgusting and kinda horrifying to look at. It looks like what one would expect to have during a nasty cold, but is a hideous blob of phlegm amidst quite a lot of blood. And that's what the Rot victims are choking on until you cure them, nevermind that it's your fault though unintentionally that they have it to begin with...
