For me, Hanbei the Undying is not just one of FromSoftware's best characters, he also provides a lesson in how to tell stories through gameplay.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Activision) |
Spoilers below for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. If you haven't played it, go do that, it was the best £50 I spent on a new controller after I smashed mine.
It's wild what you end up talking about when you drink in other countries isn't it? It was during one of my semi-regular escape attempts from Brexit Island when I was asked by the people I was travelling with who my favourite NPC in gaming was. An odd question but an important one. So often we give attention to gaming's protagonists for their role driving the story but in doing so we forget that non-player characters are the ones driving the world where that story takes place.
It was at this point, for the first time in a long time, that I remembered Hanbei the Undying from FromSoftware's 2019 shinobi-em-up Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While I can't honestly say that I'm deeply attached to any NPCs because I'm not the kind of person who writes Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction, I felt that it was telling that Hanbei sprang to mind. As such, today I want to explore what makes Hanbei, to my mind, such a great NPC and what he can teach us about telling unique and impactful stories.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Activision) First, let me give you a bit of background to Hanbei. The undying swordsman is an NPC in your home base of the Dilapidated Temple. When you first meet him, he asks that you kill him in a duel. Insert joke about having been on worse first dates. However, having torn him in half with your sword, his body knits itself back together and he simply sighs in disappointment at your poor interpretation of murder. From this point on, he becomes your coach cross punching bag by allowing you to fight him as training for the rest of the game. It turns out, having an immortal training partner is quite helpful for figuring out which end of the sword is the pointy bit. Hanbei is a character who immediately endears himself to you simply through how sympathetic he is. Watching the grotesque writhing as his body stitches itself back together makes it immediately obvious that Hanbei's immortality is more curse than gift. This is all before you even consider the contextual implications of an soldier in feudal Japan who is physically unable to achieve an honourable death.
However, despite this mild body horror and his clear disdain for his own circumstances, Hanbei still offers to help you. In one brief exchange, he sees that your armless arse is in need of some practice, before offering to help you. It may not seem like much but FromSoftware could have very easily cast Hanbei to sit in a corner of the temple and bemoan his circumstances like the various crestfallen knights from the Dark Souls series. Instead, he shows you generosity by turning his circumstances to your advantage. Thus, with only a very short exchange, Hanbei immediately ingratiates himself with new players and earns their sympathy.
At this point, I'm sure anyone that has read a Wolverine comic is pointing out that a man cursed with immortality using his curse to help the world isn't a wholly unique concept. Hell, Wolverine even goes to Japan a lot so Sekiro can't even claim that as a selling point. However, what makes Hanbei such a good example of video game storytelling is how this story develops through gameplay. You see, Sekiro is hard. For people like me that were bitten by a radioactive sloth as a child, the high speed and precise timing of the combat takes a lot of getting used to. As a result, new players are likely to spend a lot of time practising with Hanbei. These practice sessions are effectively devoid of dialogue but, because of he helps you learn the game's mechanics or, if you're like me, vent frustration at annoying bosses by killing him over and over, he becomes an important part of your gameplay routine. It's a narrative device that only video games can effectively pull off where the same repeated actions, without any dialogue or cutscenes at all, cause you to bond with a character until they become central to your experience with the game. Where Hanbei's character, and FromSoftware's deliver of his story, really peaks though, is in its conclusion. Around the halfway point in the game, you come across the Red Mortal Blade, one of two weapons in Sekiro's world with an intrinsic link to the afterlife and which, as a result, are capable of killing immortal beings. When you arrive return to the Dilapidated Temple, Hanbei comments on your newfound stabbing stick and asks you to, finally, kill him with it.
To my mind, this moment is one of the high points of Sekiro's story because this one exchange carries with it a whole wealth of implications. Firstly, it offers a payoff to Hanbei's story. Having spent the whole game endearing himself to you by helping you train for your quest, he finally asks for something in return. The game gives you the option to refuse him and keep him on as your training dummy but, after all of those hours of training and the progress you've made because of him, you don't want to. Freeing him from his torment gives you all of the necessary emotional payoff for this character you care about. Secondly, Hanbei's death also offers players a reward on a metatextual level. By allowing you to put Hanbei to rest, the game is effectively telling players that they've graduated. Hanbei's role in the game is all about training and grasping the basics of the game. Once the game encourages you to kill Hanbei, it is a signal to players that they have mastered all the tools they need for the rest of the game. It creates this unique emotional cocktail very few NPC stories ever have where players feel both melancholic from granting Hanbei his wish while also feeling proud of themselves for no longer requiring his services.
Finally, Hanbei's story is also an important part of Sekiro on a thematic level. Sekiro's world and its plot both revolve around the concept of immortality with mortal men's folly trying to achieve it contrasted against the horrifying reality of what life without death looks like. Where most immortal entities in the game have been moulded and transformed into vicious monsters and murderers by their immortality, Hanbei exists in contrast to this. He has remained human. However, the clear unhappiness still makes it abundantly clear that, regardless of his lucidity, his immortality should still be severed. This is an important thematic point for the end of the game. The most common endings that players will get involve either sacrificing your character, Wolf, or your young master, Kuro, to purge Japan of immortality. Neither Wolf nor Kuro are monsters but, just like with Hanbei, the suffering that immortality has brought to them and those around them makes it important that they continue with their plan for severance. Hanbei's story is so significant to my mind because it is part of a web of interconnecting moments that all tie back to this point about immortality and the severing thereof that makes the game's ending feel all the more momentous and emotionally impactful.
Everything I've highlighted here, for me, exemplifies what makes FromSoftware such a breath of fresh air in the video game landscape. Their ability to tell intricate and effective stories like Sekiro's through gameplay and without relying on length expository cutscenes and dialogue trees show what games are able to do as a storytelling medium and Hanbei is a prime example of that. I wrote an article some time ago about how cutscene heavy cinematic games like The Last of Us and God of War are important for appealing to wide audiences that might be coming to video games from other mediums like film. While I stand by that, I also believe that, when talking about video games as a art-form, examples like FromSoftware and characters like Hanbei are where the medium really shines and shows what it is capable of in the realm of deep and emotional storytelling. All images and properties referred to above belong to their respective rights holders and are utilised here for the purpose of criticism and review. |
