The Ethics of Sifu
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- Опубліковано 17 гру 2022
- Spoilers for Sifu in the video. I wanted to expand upon my thoughts about Sifu since it is still one of my favourite games of 2022. I previously talked about the game in my video about video game adaptations, but it's not apparent that I would talk about the game with such a topic.
Link for the video here: • Why Most Game Adaptati...
This video contains the whole Sifu portion of that video, where I talk about the story and how it affected me. I expand upon that and relate it to how the game teaches morality through immersion. I also share some of my own theories and interpretations of the story and lore.
This video is protected by Fair Use, under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.
I do not claim ownership, all rights and credits belong to their rightful owners
#sifu #videoessay #analysis #dankym - Ігри
Hey, thank you so much everyone for watching this video; it’s gotten fairly popular. I highly recommend watching my other videos as honestly, I feel they’re much better than this one, and would love for them to be seen by more. Regardless thanks for just clicking and finding me.
The part about common enemies not getting the same mercy resonates with me. You see it so often in movies. The heroes completely slaughter the henchmen and sometimes even joke about it, but when they get to the main villain, they have this big moral crisis where they want to be merciful and forgive. Meanwhile, all the henchmen combined might not have done as much wrong as their leader. But nobody ever even considers giving them mercy, when they have done far less wrong and would be far more likely to redeem themselves. I get it, it's more fun if they get wrecked without mercy, but it completely invalidates whatever they say to justify sparing the main villain later.
This is true, but in how they structure the movies (and the same with Sifu) the henchman are usually trying to kill or stop the hero from reaching their objective, so it's more a matter of necessity. Whereas once they reach the ornate room with a monologuing villain they can then entertain the idea of peace.
Like the entirety of the 3rd Museum level, the whole time you have dude with metal baseball bats and swords running at you trying to kill you, there isn't much time for peace. But in a room alone with a women who literally says she doesn't want to fight? That's different.
Well, you can just k.o. the common enemies with your bare hands/staff/bat. This is all about mastery.
"He who has Kung-fu and Wude lets other know that he can break him. His hands go out like lightning, and the other doesn't want to fight anymore".
Take it to mooks as well. It will be much harder, but much more satisfying :)
Step one: beat up henchmen
Step two: stare boss in the eyes until it gets awkward
Step three: ???
Step four: inner peace
Dishonored does a good representation of how u can also show mercy to everyone except ur antagonists
@@APersonOnUA-camX but it’s kinda bad in dishonored as much as i love the game
sifu taught me that as long as youre still living and breathing, theres always time to atone for your mistakes and improve
I know it is unrelated, but Christianity teaches this as well🤗
@@mihaica87bruhhh
the villains of this game make no attempts to atone for their crimes
@@destroyallfurries Yeah you're right, the villain's don't turn around at all and the protagonist doesn't do anything worth atoning for. After the wude ending these people are still alive and very powerful, they just don't have the talismans any more. It's not much of a punishment considering the scale of their crimes.
@peacemaster8117 fajar goes back to making some sort of numbing plants to help yang in his quest for healing, sean atones for his mistakes and learns that teaching is not only for the tough and seems to start a school like his father, kuroki seems to reflect more on her actions and has severed her ties with her past, and learned to move on, as for jingfei not mucb really changed as she was already helping many people already, and yang as well, accept that he taught Yin (our protagonist) to be better, to strive to keep peace and forgive, throughout our journey we were slowly inching towards Wude.
6:02 I liked how when you “allegedly” threw the guy, there was already a body there.
but u saw also at 6:10 where he allegedly stabbed the guy and he just floats back up
Metal Gear Rising Reveangance perfectly addresses the issue with henchmen not getting mercy whilst the bosses get a special treatment. Would love to see you cover this if possible. Great video.
Thanks, I am interested but I don’t really have a way of playing unless a remaster or something comes for PS5.
Raiden's argument essentially amounts to "Of course they get hurt when you set them up as human shields"
@@dankym steam superiority moment
I agree with the fact killing the common enemy kinda doesnt make sense, but at the same time i think there is a way you can look at it too. The game does provide non lethal ways of finishing people off. As a matter of fact it even allows you to skip or walk past a majority of its enemies with the use of shortcuts. You do not need to use the finisher prompt to end them and usually hitting some of them with basic attacks until their health depletes leave them knocked out regularly without an animation that shows you hitting all these lethal extremities or reathing in pain on the ground that at least shows their alive. Even in the 3rd Level when you are first presented with the first lethal weapon you can use you have to make the consious decision to use that weapon, same with throwing people off ledges and stuff. you can complete the entire campaign without killing a single person really its just really hard and a lot slower which is the point. Like stated in the video it is alot easier to harm people than to spare them.
I’ve also noticed how knocking down some enemies leaves them writhing while executing them with the prompt leaves them motionless, some even with their eyes open. I tried doing a run without executing anyone and ended up just sweeping all their legs. But yea, that was tough, especially the mid-bosses
"Kiryu never kills anyone"
Should be an achevivment cause whenever I get that knife. I start slashing immediately 😭😭
It's a video game system.
“I have to harm and kill people to progress” me smacking out the tech guy that’s not a threat
Lol yea for a long while I also just kept attacking everyone in that training room before Sean’s trials. I didn’t realize they were all passive and I could just walk and talk to the dude at the end.
I was the exact same with the start of the tower a bit of an ethic lesson there I think 😂
@@cassex4415 Bro u had no chill 💀
Don't know why but if you spare everyone with less age is more satisfying cause you did,nt spend your whole life in revenge
Yeah, the best possible ending is getting the Wude ending at age 20, you get revived by Yang at LEAST age 21, and get to live your life all the way til your 75, running your own school with your own students and I’m assuming hanging out with each of the bosses, at least Yang.
Yeah
@@HatKidPeck And we get to marry kuroki 😍
@@HatKidPeck fact, i tried 20, but i only could get 21, but i was like 20 in each boss, is satifactory
@@posadist681 lol
This is the moment, when Fajar became Heisenberg
funny enough, after beating some of the regular enemies you can actually still see some of them move a bit from exhaustion and getting hurt. So it could just be a Kiryu Kazuma thing where you don't actually kill people other than the bosses themselves
Never mind those you execute using bladed weapons. It even has a one-hit kill move😆
It depends on how you finished them, because sometimes they are limp in a small pool of blood and arent breathing anymore, especially with bat and sword finishers.
Honestly, I interpreted the end not as the protagonist starting their own school, but Yang starting the school.
Yang killed the protagonist, because the protagonist realised that was the only morally correct end to their conflict. And we know that the protagonist did in fact perish due to their being in a paradise, a nirvana, an afterlife after they fall to Yang.
But in the time between the strike and their death, the willpower of the protagonist to still show mercy and practice Wude even in the face of their inevitable demise showed Yang he was wrong for seeking vengeance. It allowed Yang to finally understand after 8 long years, what his former Sifu was trying to teach him. It helped enlighten Yang, and in honour of his former Sifu and the memory of the protagonist for enlightening him, he starts a school to help pass on those teachings to others so that they won't repeat his mistakes.
So the legacy of Sifu and the protagonist lives on, not through their bloodline, but through their ideals and Wude.
not make much sense, in the begining we dont see the protag with the revive talisman before was killed, someone gave them after he was killed, and in the end work the same so, when the protag spare yang 2 times, and yang saw that the protag died, he just gave to the protag the revive talisman again, even after this in the end when protag is looking the sun and the dragon, he has the talisman, so the protag is in fact, alive, and not somekind of afterlife.
i mean... if you look at the arm of the sifu you can clearly see that its the protagnist's arm
This has been actually debunked. If you mod your player model, the ''sifu'' at the end changes accordingly
I love discovering these small creators with so much talent. Keep the great work
First time UA-cam recommended an actual good video and channel to me. Looking forward to seeing more
Fun video was a good watch while I ate my food
Thank you, I hope to occupy everyone’s meal time in the future.
I think extending beyond the fact that henchmen get no mercy, it's kind of insane for the game to lord a message over you while making combat genuinely fun and having murder be the optimal way to dispatch a lot of these enemies since the button prompts seem to lead into instant kills. It's like Sifu forgets it's a video game.
Also, MGS3 made grunt deaths feel impactful like 20 years ago while still leaving room for their bosses to seem justified in their own view to do what they had done without punishing players mechanically. Telling your players that they didn't beat the game via no credits despite getting to the end using the systems they designed to be fun is a bit too pretentious for me, especially considering that you only "completed" Sifu because there was no finality. Presenting players with things they've done throughout the game to have them make their own judgment is much more impactful.
I'm sure there's a point to "when you're filled with hate and revenge, it's harder not to give in," and sure, that could be the point. I think from a design perspective though, having a harder (but still engaging) way of approaching enemies non-lethally could be a great alternative gameplay and narrative tool, instead of not engaging with information the game presents to you. A conscious decision would still be made, you would be doing things humanely, and the gameplay would suffer less from it. I'm sure balancing, budgets, and deadlines all play a part in things like these being considered or added, so I don't think Sifu is bad for what it does. It is overstated, a bit uninspired, and still a letdown in terms of narrative tying in with gameplay, though.
You do bring up good points about the gameplay betraying the narrative in how it promotes violence. I've noticed this myself and in other comments, but trying to play through the game passively is either unfeasible or boring. The game is simply never designed for such a path except for the bosses. Sure I learned to be more merciful, but it was the game that forced me into the path of violence. But that violence doesn't have to be lethal and I find that as an interesting grey area of morality.
Bringing up Metal Gear is perfect as the games are open enough to either let you kill or not. I'm more familiar with MGSV, but I do love how the game allows me to be as passive or as brutal as I can be. Acting either way provides its own engaging challenges and allows everyone to have fun doing both. The series does a better job of exploring that grey area of morality. I might actually cover MGS or something similar like Hitman in the future.
I believe the game is designed to be played multiple times. When players first defeat Yang they arent being punished for not sparing him, they are being informed that this was only the first half of the story. Now you replay the game and spare the bosses, which will be harder but you as a player are also much more skilled.
The game is also incredibly short once you get better at it, and beating it a second time is almost a victory lap. I think the author of the video makes a great point that a lot of players probably would of quit after defeating yang and not experienced the full story if they were to see credits initially.
great video, u deserve more subs. thank you for making me love this game even more
Thank you, I appreciate you appreciating the game more. Would def help to share, but your praise is already enough.
"Bruh, Im trying to spare you I swear, but... uh... I got them DEMONS inside me or something" is such a raw line
Subbed, brilliant video man, I love this game so much! 💯😃
Often with "objects which bestow power too great to be wielded by man" is not simply destroyed or are indestructible is usually due to what they represent.
In context of kungfu films and the like, the narrative usually places acceptance and restraint as it's focus. The power is always there, but the restraint is what makes the martial artist.
A story where the item is destroyed will lose this moral, as it changes to question to "why didn't we destroy it sooner" instead of learning to control it.
At first I was scared of getting many deaths from the bosses… but now I’m scared of getting the chance to spare the bosses
It is nice to see a bit of morality being brought into gaming for a change.
Good video. I believe the person who is shown at the end (we assume they have their martial arts school now) is Yang, we the protagonist was killed by him and went to heaven. That's my take on it although I'm not really sure :)
I'd argue it could be adapted into a film by making one change, at the end of the first act of the film the protagonist kills yang at an old age where they realise that killing him only repeats the cycle and then dies resulting in the talisman and breaking through some movie magic(which in a movie about continuously dying and being resurrected doesn't seem too far fetched ) wakes up at the start of the game 20 years old but without the talisman, where he re-fights all the bosses sparing them at taking back the talismans to meet yang again but this time at 20 he beats yang and achieves wude, the end... idk I'm probs forgetting something but I think that could be a great movie.
Not a bad idea, although I think it makes more sense that the third act will repeat. I wouldn’t mind a Sifu adaptation, and I think it could be good. I’m just saying the story wouldn’t be as effective as it was in the game. The themes wouldn’t hit the same as a passive viewer. But a movie could still be fun.
Nice video lad!
Subbed. Solid stuff
The game allows you to choose your personality via playstyle. For e.g. in my 2nd run, I didn't use bladed weapons or try to throw enemies off ledges so it felt like I incapacitated them rather than killed them.
What theories about Sifu do you have, or what other game taught you about ethics?
great video :D
This game teaches ethics: *Literally beats the piss shit out of gang members, civilian works, guards, students, and quite possibly actually innocent fighters who have done nothing but stand in you way via ignorance* ETHICS
U aint ready for “The Ethics of Mortal Kombat Fatalities” and “The Ethics of No Russian” next.
And all that, just so you can confront the people who killed you and your sifu... so you can tire them out, make them think you're going to kill them, but then leave them alone and go to the next one.
That'll show them
@@Sercil00 yeah! They'll never even know what happened(cause nothing did!)
I feel like they could have put more conditions so achieving True ending felt more earned like... idk, don't use weapons, don't use finisher on enemies, don't f***ing stunt throw them off ground, maybe make our choices of dialogues MATTER? There's quite a bit they could have added
I think the museum boss was the one that made rethink what I was doing
Love the channel btw dude!
Pretty sure the bracelet wasn't one of the talismans
Just a magical family heirloom
If it’s anything like the one ring then he wouldn’t want to destroy the talismans! The power would defo be corrupting him
Very interesting
The amount of times I accidentally killed yang instead of sparing because of adrenaline 😭
I found it kind of weird that at the ending, your talisman is fully recovered despite me having lost a few of the coins. Maybe yang restored the player's age with his talisman power too
It would have been funny and maddening if you could spare common enemies the same way as bosses. Break their posture twice. There could be a little animation where they run away and are invincible while escaping.
I would have loved a third ending wich could be unlocked by not killing anybody ever (no weapons nor tossing over neither finisher prompt). Maybe you defeat Yang without "dying".
My first run was the one I spared everyone
How’d you figure that?
@@dankym I saw a spare prompt while fighting fajar but killed him and just started trying to spare him and everyone. My quest wasn't one of vengeance because that ruins people. Sparing people shouldn't be harder than killing them but it was. My second run however, yeah, I killed them all
I'm extremely late to the party but hear me out: The henchmen actually don't matter regarding Wude (or any similar revenge stories) because they are mere obstacles and are not a part of the cycle of revenge in the first place - they do not represent anything personal. So, the protag cannot *forgive* the henchmen. The point of the theme of Wude is not to stop hurting people but to not fixate on scars others have inflicted on you, to *forgive* and let go.
I disagree with the sentiment that the Guardians were right - imo, the bosses progressively get more noble in their pursuits. Like, obviously Fajar being a drug dealer is icky no good, and Sean's fight club is morally ambiguous at best, but Kuroki is just an artist, Jinfeng runs a charity organization, and Yang works miracles in a hospital. It shows a spectrum, that power absolutely can corrupt, but ultimately it's reliant on the individual people.
You do know that there is a trailer of a live action film of Sifu, where the player fights Fajar, right?
Man I came here for vengeance
Expect everyone else you don’t have to spare them
From what i can tell a lot of the moves you can do in Sifu are non-lethal and you're only KOing your opponent.
Except for blade attacks, the protagonist has no chill when they've got a knife in their hands.
Minor point, Yang didn't just kill your father, he killed his innocent child (you) as well. You only survived because he didn't know you had the talisman at the time.
major point: you ar incorrect, Yang gives you the talisman, and brings oyu back to life. You do not start out with the talisman, this is obvious upon the MC's reaction waking up with the talisman
@@MikeySlays69 That point is still up for debate. Oh and he also killed the other students too.
@@dorkangel1076it’s not
@@BasedR0nin opinions vary
good thing facts have nothing to do with opinions.. dumbass@@dorkangel1076
The story was not great but the gameplay style colourful art were great so it made up for this story revenge story's though there's to many of them these days if they did a second one it was be nice to see a proper full game with a good story
The ethical approach is a high-powered sniper rifle.
You’re too underrated
I mean, if you don't chuck anyone off a floor or use swords, you can theoretically say you didn't kill.
Christ bless you, love this
I wouldn't say you KILL the henchmen. Also forgot to mention THEY SLIT A CHILDS THROAT IN THE BEGINNING🤣
oh please with the whole thou shalt not kill.
imagen playing on a dificulty that you can beat just by spamin attacks and forgose the main threat of the death system via shrines. skill dif
did it so fucking better than Last Of Us 2 we can all agree
Idk man, seems like it's better to wipe out the entire bloodline.
11/7 wude
Same as god of war
but they are not brothers?
They are💀
Is there an in game reason why you fight dudes just to spare them?
Why not just stay home and play video games?
Them voluntarily giving up a coin is the only reason stated (in the vid) and its just an assumption. And I guess they hid the coin and take its location to their grave if you kill them.
They should have implemented a KO system for non-boss bad guys where you would get negatives for killing but knocking them out or restraining them would be the way forward.
Nah I'd rather just kicking ass
@@swindler1622 then go play a different game
@@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145 uh then what this game is then?
@@Darknova591 this is a game where killing non boss bad guys has no negatives on your character.
@@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145 because they are not important they just henchmen that work for the bosses they will try to kill regardless they only just here for like a beat em up moment like those Kung Fu movies and games.
Live action Film yes, but call me a weeb, I'm not opposed to a Sifu anime....
dont personally agree with the morality of sparing your enemies. kill them and show no mercy - but it probably reflects more on the views of the developers and their experiences then your's or mine
Yea the devs (along with me) don’t really show why it’s good to be merciful. I see it as a showing of how powerful a person is. Where I could easily kill everyone but I choose not to. When I spare, I am not afraid of their retaliation. I’ll simply defeat them again or tire them out.
It’s ethically good but can also be toxic, which I find more fun. It reminds me of when I would play Hearthstone and I would attack my opponent until they’re one health and not kill them. Instead, I’ll keep on defending myself until my opponent leaves the match. Or say in Warzone, I would down a person with self-revive, let them get up again, just to down them. I’d even give them more kits just to keep them down.
I find mercy as the ultimate show of strength.
@@dankymThat's actually a good point. In the way your putting it - you're literally adding insult to injury. You break them and them choose to let them live with that. I actually like that. In a way, mercy is a weapon of it's own.
Regardless, good analyses on the video
A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Proverbs 12:10
Well the Chinese have a very long history with many old philosophies. So the old Chinese kung Fu way of mercy isn't probably going to make sense to modern Westerner that has long ago abandoned spiritualism, honor or poetry. Modern westerners only care about pragmatism in the short term. Old Concepts like the Eastern sense of harmony or sanctity of life doesn't mean much to the modern world, even to modern China.
What an immature viewpoint
9:22 I think it’s the same case with the nazi research. Horrible, horrible stuff that could only be used for pain during its time however destroying it would hurt future generations who otherwise could find a way to use them good.
Interesting perspective. It's true; the technology isn't inherently evil, so perhaps it is better to preserve regardless of current use.
You spend 10 minutes and said nothing.
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Micah 6:8
I would like to personally thank UA-cam for recommending such a good content creator, unfortunately though, I had to pause when you said to be careful for spoilers (I’m waiting for Sifu on Xbox 🥲) but I’ve just watched your other great videos!
Keep it up broski!
Luv from DownUnda! 🇦🇺 🙏🏽 💙
Thanks dude! And yea, Sifu is coming to Xbox in March, I hope you’ll enjoy it then.