Whoopsie
One of the things I truly love about the Ghost of Tsushima game is its ability to immerse you into the world. Now imagine that level of immersion while stoned. It is pretty awesome.
Last night I tried out my Quad Grape that I had been curing for a couple weeks now. When I had some after the first week of its cure, it wasn't really what I had expected. This strain is a 50/50 balanced hybrid, which is a lot more sativa action than the indica dominant strains that I have been growing and consuming.
I found out pretty quickly that this is not a night time strain, so I had some before I started packing up for our move. It is a great strain for getting things done and just vibing to music. Well, after I got my office packed up and ran out of packing tape, I decided to play some Ghost of Tsushima and see how this strain is for gaming.
Normally when I try playing some video games while high, they can get a bit confusing as to what the objectives are, but the quad grape really didn't have that effect on me. Instead of turning my brain off a bit, it really pulled me more into the game.
Ghost of Tsushima is a very story driven game and last night I really got into the story and started to appreciate the amount of emotion that the voice actors had put into this game. There are so many games out there that are pretty cool, but the voice acting sucks and it ruins the experience.
In this scene, the monk is retelling the experience of when his village was slaughtered and the effect that it had on him and how inadequate he felt. There were some pretty long pauses during the conversation that I normally would have thought messed up the pacing of the game, but last night, I really appreciated the dramatic pauses and the restraint that the game's director showed with not just trying to rush out these dialogues.
Now like I said before, this game has a lot to explore, and last night while I was exploring, I came across a strange encampment with some pretty strong enemies.
They were some pretty badass Mongols that were quite challenging to defeat. While I was fighting them, I began to appreciate the combat of this game. It is a pretty simple normal attack and heavy attack setup. But each enemy type has its own stance that is best to use for breaking through their defenses and parrying attacks. There is also split second openings for when you are supposed to attack to slide past their defenses. It is a simple, yet complicated combat system.
Anyways, one of the new enemy types that was introduced was these shamans that sing to bolster nearby enemies and it really increases their strength, attack speed and defenses. When these shamans first began singing, their song started coming through the controller as well, which was a super cool feature that just made the immersion level that much higher.
After defeating all of the enemies, you learn that they are from Iki Island, and a tribe of Mongols was taking over the island and their leader was driving people mad. Iki Island is a DLC for the base game, so I wasn't going to go there at first, but I looked it up and saw that the story there doesn't interfere with the main story or anything, so I decided to head there and see what was going on.
So I boarded a boat with my horse and set sail for Iki Island. Little did I know that this was going to be a one way trip and I would be stuck there until I completed the story there.
During the voyage, a strong storm destroys the boat and throws my companion overboard.
The whole boat is destroyed and you end up washing up on the shore of Iki Island, battered and bruised and all alone with no way to return to Tsushima.
It was a pretty crazy way to start the expansion. So now I was lost and alone on this island. So all I had left to do was begin exploring and trying to find the Mongol leader and save the island.
This place looked incredible. This game really is one of the best looking games out right now and Iki Island really shows off how amazing this game looks.
There are massive fields full of flowers that each move independently with the wind. It really is a ton of fun to just wander around and explore.
Well, it didn't take too long to get captured by the Mongol tribe. They brought me into their leader which is named The Eagle.
The shaman leader forces you to drink the thing that has been driving everyone into madness.
This begins a spiritual journey where Jin is forced to confront the fact that he let his father die here on Iki Island many years ago.
The drink that Jin was forced to drink reminds me a lot of ayahuasca and how that sounds to drink. The Eagle probably gives people way too much of it, which causes them to lose the ability to differentiate between reality and vision, which is something that I have heard could happen if you do not use ayahuasca properly.
I ended up being rescued by a bandit and it seems that I will need to help him to gather forces to push back against the Mongols on Iki Island before I am able to leave this place.
While exploring, I found a cat sanctuary to play my flute at.
Playing the flute was a pretty cool minigame where you had to tilt the controller to follow the pitch of the notes. And when you complete the song, you are surrounded by little cats.
So far, the Iki Island expansion is a lot of fun and a lot more challenging than the main island. I am looking forward to playing through this expansion and continuing my story through this amazing game.