Out today is a video game meant not just for fun but for illuminating self-achievement. A video game that aims for you to tear your hair out but revel in your eventual successes against an imposing and deadly force. A video game that both de-stresses you from your academics, social interactions and more, while also stressing you out about your continuing embroilment with difficulty spikes and the testing of your skills.  

The game in question is developed by the much revered FromSoftware studio, a video game development company that specializes in allowing someone to suffer and also to self-aggrandize whenever they achieve what was considered impossible.  They did it before in the “Dark Souls” series, “Bloodborne,” “Demon’s Souls” and now their newest release: “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.”

This video game follows the story of a noble and scarred “shinobi” known as Sekiro, the one-armed wolf, who goes through life and limb in order to exact revenge on those who have taken his lord/charge, mentor and honor. Sekiro is incapable of permanently dying and has been gifted a prosthetic weaponized arm to aid in his quest.  

This game, much like FromSoftware’s other games, is special because it allows for a kind of “stress projection” that can be beneficial and rewarding if played properly or just well enough to allow a person, specifically a student, to deal with their personal stresses and issues productively.

It is interactive media like this that is great because not only does it provide an escape but also allows for that individual to control themselves. Perhaps the pressures of what they are going through can be better dealt with when these conflicting feelings are projected onto something that isn’t plaguing them and allows these people to fully understand their predicaments.

This is what FromSoftware games does best, and it seems that this is what “Sekiro” will be doing as well—making sure that you are able to enjoy yourself while also understanding that the games can be useful in gaining self-fulfillment, to be able to confront your issues through another avenue rather than how things may be normally and messily dealt with.