FH: Hitokiri - April 27

Let us talk, for a change, about FH, and its’ newest character – Hitokiri. Supposedly, this name/title means ‘executioner’, but even minimal research reveals that rather it means – if translated directly from Japanese – ‘manslayer’ or ‘mancutter’, because of the subtleties of Japanese language (and of Japanese to English translation). Okay. What is next?

So, the FH creative team designed Hitokiri to look like an executioner, or perhaps – THE Executioner from MCU; certainly, Hitokiri confers a similar feel to the MCU’s real life version from the ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie; why did the FH creative team decide to make him a Samurai than anything else is another question: there’s nothing inherently Japanese, or even Oriental, about executioners. Yes, they were going for an anti-hero here, just as how they did with Vortiger/Black Prior for the knights, but if with Black Prior that made him/her almost into a specific person, (reminiscent of Apollyon, remember her?), with Hitokiri they went rather the other way and made him/her almost oblique and personality-less. Maybe that was supposed to be intended, but it is still weird.

Now, in regards to the weapon – what is it? It is an ono, a Japanese version of axe or hatchet. Unlike the Vikings’ Dane axe and battle-axe, FH’s ono has two sides; in reality, there had been only one. It was used as a weapon of war, but also for other purposes; in fact, it was only rarely that the Japanese used their axes for war. Usually, it were not the samurai proper who used them, but rather the sohei – warrior-monks, or the yamabushi, (mountain hermits). Does Hitokiri look like a Japanese warrior-monk? I honestly cannot say – in FH, appearances and themes usually did not go past the external aesthetics, for it is the sort of a game where everyone tries to kill everyone else, (or at least – everyone else who is not on their team), so anything past appearances is superfluous.

Getting back to weapons, let us get back to Black Prior. As we have discussed him, he was armed with a sword and a kite shield, and we talked primarily about the shield, letting the sword go, since it looked like a one-handed version of Warden’s sword. Apparently, some people claim that it is different. Warden’s sword is a longsword – a typical knightly sword with a straight double-edge blade and a cross-shaped hilt, built to be gripped and used by both hands, whereas Black Prior’s sword is a broadsword, also known as a basket-hilted sword, because its’ hilt was usually shaped like a basket of some sort. It was a military sword, unlike the rapier, which was used more often in civil duels instead, and was invented later than the longsword did, in the Late Modern period, as opposed to the Post-Classical one. Seriously, the precision of some people is overwhelming.

Back to Hitokiri? Honestly – no; so far, Ubisoft deemed that we should know only little about their backstory – a glorified executioner of some sort. Seriously, this is what FH is coming to? Its’ creativity team could use some work, I am thinking.

…This is it for now – see you all soon!