I feel the uncle's high ground is undercut, by him immediately trying to place all the blame for the deaths on an innocent woman, simply because she's a peasant/thief, and thus he doesn't trust/like her. I think it was showing that the samurai aren't as "honorable" as they make themselves out to be. I mean, that's some first class nepotism to avoid capital punishment if I've seen it.
I've also always found it kind of odd, where the line is drawn on what is acceptable methods of killing hundreds of people. I mean, fire and explosives are perfectly ok, so would it not have been a war crime if Jin had just set off a ton of bombs? A weapon both the Japanese and Mongols used a lot? Or just set them all on fire? Again, fire, really popular weapon. But, somehow poison is going too far. It's always weird to me. Especially when traditionally, ninja would be the ones that would do things like this for their shogun, at that lord's behest. They did all the shady stuff so the ruler's hands stayed clean. So, if you sanction such tactics, are you still honorable? The tenants of bushido would suggest so.
It's a big mess morally, and the game doesn't really stick the landing in that regard, I'll grant you. For me though, the telling difference between Jin and his Uncle (and samurai in general as shown in the game), is that Jin was willing to give up his "honor" to save the lives of his people. But his uncle, was willing to give up the lives of his people, to save his honor. That'a s telling difference to me. If you get a hundred of your men killed in a foolhardy assault, when killing the enemy (the whole reason you assaulted in the first place) in an extreme way would save those lives, what is the right choice?
Maybe Sucker Punch was trying to illustrate that? The morally gray nature of that culture and it's codes of ethics? But I agree the writing didn't really follow through as well as it could have.
