Bloodborne

This review contains spoilers.

Bloodborne not only offers a brilliant Cosmic Horror story, but it is also a strong contender for the best game From Software has ever made. The worldbuilding is front and center, the story is not so vague and abstract as Souls-like games tend to be, and the combat is more engaging and rewarding than the first two Dark Souls.

The game’s opening is brief but very effective. We watch it unfold in the first person as our character, seemingly tied to a bed, watches helplessly as a strange old man talks about blood transfusions and gives a dark, sardonic laugh that should serve as a welcome card to any fan of the Souls series. Next, we watch a monster similar to a werewolf slowly arise from a puddle of blood in the ground until it is suddenly attacked by someone offscreen. And then, just when we’re beginning to believe we’re safe, some creepy childlike creatures appear in our line of vision and start to move toward our character while they lose consciousness. We wake up again in a dimly lit room inside what appears to be an abandoned clinic. Downstairs, the werewolf is still waiting for us, feasting on some remains, and right outside the clinic lies the blighted, maze-like city of Yharnam, with its impressive gothic architecture, full of inexplicably tall buildings that point upwards towards the dark sky, and blood-thirsty denizens.

The werewolf emerging from the blood is emblematic of the story’s central theme. The city of Yharnam is ruled by the so-called Healing Church that employs blood to treat every affliction. However, this blood is responsible for turning people into monsters after a time. Bloodborne’s narrative is built upon the “forbidden knowledge” trope: the rulers of Yharnam sought to find ancient knowledge and what they indeed found – the blood that cures – brought them only madness and ruin.

Right at the beginning, we come across a man locked inside a house that warns us over a window, “This town is cursed. Whatever your reasons might be you should plan a swift exit. Whatever can be gained from this place, it will do more harm than good.” This warning perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of most of the characters we meet in our journey through Yharnam: people that went looking for salvation, aid, or purpose, but found nothing that could make up for the suffering they ended up causing themselves and others. One of the first sidequests available, for example, is to help a little girl find her missing parents – but the reveal will not lead to a happy outcome for anyone involved. People in Yharnam may seek answers but find only despair in them.

The art direction at play in Bloodborne is superb. Yharnam is enveloped by a nightmarish atmosphere: in the first area alone, there are many coffins bound by iron chains as if to prevent the dead from coming out. There are grotesque sightings everywhere: in the main street, for example, surrounded by an angry mob, we find a crucified… werewolf. The line that separates hunter from beast is more than blurred here: men are literally transforming into the very same monsters they fight against, and because of the very thing they revered and lauded as a cure.

We find few allies in Yharnam. NPCs are often hostile toward us or just plain indifferent. We can knock on some doors, since there’s a red lamp indicating when they are interactable – and the red light serves as an ominous sign –, but we always find that the people will either lament or laugh at our character’s predicament. And they will never open the door.

As we progress in the story, venturing deeper into Yharnam, the nightmare only intensifies. Knocking on doors will not get scornful commentaries anymore, but piercing screams and wails. Instead of angry villagers, we start to find all sorts of beasts holding torches and pitchforks. The few “sane” characters we meet will just giggle when we try to talk to them or cry in pain. Most of them will die in one way or another.

The creatures we face get more and more grotesque with time. We find spiders with human heads, flea-like creatures with swollen stomachs filled with blood and a female face hidden by their long pale hair, or people that sing but have a giant brain lined with eyes as a head and are so hideous that they drive our character mad just by looking at them – they build a frenzy gauge that deals hefty damage when full.

It seems that the impact of our actions in the world is insignificant at best: things are getting worse despite all the huge creatures we defeat. This feeling of powerlessness is exacerbated with each passing area and, even though the game has three endings, none of them come even close to being a happy one.

This hopeless atmosphere fits perfectly with the cosmic horror vibe that the narrative is trying to build. At first, Bloodborne seems to be only a horror game, with werewolves and angry villagers, but it doesn’t take long for us to meet humanoid creatures with tentacles coming out of their mouths or to hear characters referring to something called “the great ones”.

Cosmic Horror is not about squid monsters, however, but the feeling of utter insignificance toward the vastness of the universe. It’s about the notion that humanity is so tiny and minuscule and irrelevant that they aren’t even physically and psychologically capable of comprehending what is out there. This is why madness comes: the characters fight to learn the truth, but the truth is so terrible, so sublime – in the sense of causing shock and paralysis –, and so ineffable that they simply cannot process it and, in turn, become mad.

“Give us eyes,” one of the characters we meet says as he prays to the so-called “great ones”. The people of Yharnam, its scholars and rulers, and those in power, they all sought the ability to see the hidden truths of the world and discover the secrets of the universe, but since the answers about the nature of reality are never pleasant in the Cosmic Horror genre, the characters that look out for them are only punished for doing so.

There’s a brilliant moment in the game that encapsulates this theme. After we defeat a terrifying monster full of eyes, we gain the ability to perceive things that were invisible before and get a glimpse of this so-pursued truth. And this only increases the horror effect in the game: we can now suddenly spot gigantic, eldritch creatures in places we deemed safe before, seeing them on the walls, on top of the buildings, or clutched to their sides, even though they are almost of the same size of them. These monsters were always there, we just couldn’t see them, but the ability to do so just makes the whole experience of traversing Yharnam more terrifying.

Yharnam is a city built on top of eldritch ruins, an infinite number of maze-like tombs full of deadly traps and monsters. They are called “Chalice Dungeons” and, each time a hunter goes inside them, their layout change, forever remaining an inscrutable labyrinth. We can venture deeper and deeper into these dungeons, defeating the most monstrous of eldritch horrors – and even the people of Yharnam responsible for the whole mess – but there’s no end to them. There’s a perfect video by Jacob Geller about these optional dungeons.

The level design in Bloodborne is built around the idea of shortcuts. After our hunter dies, they get teleported back to the last checkpoint – an eerie lantern – and we must go back to the very spot where we died to recover the lost experience points (here, aptly named blood echoes). But if we have managed to get far enough in the level, we usually can unlock a door, a gate, or an elevator that makes the process of backtracking less time-consuming. It’s the same thing with the Chalice Dungeons, which places their bosses right near the entrance, next to the eerie lantern.

Boss fights in Bloodborne are intense and memorable. And there’s great variety in their design: there is a monster that summons other enemies while it tries to hide in the room; there’s another that runs away from us inside a building, requiring a chase; and there’s even one that stays mostly passive, but is protected by its minions and eventually aims projectiles at the hunter.

The fights are hard but mostly fair, even though there are some frustrating designs here and there. There’s an electrical beast, for example, that is enormous and moves incessantly, making the camera spin around madly if we have it locked up on the beast. This makes us fight with the camera – and with the controls – more than anything else, which is never a good thing. There’s also a fiery hound with some unintuitive hitboxes and a boss that jumps to the ceiling and quickly drops on us – and since we don’t have time to look up, we must dodge blindly and hope for the best, even though this attack can one-shot the hunter in what is a fairly long fight. However, these unfair, frustrating, raging-inducing encounters, unlike Dark Souls II, are not the bulk of the game, but a rare occurrence.

Combat in Bloodborne is the opposite of the one in the Dark Souls series, in the sense that it is designed to favor aggressive behavior from the player instead of a careful, methodic approach. Shields are mostly absent – being replaced by a gun – and dodging away from enemies is pretty useless, since they move quickly and attack relentlessly with blows that often propel them forward with incredible speed. We must either learn to dodge toward the enemy or to parry their blows with the gun.

There’s also a great risk/reward dynamic with the Rally mechanic: after being hit by an attack we are given a very brief window in which we can fully recover from the damage, but only if we manage to quickly hit our enemy a couple of times. This means that combat here is frenetic and intense, since after taking a hit, this mechanic actually encourages us to press forward nonetheless, instead of taking a step back to reassess the situation.

Being stripped of long-ranged attacks – we can’t aim with the gun, which serves only to stop enemies in their attacks or parry if used in the last moment –, we are given little to no reason to stay away from an enemy. This is one of the most important changes in the Souls formula that Bloodborne makes, as it increases the horror effect: there’s no safe spot away from an enemy. On the contrary, we must always be very close to these abominable monsters, and put ourselves in danger, having to react quickly to their moves and always put pressure on them with our attacks.

Bloodborne proves that the Cosmic Horror genre fits the Souls formula like a glove, creating a terrifying experience, which is made even more memorable by the revamped combat system that pushes us right into danger.

February 05, 2023.