[Game Review] Bloodborne

Note: spoilers below.


Bloodborne plays a neat trick in its opening areas: it plays into your memory of classic horror stories.  The game opens with you undergoing a blood transfusion, the operation that converts you into a Hunter.  Hunters have a mysterious past at this point in the game, and all you know is that the blood in your veins will heal you of your unnamed affliction, and that now your duties are to participate in the Hunt.  The Hunt has happened before, although you won't learn about its history until much later, and you are sent out into the world to kill as many monsters as you can.  Some monsters, the game tells you, don't look like monsters.  They look like people, poisoned by "The Blood", damned to become werewolf-like monsters if given enough time.  Killing them can drop blood vials, the same blood coursing through your veins and the veins of these monsters you are killing, and using them will quickly heal you.  It's werewolf/vampire iconography, enhanced by being framed by Victorian style and architecture.  It feels so by the numbers, in fact, that you could be forgiven for thinking that this game was initially disappointing story-wise when compared to the lore-heavy existentialism of Dark Souls.  At about the halfway point, you realize the ruse:  this isn't a story about monsters or beasts, about campy werewolves and vampires, but rather that of Gods, of Lovecraftian horrors and Zarathustra-type pursuits, all of which have gone horribly wrong and led to the current state of affairs.  The Hunt is an attempt at clean up from years of experimenting with these Gods.  These experiments were meant to progress man to a higher state, but it resulted in a horrible scourge on the Yharnam public.

The story (as far as I can understand it) starts with a group of people discovering the Chalice Dungeons, ancient rogue-like dungeons that alluded to ancient cosmological beings called The Great Ones.  Most of these Great Ones long since ascended from earth, but one remained.  It was kept alive and its blood was taken and experimented on and used as a healing remedy as well as being thought as the key to human evolution.  Experimentation led to dark results, people going mad or turning into beasts, and a schism ripped apart the "scientific" community.  One half believed that it was through blood experimentation that they could find the future evolution of man, while the other believed in the power of insight.  Insight, in this case, is somewhat vague.  How does one find insight in the Great Ones?  Each Great One born had a Great One umbilical chord, and using them was thought to give insight (you can imagine how that works; spoiler: poorly).  The blood-activists created a hierarchy in the Church of Healing.  It seemed to virtually rule the city of Yharnam, being the source of the healing blood.  When a sickness ripped through Old Yharnam (a sickness heavily hinted as having come from the blood), the Healing Church swooped in to save the day, placing themselves as an invaluable power in this society (this being the first Hunt).  The fact the blood was turning people into beasts was a well kept secret for a long time, helped by developing a secret police force called the Hunters to wipe out those in danger of turning to beasts.  The Healing Church created several other organizations, each of which would carry out their own experiments and slowly separate from the Church's control, always in favor of looking for their own ideas about human progress -- or, their own striving for Godhood.

Bloodborne takes a different perspective of Dark Souls' existential exploration.  Rather than considering life and death and usurping the Gods, Bloodborne wants to confront the horrors of the Gods, the horror of striving for incredible power and the detriment that desire has on a person and on society.  If Dark Souls was introspective and considering Gods as a concept and its blanketing of human flaws, Bloodborne wants to think what religion and the striving for God-like status does.  It feels like a perfect thematic companion to Dark Souls rather than covering the same ground.

That said, I'm not sure Bloodborne's grouping with the Soulsborne series is totally fair.  Most notably in Bloodborne's take on combat.  Initially, the game feels like a faster version of other Souls games, but once the first mandatory boss is encountered, it is quickly shown that there are some key differences in gameplay.  Father Gascoigne is a tough first boss, roughly like the Taurus Demon in Dark Souls, but with the quit rate in new players closer to the Gargoyles.  Father Gascoigne acts as a check to make sure you have been paying attention to the new mechanics in Bloodborne, punishing new players and Souls veterans alike for not keeping up.  Dodging will get you far in this fight, but his ability to counter you with his gun means that your better option is to learn how to parry him, one of the most important moves in Bloodborne.  Father Gascoigne, like the player, is a Hunter, and thus has mostly the same moveset, so being punished by him is also teaching you how to punish, a smart design decision so early in the game (as frustrating as it is on your first few attempts).  After Father Gascoigne, you should have learned several of the major differences between Bloodborne and the other Souls games.  Bloodborne is insanely fast, allowing quick dodges around enemies and quick attacks.  Staggering is more important here than in Souls games (until Dark Souls III), meaning hitting hard and fast is more beneficial than the cautious play of Dark Souls.  Parrying was overpowered in the original Dark Souls, and with Bloodborne's emphasis on parrying, the same is true here.  Parrying can often times neuter bosses if they have slow enough attacks, especially the last two bosses.  Bloodborne's biggest difference outside of the speed of it is that the gear is no longer that different.  There are three or so main weapons, with some variants outside of that, but generally replaying the game with different weapons is only going to net one or two different playthroughs, rather than the dozen or so possible with Dark Souls' options.  Likewise, gear is virtually unimportant, with only minor defensive bonuses netted to you for experimenting with them.  I didn't change my armor (which is really just coats and hats, so not "armor" per se) except in the first area, where I found a set that was never statistically outclassed for the next 20-or-so hours of the game.

Without much to look forward to gear-wise, exploration had a bit of a mixed presentation.  Usually in a Souls game exploration had the chance of netting a game-changing weapon, piece of armor, or some other upgrade element that increased Estus Flask charges or healing capabilities.  Healing is no longer through Estus Flask type mechanics, but rather blood vials, which are looted from corpses or bought at a store.  Certain areas are scant for enemies that drop blood vials, requiring backtracking in order to properly tackle the boss (side note: rather than do this, I would often try bosses multiple times without any possibility of healing, which turned into a very fun challenge, even when it ended with me giving in to backtracking only to kill the boss on my first subsequent try).  The blood vial system does something smart in its design despite its obvious weakness by allowing you to maintain your single run longer than in most Souls games without needing to go back to a bonfire (or, in this case, a Hunter's Lamp).  Exploration, then, becomes this increasing intensity as your blood echos (this game's souls) collect to dangerously high levels.  Areas are often sprawling in many directions with nooks and crannys to look for levers, elevators, or wholly new and large side areas.  Exploration's biggest reward is in finding side areas and the rising tension of not wanting to return to the Hunter's Dream to cash in your echos.  Re-exploring areas also becomes more adventurous as the game goes given you are likely to have more Insight by the time you return, which is Bloodborne's Humanity.  It can be spent at a particular store or for summoning help at boss doors, but if you let it collect, it will slowly begin to spawn new and unique enemies, or modifying previous enemies to make them more difficult.  Likewise, it changes the presentation of enemies, giving them grotesque clusters of eyes or other Lovecraftian traits.  It is incredibly fun, but it may be more person-to-person on whether you will enjoy it or not, given it seems to be exploration for exploration's sake (which, disclaimer: I absolutely love).

The thing about all of the above is that it is easy to overlook any issues because Bloodborne just feels so damn good.  Playing it is smooth and quick and you always feel as though you are making very sudden decisions with combat because many mistakes can be made up for by either staggering an enemy with a heavy attack, or by reclaiming health with Bloodborne's unique system of allowing you to hit quickly for health before your health bar shrinks after being hit.  The Chalice Dungeons, rogue-like dungeons that, while feeling very samey, allow you to play with Bloodborne's combat and ended up being very fun for me, although I've read enough to know that these dungeons are easily one of the most polarizing part of the game.  Bloodborne, because of how fun it is to control, is one of the best entry points into the Souls series.  Despite not having much in the way of replayability through different builds, I can't help but toy with the idea of doing a second run.  The world is so immersive and beautifully rendered, and the controls so tight that I look forward to returning to the horrors of Yharnam.



9.5