SPOILER WARNING: Bloodborne spoilers throughout
The Japanese game development studio FromSoftware needs no introduction at this point. Even if you’re not into video games, chances are that you’ve heard of their Dark Souls series, or about their wildly popular 2022 release Elden Ring, which is essentially the spiritual successor to Dark Souls. However, few of their games have garnered quite the same cult following as their 2015 release: Bloodborne. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Bloodborne is just Dark Souls but in a Victorian gothic setting instead of a medieval dark fantasy setting, because for all intents and purposes, that’s what it is. As most things in life, it’s a little bit more nuanced than that, but if you’re already familiar with both games you won’t need me to explain those nuances to you, and if you’re not, understanding those nuances doesn’t matter at all. Besides, plenty better writers than me have done a way better job explaining those nuances than I ever could. This game, revered as it is, has been analyzed to pieces. Every aspect of it picked apart: its lore, its gameplay, its setting, its characters. There’s nothing I could write about any of those things that hasn’t been written a hundred times before already. So what I want to get into is what this game meant to me specifically. Because, boy, did this game make me think, and feel.
I was actually a bit late to the party on this one. Bloodborne was released in 2015 as a Playstation 4 exclusive. I never owned a PS4, so it wasn’t until 2021 and I was able to get my hands on a PS5 that I got to play this game. Something I was quite excited for, as I’d really enjoyed both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 before that (we don’t talk about Dark Souls 2). I had picked up on all the praise this game had received from its dedicated fan base throughout the years, and after having played it myself, I can confidently say that this praise is nothing but well deserved. It might even be my favorite game. Hell, I’ve got a Hunter’s Mark - one of this game’s most recognizable symbols - tattooed on my wrist. But why Bloodborne? I don’t have Dark Souls tattoos. I don’t have Sekiro tattoos. I don’t have Elden Ring tattoos. No, I went with Bloodborne instead.
Why Bloodborne, then? Bloodborne, much like Dark Souls, is a game in which you’re going to die. A lot. Oh my god, do you die a lot in this game. Pretty much everything and everyone in Yharnam (the city around which this game's story revolves) and the areas beyond that is out to kill you. And it never gets easy, either. Sure, you’re going to get better the more you play (that’s the idea, at least), but if you slip up, even the most basic enemy will swiftly end you with no remorse. “You died”. Big red letters, all capitals. Again and again you’ll be seeing that message across your screen.
Now, I always thought I hated games like those, before I actually played them. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” has never been my motto. No, when the going gets tough, I fucking quit, and go find something else that I’m better at. That kind of motto felt way more applicable to me. Most days, it still does. I don’t like to fail. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, but like, in the bad way. In the way that I want to be immediately good at something, or I’ll never do it again, thus getting rid of all chances of actually becoming better at something. I’m not sure if I’ve always been like that, if this is nature, or nurture. What I can tell you is that I grew up with a father that didn’t like it when I failed. He hated when I failed. Failure was punished heavily. This is going by his definition of failure, though, which is doing anything that he would have done differently. Not that he was ever really involved in making sure I didn’t fail, though. I’m sure he thought that he was, but his method of teaching was pretty much exclusively through negative reinforcement. He thought that if he would simply punish me enough, I would stop being such a failure. Spoiler alert, it didn’t work out as he had planned. I don’t think I ever stopped being a failure in his eyes. I don’t know, the last time I spoke to him was over six years ago. What I do know is that it resulted in a child, now (arguably) a grown-up, perpetually terrified of getting even the smallest thing wrong, forever dreading the possible repercussions.
This extended to my behavior in video games. If I ever got stuck somewhere for too long, I would simply rage quit. In most cases I’d never return to that game, leaving it forever unfinished, dooming it to merely collect dust on my shelf. So how on earth did a game like Bloodborne, notorious for its difficulty, get to be my favorite? Why did I not quit and give up when Father Gascoigne, the game’s first mandatory boss fight, kicked my ass. Once. Twice. Five times. Ten times. More than that. My first time encountering him, I got absolutely destroyed. I mentioned I had played Dark Souls before Bloodborne, and I said I wouldn’t delve into the subtle differences between the two, but it’s worth pointing out that Bloodborne expects way quicker, way more aggressive combat from its players than Dark Souls did. Dark Souls, at least the way that I originally played it, was slower, more methodical, not to mention that I would just carry a great big shield around to absorb most of the damage being done to me. Bloodborne, on the other hand, is chaotic, and fast, and has no shields (yes I know there technically is a shield in Bloodborne, but it’s absolutely useless, and was added for the single purpose of trolling gamers that were expecting Dark Souls. Even the item description in-game states all but explicitly that). I could not keep up. Gascoigne’s hatchet, which he’d transform into a battle axe, his blunderbuss, would wipe the floor with me, time and time again. And then when you get him down to half health, he transforms into a beast, getting rid of his weapons in favor of his fangs and claws, which allow him to be even faster and more aggressive.
Honestly, I can’t tell you why I didn’t quit at that point. Part of it must have been the aesthetic of the game. While Bloodborne never had the best graphics, or performance, the game is still gorgeous, even to this day. Not just in its visual representation, but the broody atmosphere that it stands for. And then the music, good god, the music. “The Hunter” (composed by Ryan Amon), which is the music for Father Gascoigne’s boss fight, is one of my favorite pieces of the entire game, maybe just behind “The First Hunter” and “Blood-starved Beast” (both composed by Tsukasa Saitoh). When the second phase of the Gascoigne fight starts and those huge kettle drums join in, it just gets your blood pumping. It’s 100% pure adrenaline, presented in epic, orchestral form. And I think that’s initially what kept me going. What kept me from throwing the towel into the ring, against my every instinct. Just because I wanted to keep enjoying this gorgeous piece of art just a little bit longer, no matter the cost. That was my original reason.
But at some point, that reason changed. As I kept throwing myself against this brick wall, over and over again, I began to notice things. I became aware of Gascoigne’s tells. Just from watching his wind-up, I knew what attack was coming next. I learned, bit by bit, the moments and attacks on which he would punish me. That exact same punishment that I’d been intentionally taught to dread my entire life. The patterns began to make sense to me. They became obvious to me. I saw what punishment I was about to receive, knew how to get out of the way, only to counter and dish out some punishment of my own. And that felt incredible. Trust me, the irony of this boss being called “Father” Gascoigne is not lost on me. I was still getting my ass handed to me, but a little bit less with each next attempt. And I could just try. Again, and again, and again, whittling his health bar down a little bit more each time. Until finally, I didn’t see those big red letters on my screen at the end of the fight. The letters were white this time. Glowing, like a light through the dark night. “Prey slaughtered”. This hunter, who had been mercilessly tearing me apart dozens upon dozens of times, lay defeated before me. He had become the prey, and I had become the hunter. I had won. Not by any stroke of luck, but by putting in the time, effort, and energy. By not giving up when I hit an obstacle that seemed impossible to overcome at first. And similar to the fate of all those that venture into Yharnam, I had acquired the taste for blood.
Perseverance in the face of adversity. That is what Bloodborne, even more so than Dark Souls, is to me. For any victory in the game wasn’t just a victory over tough bosses, it was a victory over my own nature. A victory over my own upbringing. A victory over the trauma that upbringing caused. A victory, above all else, over my father. A defiant “see what I could have been if you had let me fail?” And for that purpose, I carry the mark of the hunter with me, forever inked on my wrist, to remind myself of how much stronger I can be when I don’t give up. When I allow myself to fail and try again. And should I ever forget, all I need to do is raise my fist, and see the proof drawn in black upon my skin.
Because I didn’t just beat Gascoigne. I didn’t just beat the main bosses. I didn’t just beat the game. No, Bloodborne was the very first game ever in which I got a Platinum trophy. I got every single trophy there is. I trudged through the Chalice Dungeons. I slaughtered every available boss. I slayed nightmares. I lived through the hunt to see another day. I pledged to watch over the Hunter’s Dream. I lifted humanity into its next childhood. I had become a Great One.
If none of this makes any sense to you, don’t worry, we’re about to get weirder. For there is something else that in my opinion elevates Bloodborne above the other, similar titles that FromSoftware has put out. Because Bloodborne is secretly a great subversion of your expectations. Something that was not even alluded to in any of the promotional material leading up to the game. You see, Bloodborne sets itself up to be this Victorian gothic horror, akin to the writing of Bram Stoker. And in the beginning of the game, that’s definitely what it is. As you explore Yharnam, you will encounter various feral beasts, or humans in the process of turning into said beasts. The beasts, just to sketch a picture, essentially look like our most common depictions of werewolves. Each with their own unique twist, sure, but mostly following the same theme: elongated snouts, fangs, claws, and lots of fur. In most video games, that’s all we need to know. People are turning into beasts, I’ve got a big sharp weapon, I need to hunt all the beasts. Cool, got it, let’s go. However, the more you progress, the more you’ll start to get the sense that there’s something else at play. Something perhaps more sinister. Something more dreadful. Something more… unknowable. The first clue towards this can be found in the names of a number of early game bosses. Father Gascoigne. Cleric Beast. Vicar Amelia. All of these beasts that you slaughter bear clerical titles. All of them are members of the church. A church that goes by the name of the Healing Church. And right at the start of the game, in the very first cutscene, we were already shown what “healing” in Yharnam entails. Yharnam’s specialty is the practice of blood ministration. Essentially bloodletting, and blood transfusion. Who would have thought that blood would play such a central role in a game titled “Bloodborne”?
However, this blood transfusion does not involve the blood of others. Not of other people, at least. For in the history of Yharnam, the Academy of Byrgenwerth made a remarkable discovery in the dungeons deep below the old city. They found the blood of an ancient being, which is referred to as Old Blood. Now the heads of the academy, scholarly as they were, knew to be wary of this potentially dangerous substance. They even introduced a saying specifically referencing this, which became the password needed to enter the academy: “Fear the Old Blood”. Some of their other members, however, had less reservations about that. They split from the Academy of Byrgenwerth, and started a new institution: the previously mentioned Healing Church, as they believed the Old Blood to be able to heal all diseases and other ailments, through the process of blood ministration. And for a while, it did. Until those who had received the Old Blood started turning into beasts. The plot thickens. And with some of the terminology that I've used here, you might start to get some semblance of an idea about the kind of horror into which this story is shifting.
Anyone familiar with FromSoftware games should know that none of this is explicitly told or otherwise explained to the player, and can only be pieced together from bits and pieces of NPC dialogue - some of which you really have to go out of your way for to receive - and from various item descriptions. But in order to progress the game, you do have to venture through the dark and dangerous forest, to find Byrgenwerth on the other side of it. And that is where the tone of the game starts to shift. Because the beasts you encounter in those woods are no longer the lycanthropes you previously saw in Yharnam. These new enemies are distinctly more serpentine. Most of them appear to be amalgamations of multiple snakes, writhing and slithering out of a single fleshy point of origin. And then as you get closer to Byrgenwyrth, the enemies resemble insects more than anything. But whereas the wolf-like and snake-like creatures still looked decently close to their real world animal counterparts, these bugs look… off. They have way more eyes than you’d expect, even on an insect. Not to mention that their proportions are all wrong They are swollen and lumpy in places, and have this unnatural coloring about them, all the while maintaining some vaguely human anatomy.
Finally you get to the academy, which is all but abandoned except for the head of the academy, Master Willem, who sits outside on the terrace next to a lake. Silently, he points his staff towards the lake, and it’s clear what you have to do. And down into the lake your plunge takes you. But you don’t drown. You don’t sink. It doesn’t even seem like you fell into water. You just fall, as you appear to transcend into another dimension. Or another plane of existence. For at the “bottom”, we end up in another, but very shallow layer of water, and we see this… thing. Rom, the Vacuous Spider, is her name. Except, she doesn’t exactly look like a spider. Her body looks like that of a leech but covered in alien looking flora. She has multiple centipede-like legs, way more than the eight you’d expect on something with the name “spider”. And her head most closely resembles a pumice rock, except the dark spots that appear to be holes at first, are actually several jet black eyes of various sizes, with no symmetry to their placement whatsoever.
And with this boss fight, Bloodborne starts to reveal its hand. This eldritch bug, or arachnid, or whatever you choose to categorize her as, is the first definitive proof that the game doesn’t just take inspiration from the likes of Bram Stoker, but also from another very influential but wildly different (and sadly, quite problematic) horror author: none other than H.P. Lovecraft. Bloodborne, this entire time, has been a cosmic horror in disguise. Quite literally, as you’ll soon discover after defeating Rom, as she had actually been disguising numerous other horrific creatures all throughout Yharnam. Both from the city's population, and from you as the player. None of these monstrosities look anything like Rom, yet they’re all equally unknowable and indescribable in their appearance.
Now that we’ve gotten all this lore out of the way, I can begin to explain another reason why Bloodborne means so much to me. This might be a confusing statement, but beings like Rom, and the similar ones that she kept hidden, are relatable to me. Not for what they are, or for what they look like, but for what they represent. The sheer terror of that which cannot be predicted or described. For those of you that haven’t read my “About” page: I have ASD. I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on it, and I can function as any “normal” human being, but there are few things that stress me out more than sudden unexpected events or changes. Before I do anything, I need to have completely analyzed the situation. I need to have run the simulations in my head, in order to anticipate the most likely outcomes. If something comes up for which I did not prepare, if something changes that I did not predict, I enter a state of panic. This panic can be actually debilitating, depending on how much it deviates from my initial expectations. If you want to actually break me, simply tell me you have a surprise for me, but don’t tell me what the surprise is. I literally can’t handle that.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”, Lovecraft begins his introduction to his 1927 essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature. And that fear of the unknown is something with which I’m intimately familiar. And few other works of art inspired by his works seem to capture that fear of the unknown more accurately than Bloodborne does. Like I said, I like to prepare myself for any sort of situation I’m getting myself into. If I don’t, I shut down. But how can I prepare myself for things - for beings - that you cannot even imagine? That cannot even be described when you’re able to look right at them? The names of several of the late game bosses - not to mention some bosses that can be missed entirely - do a great job at capturing just how unthinkable and unimaginable they are. The One Reborn. Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos. The Moon Presence. The Celestial Emissary. I have beaten all these bosses numerous times at this point, but if you asked me to describe what they look like, I would not be able to. That is a downright impressive feat for a medium as visual as video games are. Not to downplay H.P. Lovecraft’s artistic merits, but it’s easy to write that something is indescribable, it’s much harder to make something that can actually be seen indescribable.
And being terrified by something which cannot be expressed or described, despite it being your actual reality, is very much what being autistic and stressing out over things that neurotypical friends have never ever considered to be a problem is like. How do I explain that I can’t go out on a whim because I haven’t yet thought about everyone who’s going to be there, what they might talk to me about, what they might want to do, which strangers they might bring along, and I’m currently panicking even imagining jumping into that deep end, when others will just, you know, go and let it happen? So there you go. Cosmic Horror: the living with autism experience.
Honestly I could go on and on about why this game is not only a masterpiece, but also deeply personal to me. It’s probably for the best that I don’t have any friends in my personal life that are into this game, because I’d just talk their ears off for hours about every deep, dark, obscure aspect of this beautiful nightmare of a video game. I’d want to sit about and speak feverishly into the wee hours. I’m currently on page six of the Google Doc in which I’m writing this, and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. But then again, maybe I should let you off here, and stop digging deeper. After all, who knows what manner of horror lurks beneath?
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