Bloodborne
This is the Dark Souls of introductions. These are the Dark Souls of words. And Bloodborne is... well, it’s actually not that much like Dark Souls, aside from also being quite difficult. Luke Albigés travels to the doomed city of Yharnam
The Background
On the back of the surprise success of Demon’s
Souls and Dark Souls, ‘Souls-like’ became the newest member of the Lazy Reference Family around five years ago, joining the likes of ‘Metroidvania’ and ‘Roguelike’ as a shorthand term for a seemingly new subgenre. Truth is, there’s nothing especially new about boss-focused games that punish failure heavily – most shmups fall into that category, and it’s sad to say that if Gunstar Heroes came out today, some clown would probably refer to it as ‘the Dark Souls of Cuphead clones’. It’s always been the way, though – FPS games long lived in the shadow of Doom, Quake, or whatever the floaty gun game du jour was, so these labels aren’t especially surprising. What is surprising, though, is how Sony and Fromsoftware joined forces to take an emerging genre trend and grow into something bigger, something scarier, something fresh. Dark Souls’ key trait may be that you never truly feel safe, but Bloodborne takes things a step further... you’re not even allowed to feel comfortable. Ever. There are few more oppressive games, and it’s all the better for it.
The game
It’s easy to see why people lump Bloodborne in with the Souls games. On a surface level, they are quite similar – brutally hard games built around tough bosses, not to mention the fact that it’s the same studio at the helm. Yet there are some crucial changes to the template, some of which may swoop below the untrained eye. Setting is the most obvious difference, the game switching the western European medieval fantasy furniture of its stablemates for a more modern (in as loose a sense as you might expect from Retro Gamer) Victorian-esque backdrop, with elements of Lovecraft and Stoker thrown in for good measure.
This gives Bloodborne more of a horror vibe than its stablemates, a factor it plays up expertly. It’s no overstatement to call Bloodborne one of the most oppressive games you’ll ever play, because it is – the awkward architecture, the chilling soundtrack, and the horrible inhabitants all conspire to make sure this is a place you absolutely do not want to be in.
And yet still you do. As with the likes of Silent Hill and Resident Evil before it, Bloodborne is so superb in
its painting of this terrible place that you can’t help but feel intrigued by it, captivated by it, even. You want to venture in, even though it’s been made perfectly clear that no sane person should. And no sane person will, thanks to the ingenious Insight mechanic, whereby every new revelation is tracked – in numerical fashion, for legibility – and each vision into the true nature of the world comes at a price. As much as you’re free to keep this value low and press on down the path of least resistance, to do so is to miss one of the most interesting worlds gaming has ever presented us. Similar nuance extends to the game’s combat, where aggression is promoted over the usual more considered approach of the Souls games. This concept is embodied by the Rally system, where recently lost health can be restored by quickly lashing out at your enemy with a flurry of desperate attacks – a risk-reward system whose pace is perhaps unmatched outside of the Burnout games. It’s counter-intuitive at first, but the blood-for-blood attitude it inspires is tonally perfect with the game and soon becomes second nature given how aggressive most opponents can be. The game’s thirst for blood in this regard even extends to its stablemates – the one shield in the game is included effectively as a joke item and highlights in its flavour text how such equipment ‘engenders passivity’, once again promoting more active play.
That said, there’s a balance to be struck, for sure – one of the earliest parts of the game teaches the value of slowly picking off targets one by one, deliberately delivering a lesson in aggression management and strategy that aids in the challenges that are to come. Outnumbered often equals dead in this world, so kiting foes with tossed pebbles might just save your life... ‘might’ being the operative word.
WHY IT’S A Future CLASSIC
The ‘Souls’ phenomenon will undoubtedly be revisited down the line and the truth is that all four games – Demon’s Souls through Dark Souls III – are more or less interchangeable mechanically and thematically… all great, but all doing very similar things. Bloodborne sits in its own space, as it deserves to – it’s the game that broke away from that template to deliver something mysterious and beastly in its own right. Few games have nailed this kind of Lovecraftian horror so well, and it’s unlikely that any will match Yharnam in that regard any time soon. That coupled with a less obvious reliance on the online element (coop and PVP, while still possible, are far less important to the experience than in the Souls games) also helps make it the most futureproof game in its stable. You could say that it’s the Dark Souls of Dark Souls games, only doing so would make you a terrible person, so don’t do that. Please.