I’ve spoken at length about how much I absolutely love Bloodborne. From Software’s action-packed love letter to Lovecraft has been one of my favorite gaming experiences in recent memory. I previously wrote about how well it gets you “into” the game, particularly due to how well it uses its theme as a connective tissue. Video games strive to be immersive and engrossing, after all.
But for all the praise I heaped on Bloodborne’s ability to get me into the game, it does falter a bit when it comes to keeping me in the game. Exploring a level can be captivating and fighting a boss is gripping, but the game sometimes loses steam at the moments in between.
Hidetaka Miyazaki’s games are famously obtuse. The lore is dense and hard to decipher because of Miyazaki’s childhood experiences. Growing up tremendously poor, Miyazaki’s appetite for books had to be sated by taking out books from his library; since many of these books were in English, he used context from the illustrations and his own imagination to fill in the gaps of his understanding. Bloodborne and Dark Souls both provide lore in a manner that forces the player to do the same.
And that’s great! Gathering information becomes a treasure hunt and storytelling becomes a wholly interactive experience. Gamers play an active role in the dissemination and interpretation of story, which is incredibly fun and refreshing. It works incredibly well for the type of world Miyazaki is building.
The “obtuse” approach doesn’t always work well, however. Throughout Bloodborne, several mechanics and unlockables are hidden behind the wall of non-information. Actual gameplay is shrouded in mystery, and this is where the experience falters.
There are three examples I can give, each touching a different facet of the game from cosmetic to mechanical. I’ll go into them into detail below, but if you know the game, you might know where I’m taking things. Today, class, we’ll be discussing The Rifle Spear, Eileen the Crow, and the Moon Presence.
First up: The Rifle Spear. In Bloodborne, every time you load the game, die, or travel to another area, there are little blurbs on screen while the game loads. I have no idea if they are random or not, but it’s something engaging to read while the screen boots up. On one fateful load, a paragraph devoted to this weapon appeared and, of course, I read it with great interest. It was crafted by heretics? It’s a spear built onto a gun? Sign me up! What that screen failed to mention, however, was where it is and how to get it.
So I pulled out my phone and Googled. Turns out I had to head over to Old Yharnam to grab one. So head over to Old Yharnam I did! Tucked in an out-of-the-way alcove, I finally found it and quickly opened my inventory to equip it. To my dismay…I couldn’t actually use it. You see, Bloodborne requires you to level up individual stats with the Blood Echoes you acquire. I had been leveling up my Vitality (because I like living), my Stamina (because I like being able to do things), and my Strength (because I like being able to swing a sword well). In order to use this weapon, I should have been leveling up my Bloodtinge, something I never did because what the hell does “Bloodtinge” mean?
Words like “Bloodtinge” and “Arcane” don’t mean anything to me because I pretty much never use them in my day-to-day life. Alas, Miyazaki expected me to not only know what Bloodtinge means, but also know why investing my levels in it would be a smart thing to do. No context is given at the beginning of the game, when you are crafting your character, so I had to learn by Googling after the fact. Thanks for the heads up!
So the obvious question then is “did you go level up your Bloodtinge?” No, I didn’t. I acquired this weapon in the middle of the game, far enough in that I had committed a decent amount of my levels to Strength. Bloodborne, due to the way stats level and weapons scale, does not encourage experimentation. It encourages specialization. The smart thing to do is devote your levels to the one or two stats that will make you excellent in one brand of combat. So by the time I had stumbled upon this weapon, it would have been foolish of me to start leveling up my Bloodtinge, as the logical investment would be to continue building up my Strength.
I was not given sufficient information from the game on how each of the stats functioned or their individual benefits. I just…saw the words…and was told to pick one. Sure, I could have set the controller down, pulled out my phone, and consulted our friends at Google, but I didn’t, and we’ll get to why later.
Let us move on to our second lesson: Eileen the Crow. Much in the same way I learned about the Rifle Spear, a blurb devoted to the Crowfeather Garb showed up on my screen and it looked awesome. This outfit resembled a plague doctor that had taken up the black and moved to The Wall (from Game of Thrones). I wanted to be the most badass looking hunter in all of Yharnam!
But I had to find it. After some Googling, I discovered that getting this outfit would be a heck of a lot more work than finding the Rifle Spear. I had to work with a woman called Eileen the Crown to complete an entire questline. So I had to work backwards. If I needed to help assist her at the Grand Cathedral, first I needed to help her at the tomb of Oedon. But before I can do that, I needed to talk to her outside the Cathedral Ward. But before I can do that, I needed to talk to her in a hidden room located in Central Yharnam. If I killed Rom the Vacuous Spider before talking to her in Central Yharnam, she disappears and the quest cannot advance.
Guess when I found out about the Crowfeather Garb?
Here was yet another item I couldn’t use because I didn’t somehow magically know about these requirements at the beginning of the game. I suppose I could have taken out my phone and Googled “What are all the cool things in Bloodborne that I might want, but may not be able to use because I failed to do X, Y, and Z at beginning of the game,” but of course I didn’t do that because that would be insane. If there was some indication from the game, literally any indication, I could have been put on the right track. Of course, there wasn’t, so an entire quest in the game went unplayed. Quite thrilling!
Final topic! Let’s talk about the Moon Presence, shall we? I had a different experience with this one, actually. When I said I was going to start playing Bloodborne, I had two friends, independently, tell me that I need to go and collect three items in order to fight a secret boss at the end of the game. It was the “real” ending, they said. It had to be done.
So, I Googled like hell. I noted where these three items were, where I had to be when they would appear, and what I had to do to get them. I dutifully followed the instructions I found online so that I could, when all was finally said and done, fight the Moon Presence at the end of the game. Fight him I did; get the good ending I did.
But it wasn’t fun. I was just doing what the internet told me. The game didn’t provide any sort of metric or hidden clue in order to help me find these things. No, quite the opposite. The game assumed I had the internet. No one was expected to do this alone. I know, because a poll was done on the Bloodborne subreddit and there were zero respondents out of thousands that said they successfully fought the Moon Presence without the help of the internet. Not one!
Is this that bad? After all, such vagueness encourages you to play the game a second time, right? Now that you know what to look for, and with the world’s knowledge right on your phone, all of this should be a breeze! Yeah, I guess that’s true. I could Google this stuff the second time around. But what am I not doing when I’m Googling?
I’m not playing the game.
There is a joy to discovery. It’s what makes a game like Breath of the Wild so much goddamn fun. But there is a frustration to missing out. I loved when I discovered things in Bloodborne in the same way I loved discovering things in Breath of the Wild. But Breath of the Wild never locks me out. It never punishes me for not somehow being omniscient enough to guess at all the things I could maybe want. Bloodborne does.
When you discover something in a game, there is that surge of adrenaline. “I found that,” you think. But, really, you didn’t. You were given a little push by the developers. Maybe there was a glimmer on the horizon that caught your eye? Maybe some scuffs on the ground made you wonder what in this room could be pushed to line up with them? Maybe you found a map in a desk that gave you the clues you need?
But there’s nothing in the game that tells me where I can find the items needed to fight the Moon Presence. There’s nothing in the game explaining the leveling system. There’s nothing in the game to guide the player towards the items that it dangles in front of you during the load screens. It expects you to start Googling things, and in so doing, shatters the illusion. You were playing a game, and now you’re not.
What makes this so confounding is that these aren’t shortcomings of the game in the way that, say, glitches and bugs are. All of this is by design. It’s intentional. That’s why it’s so frustrating. Miyazaki, you put so much effort into getting me into you game.
Don’t you want to keep me there?
Post Script
I threw some punches at Bloodborne here. While I do mean everything I said, it’s worth reiterating that these are my own gripes with a game I otherwise love. No hard feelings, Miyazaki, right? In fact, to show you how much I loved the rest of the game, I’m going to do what I always do in this part of the post…talk about the music! I worked really hard to keep this list short, because I would happily talk about every single song on the soundtrack at length, but this isn’t a music blog and you don’t want to read all of that. So, after much effort, here are my absolute favorites.
The Hunter – This is the music that plays when Father Gascoigne kicks your pathetic ass over and over at the beginning of the game. Gascoigne fancies himself a hunter, but he’s gone mad from bloodlust, even murdering his own wife without realizing it. Halfway through your fight with him, the blood gets to him and he himself transforms into a terrifying werewolf. The music that accompanies this fight is top notch. It starts off intimidating as all hell, which makes the second half all the more impressive. The strings demand all the attention in this song, but the horns are what make the piece.
The Hunter’s Dream – When you retreat to the Hunter’s Dream, you are in a safe haven. It’s not a happy place, but you are safe. Here is where Gherman stays, waiting for Vicar Laurence to relieve him of his post. Unbeknownst to him, Laurence has long been taken by the scourge, leaving Gherman to wait for a friend who will never arrive. This track is incredibly peaceful, but is brimming with sadness and loneliness.
Ludwig the Accursed – Much like Gascoigne, the battle against Ludwig comes in two phases: he’s a horse-like beast, recklessly trampling around the arena; then he’s a hunter, armed with his Holy Moonlight Sword. The first half of this song is, therefore, full of strings that are excellently illustrating the idea of a caged monster fighting his way loose. When you listen, though, you know the second he gets that Greatsword, because the song absolutely explodes into the most, and I hate using this word, epic orchestration I’ve ever heard. The chorus is booming, but don’t sleep on the strings, which are still working overtime.
Lullaby for Mergo – One of the last bosses of the game is Mergo’s Wet Nurse, a demigod who lost purpose after Queen Yharnam miscarried. As the level leading up to this fight had echoes of a baby’s cry off in the distance, this theme is just as on-brand. It’s a plinking melody that is both eerie and heartbreaking. For sale: music box, never played.
The First Hunter – This is the final boss in the game, really. The Moon Presence is a bonus, as Gherman is the heart and soul of the finale. Gherman was your ally throughout the entire game, but now, as you refuse to submit your life to a man who's lost his way, Gherman stands tall and faces you in combat. For every game that needs to have their final boss feel epic (in a bad way) and “badass,” Bloodborne recognizes the pain felt by all parties and really plays to it.
Bloodborne – The eponymous track plays over the end credits. Listening to this legendary piece, it’s like Miyazaki said “write me the most horrifying song you can while also making it be as many different types of ‘sad’ as possible.” They all give me chills, but this one might give me the most?
Comentarios