My LifeInHorror:BloodborneNine Years of The Hunt by George Daniel Lea
Nine years of The Hunt, nine years of fearing the Old Blood, nine years of Insight and terrible miracles, dreadful revelations and transcendent nightmares.
Nine years of Bloodborne.
At the time of writing, it barely seems credible that the game is that old (in video game culture, nine years is several lifetimes). Given its vitality, the fervent, obsessive fan-base the game still boasts and the fact that it’s still held up as a paragon of design, technicals and storytelling, one might be forgiven for assuming it to be a more recent release.
For my part, Bloodborne is as much a formative text as C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia or Clive Barker’s Weaveworld. The phenomenon becomes rarer as we age; those works that upend or expand our assumptions of art or storytelling. Bloodborne is one of the more recent for me; a trial-by-fire (and, indeed, blood) introduction to the world of From Software RPGs, that, for reasons I can’t clearly identify, had somewhat passed me by until this particular offshoot. Of course, I’d come across the likes of Dark Souls in reference and general video game culture (at that point, it was impossible not to; Dark Souls was everywhere and everything). However, I’d never deigned to delve into the legendarily difficult series myself.
My exposure to Bloodborne was almost accidental;
a strange collusion of circ*mstances that would change my appreciation of video games -and storytelling itself- forever:
A friend of mine who adores video games -but finds them difficult to engage with- purchased the game on a whim, purely on the basis of its cover. Whilst I was visiting, he threw it into my lap, proclaiming:
“See if you can make sense of that. I can’t get past the first enemy.”
So, I took my first, tentative steps into the haunted nightmare-city of Yharnam.
First of all, I was struck by the aesthetics and atmosphere: A steam-punkish pseudo-Victoriana, liberally slathered in gothic motifs. Our first experience of the world is as a patient; we see through our character’s eyes as they lie strapped down on a medical table, a filthy, bearded and blind man administering some oblique and arcane medical procedure. He rambles about hunts and blood and dreams, before we descend into our own nightmare:
Waking in a twilight distortion of the same room, we are horrified by the emergence of a flayed lycanthrope from the pool of blood beside our bed, the beast approaching us as we lie helpless before curiously bursting into flames, melting back into the same pool.
From beneath the bed emerge misshapen, barely-formed creatures that swarm over us, blocking out our sight, chattering insanity in the darkness until we lurch awake once again, now in a new layer of the dream, alone and at last in control of ourselves.
As introductions go, it’s a far cry from the usual slick, visual spectacle one would expect from an action horror game, filled to bursting with curious implications and suggestions of lore.
This, I would come to learn, is how Bloodborne communicates its unique back-mythology and unfolding plot: Not through exposition or clear exhibition, but symbols, metaphor and implication.
Exploring the seemingly-abandoned hospital
I found myself blocked from escape by a distressing figure: A hunched, gangrel lycanthrope, crouched over the mutilated body of the man responsible for my procedure.
Being familiar with action horror fare, I naturally assumed this to be the tutorial encounter, where we’d learn the rudiments of combat, so stepped forward to engage the monster. In moments, I’d earned the first of many, many hundreds of “You Died,” screens I’d earn throughout my odyssey.
And here, I began to learn how beautifully Bloodborne weaves the standard mechanics of video games into its mythology:
Dying is part and parcel of the experience of From Software’s RPGs, as fans of the previous Demon’s and Dark Souls well know: Rather than simply being a traditional mechanic of the medium, From Software makes death a part of the mythology and ongoing narrative:
Rather than receiving a standard “Game Over” screen and returning to the last check point, death in Bloodborne spirits us to “The Hunter’s Dream,” a liminal space held between dreams and waking, where Hunters can return for advice, succour and sustenance. A strange and fey space, the Dream is a brightly lit garden, florid with all manner of growth, at the heart of which sits the manor known as “The Hunter’s Workshop,” where we can find weapons, tools and numerous options to upgrade ourselves.
At this point, the Dream is exceedingly mysterious, consisting of paths that seemingly lead nowhere, sealed gateways and strange horizons. Clearly, it’s a place of mystery, but of what kind, we have no earthly clue.
It’s also here that we find our first weapons of Bloodborne: A choice between two that significantly alter our style of play.
Here, as in most areas, Bloodborne distinguishes itself as very strange indeed: Whilst new weapons may be found throughout our journey, no one set ever becomes redundant: It isn’t the case, as in most RPGs, that weapons supersede one another. Rather, each set is unique in terms of its style, meaning that players must experiment with those they encounter to find what best suits (it is entirely possible -indeed, almost standard- to play from beginning to end with one of the starting weapons. The game does not limit or prohibit its players in this manner. The choice is more one of style than of power, and requires a considerable degree of experimentation to find what combination suits).
I found myself enchanted by the strangeness on display in Bloodborne
The state that doesn’t seem quite real, that, despite being a place of sanctuary, is also subtly sinister in terms of implication:
It’s here that we learn we cannot die. Whatever strange, cyclic nightmare we’ve found ourselves in, death is no escape, and there’s no obvious means of waking. Our only choice is to forge ahead, through the beasts and blood, and learn what secrets we may (or go mad in the pursuit).
A curious gravestone provides return to the “Waking World” (something of a misnomer, we will discover, but for now, the distinction is an interesting one). Waking once again upon the operating table, we find we are armed with the weapons we selected in the Dream. Now, we stand a fighting chance.
Facing off against the same lycanthrope that barred our way before, we find that merely being armed isn’t enough: Yes, the fight is somewhat easier, but not by a significant margin. The beast can still murder us in a brief combo of attacks or even with one good swipe of its claws.
And this is particularly poignant lesson about Bloodborne:
It is never easy. No matter what you’re armed with, how upgraded you might be, how often you fight the same opponents, if you approach encounters expecting an easy time, even the least of them will see you dead on the ground. The game, despite having the trappings of a gothic action-horror, is more legitimately a baroque kind of puzzle experience:
Each encounter, every individual monster or mob of opponents, must be approached with an eye towards learning their tells, their patterns, pre-empting their attacks and taking advantage of openings they provide. There is a sincere learning experience to every encounter in the game, which can prove profoundly alienating, as it’s necessary to die and die and die again until you work out your own solution.
Far from finding this alienating, I discovered a faintly masoch*stic proclivity via that first encounter: I could not leave it alone. Despite dying multiple times, I had to keep going back, to work out what I was doing “wrong.”
Realising that I wasn’t, I just hadn’t learned how to beat the monster yet, was revelatory. I hadn’t encountered this style of game before, but found it profoundly engaging, immersive on an almost mesmerising level.
Eventually, I learned enough of how the beast operated and my own suite of attacks to bring it down: A moment of sincere accomplishment, an adrenal rush that left me heady with delight. Beyond the werewolf, the doors of the clinic open onto Yharnam itself; a moment of revelation that is stunning in its grim import, sincerely breath-stealing in its macabre beauty.
Instantly, it becomes apparent that we are in some exaggerated, distorted space: A culture whose history and traditions are far removed from our own (yet undeniably influenced by them).
The collapse of Yharnam as a civilisation has already occurred or is well underway: Everywhere lies evidence of people fleeing the city or sealing themselves away: Luggage left unattended, stage-coaches abandoned, horses murdered and horribly mutilated. Amongst the gothic architecture, the faux-Victorian streets and squares, we find disturbing statues that look to have been warped or altered by some supernatural phenomena, many of them draped over with cloths to hide their disfigurement and chained as though they might abruptly animate. Elsewhere, we find piles and rows of coffins- the dead of Yharnam, which are also chained and locked, the living now in mortal fear of their deceased friends and families.
As I have said in my many, many “let’s play” series of the game, no-one does environment like From Software. Unlike many RPGs and otherwise story-driven games, Bloodborne and its contemporaries provide very little in the way of exposition or explicit information: We are an “outsider” in Yharnam, a foreign visitor to the city who’s arrived in the midst of its self-authored collapse. We are not privy to the events that led to these circ*mstances, the various powers and factions at play: Everything must be inferred from what we discover, what is happening around us. Nowhere is that more apparent than within the architecture and environs of Yharnam itself:
There is a pervasive sense, even from our first footsteps, of a once-great culture, a civilisation of learning and plenty and sophistication. However, all of that is gone by the time we stumble out into the dusk:
Windows are barred, doors bolted and chained.
The only people on the streets are either dead or ragged, torch-and-pitchfork bearing mad-men, clearly deranged as they conduct their “cleansing” of the streets. The first few we encounter are hostile, violent. From context clues, it’s clear they aren’t seeing what we’re seeing: Despite being somewhat bestial themselves, they condemn us as a “beast,” try to drive us away as they might something wild and monstrous.
As we ascend a ladder to Yharnam’s rooftops, we are frozen by the unnatural shriek of something in the distance, something we can’t see, but which is clearly greater than the mad men and werewolves we’ve thus far encountered.
It’s difficult to communicate the texture of the game, even in these early stages: Some of the most effective horror media I’ve encountered has a quality I can only describe as occult; something darkly magical, tainted even, in its weft and weave. The overall effect is to leave the audience feeling corrupted by association, diseased or accursed for having consumed it.
Bloodborne has this quality:
Every step through Yharnam feels like a drifting through some deranged nightmare, nothing quite real or stable, everything subtly -and increasingly- distorted as sanity slowly dissolves.
The overall impression is of a setting that dances on the jagged edge of reality, between actuality and abstraction. The Yharnam we explore is neither a literal place nor a fever dream thereof, but both at the same time.
As such, we soon find that factors such as time, place and dimension are twisted upon themselves, neither absolute nor reliable. The city is a confusing tangle of alleys, streets, districts and by-ways that twist and writhe around one another in architectural impossibility:
Buildings too large and elaborate to be constructed contain inner dimensions vaster than reason allows or too small to warrant their outer-dimensions. Likewise, paths and doorways lead to strange and uncertain places; ways into underground sewer networks -as terrifying as they are grotesque-, cemeteries and sealed-off districts where the purported “plague of beasts” has run rampant. Everywhere we trespass, we encounter the wild and deranged remains of Yharnam’s people: Blood-maddened mobs who perceived everyone and everything around them as “beasts,” tainted by the very curse that evidently operates in their blood. In some areas, the disease has waxed to its ultimate expression: Full-fledged werewolves stalking the city’s great bridge district, still bearing tattered remnants of their former humanity. Almost everywhere, twisted, mutated crows crawl and gibber, clearly altered by their feasting on tainted corpses, made immense and predatory.
When we descend into Yharnam’s sewers, we find a labyrinthine network of tunnels linked by streams of tainted effluent. Here, the corpses of those succumbed to the plague -or murdered by the city’s mobs- collect in vast, rancid masses, horrifically still animate thanks to their diseased blood, despite their putrefying conditions.
Everywhere we stray, we encounter evidence of the city’s impending collapse, a series of inevitable catastrophes cascading, all beneath the veneer of an overarching nightmare, a metaphysical unravelling that doesn’t become overt until much, much later.
In terms of player experience, it’s difficult to communicate the unique horror of Bloodborne. Beyond the obvious aesthetic monstrosities (werewolves, monsters, mad men), there’s an underlying sense of dread, of breathless unravelling:
Even in these earliest stages, it’s clear this is horror of an entirely other species. The pseudo-Victorian setting, styles and architecture recalls the gothic horror of the period, from Dracula to The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. This is certainly a profound influence within the world, primarily sartorial, but also in terms of theme and ethos (decay of established structures, architecture operating as an expression of the internal or metaphorical, the return of the repressed etc), but so are wider, more abstruse horror traditions:
An increasingly obvious influence is the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft: Whilst the opening sequences of the game are more overtly gothic, the game effloresces into wild and profound cosmic horror as its story unfolds:
One of the more immediately mystifying elements is a statistic called “Insight,” which the player accrues by experiencing certain disturbing revelations in-game (encountering the various “boss” monsters is one such experience) or by discovering the strange artefacts known as “Mad Man’s Knowledge.” It’s here we find an example of the true sophistication of Bloodborne’s storytelling, and how beautifully the developers have tied that mythology into classic RPG tropes and technicals:
Ostensibly, “Insight” is just another statistic on the player’s character sheet, one that alters the gaming experience in a number of core ways.
However, it is also key to understanding the player character’s -or “Hunter’s”- experience of the setting, their ultimate trajectory through it and the various outcomes that await at its end:
“Insight” is required in order to access one of the game’s core mechanics, that is: The ability to “level up” by spending “Blood Echoes,” which are earned by slaying enemies or consuming certain items. Ostensibly little more than a standard RPG “levelling” system, in terms of what that system represents within the gaming universe, it is so much more:
First of all, one requires a degree of “Insight” in order to even access it. In universe, “Insight” is a synonym for revelation, the capacity on behalf of the Hunter to internally assimilate all they’re experiencing and thereby expand the operation of their consciousness. However, “Insight” is also synonymous with insanity (“Mad Man’s Knowledge”). In this neither dreaming nor awake condition, parameters of sanity or prescriptions of conventional reason are barriers to transcendence:
In order to truly transcend “The Hunt,” “The Dream,” we must embrace not only our own escalating madness, but that of reality and the wider cosmos.
The “Blood Echoes” by which we level up (essentially what other games might term “Experience”) are samples of blood suffused with dark and archaic revelations, influences that stem from beyond conventional experience and stray into the Lovecraftian. Through various conversations, environmental details and item descriptions, we learn that “blood” in Yharnam is ubiquitous; a panacea for all disease and ailment, a spiritual sacrament and transcendental medium. It is also the source of the madness and lycanthropy pervading the city, prescribed by the governing body of The Healing Church. Gradually, we learn that this “blood” is derived from some eldritch source and treated to be far more than a mere bodily fluid:
Which carries within it memories and alien influences, all of which become part and parcel of us when we imbibe it. It is through the blood that we begin to commune with the wider, extra-dimensional influences in Yharnam, but also by the blood that we might potentially join those who have descended into madness and abomination.
Bloodborne is a beautiful, bleak, trippy and surreal story that we enter in media res, communicated almost entirely without exposition (the degree to which each player engages with the story is entirely up to them; almost every detail has to be inferred and interpreted from environmental cues and brilliantly ambiguous symbolism).
For my part, as I began to understand how the game operated, how brilliantly subtle its storytelling is, I found myself flabbergasted: Very, very few texts in any medium, let alone video games, treats its audience with such profound sophistication, engages on such a sincere and immersive level.
In order to get the best out of this experience, it’s imperative to approach it in a particular frame of mind: Open and without assumption. Imaginatively and intellectually engaged. It is a sincere imaginative exercise, that makes demands on its audience as only the very best art does:
No two “Hunters” come away with precisely the same experience, having had the same “dream.” The symbolic and abstract nature of the game is so sublimely realised, so pitch-perfect in conception and execution, that many online personalities have made entire careers poring over and dissecting its content.
For me, Bloodborne is the most sublime horror; aesthetically and mythologically sophisticated, beautiful in terms of its significance and potential extrapolations:
As we progress, we encounter greater monstrosities: Creatures born of “the blood,” but also what it has found in humanity:
The first truly epic monstrosity we encounter is a far cry from the various lycanthropes infesting the city: A huge and gangrel creature known as “The Cleric Beast,” it is the source of the other-worldly howl we heard echoing earlier, and also indication of the true depth of abomination “the blood” can bring us to:
By its name, it’s clear the beast was originally a member of The Healing Church, an institution that made a holy sacrament of Blood Ministration. Having imbibed blood more regularly and in more ritualistic manner than the common or garden laity, they have transmuted into a mad and elaborate monstrosity, a creature without insight, revelation or even the barest humanity any longer.
This is the first example we encounter of the corruption within the Church, and a fairly overt clue as to where the madness originates.
Later, we encounter our first bona fide member of The Church: A cleric by the name of Father Gascoigne, who has also lost his mind to the plague, such that he mutates before our eyes into a lycanthropic monstrosity, which it is our sad duty to put down.
An example of Bloodborne’s particular style of gameplay, no matter how strong you are, how many hours you’ve poured into “grinding” or levelling up, Gascoigne is a punishingly difficult encounter; a test as to whether or not the player is worthy of continuing. He is also the starkest lesson thus far in how the game treats its combat:
It is necessary to learn Gascoigne’s various tells and tricks, the patterns he evinces and how best to exploit them. This is not an encounter that can be forced or ganked in any way: It must be learned and approached with a degree of understanding very, very few video game encounters demand. The sense of sincere accomplishment upon defeating Gascoigne is something I’ll never forget: A high unlike anything I’d thus far experienced in the medium; the fulfilment of a creative or intellectual exercise. This is not some sham or condescending bluff; it is genuine in its rigour, and anyone who has the wherewithal to see it through has my respect.
More than that: This is where the game opens like some tainted flower, where the world becomes traversible, and so many dark and dire secrets can be plumbed. Gascoigne’s death is a mark of tragedy within the story, but one that requires engagement and interpretation on behalf of the player to understand:
If the player has not encountered the man’s daughter, who speaks to the player through a fairly unremarkable window in an earlier area, then certain story-arcs are not activated, and some of the sumptuous bleakness of the setting is left unfound. Once again, this factor demonstrates the true “adventure game” qualities of the piece: If certain characters or events are not encountered at particular times, then entire story lines remain deactivated, areas of the game can be missed and certain details of the expansive back-mythology go unexplored. In my own original play-through, I entirely missed Hemwick Charnel Lane, The Upper Cathedral Ward, Castle Cainhurst and numerous others, all of which require precise conditions to be met at certain phases of the game in order to be accessible.
Nor is this alienating in any way: To those of us with a penchant for such things, it merely renders the game more esoteric and obsessive: A puzzle with numerous configurations and recesses. With every new area unlocked, every new encounter and atrocity exposed, more and more of the story occurring around us becomes apparent:
Far from merely being a tale of lycanthropy and madness born from tainted blood, Yharnam reveals itself as being the hub of numerous interlinked realities, that are also states of mind, conditions of the soul:
Approaching Hemwick Charnel Lane, for example, at a particular phase of the moon, will provide a very different experience than if it’s approached in latter phases: Whilst there’s some sunlight, the maddened residents will be engaged in disturbing occult rites when The Hunter approaches, and thus be more vulnerable. If, however, the moon is full, living shadows coalesce from the dark that can never be truly defeated, making for a more fraught and difficult experience.
Likewise, should the player speak to a particular, obscure character on a particular forest path at a particular time, they will receive a curious object that is the esoteric key to another realm, a “Nightmare Frontier” several levels of reality removed from the one upon which Yharnam sits.
I recall being so immersed, so enamoured of this emerging story as I played, it consumed my mind utterly (ironically in a manner not unlike the “madness” that afflicts its characters). Playing the game, unlocking its secrets, feels like some occult rite: Transgressive, unclean, yet revelatory and transcendental. The “madness” our Hunter accrues, which is synonymous with revelation, is echoed in the player experience:
Few texts in all of fiction have so immediate, visceral and profound an effect. The game is a roadmap of deviant metaphysics, in which the worst must be contemplated, experienced, even committed, in order to earn transcendence beyond one’s stunted condition.
All the way through, we have no clear notion as to our Hunter’s intentions: Do they seek merely to be well, to cure some affliction through the tainted blood, or is there some more obscure design at work?
Take, as an example of the game’s peculiar storytelling, the artefacts that provide Insight, “Madman’s Knowledge:” These artefacts take the shape of fractured skulls in which arcane energies swirl. Upon closer inspection, those energies seem to take the form of some otherworldly parasite, a luminous slug or worm. This will not make sense until much, much later in the game, when the player trespasses on layers of forbidden dreaming that reveal something of the powers at play in Yharnam:
We discover, by and by, that the various layers and levels of reality -or “dreaming”- in which we operate are bounded and connected by a great sea; the Sea of Dreams, in which swim entities analogous to gods (“Great Ones,” Lovecraftian entities whose thoughts, natures and designs are largely inscrutable). The bizarre worms and parasites that accrue upon them are the same we see reflected in “Mad Man’s Knowledge.” In this mythology, revelation, madness, arcane wisdom, have shape and a kind of animus: They are living parasites that dreaming, mortal entities either actively invite into their minds or are unwittingly infested by.
The weight and complexity of this abstract condition, the layer upon layer of symbolism and metaphor the game draws, is nothing less than genius, requiring sincere focus and obsession in order to interpret. I still have yet to find an equal to it in video games and most other mediums. An analogue I immediately drew upon is House of Leaves; a novel whose storytelling is similarly abstract and non-standard, that requires the audience to piece together some semblance of its truth from non-linear scraps and fragments. That a video game can treat its audience with such incredible respect will likely be shocking to those not familiar with the revolutions that have occurred over the last couple of decades. At present, Bloodborne stands toe-to-toe with the very best examples of horror in any medium, and surpasses more than we might be willing to admit.
Part of what entices me to the mythology -no matter how hideous and inhumane it becomes- echoes elements of my abiding obsession with Clive Barker’s fiction:
As in many of Barker’s most iconic mythologies, Bloodborne’s horror is not an end in itself: The game is not interested in merely unsettling or disturbing (though it manages both with aplomb): Such experiences are merely gateways to deeper experience and revelation: The myriad horrors and atrocities afflicting Yharnam are largely by-products of various -and variously misguided- attempts to harness metaphysics, access the Sea of Dreams and court the attentions of The Great Ones (though the reasons why vary from supplicant to supplicant).
As the game progresses and we learn more about the numerous powers and institutions at play, we come to learn that the presiding Healing Church is only one such power, and even that is fractured into various sects and schisms operating their own unique ideologies. Amongst the various factions at work is The College of Mensis, a peculiarly cultish offshoot of the College of Byrgenwerth (more on that later) whose inscrutable workings are in play from the beginning of the game, and may end up inverting or rupturing the nightmare completely, the Vilebloods.
A peculiarly gothic, vampiric culture whose curse has rendered them immortal and also strangely outside of the normal span of time, various clans and species of Hunter, all of whom evince their own faiths and agendas, plus agencies that are far from as terrestrial, such as the Choir, who operate in a cloistered area of the Healing Church attempting to make contact with beings from beyond (and whose efforts have born strange and disturbing fruit).
All of these factions have rich, beautifully developed histories, cultures, iconography, but none of it is communicated explicitly: As with every element of the game, we learn by inference and intuition. A certain consistency in garb or choice of weapons might provide some clue as to a character’s origins or loyalties. Likewise, elements of monster design carry over into religious iconography or uniforms, suggesting dark, occult links between certain movements and entities (take, for example, Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos.
A secret boss located in the hard-to-reach Upper-Cathedral-Ward, her gelatinous, fungoid body boasts tattered wings that the various church uniforms we encounter seem to emulate as some sacred symbolism. Likewise, we encounter throughout the game various species of greater beast whose common elements suggest their origins: The Cleric Beast, Vicar Amelia, Laurence The First Vicar and others all evince certain common mutations, suggesting that the disease of the blood is also abstract, altering those it afflicts in accordance with their beliefs and spiritual natures).
No moment in the game, no screen, environment or encounter, is empty or perfunctory: Everything in Yharnam and its attached dimensions seethes with symbolism that demands exegesis: Like the Dark Souls titles before it, Bloodborne demands -and, indeed, deserves- to be read like a text. Indeed, in order to get the best out of the experience, this is essential.
For me, playing the game for the first time was a revelation: I had never before encountered one that demanded its level or intensity of engagement, that is so willing to challenge its audience intellectually and emotionally. Part of the intrigue here lies in cultivating your own interpretation of the mythology. No two people will come away with quite the same conclusions or picture of events. Uncertainty and ambiguity are baked into the experience. Yharnam itself is a surreal nightmare-scape, architecturally unlikely, logistically impossible. In that, the game trades off of its medium and format to evoke confusion, uncertainty and, ultimately, dread:
Nothing can be trusted here, nothing is set or certain. Doors might well lead to other areas of the city, or might open onto portals into impossible, twisted hell-scapes, manifest nightmares through which old and dreadful gods walk.
The horror of Bloodborne is unlike anything I’ve encountered in any medium: As well as the visual, visceral threats provided by torch and pitchfork-wielding lunatics, crazed Hunters, rabid lycanthropes etc, there’s also a profound existential horror that betrays the influence of Lovecraft upon its mythology:
Here is the uncomfortable proposition that madness is a form of insight, a means of revelation that isn’t exclusively abstract, but can influence and unmask elements of physical reality (elements denied to the sane and rational). More terrifying still is the underlying proposition that madness can open the way to existential collapse: In Yharnam, species of madness become ritualised as magic or occult science, and serve to reshape or unsettle reality in such a manner that deviant gods and abortive divinities worm their ways through the cracks (more than one encounter involves some occult rite in which living people are harnessed to unsew the seams of creation, the creatures that result beyond any conventional notions of the divine or infernal).
We as the Hunter, the foreign pilgrim arrived at Yharnam’s gates on the eve of this latest nightmare, are uniquely placed to explore this delirium. Yet, even our avatar is an enigma:
Beyond that brief biography, we know nothing about them: They are a blank slate we must fill with our own agendas and intuitions. Even this can become a source of horror when certain paths are followed: Our Hunter ostensibly seeks treatment for some unspecified ailment -hence the oblique opening of the game, in which they submit themselves for “blood treatment.” However, that is far from the be-all and end-all. Either by original design or fumbling chance, the living dream into which they are thrust leads to revelations and cosmic horrors that alter their perceptions and agendas:
Here, reality itself is malleable, able to be transcended through particular rites, reshaped by others. By the end of our Hunter’s journey, we might have become so enamoured by the dark potential on display, that we seek to transcend our very humanity and swim amongst the Great Ones themselves.
It’s a long, bloody and amoral pilgrimage
One that brings us face to face with horrors beyond imagining: The revelations of what became of the original founding saints of the Healing Church, the scholars of Byrgernwerth in their quest for arcane enlightenment, the myriad rites and rituals underway that invert, upset and rip open the dream itself…
The plot of Bloodborne is typical From Software genius, in that we arrive in Yharnam after many of the more significant events have played out (or are in the midst of doing so). It’s thus our business to explore and investigate them, piecing together what we can. The sense of metaphysical desolation is profound, and only becomes moreso as we discover that every effort to elicit transcendence has resulted in madness and abomination (no matter the means).
And yet, unlike its sister Dark Souls titles, Bloodborne stands as perhaps the most curiously hopeful of those mythologies: Whereas desolation and the breaking down of metaphysical engines is the crux of Dark Souls, here, their shattering necessarily leads to sought-after transcendence. Horror, madness, despair all become annealing and necessary components of ultimate enlightenment:
If the Hunter manages to reach the final encounter, to fulfil the esoteric requirements to court the game’s “best” ending, they are reconfigured from their original humanity, becoming a Great One themselves; a creature of the abstract, an infant divinity, that will take its ultimate place in the Sea of Dreams.
This metamorphosis is framed by the game as profoundly positive: This, it seems to argue, is the purpose behind all the horror and atrocity: The leaving of this mortal coil, the waking world and all its tawdry evils.
Unlike Dark Souls, there are suggestions of something better here in Bloodborne.
state beyond the horrors we wander through. Of course, the game leaves the full implications of that up to us, the audience. Whether we take it as a moment of ecstatic transcendence or devolution into inhuman horror largely relies on what biases inform our unique interpretations.
For me, the metaphysical journey of the Hunter is one of sublime and essential horror; it represents the shedding of former selves and states, the sickly conditions that no longer serve us. This is core to the metaphysical horror of Bloodborne: The monsters, the atrocities, the abominations…whilst they each exhibit their own brands of disturbia, the true horror lies in cycles that never end, the repetition of old sins and mistakes that offer only the slightest thread of transcendence.
This is built not only into the game’s metaphysics but also its mechanics (which are synonymous): Dying merely returns The Hunter to Hunter’s Dream, which is as much Limbo as it is sanctuary. Meanwhile, the world beyond resets, returning to a pre-established point of the night until certain thresholds are crossed (e.g. the uncovering of certain secrets, the slaying of certain entities etc). The entire situation is one of endless cycles, which other characters are also caught in: Dialogue with certain Hunters reveals they are also passing through the Dream, and have been trapped in its cycles for longer than they can recall (Gherman, who holds The Hunter’s Dream in place, has been driven almost mad by the endlessness of it).
We are presented numerous choices at game’s end, depending on what we’ve done: Let Gherman slay us, thus awakening from the Dream, abandoning its metaphysics altogether and going on with our waking lives, resist our own slaughter, at which point we become the next incumbent of the Dream, taking Gherman’s place. Or, if we have revealed enough during our time in the Dream, facing off against the unknowable power facilitating the cycles, and finding transcendence in its defeat.
The means of escaping the old cycles are few and esoteric. It is rare indeed to fulfil all of the relevant criteria, and even rarer to understand the cosmic mechanics at play.
Even the transcendence we’re offered is a strange one: Abandoning the cycles means abandoning our humanity, becoming something abstract and entirely other: One of the Great Ones whose like we’ve fought all the way through the game. It is the only escape here, the only option. Interestingly, we encounter others who’ve experienced similar transcendence throughout -Rom The Vacuous Spider, for example-, and even they haven’t managed to escape the cycles entirely (though they have much more direct control over them).
Metaphorically, there’s despair inherent, baked into the very essence of the game. And yet, within that despair, a strange species of hope, implications of a wider, grander condition, that we might access and harness, if only we can face the darkest of states within ourselves.
For my part, Bloodborne is that rarest of things:
A formative text that occurs long after childhood, after the influences of our teenage years. I have rarely come across a work of horror that has so powerfully obsessed, demanded such profound fascination and rewarded me for that exercise. A cursory search on YouTube will reveal entire channels dedicated to its analysis, that treat the game as university English literature courses treat their subjects. And this is not pretension or contrivance: The game demands this level of analysis from its audience, a degree of engagement far beyond any of its contemporaries (save, perhaps, its siblings in the Dark Souls series).
To say I am obsessed with the game and its lore is a profound understatement. That it has changed the state and nature of my imagination is undeniable.
It isn’t for everyone:
The degree of difficulty, the punishing, oblique nature of its combat and levelling system, may be too much for some. Likewise, the esoteric nature of its storytelling alienates as many as it attracts. But, for my tastes, Bloodborne is not only one of the most beautiful video games ever made, but a text that rivals many in cinema, literature and any other media.
So, here’s to nine years of the Hunt, nine years of the terrible Dream, nine years of beasts and blood and eldritch horror. May they last for another nine, and another beyond that, until something even more profound occurs to break the cycle.
George Daniel Lea 22-05-2024
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George Daniel Lea George Lea is an unfixed oddity that can occasionally be sighted wandering around the UK Midlands. Queer as a very queer thing. Following the publication of his first short story collection, Strange Playgrounds and Essential Atrocities, he found a home amongst Perpetual Motion Machine Publications/Ghoulish Books stable of queer writers with his two-volume short-story collection, Born in Blood.
