Bloodborne Is Genius, And Here's Why

Bloodborne is second only to muppets Christmas carol in its depiction of victorian dystopia

As someone said in Steam: Dark Souls is about badass overpowered protagonists... except that you're no protagonist.

You mentioned that the sound design is really good. I am happy to announce that it was personally made by Tommy Tallarico in collaboration with Hideo Miyazaki. In fact Tommy inspired the development of Bloodborne as well as Elden Ring. His mother is very proud.

I think something that doesn't get enough attention is how well Gascoigne is designed specifically to teach you how to use your tools properly. He has, until he turns into a monster, your weaponry, your move set, and he kicks the shit out of you cause he fights _super agressively_. He's a mirror image of what you have to be to win, until he turns monster.

Darksouls takes the “let the kid touch the stove” approach to player teaching.

The Yahar’gul area music is especially chilling when you realize it isn’t ambient, it gets louder when you get out of the Chapel and is coming from a certain direction, it is canonically what your character is hearing in game, there is a choir singing loudly somewhere in the village.

Bloodborne was the first game I enjoyed after I stopped gaming in like 2010. I genuinely tell people who don't even play videogames about the removal of shields and the rally mechanic and how it changed the game in such an amazing way by encouraging aggressive, rhythmic gameplay. I wonder how many of them were just waiting for me to shut up about something as esoteric gameplay mechanics.

Elden Ring's guard counter seems like a capstone on the slow development of fun-shielding. By giving you an attack that looks very powerful and does more damage that you only get by successfully blocking, it is actively baiting every shield-user into attacking immediately instead of waiting for obvious safe openings. You are being drawn into taking risks, with the prize of crisp AV feedback and obviously more damage, and eventually start seeing the posture-break counters which are hugely damaging and very satisfying. That way even if you're playing defensively, you're actively engaged with the enemy.

That is such a brave way to pronounce “Gascoigne”

Giving gascoignes daughter her dead sisters bloody white bow is a moment I'll never forget, the way she started crying I genuinely felt so bad, I turn away to go about my travels and I start to hear her laughing saying how pretty it is and that it's all hers, i stood in disbelief for about 15 minutes. Sent chills up my spine

Okay I know this is about Bloodborne but as an animator, that footage of Lords of the Fallen HURT ME. Every one of those swings was so methodical and slow but there was absolutely no weight behind them. The character standing upright and really only using the bare minimum of the rest of their body to take the swings, the fact the speed remained almost completely flat with little acceleration and no anticipation or overshoots. Good god. I HOPE that was the result of them having to rush the project before they could finish the attack animations because if someone thought that was acceptable then I do not want to see their portfolio.

I never realized how you can tell mimics apart with the position of the chain on them in ds1 but I thought it was a really brilliant and subtle way to give you a chance to tell

I have a theory that bloodborne is more fun for newbies because the rally system engenders what i like to call "Mad Bastard Energy". Basically that insanely agressive "C'mon if you think you're 'ard enough" attitude you get in east London pubs on a match day. It' s seriously impressive.

You can't just spam attack. laughs in saw cleaver

One time I was watching my friend play through this game for the first time, and he was fighting Ludwig. It was very difficult, but at one point Ludwig went for one of his big stage one forward attack sequences, and my friend just said "fuck it". He was pissed enough that he got aggressive and committed to a huge powered-up swing when he got an opening... And that's how he derailed Ludwig's whole attack and made him stagger by smacking him upside the face with a perfectly-timed Ludwig's Holy Blade. It was minor, but it may have been one of the coldest moments I've seen in a game in awhile. Bro really said "NUH UH" with a bigass sword.

14 minutes into a 7 year old video, but the question “Is it possible to play a game wrong?” has a huge place in my heart. I always had a way of playing games, which was more of a grindy, slower, lore-focused playing method. My best friend was more of a middle-ground grinder-completionist-style player, which exacerbated my own style, and it caused us both to have a great time sharing RPG profiles with each other. However, when I met my wife, she was more of a “Story Games Only” type of player, and she preferred using walkthroughs. At the time, I could have died on the hill of “she isn’t struggling through the game enough, therefore she isn’t experiencing it correctly”, and we got into semi-fights about it where I felt like I was defending my whole way of living life. Eventually, though, we ended up playing Final Fantasy Lightning Returns together, which doesn’t really have a “grind” option to it, due to it being a completely timed game, and it kind of broke that habit for me. After that I had a much more profound appreciation for the amount of time that I had put into video games, but I was also kind of mad that I had even done it to begin with, and I realized that I was completely wrong about people “playing games incorrectly”. I give so much more respect to people who genuinely LIKE the games that they play, because I just want to be that person now. TL;DR: I don’t think there is any wrong way to play a game, even though I used to think that way.

Bloodborne: Let's teach 'em how to dodge Sekiro: Bitches gotta parry.

My favourite section of Bloodborne is when the Blood Moon rises, and you enter Yahar'gul. From the top of the area, you see all of the Amygdala's clutching to the buildings, and everything smeared with a red, bloody, hue. Arianna gives birth to a deformed celestial baby in the sewer, the old lady goes mad, Adella grins to herself creepily, the skeptical man grows silent, the Oeden Chapel Dweller wishes it to be over, the imposter Iosefka tries to ascend, and fails, the Yharnamites in their homes grow silent as the weight of the entire universe crushes their tiny minds. It's the part of the game, when you realise that it's all, much, much worse than you thought, and you're alone. It's the part of the game when I realised that everything was fucked.

One benefit I think blood vial farming has is that it pretty much forces you back to central Yarnham, where if you talk to NPCs, dialog changes as you progress through the story. But in general, I like the Estus mechanic more.

I remember playing the first game as a mage. ...Without knowing what the lock on button was. I remember having to dodge around bosses at point blank range and shooting the spells by aiming with the controller. The CONTROLLER. So I put the catalyst in my offhand and sword in the other, and focused on using mainly shotgun type spells while dodging and hitting occasionally with the sword. When I found out that their was a lock on button I immediately went to the soul spear and thought it was completely op that you could just one shot mob enemies from a meter away, and was literally so happy.