Bloodborne is the game in which FromSoftware took the shield away. In Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls a careful player could hide behind one. In Bloodborne guns take the place of shields, used less to kill than to interrupt an enemy’s attack and open it up for a counter-blow, and the game rewards dodging and close-range aggression. The studio’s president, Hidetaka Miyazaki, directed it, and Sony published it for the PlayStation 4 in March 2015.
Yharnam
Sony’s own description sets the scene: “A lone traveller. A cursed town. A deadly mystery that swallows everything it touches. Face your fears as you enter the decaying city of Yharnam, a forsaken place ravaged by a terrible, all-consuming illness.” Wireframe used Yharnam as its example of how buildings alone can carry horror, with its “Gothic and Gothic Revival buildings of black stone… packed with disturbing details, and their ill-lit interiors… perfectly eerie”. Wireframe also counted it among the games that brought Lovecraft-style cosmic horror back into fashion.
Attack as defence
Two ideas changed how the game is played. The first is the rally: after taking damage, a hunter can win some of the lost health back by hitting an enemy quickly. Other games borrowed it; Wireframe noticed it in Streets of Rage 4 (2020), where health spent on special attacks “can be regained if you follow up with more damage before you get hit”, and said that it “ups the risk/reward stakes considerably”.
The second is the trick weapon, which transforms between two forms with different attacks. Wireframe’s profile of FromSoftware said that Bloodborne “brought with it a need to relearn your fighting styles and incorporate ‘trick’ weapons”. The game also has the Chalice Dungeons, optional underground areas, some of whose layouts are generated by the game; Wireframe listed them among the places where rogue-like ideas had spread.
After release
Bloodborne stayed on the PlayStation 4. An expansion, The Old Hunters, followed in November 2015, but the game has not been released on PC.
That gap led to one of the best-known fan “demakes”, in which a new game is rebuilt in the style of an older machine. Lilith Walther spent 13 months on Bloodborne PSX, a free PC game that looks and plays like a 1998 PlayStation title, with low resolution, warped textures, optional scanlines and a Big Head Mode cheat. Wireframe reported that it was downloaded “well over 100,000 times in the first few hours” after its release on 31 January 2022, and noted that it was, at the time, “the only way that Bloodborne can be played at all on a PC”. It covers only part of the original.
Sources
- Wireframe issue 2, November 2018, p. 60: review of Call of Cthulhu (cosmic horror “back in vogue”, “be it Bloodborne or Sunless Sea”).
- Wireframe issue 8, February 2019, p. 29: Yharnam’s architecture.
- Wireframe issue 12, April 2019, pp. 50–51: “Developer Profile: FromSoftware” (trick weapons; Miyazaki as president).
- Wireframe issue 28, November 2019, p. 63: rogue-lite ideas and the Chalice Dungeons.
- Wireframe issue 40, June 2020, p. 92: review of Streets of Rage 4 (the rally).
- Wireframe issue 60, February 2022, p. 106: Kim Justice, “Borne again” (Bloodborne PSX, Lilith Walther, 31 January, 100,000 downloads, the only way to play on PC).
- PlayStation, Bloodborne game page (web, secondary): release date and Sony’s description of Yharnam. https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/games/bloodborne/
- “Bloodborne”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): release dates; Miyazaki as director; the rally and trick weapons; the generated Chalice Dungeons; guns in place of shields, used to interrupt attacks; The Old Hunters (24 November 2015); no PC version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodborne