Bloodborne Fan Reaction

So Bloodborne has been out for about a week and a half, and as a long time devotee of From Software’s games I couldn’t be happier. The game is an incredible thematic and mechanical evolution of the story and level design found in its predecessors while also offering a more detailed world to play through. While I’m happy to see such a good game receive high critical praise, at the same time I’m noticing a trend where most reviewers are talking less about how the game is good, and more about how the game is hard. Not much is said about what it does that sets it apart mechanically from other adventure games other than your character gets killed often. Getting killed repeatedly is presented as a mark of validity, only a real gamer would make it through Bloodborne, a real video game where you get killed over and over again!

The weird thing about this is that Bloodborne is actually much more accessible than its predecessors by design, yet the changes and reasoning behind why are lost on the many people that use Bloodborne less as a fun game and more as a platform to judge others’ gaming skills. It’s taboo to simply not enjoy Bloodborne for what it is, and I constantly see this bristling reaction to people who don’t like it, since how could anyone not like Bloodborne? Toxic folks live under the assumption that since they like certain games, and they play games, they are true gamers. People who don’t like the exact same games as them are somehow lesser people. It’s especially tragic coming from From Software fans, however, since we were all collectively crushed by their games over the years.

Something fans seem to be forget about Demon’s Souls is that it actually has an excellent tutorial. It eases players into its more deliberate pacing, with an introductory area that gets subtly more complex as it goes on. More than just a few brief messages on the game’s controls, it quickly gets you used to the idea of taking things slowly, peaking around corners, and paying attention to what’s above and below you (compared to how many big budget titles eschew use of vertical space in their level design, this may be the most important part).

Without a cutscene or a voice in your ear, the game handily gets players used to its fantasy game/survival horror hybrid structure. At the tutorial’s end, players are quickly executed by a powerful monster (though expert players can actually defeat this foe), getting the game’s story started while also showing off the most unique feature of the game. There is no reload, and no checkpoints in the traditional sense. Instead, the game is saving your progress at all times, and actions that would cause a game over in other titles like killing a major character are permanent changes to the game (impressively From Software’s games can still be completed even with all of its NPCs gone).

From Software has been making challenging, atmospheric adventure games for years, with their original King’s Field adventure game actually being the first title released on the original PlayStation as well as the first real time 3D first person game (sorry Terminator: Future Shock and Quake). The series and its spinoffs were very successful in Japan for the same reasons From Software’s newer games are successful worldwide, but they failed to get more than a cult following when released elsewhere due to their slow speed and focus on exploration at a time when games played from the first person were coming to be equated with fast paced action shooters.

While Demon’s Souls would receive almost universal acclaim from both critics and players for being so well-crafted while simultaneously violating so many rules of how the average third person action game works, something interesting happened. Even before its release outside of Japan, its reputation as a challenging game was known abroad, but upon being made available in the US it quickly became a gamer status symbol to say that one has beaten Demon’s Souls. Half the internet suddenly “invented” terms like “Nintendo hard” to describe Demon’s Souls, and conversation about the game quickly shifted away from why it’s actually good. Instead, we’d see articles about how more games need to be like Demon’s Souls not because of what it does right, but just because of its difficulty. Suddenly if a person didn’t like Demon’s Souls they just weren’t as good a person as someone who does. After all, Demon’s Souls, as people would have it, was the first real video game released in years because of its brutal challenge.

People often deny this gatekeeper attitude to enjoying video games when I speak about it, but it’s hard to ignore. By the time From Software began developing Dark Souls (different publisher, very similar game), all of its advertising was based around how the game is hard. The official Dark Souls website is even www.preparetodie.com. This culminated in Dark Souls 2, a game even ardent fans often criticize for being hard just for the sake of being hard rather than actually being a rewarding challenge to overcome. Yet it was exactly what some of From Software’s loudest fans had demanded, nothing but masochistic difficulty without a concept of how the rest of the game needs to be built to complement it. But the damage was done, with Bloodborne now getting a great reception with little actual conversation as to why beyond the most basic: That it hits the superficial elitist gamer bait triumvirate of faux-Victorian setting, Lovecraft, and high difficulty.

Between the reputation of its developer and the universal critical praise, it’s considered a critical character flaw to dislike or criticize Bloodborne. Personally, I do think it’s one of the best games From Software has ever made, up there with the moody Otogi: Myth of Demons, the ruthless King’s Field II, and Demon’s Souls itself. From Software has further tweaked and streamlined the formula, making it the most accessible game in the series, but it unfortunately has the most obtuse opening area of them all. The game’s opening forces you down an avenue crowded with a very large number of enemies. There are alternate hidden paths and side streets to poke around as one makes their way down the street, but without something like Demon’s Souls’ tutorial or helpful messages pointing them out, it’s a frustrating start that seems ideal only for those already familiar with the series’ mechanics.

It’s a bizarre decision, since with a few indicators, or maybe having one of those hidden paths not be obstructed by objects the player must destroy to reveal it, it would actually go a long way to lessening the early game’s extreme challenge while still telling players all they need to know about how to progress. Anyone playing Bloodborne for a time will hear plenty of talk from NPCs and plenty of story content about how their character is a hunter, the game takes place on the evening of the big hunt, hunting is probably the most used word in the game. It’s not there just for flavor, but rather, the key to successful combat throughout the game.

Enemies are actually much less perceptive than in previous Souls games, and the game encourages stalking your way around large groups to come up with a plan of attack ahead of time. At the opposite extreme, in this game, when an enemy hits you, you can actually recover that damage instantly by hitting the same enemy back quickly enough. It’s a smart addition since it forces you to take an instinctive, animalistic approach to every encounter. Skulking around behind corners walking the long way around enemies that look too dangerous, trying to distract and pick off stragglers one by one is ideal. But being able to recover that damage and emerge unscathed from an ambush encourages one to go berserk when cornered. It’s also, without having a cutscene or any particular exposition about it, a great way to make you question your actions in a game where half the enemies are already calling you a cursed foul beast as they charge at you. It doesn’t take long for Bloodborne to make it clear that every single being you slaughter in the game is just a farther gone version of your character.

It’s a shame that the starting area’s structure isn’t handled as elegantly as the rest of game, since once you pass it and defeat a boss, things really open up. Players now have access to several different areas to explore, more weapons to experiment with, and most importantly will gain Insight.  From Software has always strived to have controls and game mechanics that are “in character” with the settings of their games, and Insight is a great way to do this without making the game inaccessible. Represented by an open eye, Insight is heavily inspired by the sanity points in Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu pen and paper RPG. The game in general is very Lovecraftian, a From Software staple that is much more prevalent here than in their previous games.

Characters gain points of Insight by confronting particularly horrific bosses, reading certain things in the game, and by consuming certain items that impart knowledge of the game’s world upon the player. The higher one’s Insight gets, the more access one has to the game’s more supernatural elements. A particularly chilling example of this is that with a high enough Insight, one boss’ monstrous shrieks are heard as plain English during the battle. The downside is that the game’s difficulty increases as you gain more knowledge of the supernatural workings of the setting, with enemies gaining additional moves and some gruesome cosmetic changes.

The brilliant thing about it is that one loses Insight, making the game easier and more stable, by calling for help from another player. It works extremely well atmospherically, a character has to focus and reach out for help to center themselves. But it also works extremely well to balance the game’s difficulty. If things get too hard, seeking out help makes it easier by reducing one’s Insight whether another player joins the game or not. It’s an elegant way to help bring the mysterious horror elements of the game more to the forefront without compromising the game’s balance or resorting to the torture porn like cutscenes that typically pervade the survival horror genre. That’s not to say that Bloodborne lacks an almost absurd amount of visual viscera throughout, but having this kind of content presented in such a frank and not showing off way makes it more genuinely unsettling.

Another new addition to the series in Bloodborne is a set of optional, randomized dungeons. Players can delve into these areas to find rare items and learn some more background information about the game’s setting. One can even use up various items as the game generates a dungeon to have subtle effects on their difficulty and potential treasures. Having these completely separated from the main game is a great move. Players that want to focus entirely on maxing out their weapons and finding the biggest challenges can do so without it interfering with the balance of the game proper. They’re also fairly addictive and could be a game unto themselves, as their structure and enemy placement is strongly evocative of classic first person dungeon crawlers like Ultima Underworld and the King’s Field series itself.

Yet, despite all of these great features that add flexibility and nuance to the game, almost every review of Bloodborne, is exclusively about the game’s difficulty and nigh impossible battles (always couched with a “it seems like a chore but is actually fair you just have to master it” warning). It’s a shame that, despite a misstep in its opening, such a great game is reduced the notion that it must be played and praised simply because it’s hard and has beautiful graphics. I’ve been a fan of almost everything From Software has done since the original King’s Field was released, and I’ll even go to bat for their lesser known adventure titles like Forever Kingdom and Eternal Ring. On that same note, if I were completely new to From Software’s games, I’d probably be pretty frustrated with Bloodborne for its harsh opening, and may even drop the game depending on who and where I went to for more information about how to play it effectively.

The toxic response I’ve seen some gamers receive for simply commenting that the game can be hard is frustrating. It’s also intrinsically against the spirit in which From Software’s games are designed. Older interviews with series director Hidetaka Miyazaki indicate a desire to make the games in the vein of the original Legend of Zelda or the Pokémon series. Socializing with friends about what paths and strategies were used and experimenting with different techniques is the heart of progressing. Accomplishment comes not just from slaughtering monsters but from mastering the environment, unlocking shortcuts, finding hidden items, and so on while still keeping one’s guard up for the newest trap or creature.  It’s how Demon’s Souls got its cult following in the US before being officially released here. Yet I have seen a googol of conversations about Bloodborne where when a player is frustrated, the response is to either get better at the game or that the player is just not good enough to play the game.

There’s actually an entire mechanic to encourage less toxic behavior in the games themselves. Players can leave messages in the game world to communicate with each other. The system can be played with for humor, but Bloodborne’s selection of keywords and phrase makes it much more difficult to provide misinformation than in previous games. In addition, whenever a player approves of a message, the message’s writer’s energy is refilled. In a game where resources can be limited this is a huge life saver, and a great incentive for players to help each other out. The game also deliberately lacks any form of voice chat, preventing one from being cursed out for not having a properly optimized build or wearing the wrong hat. All player communication is kept ethereal in a way appropriate to the game’s setting while still actively encouraging players to help each other out. Bloodborne, more than any other game in the series, is built around the exact opposite of the idea that one needs to be some kind of lone hyper skilled gamer to complete it.

It’s a shame even a game so laser focused on cooperation and learning from other players can still attract an exclusionary crowd. Bloodborne has become yet another in a line of games that are to be taken very seriously for being an achievement in game design, but to which any criticism will be met incredulously with "it's just too hard for you to understand."