A Look Back At The Story of Bloodborne

bloodborne has one of the best stories i have ever seen it's widely regarded amongst fans as a masterpiece and one of the best in the souls series and after finishing the game myself i'm inclined to agree welcome back to another story review the series where we look at some old games and i not only give you a retelling of the game's story but also give my opinions along the way we've already done a few of these in the past and i plan to do many more in the future so if this interests you in any way consider watching some of my previous episodes or subscribe for future ones but as for today we'll just be focusing on bloodborne so without further ado let's get started as always i want to put a massive spoiler warning now as we'll be going through the entire game and dlc throughout this video although i do understand though that many may not even know what bloodborne is so allow me to give you a very basic spoiler-free rundown of the game's plot then you can decide from there bloodborne takes place in a fictional world of yharnam and we play as someone only known as the hunter yharnam is known across the world for its blood administration as the blood they use is said to cure all illnesses we're an outsider who came to yharnam to seek this blood in hopes of possibly healing us but that's not all this blood does the blood in yharnam has a secret a secret the healing church does not want getting out furthermore that's not the only secret yharnam has within its walls sadly this is all i can say for now without ruining most of the story if this sounds remotely interesting to you then go buy the game sadly though it is only on playstation so i can understand if you can't get your hands on it now that the introduction is out of the way let's actually dive into the game's narrative so right away bloodborne foregoes the usual lengthy cutscene that gives a summary of the world's events originally i was going to write a strongly worded paragraph on how much this annoyed me but after looking at it differently i realized how much of this story would genuinely be ruined with an introduction like the previous games the reason being is that bloodborne is hiding its actual story for most of the game and if any of the history or events of the world were mentioned then it would not only make the player more confused it would also ruin the surprise so instead the first second of the game starts with someone walking up to us talking about yharnam and something called pale blood it's assumed that our character had asked a question to the blood minister and that the cutscene starts right after we ask it so it's possible that our character was trying to seek this pale blood but given that they're trying to get a blood transfusion it's possible that the players also afflicted with some illness and sought out yharnam because of their extraordinary blood however before we're given the blood we need to sign a contract because the blood of yharnam is so sought after by the rest of the world it's obviously in high demand so as payment the church requires a contract to be signed but this contract isn't so that we pay them for their services but rather be of service to the people of yharnam as thanks for being given their blood in yharnam a strange phenomenon has occurred as we can see that the town is overrun by beasts by signing the contract we become a hunter and our task of bringing an end to the hunt so it can be surmised that this hunt we partake in is our end goal except that's not entirely true it's clear we the player didn't come to yharnam to stop the hunt we came here for the blood our actual objective is much different however there is a slight problem right after receiving the blood we wake up and the first thing we see is a note that reads seek the pale blood and transcend the hunt this note highlights an issue with bloodborne's writing which are the translations the first half of this note is incorrect from software the creators of the game are known to be japanese so translation errors are quite frequent in their games this can sometimes be a few incorrect words or the whole description missing at least within the english version some of the text is wrong this note doesn't actually say handwritten scrawl as in japanese it actually says scribbled in your own handwriting implying that our character wrote this note but in the english version that's not explained which is why there are constant questions on many forms as to who wrote the note despite there being a clear answer this isn't the only translation error that bloodborne has but it's definitely the most notable after the note is read we head downstairs to fight the very first enemy and we die this however teleports us to the hunter's dream the reason we're here is that earlier before getting up from the table we hear the blood minister say that we will simply be seeing a bad dream before a beastly figure appears in front of us is engulfed in flames right after these tiny little white men which we learn are called messengers surround our body these little guys worship and aid the hunters in the hunter's dream and it's because they're connected to the player that allows us passage into that hunter's dream the place's name is a bit misleading as it's a real place but it's not a real place like it doesn't exist within yharnam physically but it's also not a dream because we can physically die in here this may sound extremely confusing but i do have a theory on this that i'll explain a bit later when we get to the nightmare realms getting back on track we discover that we aren't alone in this stream as there is a doll that becomes our level up lady and then there's german the first hunter the hunter's dream becomes a base of operations for the player but was also a base of operations for many other hunters that came before us as not only are there graves everywhere signifying that people used to be here the doll also just straight up tells us this while we're in here we finally get to pick our weapons and finish our loadout bloodborne handles combat much differently than the other souls games and while it may not be intentional i think this flows quite well with the game's story firstly all the hunters carry a weapon and a gun at all times however there isn't much to choose from in this game just as a quick comparison not including the guns there are only 26 melee weapons the player can use compared to dark souls 1 where 26 weapons just fills up the straight swords and greatswords there's still a dozen other categories of weapons that haven't even been mentioned furthermore the game has also removed armor and changed it to a tire out of all the clothing in the game i think there's one armor set that actually says the word armor on the item as opposed to robe or garb so bloodborne has significantly decreased the quantity of both categories but you know that saying quality over quantity and i think bloodborne ran with this idea in terms of the way i see it as a hunter especially when it comes to hunting beasts such as these mastery of your weapon is not only expected of you but it's required if you want to stay alive so by giving the player fewer weapons it gives them fewer options and possibly more time with one weapon one of the first weapons available to the player is the flagship saw cleaver i used this weapon the entire game this is because bloodborne's weapons are all about the moveset rather than the damage the worst weapon based on damage is the blade of mercy at 60 with the highest being 105 which belongs to the kirkhammer compared to other games where starting damage can be anywhere from 55 to 160 depending on the weapon it makes this game's damage difference irrelevant what i'm trying to convey is that the game is almost encouraging you to be a real hunter by dedicating a long time to one weapon now of course you're free to change to whatever weapon you want whenever you want as it's quite generous with upgrade materials but i've always felt this lack of quantity was intentional so that the player feels like a proper hunter one who has dedicated time to mastering the inner workings of the weapon this is further reinforced by the game's trick system which changes the weapon's form and not only adds more moves to the weapon but also different combo strings as you can switch forms mid combination as for the attire on the surface this may not make sense but given how the flow of combat works i think it fits perfectly within this game in bloodborne dodge rolls only exist when not locked on as when in combat your character does a dash on top of this their health loss isn't permanent as the rally mechanic allows you to regain health back by attacking the enemy the rally and dash mechanic try to push the player towards a more aggressive style of play especially when you take into account the visceral attacks and how some runes can give your health back from them the game is trying to push you to use your healing items as a last resort and this quick pace of combat would be impossible if the player was covered in armor so bloodborne removed armor and added a tire since it's a lot lighter and gives the player more freedom of movement by far my favorite things to look into is how the gameplay ties into the story and bloodborne does a fantastic job at this by giving meaning to the weapons and armor we find in game as while may seem trivial many games don't even bother really putting in that effort to justify these things so when it does occur in cases like bloodborne it allows me to be more invested in the story as everything was taken into account after selecting our equipment we can head back and kill the beast that defeated us once it's defeated we can walk outside the clinic and enter central yharnam and i gotta say bloodborne is stunning not just in the actual design of yharnam but the small details put into the levels as well yharnam clearly takes inspiration from the victorian era but adds a more gothic twist to it as evidenced by the rough and lethal architecture like the overuse of spikes near letters and the overall neutral color palette the town has one thing that has irked me on occasion is most of the souls games take place in a broken land that is way past its prime but not a single game has ever actually convinced me that this is the case until i played bloodborne some standout levels though like undead burg and fair and keep do do an excellent job at conveying this the inbuilt bloodborne carries this throughout the entire game there is so much death and decay within these areas that you can feel how miserable the people are here but that's just on the surface as there are those smaller details i talked about where within a few minutes after leaving the clinic you can find a large crowd of the townspeople huddled around a fire pit the town's people are also called the yarnamites so i'll be using that from now on this may not seem significant until you realize that in the fire pit is a cross with a beast being crucified on it this one tiny area shows the disdain people have for these beasts and shows that the hunters aren't the only ones fighting back against the beast's curse but once again this also makes sense as hunters are trained to fight these creatures which is why you normally find them alone whereas the jarnamites are just regular people so they travel in packs which is why we fight large numbers of them these small details continue to get even smaller as certain characters like the old hunters from the dlc have belts around their right leg if you notice while playing our player heals by stabbing something into their right leg the old hunter trouser reads a widespread belief of the period was that beast blood crept up the right leg and this led to the double wrapped belt these design decisions and small details are just like the weapons and attire we previously talked about details that didn't need much backstory as the player probably wouldn't have noticed or cared if it wasn't added but by adding them it shows that not only are from software genuinely good developers but every detail was taken into consideration getting back on track our objective is still to seek the pale blood and transcend the hunt however this is quite obscure and vague so thankfully bloodborne provides a much more approachable and straightforward objective from a note in the hunter's dream that reads to escape this dreadful hunter's dream halt the source of the spreading scourge of beasts less than i'd carry on forever even if the previous objective makes zero sense this at least gives us something to think about and also acts as a justification for our actions except there is a slight issue as not only do the beasts attack us but the yarnamites do as well this is bizarre as i just talked about how the yharnamites are taking part in the hunt alongside us but this is cleared up by the story it's discovered that the cause of the beast is from the blood itself currently we don't know why it's the blood or what is in the blood that's causing this problem we just know that this is the reason why this is very typical of souls games where questions will be answered with a brief summary that gets more complex and fleshed out as we continue for now though what we uncover is that the blood of yharnam is more intoxicating than alcohol and this addiction to blood is what's causing people to seek out more and since it already has some disastrous side effects the more someone consumes the worse it'll get this may not be the same for all the residents but if you pay attention to the blood-borne trailer when the camera zooms in on the eye of the yarn might you can see that their pupil is sort of broken or misshapen and it also looks eerily similar to the eye of a blood drunk hunter the item we used to enter the dlc and just like the item says even hunters aren't safe from this inevitable fate in fact i think they're worse off than many as they're constantly killing beasts and surrounded by the hunt that's why characters like eileen the crow exist as when you meet her she tells us that while we're a hunter of beasts she's a hunter of hunters throughout her questline we assist her in killing certain hunters who may have been consumed with blood bust it's her duty as the hunter of hunters to grant them a merciful death however even she is not immune to this fate as if we don't do her quest line instead of the crow of cainhurst arriving at the cathedral she'll be here and attack us instead implying that she too succumbed to the bloodlust and it was because of us assisting her in her hunts that we were able to prevent this fate from happening however just as the hunters within bloodborne are unique so too are the beasts the first two bosses of bloodborne are actually a really great visualization of the facts the blood has on people as we can find the cleric beast a beast we definitely haven't seen before and father gascoigne a hunter drunk from bloodlust but it's also here where bloodborne deviates from the other games in regards to its storytelling bloodborne focuses more on context clues for its lore rather than item descriptions the descriptions do exist but definitely play less of a role in bloodborne compared to the other souls games where one boss will have a soul weapons and possibly armor tied to it giving you seven different pieces of information in bloodborne most of the time you'll just get one and even then you're lucky to get that for example the cleric piece drops one item called the sword hunter's badge where the last sentence reads as it was clerics transformed into the most hideous beasts from this item we can conclude that the clerics who were a part of the healing church the organization that distributes the blood were affected by the blood even more than the yarnamites or possibly the hunters due to them being near it all day this caused them to transform into different forms of beasts which are much different than the ones we find in yharnam even without this item you probably could have came up with this idea as the boss's name is cleric beast implying that it's a beast that used to be a cleric this is the same for father gascoigne who only drops a key to the door behind him we don't get any lore from him on why he turned into a beast but given our knowledge on the blood of yharnam and the beast curse we can come to the assumption that he was consumed by bloodlust these are much more tame examples but it becomes tougher when you talk about bosses like the one reborn which drop absolutely nothing regarding its backstory but because the area it's located in and the area's history we can use small bits of lore to piece together our own story about the boss this will inevitably frustrate players as the most basic form of lore that being the boss souls and items are no longer a viable way to understand the story but personally i don't mind the way bloodborne altered its own way of storytelling it's definitely more difficult than other souls games and especially when we get deeper into the game but it was a nice change of pace and it forced me to think about my surroundings and actively pay attention as i said i didn't mind this but i can see many people who will be annoyed or even turned off by this as the game provides even less ways to access key items after defeating father gescoin we're able to enter the odin chapel and subsequently the cathedral ward and a tier where the game becomes a bit more open and that's where i believe the tutorial officially ends the cathedral award will act as our temporary base of operations but only in the sense that we're going to be coming back here quite often from here the player can explore many different areas like hemwick old yharnam and the forbidden woods however before going to these areas we need to clear out the cathedral ward itself to prevent some backtracking because at the end of this level is vicar emilia similar to father gascoigne she doesn't drop much except dependent which just tells us that vickers were heads of the healing church and this pendant they carry is to remind them of their old adage which is fear the old blood but once again you didn't need this info as her story is just like the cleric beast someone who transformed into a different beast thanks to the high amounts of blood that were around them the reason we have to defeat her so that we can touch the skull behind her which shows a cut scene of two people talking to one another that being master willem and lawrence these two will play a massive role later afterwards we can visit oldie arnhem and this highlights another wonderful detail about bloodborne and that's not only do the characters and bosses have great stories but the areas do as well and it's these locations that assist us in providing backstories to those characters and bosses within the area such as in old yharnam where upon entering we're told to leave should we refuse we get shot at by someone atop a tower we discovered that this person is a hunter named dejira this is the first instance we see of hunters defending the beast from other hunters which is quite odd given their whole job is to kill them but oliver arnhem has quite the tragic backstory old yharnam and its residents were ravaged by a sickness known as ashen blood and due to its poisonous effects it caused more of the beast scourge to spread and because it was spreading too fast drastic measures needed to be taken so oliviarno was locked away and burned to the ground this relates to why dejura is protecting them because he feels guilty for what happened and assuming you don't anger him like i did you can talk to him peacefully and when spoken to he'll say this i no longer dream but i was once a hunter too there's nothing more horrific than a hunt in case you fail to realize the things you hunt they're not beasts they're people one day you will see i really like the addition of dejorah as a character because it humanizes things in yharnam as it shows that there are hunters out there who genuinely care about what they're hunting and feel terrible about it he realized that the beasts he was trying to kill are just regular people and even though they're beasts he can't use that as justification to kill them especially when you take into account how the people of oldian were even turned into beasts in the first place that's why de jure doesn't blame the beast but rather the church as they were inflicted with a disease that was accelerated thanks to the church and it was the church themselves that deemed the place unlivable which is why it was sectioned off and burned it's a horrific but wonderfully crafted story and a lot of the locations in bloodborne do have incredible backstories that really make you stop and think once you get all the details for example after going through a few other areas we'll eventually make it to bergenworth and it's here where the story of bloodborne reaches its climax birgenworth is a place of study here in yharnam as we make our way through the building we can come across a man on a chair who will know to be master willem thanks to the flashback from earlier master willem is the head of the bergenworth scholars here in yharnam and they made a very disastrous discovery we don't know what that discovery is but we'll find out shortly as while willem can't speak to us he does motion us towards the ledge and by jumping into the water we enter another plane of existence with the only thing in here being rom the evacus spider killing rom is the start of the mystery after her death we see a lady who we will eventually discover to be the undead thumerian queen who's also named yharnam after we speak with her the moon glows a violent red color as it inches closer and closer to us in fact so close that the clouds are actually traveling behind it thankfully though we awake from the terrifying nightmare and are back on the mainland at least you can go on believing that as long as you don't look up this creature is an amygdala and it's not only a species of creatures that have existed in yharnam it's also been here the whole time we've been playing you can visit this exact area before reaching rom and assuming you're careless enough to not look around something invisible will grab you and give you a sneak peek of the real story of yharnam but this alien creature is just the tip of the iceberg because bloodborne was never actually about the hunt it's about ascension and experimentation and most importantly of all it's about the great ones this is where the story of bloodborne permanently changes and to help you get up to speed let me explain what's exactly going on here and don't worry if you get lost or confused along the way i'll try to summarize the basic details at the end bloodborne's story begins years ago when an ancient race of people called thumerians would discover the great ones and thus lead to their wisdom of the eldritch truth the eldritch truth is basically a catch-all phrase for the great ones esthemarians were able to discover that the great ones exist and that they inhabit a higher plane of existence much higher than our own all of this pretty much encompasses the eldritch truth eventually the thumerians would become the eternal guardians of the great ones which is why they're present in the chalice dungeons we enter from the hunter's dream as those are the places they rested after some time all the great ones ascended to an even higher plane of existence except ebridis who was the only one left behind a bit farther in the future the pthumerians would establish a government system and elect a monarch who we know to be queen yharnam she ended up having a child who was named mergo but mergo was special as it was a half human but half great one hybrid multiple lore descriptions tell us that the great ones will inevitably lose their children so they seek out surrogates at this point in time queen yharnam would be the surrogate but other characters will also be affected like aryana and yosefka as killing them drops an umbilical cord years go by and we reach the establishment of the bergamorth college this was led by master willem the scholars of the college would eventually discover those areas we discussed before that we know as chalice dungeons and would uncover the history of the thumerians as well as the existence of what they call the old blood this old blood is the blood of the great ones and this was the turning point for both byrgenwerth and yharnam as all their time was dedicated to figuring out how to not only communicate with these beings but also ascend to their level of existence this led to the scholars testing the old blood but while overseeing the tests of the old blood master willem feared its effects as they were still unknown which is why he says the phrase fear the old blood that cutscene we saw earlier is when lawrence would leave the college lawrence believed that the blood was the key to humanity's ascension as this blood had incredible healing properties master willem however still believed that ascending was only possible by lining the brain with eyes allowing the individual to gain insight into the great ones this is further reinforced by the creatures we kill in byrgenwerth who have multiple eyes because they're falling out many of the scholars in the college were forced to choose who to side with after the split occurred between master willem and lawrence master willem would continue his research while lawrence and the members who followed created the healing church due to having a proper setup and a base of operations the method of blood transfusion was quickly discovered but as we know this made things worse in yharnam as it created the beast courage so lawrence worked with german to create the first hunter's workshop so they could stop the beasts clearly that didn't work and the other organizations and then the healing church would start to take notice these groups being the choir and the school of mensis just like the prior groups the choir and the school of menses also wanted to ascend to a higher plane of existence but their creation was made shortly after the downfall of the healing church as not only was it proven that the blood was not working as they wanted it to lawrence would also pass away leaving the spot for leader up for grabs so with the church in ruins and its leader dead the rest of its members started taking matters into their own hands the choir had the advantage of being able to visit ibritis the left behind great ones so they tried using her as well as other experiments and involving children in their newly built orphanage they would use these kids and turn them into celestial emissaries with the intention of either being great ones themselves or using these emissaries as a way to communicate with the great ones so that they could learn more on them the choir clothing set says together with the left behind great one they look to the skies in search of astral signs as that may lead them to the discovery of their true greatness they were also able to use what we would call magic as the auger of a british was quite common amongst their ranks as for the school of mensis they were led by a mikalash who also happens to use the same auger of a british magic which may imply that the school of mensis were originally members of the choir or at the very least miklash at least used to be they're responsible for creating a ritual called the mensis ritual which is an extremely confusing piece of lore that is never actually really explained some have said that it has to do with the snatchers kidnapping people and using those people in their rituals but there's also information that points to michaelash using a child possibly murgo to lure the red moon to them mensis may be a reference to the word month when talking about the moon and its monthly phases so it seems like the moon was a part of their goal but to what end though is unclear regardless they performed the menses ritual and were able to create the nightmare of mensis a nightmare realm i will get to later within this realm though are queen yharnam and her son mergo which is quite peculiar basically though all of these groups separated due to their differing ideals and would even sabotage each other at times as we can summon a immense student to fight abridus who of course we know is to be affiliated with the choir and to even get into the choir's orphanage we need to find a key to the upper cathedral ward which is located on a corpse in a cage which is in yahara ghoul run by the school of menses while this division in the church was occurring one rogue scholar would reach out to castle cainhurst a place that had already existed for quite some time and would then travel there to share their blood discoveries with them the healing church would catch wind of this betrayal and spin a story that basically caused a holy crusade as they claimed that castle cainhurst were creating vile beasts and needed to be stopped this led to the creation of a group of hunters called the executioners who assaulted the castle the only problem is that the queen of the castle and elise is immortal to my knowledge this is never explained but has been the basis of many theories this immortality caused a problem because they couldn't kill the source of the vile bloods which is why legarius leader of the executioners can be seen in front of the throne room as he locked her away permanently and guards the room so that no one may enter to free her this also leads into alfred's questline who is also an executioner and is way more than delighted to see the queen there you filthy monstrosity what good's your immortality now try stirring up trouble in this sorry state all mangled and twisted with every inside on the outside for all the world to see [Laughter] so quickly let me summarize what i just said so basically bergenworth found the tombs we known as chalice dungeons which led to the discovery of the great ones and the old blood the goal from then was how to ascend to a higher plane of existence the methods of ascension are what created the different groups birgenworth one by master willem believed lining one's brain with eyes would give the person insight this is once again reinforced by the multi-guide creatures at byrgenwerth lawrence founder of the healing church believed the old blood was the key to ascension within this church were two groups of hunters the official hunters led by german who were created to stop the beast curse from spreading and then the executioners who were created to put down the people of castle cainhurst as they believed they were evil the last two groups were the former members of the church the choir wanted to use a british and their creation of the celestial emissaries is a mean of ascension although once again it is still unclear whether the members of the choir wanted to become celestial emersors or we're just using them as a communication device to communicate with the great ones and then finally was the school of mensis who kidnapped people and used them in obscene rituals and were somehow able to create the nightmare realm of mensis that contains queen yharnam and her hybrid son mergo this is just a small part of bloodborne's story not only is there so much we haven't discovered yet but there are some details i left out of the previous topics for the sake of brevity and organization there is genuinely so much to talk about and if this didn't get you excited about the game's story then i don't know what will because this fundamentally changes how we see this game i do want to clarify you don't learn all this info i just explained after killing rom the only reason i waited until her death to explain the full story is because the proper context was needed as now we can reanalyze our current knowledge and connect it to this new discovery like rom herself who seems to be just a spider until you realize that rom was originally a scholar at byrgenwerth who evolved into a great one courtesy of coss or even how many of the hunters and notable figures in the game were blindfolds this could be based on a theory within the game's world that the scourge beast play causes people to lose their eyesight but could also be a way for the person to prevent going mad from seeing the great ones which also connects into the insight mechanic these ideas could be completely wrong but that's the point of creating a theory and being able to connect new lore with previous lore so seamlessly is fantastic and a testament to how detailed the world building of bloodborne really is but like i said before we're not even done with the game's story as there is so much more to uncover but now we're starting to enter questionable territory if there was ever one massive fault in bloodborne story it's the lack of elaboration or just even a simple explanation related to some of the events and locations in the game we briefly mentioned this before with some of the bosses like the one reborn who don't have a concrete backstory but thanks to the history of yahar ghoul were able to come up with a compelling theory based on this information this however is not the same when discussing the nightmare realms bloodborne has this fascination with dreams and nightmares as across the game will end up visiting four locations called the hunter's dream hunter's nightmare nightmare frontier and the nightmare of menses just about all of them minus the hunter's nightmare to an extent are extremely confusing and very difficult to wrap your brain around once again we're gonna have to rely on context clues in the environment to help us come up with a theory but there's even less to go off of within these realms as they're completely separate from reality each of these places has a host and its location is unknown but it's assumed to be in a different plane of existence but the location of this new plane is possibly closer than we think as we can see the cathedral ward underneath the fishing hamlet and the hunter's nightmare as well as being able to see the nightmare of menses from the nightmare frontier it's extremely confusing as it seems that these places could operate like yahar ghul and are just simply an unseen village or do exist but are unable to be preserved by normal humans or maybe it's something else entirely one thing that is for certain is that there is a host that created this specific realm for a specific reason however for some of them we still don't know why this is great as it gets the community talking but theory crafting is only useful when there's a set amount of facts from which to build off of but when it comes to these realms there's very little to even start with many have pointed out how these realms are very similar to hp lovecraft's dreamlands which in case you weren't aware hp lovecraft was a massive inspiration for this game according to some of my research in this topic the dreamlands are alternate dimensions only accessible to humans through dreams there's also a mention of the waking world which is just the present realm the characters are in so relating this to bloodborne current day yharnam would be our waking world and all these other realms we visit are just the dreamlands but once again the question still remains how did these realms even come to be well to start we have to talk about the nightmare of menses to access this realm we have to touch mikalash who is clearly dead amongst the other members of the group this nightmare seemed to take in things from the real world and put them in the nightmare not completely removing them from yharnam but more like duplicating them as the lecture building seemed to belong in yharnam originally after exiting the lecture building we can officially make it to the nightmare and it's clear this group does not want to be disturbed as protecting the gates is this beam of light which comes from the brain of menses the nightmare mensis is interesting because it tries to convey to the player how time works although admittedly it does that quite poorly another example of this is the chalice dungeons these dungeons are extremely unique as you can fight bosses like ram inside of them this is very confusing already but to add even more confusion to the mix in the boss fight arena for ebridis called the altar of despair it looks like a british is bent over crying when looking in the direction of what seems to be rom's corpse so we have a dead rom in the altar of despair and two live roms one in the chalice dungeon and one underneath the great lake at byrgenwerth the only explanation that i've come to is that it's related to time and the ability to be in multiple places at one time while i have no way to explain the chalice dungeons other than these places being a time in history that has been frozen as for the other two parts of rom the one in the altar of despair seems to be the real rom and the one of the lake is also the real rom but not physically just like how michelesh is dead in yahar ghoul but very much alive in the nightmare it seems that these realms work very differently when it comes to time as well as the physical body it's also even more confusing when you consider that there are different hosts per realm and the ways of entry are different per realm michelash more than likely can't enter the hunter's dream as he's not a hunter we can't enter the hunter's nightmare without the eye of the blood drunk hunter item as we'll see when we discuss the dlc the hunter's nightmare is for hunters who become drunk with blood bust so if you don't fit the criteria you can't enter which is why we need the item to gain entry to it so how does rom fit with all of this well many within the community believe that all these planes of existences are on layers if we use yharnam as layer 1 then this place where rom exists is layer 0. we eventually discover that we can see the cathedral from the hunter's nightmare making that above it at layer 2. there's even a possible theory that the amygdala in the hunter's nightmare fell from the nightmare frontier since it's the boss of that area making that place layer three continuing further many may speculate that the nightmare frontier is connected to the nightmare of menses due to its close proximity and the fact that the lecture building connects the two places making the nightmare of mensis just either the top layer of layer 3 or maybe even its own at number 4. as for the hunter's dream i believe it to be the highest layer within the realms that we know of as the ending of the game kind of backs this up a bit i really do like this theory a lot although it's simply just a theory and it's impossible to know if this is truly correct but it's clear that the things in these realms are not on the same system as yharnam circling back to the nightmare of mensis we know that mikalash is the host of the nightmare evident by his name so killing him would stop the nightmare except that doesn't happen to once again relate this to the hunter's nightmare the only way to stop that nightmare is to kill kos because that is the host the orphan of course is not the host as the nightmare doesn't end until you kill the black spirit lingering above coss itself but with the nightmare of mensis it doesn't stop when you kill mikalash as there is still another boss left that being mergo's wet nurse the wet nurse is protecting mergo and it's only by killing myrgo that things actually end technically you can revisit these realms even though the host is dead so i just chalked it up to game design as technically within lore they should be gone so it seems that these realms operate differently depending on its inhabitants both of the realms officially end when the great one in their respective realms is killed so it's possible that the great ones hold more power in these realms despite not being the host in the case of mergo although to be fair the nightmare of menses was made so that mikelesh and the students of menses could communicate with mergo so maybe there's a loophole there this is what i meant earlier when i talked about bloodborne's biggest issue because these past couple of minutes have just been complete speculation this whole theory has no amount of truth to it since it's simply just a theory there is nothing wrong with leaving things up to interpretation and allowing the community to answer the mystery on their own but i feel like there was something really lacking here when it came to these realms it is probably one of my favorite pieces of lore to look into though as there is so many diverse ideas but there's also an issue because due to this lack of explanation the community can't really agree on anything concrete is a base thus you have many outlandish ideas like people thinking the realms or different planets or yharnam is actually a realm in itself and the real yharnam is something we don't get to see or who knows maybe my theory is completely outlandish and those are more centered in facts it's all over the place despite the obvious issue the idea of these realms and how they are planes that exist that you aren't able to see by normal means is such a cool concept and further solidifies my previous statement that bloodborne's world building is insanely detailed and even something like the nightmare realms are able to be discussed thoroughly because the idea of what these places are and what they actually mean intrigues enough people to want to uncover the real truth these realms could have simply been boring ideas in places that the players could deem unworthy to even bother mentioning but it's due to the writing of the rest of the game that makes the very idea of trying to uncover the full story even including the nightmare realms almost mesmerizing at this point in the game the only boss that stands in our way is mergo's wet nurse but killing the nurse leads to the game's ending so before we get into that ending we have to discuss the dlc bloodborne only came with one dlc called the old hunters this dlc takes place in the hunter's nightmare which as we discussed is a nightmare realm created by a specific host for a specific reason the purpose of this place is to give the hunters who succumb to bloodlust the place to go which sounds rather wholesome until you discover why the hunter's nightmare was created pretty early in bloodborne's timeline in the order of events we previously discussed we have that era where the college was founded and then the old blood was found along with the thumerian tombs and then afterwards the college would then split up because of all the different ideologies leading to the creation of things like the healing church the choir and the school of mensis well the hunter's nightmare was created in between these two events so it was before the creation of the healing church meaning the beast curse had still yet to take form as lawrence was still testing the blood's effects so this realm is years old at this point possibly the oldest realm we could visit in game but this realm was created as a curse against the college and the hunters for what they did during the early stages of experimentation and research at the college master willem would receive a word of a washed up great one at a nearby fishing village this great one was known as coss the same one mikalash refers to during his boss fight as she once did for the vacuous rome grant has eyes grant us eyes it seems that rom ascended to the spider form thanks to cost but given the word vacuous is just another way to say lack of intelligence it's probably out of punishment for what occurred at the village master willem upon hearing this news immediately sent scholars and hunters to investigate and the reports were true a great one did exist within the village but even though they were turned into fish they revered kos and saw her as a god in an attempt to investigate this being's power further the hunters and scholars brutally destroyed cossa's body and even did the same to some of the villagers it's reported that they carved large gaping holes in the skulls of the villagers and also violated cossa's corpse by possibly dissecting her skin and organs picasa is a great one and even though a great one's body may die its mind can continue to live on because she was still alive in a roundabout way she was able to put a curse on all the scholars and hunters all hunters and on occasion random people as well will be cast into the nightmare for eternity engaging in endless hunting forever this is the fate for all hunters as after enough time the bloodlust will consume them so it's inevitable that they end up here we can enter the hunter's nightmare and put a stop to it by eliminating costs however her child will appear upon arriving at the beach and fight us it's only after defeating the orphan of cost that we can slay the black spirit residing in costs which destroys the nightmare but we have quite a few ways to go before getting there as we have four bosses to get through first one thing you'll notice about the old hunters dlc is that the setting is identical to the cathedral ward minus the massive chunks of debris everywhere the reason why the cathedral ward is here is that i believe the hunter's nightmare is pulling in all the locations of tragedy the fishing village is here which is where the massacre took place and the cathedral ward was the base of operations for the church who unleashed the beast curse upon yharnam so it got pulled in here too some have theorized that the debris everywhere is the lack of knowledge the brain has when dreaming if you think of a memory from yesterday it's a lot more vivid than one from a few years ago over time you'll forget small parts of that memory until it becomes impossible to remember someone made a really great analogy and it's at this area is like the cathedral ward except the person assigned to making the buildings didn't have the blueprints it's impossible to remember every single detail in the cathedral ward which is why parts of it seem to be missing i really like how this environment ties into the real world examples of how dreams and memories work within our brains the first boss we find in the nightmare is this fiery cleric beast who we can't fight just yet so by passing him and going the other way we can make it to ludwig the accursed just based on his appearance it's clear that ludwig has been here for quite some time ludwig was actually the first hunter of the healing church workshop this is different compared to gearman who was the actual first ever hunter once lauren split from the college they needed to enlist the help of the hunters which led to the creation of the hunter's workshop which was of course run by german however the arnomites grew wary of the church and the workshop and believed that the church had something to do with the beast so lauren shut down the workshop due to gearman and the other hunter's failure to quell the threat lawrence then created the new healing church workshop and enlisted different hunters to help him this failure also ties into gearman quite a bit when discussing the ending but we'll get to that later ludwig was one of the early hunters of the healing church workshop and because he was one of those early hunters over time he succumbed to the blood and due to the curse being created by cost was forced to live here for eternity this is the same reason this fiery cleric beast is here as this is lawrence the same lawrence who created the healing church and the one who believed blood administration was the key to ascension is now eternally stuck in the hunter's nightmare i really like the idea of making him a cleric beast as he was obviously a high-ranking member in the church just like the vicars and clerics so it makes sense why their appearances would be similar to even activate this fight we need to find lawrence's skull in the nightmare which is way closer than you think is we can use this lift and by letting it go up we can find it underneath the original lift his skull reads a symbol of lawrence's past and what he failed to protect he's destined to seek his skull but even if he found it it would never restore his memories so lawrence the leader of the church has now become nothing but a mindless beast the very thing he unleashed upon the people of yharnam which i find to be quite an ironic fate the next area we visit is the research hall and this location was where many patients of yharnam were being experimented on with the same purpose of ascending this is backed up by the palest skin similar to those who are considered kin and at the top of this building is a garden with the living failures these flowers in the garden were similar to the flowers in the celestial emissary arena so it's possible that these patients were being used to create celestial emissaries but the majority of them failed and even the ones that did succeed the first step couldn't become emissaries which is why they're called the living failures but what's odd though is that throughout this area we hear people call out to a lady maria who conveniently is our last boss lady maria was one of the hunters present for the massacre at the fishing village she regretted her actions deeply and thus decided to dedicate her time to watching over the patients and taking care of them we know this as her recuyo the weapon she commonly uses can be found in game at the bottom of a well implying that throwing away this blade was not only her trying to forget this horrific event but also her giving up her hunter status which led to her being the permanent caretaker of the research hall it's unclear how long she did this for but she would eventually kill herself over this guilt evident by the bloodstain on her clothes implying that she slit her throat once again due to the curse she would then be sent to the hunter's nightmare for eternity we also discovered that lady maria is related to queen annelise the same one at castle cainhurst i don't think there's any more development into this discovery but i still think it is nice to know lady maria is the one hiding the secret of the hunter's nightmare and by killing her we can walk through the fishing village and uncover the real truth this would then lead us to costs and if you manage to kill her then you can end the hunter's nightmare permanently allowing everyone inside to finally achieve peace the dlc for bloodborne was just like its weapons there was a clear attention to its quality rather than its quantity the old hunters is not a long dlc and took no longer than four hours to complete but each of those four hours was not only filled with engaging gameplay but also important pieces of lore that fill in some holes in the game's narrative it's a fantastic dlc and a necessity if you plan on playing this game returning to yharnam we can now go back to the nightmare of menses to defeat mergo mergo might have one of the most important roles in this game's story the school of mensis obtained an umbilical cord from a great one and used this to communicate with mergo but things went wrong and resulted in the stillbirth of their brains which is why they're all dead it's unclear why mikalash is the only one alive but maybe it's because he was the one who used the chord and thus is alive in the nightmare realm but dead in the real world but once again we're entering that questionable territory the reason we know this is because an umbilical cord drops after killing mergo these umbilical cords are key to the game's secret ending after killing myrgo's wet nurse the game pauses for a moment and all we hear is a baby crying after the crying is done we finally get the nightmare slain title to appear this implies that it wasn't the wet nurse who was the objective but rather murgo himself also something interesting is that queen yharnam is outside the boss arena and upon killing myrgo she bows and disappears this may tie into what we discuss with ram on how she is dead but alive in the lake it's possible that she thanks us for finally ending murgo and subsequently her misery as they were stuck in these realms despite assumingly being dead already just like the old hunters it's possible that we were finally able to give the mother and child the peace they needed to move on regardless with mergo dead we returned to the hunter's dream and it's on fire talking with the doll she motions us towards the gray tree where gearman is located here is where we can get into the endings of bloodborne and there is three of them to discuss starting with the first one this sees us accepting gearman's proposal when we talk to gearman he claims to offer us a way out of the hunter's dream he's going to kill us which will allow us to be free of the hunt and the dream altogether should we accept he decapitates us and we awaken a more peaceful version of yharnam afterward we can see the doll praying at our grave and hoping that we find worth in the waking world earlier we talked about how yharnam was the waking world and how these nightmare realms were the dreamlands at least according to hp lovecraft well this changes things as this implies that the yharnam we explore is just another realm and the real yharnam is the one at the end of the game as the doll calls it the waking world there's always been one thing that's bothered me about this game and it's the dream itself this is the one base of operations across the souls game where nobody appears in the base we only have the doll in gearman no one else comes into this dream but we can tell from the graves that others have come before us but it seems that not every hunter has been to the dream the only hunters that have been confirmed to be in the dream are de jura and eileen due to some of their dialogue it's possible that the hunter's dream is used by one hunter at a time in order to stop the hunt given how many graves there are and that we see the doll prey near ours after the first ending we can assume that these other hunters were possibly a part of the dream but were killed by gearman and given his mercy in the case of eileen and de jura maybe they're already dead remember how we talked about rom being dead and alive at the same time maybe by accepting gearman's mercy we become like eileen and dejira we're still hunters that are still partaking in the hunt but with little to no memory of the hunter's dream and are able to finally be free of its never-ending curse remember the only reason we're here in the dream is the messengers and from playing the game we can assume that no one really knows what these are i believe it's tied to the great one we'll see in just a bit so maybe this yharnam really is the same yharnam as before but we're just unaware of the real story ignorance is bliss after all the second ending is activated upon refusing his offer german doesn't take no for an answer and battles us if we defeat german we finally get to see the real boss of bloodborne the real mystery of bloodborne this is the pale blood we've been seeking and it's called the moon presence if you've been connecting some of the dots earlier i said that each realm has a host like myrgo and coss well this is the host of the hunter's dream this moon presence is related to the umbilical cords it's known that these umbilical cords are sort of communication devices used by humans to talk to the great ones it's unclear how this happened or even if this happened but it's assumed that the umbilical cord came from costs and was split into three pieces willem took the first piece lawrence and the church got the second and mikelash in the school got the third well during the events of the healing church lawrence worked with german to contain the threat of the beasts for multiple different armor sets and items we can piece together that gearman had a deep love for maria but it seemed like maria just respected him as a teacher and a friend german never really managed to confess his love to her and even if he somehow managed later to muster up the courage to do so it wouldn't have mattered anyway because maria took her own life in a desperate attempt to keep her alive demon created the doll that's why we see a doll in the original hunter's workshop in yharnam within the workshop is a small hair piece that has a line in the description that reads its color would stand most brilliantly against a head of grayish hair gray is the same color as maria's hair which is also the same color as the doll's hair and when giving this to the doll she cries what what is this i i can't remember not a thing only i feel a yearning something i never felt before what's happening to me tell me hunter could this be joy to add even more to this discovery when we kill maria and return to the hunter's dream and talk to the doll she says that she feels liberated as if the great shackles have been lifted off her implying that she was made to be a replacement for maria around this time the church was failing the hunters were failing and gearman had no motivation to keep going having just lost the one he loved so lawrence pitched an idea and german would agree they would use their third of the umbilical cord and ask a great one for help this chord which is the one we find in the hunters workshop reads the third umbilical cord precipitated the encounter with the pale moon which beckoned the hunters and conceived the hunter's dream the pale moon also known as the moon presence is the host of the hunter's dream it's unclear what the rules of the contract were but it's assumed that lawrence and giermann probably wanted a way to defeat the scourge beasts but contracts go both ways the moon presence would keep german in the hunter's dream with the intention of training the hunters and continuing the hunt it's been debated since the release of the game what the actual motivation of the moon presence is this has been the biggest discussion amongst the community and it's never gotten anywhere going back to hp lovecraft it's very clear that the great ones are the same ones from his stories the issue here is that the great ones were created to be incomprehensible in every way meaning not only can we not even begin to understand what it even looks like but not even what it wants despite some of the beings having the same title the great ones each have different motivations and reasons for doing what it does meaning its actions aren't like those of the college where they wanted all of humanity to ascend the great ones seem to act purely out of self-interest but as we know from the umbilical cords all great ones lose their children and yearn for a surrogate maybe the moon presence just wants a child this relates to ending two where we refuse gearman's offer and then meet the moon presence but it takes us in and replaces gearman with us we are now the new helper of hunters within the dream maybe it wants a child but in a different way not an infant like mergo but a grown one to watch over which would be us maybe it wants to keep the beast scourge going so that more hunters will arrive at the hunter's dream thus giving the place purpose to exist and allowing the moon presence to watch over the fight and watch over us remember the moon presence only arrives once we defeat german so it's detected that something has happened which is why it meets with us it then realizes our power and seizes the opportunity to have a new helper in the dream many of the npcs say that the night of the hunt is unending and that it's going on longer than usual maybe this is to be seen as quite literal that the hunt will last forever as long as the moon presence exists while there has been a lot of speculation on this one thing we can confirm though is that this dream is not actually a dream as gearman has some unique dialogue that you may hear and it's quite disturbing lawrence master willem somebody help me unshackle me please anybody i've had enough of this dream the night blocks all sight oh somebody please for my interpretation of this this either means that gearman realized he'll be stuck here forever since lawrence and willem are not in any state to come free him from the dream or that he was brought here against his will either way we need to stop the moon presence and thankfully there is a way should the player consume the three umbilical cords that being the one from mergo the one from the old hunter's workshop and then the last one from either ariana or yosefka they can trigger the secret ending instead of being enthralled by its presence and becoming the new gearman we resist its power the moon presence will then see us as a threat and attempt to get rid of us if we win we become an infant great one and do exactly what everyone has been trying to do for years we finally did it we discovered the true path to ascension and with this profound knowledge in mind we can now launch humanity into its next childhood as i said the motivation for the moon presence is unknown and will likely never be known so it's up to our interpretation but after this though we officially come to the end of the story of bloodborne and what a ride this has been bloodborne might have one of the best stories i've ever had the pleasure of uncovering despite some of the writing shortcomings mainly the lacking of the explanation towards the moon presence in the nightmare realms i still consider this one of the best narratives of all time i believe that not everything needs to be mentioned in a story for it to be considered good or complete holes can be left with the intention of having the player fill them and this is one of my favorite parts of the story being able to take a story from any medium whether it's books or games and being able to add my own ending or my own thoughts to its canon story it allows me to take everything i've come to know about this game's world its setting its characters and its main plot and be able to make the story my own in a way that makes sense to me bloodborne is not only one of the best games of all time it might also have one of the best stories of all time and while it does take lots of effort to actually understand the story i think that fits really well with the soul's theme a genre of games that have been known to be difficult and more than just gameplay but of course by making it to this part of the video you've more than likely already had a lot of the stories spoiled for you even so though i do encourage you to pick up the game if you can you will not regret it but just as the story of bloodborne has come to an end so too has this video thank you all for watching today and i really hope you enjoyed this took lots of effort to make but i think after some hours of research and brainstorming i was able to piece it all together it's quite easy to get tunnel vision when making a video like this as you try to focus on the bigger picture but end up forgetting a small key detail along the way so for whatever reason something i said was incorrect do let me know in the comments down below with that like the video if you enjoy and subscribe if you're new and thank you to my returning viewers for coming back to another video as always take care everyone and goodbye [Music] you

Channel: Gingy

Views: 2,474,531

Keywords: bloodborne, bloodborne lore, bloodborne story, bloodborne ending, bloodborne endings, bloodborne story explained, bloodborne endings explained, bloodborne review, bloodborne story review, bloodborne video essay, video essay, gingy, bloodborne old hunters, bloodborne old hunters ending, bloodborne bosses, bloodborne moon presence, bloodborne lore explained

Id: nD6qsOPTaKQ

Length: 49min 21sec (2961 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022