Bloodborne: A World Without Hope

i love horror i love stuff that is scary creepy gross shocking or just bizarre basically i watched a rob zombie movie when i was 13 and that's why i'm like this now but with as many horror movies as i've watched over the years a lot very few of them have been able to just lodge themselves into my brain and just live there when tarman tears some dude's [ __ ] open i pop off because i love tarman and return to the living dead [ __ ] owns but it can hardly be said that i'll spend the next few days of my life thinking about how deeply affected by a horror film i was like the movie itself was cursed and i wasn't supposed to watch it some are better at this for sure but i think video games are more uniquely equipped to leave you with a lasting impression thanks to the potential for a heightened sense of immersion wait please i promise this video is about bloodborne i'm not talking about what people usually mean when they describe something as immersive like when a game goes so far in on emulating the real world that you can source a [ __ ] in-game rock to a real-life rock or programming the horse's [ __ ] horse balls to shrink in the cold or having to wait in real [ __ ] time for the [ __ ] travel agency to open god i think that games with a lot of creative heft being put behind the realism of their world are valuable and have their place but to me in an artistic sense it's so much more impressive when you feel like you're sinking deep into a world that doesn't work like ours that world's reality is governed by its own distinct laws and it has its own unique vibe when a game is really truly immersive for me it's like i'm breathing the air of that world and it's a different kind of air you can smell it through the screen but what if that place you were being taken to was horrible like the most horrible place you could even imagine and it shook you to your core like a nightmare you can't wake up from enter bloodborne i make it no secret that it's my favorite video game of all time i have it on my clothes i have it on my streams i own the card game still haven't played it nobody ever wants to play the bloodborne card game and i keep my ps4 plugged in at all times because i know it won't be long before the cravings come back hell i played it about four more times just to record footage for this i've clicked on countless videos of other people discussing this game and damn people really like to talk about it at length so what could there possibly be left to say about bloodborne well i think it's really cool so uh i frequently struggle to describe what makes bloodborne so special i've played all the dark souls games sakuro and even recently alden ring maybe i should here's an idea but i always come back to bloodborne and how it makes me feel which of course means nothing everyone's favorite game makes them feel strong emotions but bloodborne for me excels beyond any other piece of media at emulating one type of mood spoiler warning for the whole game whatever happens you may think it all in a mere bad dream with the city of yharnam ravaged by a plague born of ancient blood found in the catacombs below the city and distributed by its most powerful institution the healing church the people now cower in their homes while beasts who were once their neighbors roam the streets the hunters who slay these beasts inevitably giving in to beasthood themselves consumed by bloodlust all the while great beings we cannot hope to understand surround us but can barely even be bothered to notice we're there and those who lived in or ruled over this city are all either dead dying driven completely mad or have become something else entirely your character an outsider has just arrived on the night of the hunt and things are not getting better for anyone anytime soon you're given a transfusion of that special yharnam blood you wake up in a clinic and before you know it you're running into npcs like a man who is too sick to get out of bed a stoic hunter who tells you to prepare yourself for the worst and a scared young girl who asks you to find her parents one of which is dead and the other is the first major boss father gas coin [Music] you can play his daughter's music box during the fight to remind him of his humanity for a split moment but eventually before the fight is over [Music] oh man this got really intense all of a sudden in 2015 when this game was released i put on some random guy's twitch stream and this bit with gas coins transformation was the first thing i had ever seen it was [ __ ] amazing he doesn't transform until a large chunk of his health is already gone so this phase of the fight doesn't last too long either way but it's hard not to feel a genuine sense of shock at what just happened plus it just really tapped into that part of me that grew up watching stuff like underworld and van helsing the way that your blood splattered clothes shine in the moonlight is gorgeous and you will spend much of the game absolutely covered in the stuff i mean look at all that blood where does it even come from okay deep breaths shortly after this fight once you've entered the cathedral ward area of yharnam you will encounter the undisputed universally agreed upon best npc in the whole game but if you spot anyone with their wits about them tell them about this herodon chapel they'll be safe here the incense wards off the beasts i get the sense that they were deliberately made to be awkward and beast-like in appearance to arouse suspicion in players who are familiar with the generally untrustworthy nature of some npcs in previous fromsoft titles but they're genuinely just a kind person who wants to help and i love that the chapel dweller is one of the only characters in the game who feels like just a friend if you take them up on their offer to provide shelter the npcs you can send here are the vile blood prostitute ariana oh my what a queer scent jesus christ sister adela a prim and proper nun who believes that yharnam will still be saved by the church an old lady who doesn't trust outsiders and thinks that hunters are obligated to help them without any thanks a man who is a dark beast in disguise and will slowly eat everyone in the chapel if you invite him and this guy this [ __ ] guy i hate this guy he tells you complete lies whenever possible and goes to the opposite place you tell him about and by the way that means if you told him about the church and he goes to yosefka's clinic instead it turns out she was experimenting on people there and he gets turned into a [ __ ] alien you stupid [ __ ] the old lady loses herself over the course of the night starts to think you're her son gives you a little taste from grandma's stash and eventually wanders out into the streets and gets herself killed ariana and adela are both thankful to you for saving them and they will each offer you vials of their blood you've been using vials of blood as the main healing item the entire game thus far but these special vials you get from npcs will often come with extra bonuses like quicker stamina recovery if you continuously take ariana's blood adella will react maturely by actually murdering ariana and okay i guess i shouldn't jump to conclusions maybe there was an accident you know how it is with spaghetti if you take adele's blood instead or just don't invite her to the chapel ariana will later become impregnated by a formless great one give birth in a sewer and is so horrified by her child that it completely shatters her mind [Music] the chapel dweller expresses remorse after each one of these events as they are helpless to provide anything but a place away from immediate physical harm it isn't enough in a place like this the night churns on indifferent to their kindness it's my fault oh my don't you see that i think that this style of romanticized melancholy storytelling is so cool everyone who contributed to the development of this game did a phenomenal job and i really feel that it expertly takes advantage of all aspects of the medium to deliver its mood and tone but there are just a few more key examples i want to touch on here that i think go a long way in really driving home that distinct feeling of like oh [ __ ] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] look i don't need to tell you that fromsoft has some of the most talented artists in the world working for them you know that already if you've even looked in the direction of one of their games but god i'd be remiss if we didn't explicitly talk about this yharnam is a beautifully depicted and frightening place it's difficult to find a corner of this game's world that doesn't feel like it was given someone's full attention and it cannot be understated how bleak it all feels sickly beasts and mobs of deranged townies on blood-soaked streets enormous alien beings sprawled across the sides of ornate cathedrals whatever the [ __ ] these things are what's up with these guys what is that no no no the multiple in-game mechanics that correspond to your character discovering things that were never meant to be seen by human eyes are also really cool and startlingly appropriate ignore that the grotesqueness of what yharnam has become is beautiful i spend so much time thinking about the visuals of this game even now with the very pleasant on the eyes graphical fidelity of elden ring and trust me i really dig the whole grand high fantasy look i still feel like bloodborne is the most visually inspired and consistently striking to me i can't look away i'm straight up transfixed my dude as she once did for the vacuous wrong us eyes [Music] in the hunter's dream the hub area of the game that you'll return to many times to upgrade your gear purchase items and level up your character exists two npcs one of which being a mysterious and soft-spoken living doll and the other a kooky old dude who introduces himself as game and friend to you hunters he tells you not to think too hard about what's going on and to just go out and kill a few beasts it's for your own good you know it's just what hunters do you'll get used to it as you progress through the game though it becomes more clear that german is a prisoner in this place he's watched as an untold number of hunters just like you have passed through this stream unable to leave it himself somebody help me unshackle me please anybody i've had enough of this dream the knight blocks all sight oh somebody please [Music] it's really upsetting i feel terrible for this guy one of the very last encounters of the game is with german he tells you that the night is near its end and that he will now show you mercy he would have you forget everything about this place and return to the waking world no longer connected to the dream it's implied that he is saving you from his own fate if you accept he pops your [ __ ] off and you wake up in the real world but if you refuse him he will be obligated to take your life by force he finds your defiance almost funny the struggle begins and your opponent is a sad old man at the end of his rope trapped within a nightmare what would a boss fight like that sound like [Music] german's theme is titled the first hunter and it is gut-wrenching you can feel the pain and desperation on the wind the moon glows bright and gearman does everything in his power to stop you it hurts man if you kill him congratulations you're the new gearman in town and even if you access and beat the secret boss after him the moon presence your character's fate is that you entirely shed your humanity and become an infant great one the doll seemingly instinctively picks you up and recognizes you as her good hunter i've heard people say they think this is the good ending are you off your [ __ ] gourd [ __ ] you bloodborne's soundtrack was created by a group of both japanese and american composers who focused on key words and phrases that were established at the beginning of the game's development one of them being mortal struggle and wow i think they really nailed that vibe this game's music is oppressive in its atmosphere if the accompanying track to a major boss in dark souls is a choir of warriors heralding your eventual victory through battle bloodborne's musical scoring is a sea of tortured souls wailing out to signal the coming of the end the most fitting example being another one of my personal favorite moments from the old hunters dlc it's a boss who's only ever mentioned by name in the base game of bloodborne and when you find the most prolific hunter of the healing church it's in a massive chamber filled with hundreds of corpses blood pooling the entire room ludwig's body is contorted into an indescribable mass of gruesome flesh and too many legs it's hideous laugh it up the beast charges you and you are fighting a screaming frenzied animal as the fight turns in your favor and its health bar reaches the halfway point a cutscene interrupts ludwig's holy sword falls to the ground beside him the glow of it draws his gaze ah you were at my side all along [Music] my true mentor my guiding moonlight he stands up straight and brandishes his blade he sets his eyes upon you and this moment feels like you are no longer hunting a beast you are dueling a seasoned killer his swings are trained and focused even distorted as he is ludwig recalls his vows as a hunter of the church to him you are the beast here and it's his sworn duty to cleanse you from the world it's so [ __ ] cool once the victor is decided the severed head of this broken hero lies on the ground still clinging to life you can speak with him but it's clear that he's beyond any help if you're wearing church attire he mistakes you for one of his own have you seen the light are my church hunters the honorable spartans i hoped they would be i feel terrible and i always lie to him i let him die with his honor intact every time ah good that is a relief to know i did not suffer such denigration from nothing thank you kindly now i may sleep in peace even in this darkest of nights i see the moonlight tragic figures like this can be found all over yharnam but by the time you've reached the end of the game and the night comes to a close it seems impossible that anyone could be left alive and unaltered we are all entangled within a web we cannot even perceive this place is not just horrible it is horror stitched into the very fabric of reality there is no good ending to any of it this isn't an age of fire or dark situation completely alone on this night of the hunt the status quo of bloodborne's world will not change and you will either be spit out and left to die by it or set to become a cog in its machine [Music] cursed affines their children too and their children forever true well that got a little heavy uh look this game means a lot to me a couple years after it came out i was in a really dark place in my life and i beat it for the first time things were really bad and i was hardly speaking to anyone or hardly eating but this game was the one thing keeping me going i was getting out of bed to play more of it during a time when i sorely needed a reason now that i'm saying this all out loud i guess it's kind of strange that a game i just spent a couple thousand words describing as extremely sad and potentially upsetting helped me get through an already bleak period of my life but as pessimistic as i might be describing the outlook of this game i feel seen by it it's nice to know that someone else out there has been through some very hard times they probably know what it's like to feel like you're drowning in hopelessness and maybe they even still feel that way from time to time i'm really glad they made a game about that instead of going to therapy because it really resonated with me i hear a few people bought elden rings so it looks like things turned out pretty okay i will always dearly love bloodborne because in the way that only a dimension of pain and misery filled with unthinkable horrors and entirely contained within a playstation 4 can be bloodborne is like a friend to me the kind of friend that makes you sure things are gonna be okay [Music] you

Channel: ShinigamiEater

Views: 1,418,459

Keywords: bloodborne, essay, video game, discussion, analysis, from software, ps4, kuueater, shinigamieater, yharnam, horror, dark souls, elden ring, action adventure, gaming, gehrman, ludwig the accursed, ludwig the holy blade, father gascoigne

Id: 2Y7avwiMjB0

Length: 21min 19sec (1279 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022