I just finished Bloodborne, which is a game about stalking through a nightmare city infested with blood-soaked, twisted disgusting abominations of the flesh and I'm just gonna say what we're all
thinking. From Software should make a puppet show. For kids. Like the Muppet Show, or Sesame Street. I mean the Muppet Workshop is doing great— but let's just say, hypothetically something were to happen during their Annual Jim Henson Memorial Wilderness Retreat and Muppet Orgy. in the case of that tragic but inevitable event, somebody needs to be ready to step up From Software's talent for creating these huge casts of bizarre monsters really demonstrates that they are ready to take up the Muppet mantle. For three reasons. three things that Bloodborne and Muppets do better than anybody else. Shape, movement, and texture Lets start with shape. Close your eyes and imagine a discolored man with impossibly long limbs an inhuman grimace a scraggly, unkempt beard a top hat and he's shambling towards you with dubious intent. You're either picturing one of Bloodborne's Marauding Yharnamites, or Dr. Teeth: Charismatic leader of the Electric Mayhem band. When your actors are two foot tall bundles of foam and felt they can't rely on the same subtle body language and facial expressions that a human being would use for comedy, so everything has to be bigger. Bigger eyes Bigger mouths longer limbs. Bloodborne's monsters look like this too, but not for comedy reasons. When a character's limbs are long and thin, they rarely overlap with their own body so it kind of turns them into these glyphs and you can use the different shapes they make to read their intent. Both Bloodborne and the Muppets use these Doug Jones lookin-ass pipe cleaner limbs to Telegraph the attacks of their
deadliest enemies HIYA Oh, good Hunter! You've discovered my S E C R E T S E G M E N T Patrick's Blood Buds Bloodborne is just overflowing with these monsters that I love so dearly so i just wanted to have a couple of these brief segments so that we can examine them in all of their glory. Up first, it's the Slime Scholar. He was a scholar, but now he's slime. Okay, lets talk about that second thing which is movement. and this is kind of obvious, but movement is the thing that makes both puppeteering and character animation work on a fundamental level So anybody can jam their hand into a puppet and flap it around but only a master can make me fall deeply, deeply in love with that puppet. For example, let's take Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal All of them are performed by Frank Oz And He's using just 18 Inches of his body- -and I am talking about his arm- To create three totally different characters. Let's say you're watching the Muppet Show, but you can't hear it because you're also listening to some royalty free thrash metal at maximum volume. [ROYALTY FREE THRASH METAL] Even though you can't hear what's being said, you can still see miss piggy swing from fake confidence to smoldering rage, and it's all in the body language. From Software definitely understands the importance of using body language in creating characters And this really comes across as you run into enemies that are in different phases of the Beast Plague. Their unique posture and movement tells you exactly how fucked up they are The earlier enemies you meet move with poise and posture, but then you see enemies that are more hunched and beastly, and eventually you're seeing enemies that barely remember what it means to be human but they still remember fear and anger. Just like Grover. And that's just a couple of the game's bipedal enemies. This game is just full of enemies that look like they shouldn't be functioning beings but they totally come to life and ooze personality Thanks to their incredible puppeteering and body language Ahhhhhh! Good hunter! I have returned with another segment for you It's Pat's Blood Buds Our next Blood Bud is the Carrion Crow It's a big, disgusting, bloated bird that can't fly. He just lies on the ground and screams at you, and I think about him all the time. He's the only Big Bird for me Let's talk about that third thing: Texture! Texture, in a way, is an extension of movement A puppeteer doesn't control all of the individual hairs on Animal's perfect head, But when he drums and he's headbanging and they fly around, it does so much to sell the Character of Animal. And who would want to see a Smooth Animal? Perverts The muppet workshop is so dedicated to this that if the laws of physics wont let those materials move the way they want them to move they will change the laws of physics. When the Muppet Workshop made the Ghost of Christmas Past for the Muppet Christmas Carol They fucking submerged the puppeteers and the puppet in a vat of baby oil to give her robes and hair that sort of ghostly, floaty look. And over in Bloodborne, From Software is playing with their physics engine to achieve some of the same goals. Dark Beast Paarl, Vicar Amelia, and the Blood-Starved Beast are three bosses which are all essentially big skinny dogs but each of them is covered in a dynamic coating of stuff that behaves differently and makes the feel and look really unique and it's incredibly tactile. Like you look at them and you just know what it would be like to touch them. Big Bird's feathers make him a big, huggable friend. And in contrast, the Blood-Starved beast's matted fur and wet flaps of skin, make him a big, huggable friend. It's From Software's mastery over shape, movement and texture that assures me, and should assure you that when the police call off the search for the missing muppeteers, There will be somebody to carry on in their stead and if they need some ideas for new muppet characters: It's Patrick's Blood Buds! There's the sewer men, who are men who lay in the sewers all day. Big mood. There's a dog that has a bunch of knives and swords stuck through it. There's the Orphan of Kos, who comes out of his mom's placenta and then uses the placenta as a sword
