About this video

• Video Title: Souls Inheritors: Bloodborne vs. Sekiro vs. Elden Ring [Spoilers]
• Channel: Noah Caldwell-Gervais
• Speakers: Noah Caldwell-Gervais
• Duration: 04:40:14

Overview

Noah Caldwell-Gervais compares and contrasts FromSoftware's Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring, highlighting how each game builds upon, modifies, or diverges from the core elements established in the Dark Souls series. He discusses their distinct gameplay mechanics, thematic explorations, and artistic visions, arguing that despite surface-level differences, they form a cohesive trilogy by pushing the Dark Souls formula to contrasting conclusions.

Key takeaways

• Evolution of the Souls Formula: Bloodborne experimented with faster combat and removed shields, Sekiro further tightened combat with a posture system, and Elden Ring transitioned to an open world while retaining the core mechanics.
• Bloodborne's Aggression and Atmosphere: The game emphasizes speed and aggression, features a dense, interconnected world, and draws heavily from cosmic horror themes, creating a unique and often punishing experience.
• Sekiro's Precision and Narrative Focus: Sekiro strips down player options to focus on precise combat and parrying, with a strong emphasis on its protagonist's defined personality and narrative arc, making its difficulty intensely tied to storytelling.
• Elden Ring's Open World and Player Agency: Elden Ring offers unparalleled player freedom in exploration and build customization within a vast open world, pacing its challenges to be more approachable while retaining deep, complex mechanics.
• FromSoftware's Cohesive Design Philosophy: Across these titles and the Dark Souls series, there's a consistent exploration of themes like cycles, decay, and the nature of power, with a dedication to integrating gameplay mechanics with narrative and atmosphere.

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Here's a summary of the video in 12 points, using direct quotes from the transcript:

1. "From that ending [Dark Souls 3], some new painting to fill some new canvas in the wake of Dark Souls from software has released a trio of games that are unique experiences from one another mechanically distinct aesthetically contrasting and widely varying in scope."
2. "Bloodborne was the laboratory for fast combat operating outside of the cosmology of Dark Souls but using the same organizational structure to create a kind of parallel experience a new version of Dark Souls 1 where speed is more important than precision."
3. "Sekiro kept that same tight structure and then tightened it even further hardening its combat eliminating all of its slack demanding more from the player than it ever had before or likely will again."
4. "And then Elden Ring which is mechanically a direct W successor to Dark Souls right down to the contents of its Spellbook however it instead Finds Its Difference by breaking the structure of Dark Souls open from interconnected linear dungeons into a true open world."
5. "Bloodborne is a game about speed and aggression much more than it is about player freedom and versatility... this subtraction is one of the most important aspects of this particular variation on the Dark Souls theme."
6. "Sakiro is the game where even more more than other from software titles animations matter more than numbers every upgrade in the game feels almost imperceptibly incremental."
7. "Elden Ring for what it's worth completely walks back every element of seciro severity in favor of player customization... Elden ring's genius is that it does not on the surface appear to be an especially novel or challenging game it seems familiar and approachable."
8. "Bloodborne's artistic cohesion isn't limited to just how beautifully the story and the setting complement each other the monster design and rhythm of combat further unify and intensify the game's presentation."
9. "Sakiro is the best game from softwares ever made because it's also the best story they've ever told and never before have I seen a game where action and storytelling are so completely indistinguishable from one another."
10. "Elden Ring doesn't demand a player do these things it just gestures towards these things as possibilities making the player mostly responsible for the shape of their Journey where they go what they find."
11. "The fragility of the game's main story is that almost all of the lore it has to offer is in item descriptions."
12. "Elden ring's difficulty is so variable that it is virtually impossible even for the hardest boss in the game to remain difficult in the same way consistently across not just players but basic build differences."

Here's a condensed summary of each part of the video, using direct quotes:

Introduction:

• "From that ending [Dark Souls 3], some new painting to fill some new canvas in the wake of Dark Souls from software has released a trio of games that are unique experiences from one another mechanically distinct aesthetically contrasting and widely varying in scope."
• "These games are also all connected on almost every other level they are each one variations on a theme and that theme is Dark Souls bloodborne sakiro Elden ring they all form a loose Trilogy of their own because despite their differences each of them Finds Its unique Voice by adding or subtracting significant elements of gameplay that the Dark Souls had tested and honed."

Bloodborne:

• "Bloodborne was the laboratory for fast combat operating outside of the cosmology of Dark Souls but using the same organizational structure to create a kind of parallel experience a new version of Dark Souls 1 where speed is more important than precision."
• "Bloodborne's genius is that it doesn't simply take the shield away but provides a baseline Bedrock mechanic that encourages players to take the exact opposite approach the rally mechanic."
• "Visually, bloodborne's commitment to truly maximizing the presentation of the source material is something unique something special."

Sekiro:

• "Sakiro kept that same tight structure and then tightened it even further hardening its combat eliminating all of its slack demanding more from the player than it ever had before or likely will again."
• "Sakiro is the game where even more more than other from software titles animations matter more than numbers every upgrade in the game feels almost imperceptibly incremental."
• "Sakiro is the best game from softwares ever made because it's also the best story they've ever told and never before have I seen a game where action and storytelling are so completely indistinguishable from one another."

Elden Ring:

• "And then Elden ring which is mechanically a direct W successor to Dark Souls right down to the contents of its Spellbook however it instead Finds Its Difference by breaking the structure of Dark Souls open from interconnected linear dungeons into a true open world."
• "Elden ring's genius is that it does not on the surface appear to be an especially novel or challenging game it seems familiar and approachable."
• "Elden ring connects players to themselves by making philosophical suggestions that a player must choose to agree or disagree with and behind it all is a sense of humor and a sense of beauty and most of all a sense of artistic Harmony."

Conclusion:

• "The fallen leaves tell a story and this is true because that's how these tools and rewards have been distributed leaves blown by the wind into the crevices and hidden places of the world and the story of the player is the story of how they too are born along the breezes of chance and curiosity to collect these fallen relics."
• "The games that from software has made have always been special in the ways that they encourage those differences they're inherent flexibility when it comes to build style plot interpretation and player motivation the way they vary from player to player feels unusually intensely individual to Any Given person."

Here's a summary focusing specifically on Bloodborne, using direct quotes from the transcript:

• "Bloodborne was the laboratory for fast combat operating outside of the cosmology of Dark Souls but using the same organizational structure to create a kind of parallel experience a new version of Dark Souls 1 where speed is more important than precision."
• "Bloodborne is a game about speed and aggression much more than it is about player freedom and versatility."
• "Bloodborne's genius is that it doesn't simply take the shield away but provides a baseline Bedrock mechanic that encourages players to take the exact opposite approach the rally mechanic."
• "Bloodborne has I think the best creature design out of all of the from software games and I don't say that lightly."
• "Visually, bloodborne's commitment to truly maximizing the presentation of the source material is something unique something special."
• "The Chalice dungeons element of bloodborne fascinates me so much because bloodborne is such a beautifully Compact and thoughtful game but it still chose to include everything that it had shaved off to achieve that streamlining by way of this largely optional game mode."
• "The difficulty in bloodborne is integrated more deeply into the storytelling brutality cruelty hostility both to the player and from the player these are the foundations of everything the visual art and the narrative are trying to accomplish."
• "There is no difference in bloodborne between narrative and gameplay they are completely simultaneous and harmonious and that is something exceptionally rare in how any developer approaches making a video game."
• "The chalice dungeons element of bloodborne fascinates me so much because bloodborne is such a beautifully Compact and thoughtful game but it still chose to include everything that it had shaved off to achieve that streamlining by way of this largely optional game mode."
• "The deficit chalice is the Soul's structure and combat Loop divorced entirely from the things that make it genuinely enjoyable The Chalice dungeons element of bloodborne fascinates me so much because bloodborne is such a beautifully Compact and thoughtful game but it still chose to include everything that it had shaved off to achieve that streamlining by way of this largely optional game mode."
• "The chalice dungeons element of bloodborne fascinates me so much because bloodborne is such a beautifully Compact and thoughtful game but it still chose to include everything that it had shaved off to achieve that streamlining by way of this largely optional game mode."
• "The games are able to express not just challenge with their boss fights but also personality these bosses contribute to the themes to the atmosphere to the storytelling they provide dramatic climaxes for each and every area of the game where mood and music Come Together along with challenge to create an artistically complete experience."

Here are the specific quotes from the transcript that directly address Bloodborne:

• "Bloodborne was the laboratory for fast combat operating outside of the cosmology of Dark Souls but using the same organizational structure to create a kind of parallel experience a new version of Dark Souls 1 where speed is more important than precision."
• "Sakiro kept that same tight structure and then tightened it even further hardening its combat eliminating all of its slack demanding more from the player than it ever had before or likely will again."
• "And then Elden Ring which is mechanically a direct W successor to Dark Souls right down to the contents of its Spellbook however it instead Finds Its Difference by breaking the structure of Dark Souls open from interconnected linear dungeons into a true open world."
• "Elden Ring sold 12 million copies in its first month in almost impossible degree of success for a technically new IP whose entire pitch was about how it did not conform to Modern design Trends however that success didn't happen overnight and it wasn't a fluke from software has spent the better part of the past to decades making variations of the same game so what right so has Infinity Ward or Rockstar or any number of big Nam Studios and If This Were A criticism so what would be warranted but the truly strange thing about the secondary Trilogy of bloodborne sakiro and Elden ring is that these variations have produced significantly different games than you'd get with just another Ubisoft open world I spent a lot of the pandemic playing open world titles and there was a similarity to them that was disappointing in aggregate Grand Auto would do something and then a dozen other games would seek to replicate the experience with tonal or aesthetic variations it was many ideas all reflecting back on One Core emotional experience this is not the way it is with the from software titles and sequels the opposite in fact they all begin with one concept the Dark Souls proprietary combat Loop and then explore extremely different emotional and interactive experiences by pushing that core idea to contrasting and extreme conclusions by mutating it in truly unexpected ways I was so grateful to have played the Dark Souls games before attempting any of the ones in this loose Trilogy and their own ways each of these games is more unforgiving at the beginning of their experience than Dark Souls ever was this is balanced by the fact that each game is very aware of both their difficulties and their differences compared to what came before these games tutorial lie more than the Dark Souls titles did they offer more concrete and tight narrative experiences generally and they also Al generally improve on the base formula with each and every experimental variation the Dark Souls Trilogy is maybe more consistent more linear they all build off of what came before and iterate on the same ideas this secondary Trilogy oddly enough ruminates on many of the exact same themes in imagery as the primary Trilogy of Dark Souls does but it does so diagonally with such major differences in tone and approach that the cumulative experience of playing the games is even more excitingly Dynamic everything I loved about the way Dark Souls 2 for example as a sequel related back to the first game so obliquely is present here too these games all relate back to the core Trilogy of dark souls in strange and oblique ways in more resonant and subtle ways as each of the three games take these same cycles of struggle on death and Decay and push them towards artistically distinct statements each of these games on their own is beautiful each one exceptional in its style and execution but seen cumulatively the game shine even brighter Elden Ring's smash popularity is no fluke no isolated success in the universe of from software the flame of creation burns in Cycles the fuel of previous games providing a p on which Elden ring could flare so brightly into the public Consciousness years before I managed to get really into Dark Souls I had tried playing bloodborne and I bounced off it incredibly hard it seemed to me like it was both unfair and impossible I spent four hours trying to find my way to the next checkpoint and I failed to make any progress at all coming back to it now after having made it through all three of the Dark Souls games I figured things would be different that I wouldn't find it so difficult and intimidating I was wrong about that bloodborne is now one of my absolute favorites among the whole from software catalog but it has by far the most aggressive and cruel first few hours out of all of them dunks you into the deep end from the start the very first Major Street of the game escalates from one enemy to two to four to 24 in the space of less than a block any three hits from these enemies will absolutely wreck your [ ] I got past the First Street a lot quicker than I did the first time around but then immediately discovered another problem I wasn't expecting there is no next check point until you beat a boss you can't even spend your souls now called blood Echoes until you discover one of these fights win or die and then come back to the hub area called the Hunter's dream of course if you die you just lost all of those those points so there's a little conundrum for you oh and one more thing you can't block anymore by Design in fact this subtraction is one of the most important aspects of this particular variation on the Dark Souls theme bloodborne is a game about speed and aggression much more than it is about player freedom and versatility there are still substantial build options in weapon Styles but there's been a thorough process by which almost every element of Dark Souls combat and exploration has been stripped down to its most essential Spark characteristics in some ways this makes for a tighter game there is a narrower set of options but these options exist in more obvious balance and harmony with one another in other ways it makes for a much more immediately difficult experience gone was my magic my fancy Rings my upgradeable armor and my shield my precious precious Shield it's not entirely gone there is one called The Wooden Shield whose description reads Hunters do not normally employ Shields ineffectual against the strength of the beasts as they tend to be Shields are nice but not if they engender passivity end quote by the time I found the shield I had fallen out of the habit of even using it forced to adapt by the demands of the game hours ago now it's extremely important to note bloodborne came out before dark souls 3i did prior to bloodborne Souls combat was done with almost a very casually turn-based Rhythm I do a thing the enemy does a thing it's a string of choices and deliberate reactions bloodborne is by contrast with wickedly fast it's centered around completely different design priorities ones where patience is deemphasized in favor of aggression which is the whole theme of bloodborne yarum the city of blood Administration it's under attack from a plague of beasts and you as a newcomer are pressed into Service as a hunter of those beasts but the blood has a will of its own an ancient echo of hunger and fear you're not a hero separate from these beasts you are one of them among them and if you are not even more cravenly violent than they are well you don't remotely stand a chance tonight is the night of the hunter moon and you aren't invited to join in the ry if you're going to spend the whole party cowering behind a steel platter I ended up spending a whole 4 hours on the central yarham checkpoint again but with a key difference I had some semblance of an idea of what I was doing and what I was working towards I needed to kill the cleric beast and to do that I needed to be a whole lot less fragile these first 4 hours were really fascinating to me because of how much more immediately hostile the sign of bloodborne is compared to Dark Souls how much more casually punishing it is towards pensive or conservative play Styles I had to relearn all the systems that I had learned in Dark Souls almost I had to unlearn the old way and adapt to the new and that's even including Dark Souls 3 which is more closely related in speed and aggression to bloodborne than it is to Dark Souls 1 and 2 it is shocking how little translated from Dark Souls 3 to bloodborne for me or perhaps not since my favorite play style is the one that bloodborne seems most intent on disrupting which is not unfair Dark Souls 1 and 2 played with a shield and one-handed weapon like I mostly did is extremely methodical and pretty slow lots of clanking and clanging and rolling backwards what ho have at you so forth bloodborne's genius is that it doesn't simply take the shield away but provides a baseline Bedrock mechanic that encourages players to take the exact opposite approach the rally mechanic when you take damage this is represented by an orange bar that disappears in a second or two if you damage enemies in return during this extremely brief orange bar window that health is refunded usually it's not enough time to fully replenish your health bar but with high enough DPS or enough courage to attack multiple enemies at once it is completely possible to zero out the impact of incoming attacks so you can take hits and be damaged neutral much like using stamina to tank damage instead of Health when using a shield in Dark Souls but only if you go against the impulse to back off and reassess the situation only if you go completely bloodthirsty back [ ] and beat the health back out of them many regular and especially boss enemies track backwards roles and punish them rolling into enemies closing the distance getting behind them staying close staying aggressive these are the higher virtues in bloodborne's combat variant a hunter and bloodborne is not a tragic figure like the chosen on dead of Dark Souls a hunter is a Sinister figure time and again the hardest boss fights are against fellow hunters as much as they are against beasts the first two boss fights of the game are meant to give robust impressions of each category of fight of the respective mechanical and thematic dangers of hunters and their deadly prey the cleric Beast is technically optional but it's also the first boss most people find so it doesn't really work out that way as an optional boss it does have an absurdly high health bar for an early game encounter let alone boss number one if you're clever and Swift you can just grind him down but I'm neither of those things and for players like me the boss does serve a tutorialz purpose as seeming impossible health bar can be quickly broken down by Elemental damage bonuses instead of reusable magic as part of your build however it's all about the items in bloodborne at least in the early game oil flasks increase fire vulnerability beasts are weak to fire already so doubling down means thousands of points in bonus damage when you hit them with a Molotov most boss Encounters in bloodborne have these hard Elemental counters and Elemental damage items that you can use completely independent of an investment in the arcane stat those items are available for purchase with Insight Insight is a new version of humanity from Dark Souls that is both used to enable online co-op and as a secondary currency the main similarity it has with humanity is in value and Rarity it's not an item you can just throw around it's meant to be used judiciously the cleric beast is also weak to a new damage modifier unique to bloodborne serration anything with saw teeth counts as serrated including one of the weapons available for free at the start those advantages still weren't enough for me to Prevail though I chose a starting class with high combat damage but middling starting health and I felt unacceptably fragile going up against the cleric beast like I didn't have enough of a margin for error so I ground my way up to level 20 which wasn't even too much of a trudge because I was learning so much at the time and El because yarum is incredibly dense denser than many of the maps in Dark Souls 3 featuring the kind of recursive shortcut driven level design that made Dark Souls 1 so absolutely unique by the time I felt like I had finished exploring this Central yarum checkpoint I was already at level 19 just once more around the circuit and I had enough points to come back swinging that is a confidence that a player has to back up more here in bloodborne than Dark Souls would have demanded because of another variant on a traditional Comfort the Estus flask in Dark Souls they automatically refill in the first game you could increase the amount refilled from 10 up to 20 and then the second and third games have you finding one Estus flask Shard at a time to make a cumulative upgrade for the reusable flask bloodborne takes a simpler but much more severe approach healing flasks are now disposable consumable items if you run out you need to buy more which is tricky to do when you just died or you can Farm more by killing more things which probably means returning to the central yarum checkpoint and running the circuit over and over and over long after the XP has stopped being useful and the boredom of it sets in skilled players can probably maintain m a surplus just going along and by the time I was a new game plus I was just buying them outright but for most of my experience with the game the flask scarcity issue only got worse as I went along by the time I was trying the DLC bosses and chalice dungeons I was spending 20 to 30% of my playtime farming for either flasks themselves or souls to buy the flasks which became prohibitively expensive in the late game I struggled with this problem Less in the new game plus Cycles because the early game allows a player to get a head start before the game actually becomes difficult again but New Game Plus is also where depth 4 and depth 5 Challis dungeons are played and those are an incredible Step Up in adversity and a major drain on your resources farming for flasks added hours to my time with the game unpleasant repetitive boring hours death costs in bloodborne more than any other from software title in more frustrating ways than hollowing in Dark Souls 2 or the reduction penalties and Demon Souls getting stuck can put a player behind their goals even further you can get even more stuck in a way that I had not experienced in Dark Souls and with longer runs to the boss Arenas that in the Dark Souls Trilogy the first mandatory boss is Father gason a fellow Hunter who you can actually summon for help as an NPC against the cleric Beast if you like he is also kind of a tutorial boss but a stricter one than I'd seen in from software game before for you see in a lot of ways he's you he's got a similar melee weapon he's got a similar ranged weapon he Dodges in a similar way to you he represents kind of a mirror figure the game is saying look at this guy do this be like this but faster better and meaner do what he does and then surpass him only then will your journey actually begin idex Gere in Dark Souls I was never like this even for melee builds eex was a simple boss a learning boss a genuine tutorial father gion and especially the almost five goddamn minutes it takes to run over and reset the fight is a much more punishing encounter a Stern tap on the knuckles with a ruler shouting not like that do it again which is only compelling to me up to a point I managed to beat him on my own since I was trying to hoard the Insight but it wasn't hard at all to get summoned into the world of someone else who is having a harder time bloodborne has continued to emphasize and include cooperative multiplayer like from sofor had done so well in Dark Souls a hunter is never alone as a phrase seen all over the game a comforting reminder that so long as you have the insight to summon there is summoning to be had from the absolute foundation on up bloodborne seeks to challenge a player in different ways than it had with the Dark Souls Trilogy it tries to encourage players to try to be something new to play in a new way but it's not as fundamentally prescriptive about it as it appears at first glance like Dark Souls it's still fundamentally wants its players to thrive and to succeed and to that end it gives players the power to help each other through the cruestv but is in practice much more free than that is the reduction of weapon Choice from nearly 100 options down to just a couple dozen especially at the beginning you don't have much more than six weapons to choose from including those found in the environment isn't that limiting well yes if each weapon was just one weapon it would certainly be limiting instead every choice available in bloodborne besides your secondary weapon is a trick weapon that transforms from one mode of damage delivery to another at the touch of a button myself I chose exactly what the guy on the cover was using cuz that guy sure looks like he knew what the score was and I loved it the sof Cleaver does serrated damage quickly enough when fold it down at Short engagement range and then you can flip the cleaver out like a straight razor and it'll deal slower damage Dage at a much longer range giving you an option between the safety of a speedy offence and the safety of keeping enemies further at Bay plus that handy handy serration bonus against beasts the secondary suggested weapon is the Hunter's pistol which requires a stat investment to be viable in terms of damage but even if you never put a single point into your range damage stat the pistol can still be used to pull enemies off of larger groups and stagger enemies in the middle of attacks allowing a dramatic and spectacular critical hit with your melee weapon it is just a fantastic combination the other weapons I favored were the kirkhammer and the holy blade both of which are light heavy combination weapons each has a simple sword of two slightly varying speeds which can stagger smaller enemies well and are especially powerful versus other Hunters keeping them in stun lock Loops larger enemies just shrug off the little slashes so for them you have the heavy two-handed mode either a giant hammer or a Dark Soul style Greatsword these are well capable of staggering large foes but all enemies move so fast and often in such large groups that making heavy weapon attacks is always a tactical gamble by making it so easy and so stylish to switch between the two modes of damage it becomes quite easy to juggle your own disadvantages and vulnerabilities to change your mind and change your approach in seconds even in the middle of a fight speed and ruthlessness are the things that the game wants a player to prioritize and it does everything in its power to assist a player who is willing to meet it halfway even if halfway is still a couple miles further down the road than most games would demand the only thing that does genuinely limit a player is the scarcity of upgrade materials there's only enough in a given playthrough to fully upgrade one or maybe two weapons bringing another two or three of the weapons up to the 9 out of 10 threshold you'd have to come through again on further New Game Plus Cycles to add more bonuses and try out new things which can be rough if you gamble on a weapon that you don't end up enjoying I wanted to like the blast hammer for instance but it isn't much of a trick weapon the second mode just kind of sparks a little flame that goes out very quickly a boring frustrating average performance weapon especially when you can just add fire damage to the more impressive cck Hammer so easily the early game is when you get to try stuff out without worrying about it too much by the time New Game Plus and the late game rolls around you need to be able to put some major upgrades into a weapon for it to be viable at all it's not hard to get something up to plus 6 but plus 9 is where something has to be to really be effective and that Gap where you've got something cool but useless sitting around in your inventory can really stretch on for hours it's the weapons themselves that are so fascinating and so versatile Firearms are a huge part of the game scaling with the blood tinge stat but the bullets are a limited resource and I just didn't like the idea of relying on another item besides the blood flasks that I'd have to farm for Arcane is a more interesting choice it governs the effectiveness of items and also allows a player to use items that function like magic spells Limited in use to your bullet pool Arcane however also augments Elemental damage and you can use gems to convert all of your basic damage into an elemental variant I ended up spending pretty much my entire New Game Plus Cycles adding an Arcane component to my build and this made my playthrough much more Dynamic and interesting the first time though I just wanted it to be simple I wanted strength if everything is scary fast and lethal then I just want to hit him the fewest amount of times to win and I was granted that wish slowly over hours once I started to get comfortable in bloodborne I discovered a world with much more personality than even Dark Souls 1 yarham is the most gorgeous City in the from software catalog it's built with the same Fascination that the Dark Souls Trilogy has with European Gothic architecture but it's more intricately dense by far than anything in Dark Souls 3 the world design has more in common with dark souls 1's Lorden built vertically with every neighborhood tucked inside another building off each other and interconnecting in extremely surprising ways yarum isn't quite as vertical as Lorden was and features quite a few winding rural Wilderness areas like Dark Souls 2 and three had but it has an extremely strict approach to checkpointing that prioritizes shortcuts much more heavily than bonfires called lamps in this game this can lead to some extremely frustrating situations where even with short cuts resetting a boss fight can take actual minutes of your time and involves running past maybe a half a dozen clusters ERS of enemies it's an element of the design that is genuinely hostile to players however as much as it can be a drag in the player experience it is absolutely fascinating as a way to arrange the spaces of the world it leads to levels that are extremely large with many blocks and many wings that nevertheless all radiate out from or thread through the same spot that you entered them from this density bills and it Stacks as you light the lamps defeat the bosses and progress deeper you open up shortcuts between the broader areas revealing the same connectivity at the macro level as there is with just one lamp in its surrounding area yarum is built from swamps up to slums up to the cathedrals of the healing Church's choir all of it built to the glory of the Divine the facilitation of communion between this realm and the intangible Hereafter of course the more work the healing Church accomplishes the less intangible the Hereafter becomes bloodborne isn't a universe of Mythic dichotomies like fire and dark but instead a very tight and glorious told story of cosmic Horror in the vein of HP Lovecraft Lovecraft is famous both for his imagination and for his racism and the latter cancels out the former and a lot of people's estimations of the man's work bloodborne is a phenomenal example of taking the core imagery especially of lovecraft's dream cycle books and decoupling it from the author through creative transformation yarum stands on its own although if you've ever read at the mountains of Madness or dream quest of unknown cadth the imagery is like a living illustration of the most imaginatively arresting parts of those stories lovecraft's Pros is often driven mostly by mood suggestion on specific imagery he sometimes punts by simply describing things as Indescribable beyond the realm of human understanding and only comprehensible in the grip of absolute Madness yarum Civic religion is based entirely around not only the worship of these unfathomable alien Gods but on the mutual exploitation of them the church takes from them learning and blood it mixes their Celestial power with human potential and in doing so creates both beasts and Hunters the less human the church becomes the more they comprehend hence the game's secondary currency Insight at high levels of insight like above 40 horrifying Watchers called the amydala become visible clinging to the high towers of the cathedral Ward the city is infested infested Beyond just beasts the whole thing is tipping into madness deeper and deeper as the magic KN of the Hunter's moon goes on these beings are exploiting the entire city in ways that the church doesn't even really comprehend the density of the environment naturally leads itself to a density of detail it isn't just Gothic it's an insane and surreal hyper Gothic aesthetic where Catholic affectation is mutated into the material with which the game builds its Cosmic horror narratively it's much more explicit and tight than the storytelling done in Dark Souls which pairs so well with the incredible and intricate design time of yarum itself ascending the steps to the great Cathedral tentacled figures raise their hands in worship to something unknown and Sinister and terrible yet this is not the tallest tower the highest place of honor and worship in the city far above is an even more beautiful cathedral home to a brus daughter of the cosmos she was the first god or goddess or whatever found long ago deep in the ancient catacombs of cities even older than yarum that have risen and fallen on this very spot the choir exists to sing to her with her to commune with the Divine and learn their forbidden Secrets abitus is at the foundation of the story and lore but physically you'll find her at the apex of the World hidden in a neighborhood it takes extra optional steps to even unlock in the Dark Souls games the lords of the realm loomed over the kingdom manipulating its Cosmos to their own ends and making it sick in bloodborne the cosmos itself shines down over yarum with its own horrifyingly inscrutable agenda the bloodshot eye of the hunter moon just one of the many alien Gods staring coldly from their High perches until of course you come along to knock them down smashing their ancient flesh into the cobblestones and dirt bloodborne's artistic cohesion isn't limited to just how beautifully the story and the setting complement each other the monster design and rhythm of combat further unify and intensify the game's presentation bloodborne has I think the best creature design out of all of the from software games and I don't say that lightly the absolute best thing about the high difficulty in Boss driven combat of any from software game is how they allow for bosses that are legitimately gorgeous to behold creepy and compelling in equal measure animated with the kind of fluidity that most games never even come close to from demon souls to Elden ring the games are able to express not just challenge with their boss fights but also personality these bosses contribute to the themes to the atmosphere to the storytelling they provide dramatic climaxes for each and every area of the game where mood and music Come Together along with challenge to create an artistically complete experience by exercising tighter control over the amount of tools at the player's disposal the boss fights and bloodborne are also able to orient more tightly around these tools and by doing so exercise more control over the pacing and style of the boss encounters as we'll see when the video eventually Lumbers along the Elden ring trying to design for an extreme multitude of player approaches can lead to some uneven guesswork in encounter design the game kind of has to ignore the most obvious outliers of overpowered and underpowered approaches bloodborne and to an even greater extent sakiro eliminate the possibility of the player being too overpowered or too underpowered their progression has been curated through the linear elements of the design and the borders of possibility that the difficulty curve creates on average it seems like the health totals are higher for bosses in bloodborne than other related games and these bosses run an interesting mix of colossal beasts and Duels versus other hunters who draw on the same list of available weapons and abilities as you do these two things combined lead to fights that require not only finesse but endurance most bosses progress through several stages where their move set dramatically changes the way they change can be unpredictable some tighten up and become more precise with their attacks some gain area of effect capabilities and new spells and some lean into Fury with attacks that come more ferociously than before eliminating the safe attack Windows of the first phase or two of fight the one thing that unifies all of these fights is that aggression increases as the fight goes on and the deeper Health pools that you're fighting through are meant to make sure that a player stays in each phase for a properly dangerous amount of time when I came through on New Game Plus for two playthroughs going after the second and third endings I added an Arcane component to my strength build to use what forms of magic there are in this game and even then magic was little more than a small bonus to damage a secondary tool set that doesn't must represent a whole different play style the way magic works in Dark Souls or Elden ring in New Game Plus the health pools were even deeper to the point where some of the fights are in the 5 to 10 minute range per attempt player damage scales over the course of a couple playthroughs and into the 100 plus level range but the bosses always seem to scale a little higher and I found a lot of the boss encounters on new game plus 2 to be much more desperate and difficult than they even were the first time around despite me being relatively close to the max damage output as far as upgrades and attribute points are concerned baked into the design on the very deepest levels are hedges and dams against the player becoming too overpowered and to maintain the balance of power between the bosses and the play this is a game about hunters and prey with you the hunter but the thrill of that is also in being the Perpetual Underdog in the situation the prey needs to be more powerful than the hunter for the mood to stick in New Game Plus Cycles of Dark Souls and Elden ring a player can approach parody with some of the bosses especially early you can be much more dangerous than them bloodborne is a game that deliberately seeks to be a harsher more aggressive experience and it goes about this not just on the thematic level but in subtle numeric ways as well like the more hostile scaling into New Game Plus in Dark Souls the high difficulty was part of the theme but generally felt more like a puzzle something that could be reoriented and overcome systemically as much as by willpower and good gameplay with bloodborne the difficulty is integrated more deeply into the storytelling brutality cruelty hostility both to the player and from the player these are the foundations of everything the visual art and the narrative are trying to accomplish they are integrated here in bloodborne in a way that's as uncommon as it is impressive sakiro takes these design approaches and intensifies them Elden ring walks them back but here in bloodborne the game's inherent hostility feels the most purposeful and the most balanced of all three of these titles it is trying to create an atmosphere where when the boss dies and a rain of blood pours down on you you just want to open your mouth wide drink of it and scream father gason is a fine early example of difficulty theme and narrative being integrated in the way he acts as a kind of instructor on how to play your own character and as a warning of what you're destined to become once you've heed those instructions but he is only one of many let's now visit the inhabitants of the the cathedral District to its highest Heights and lowest lows down is the direction the game takes you first from the middle position of the Odin Chapel the chapel kind of mirrors the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls 1 the hunter dream is the player Hub area yes but the original Firelink Shrine and the original Dark Souls wasn't like the modern hubs you didn't need to return to it to level up or to upgrade anything its purpose was navigational and thematic a central anchor between up and down ignorance and knowledge the beginning of the game and the end the cathedral Ward Central checkpoint serves the same navigational role branching paths out to not only the required areas but most of the optional areas in the DLC besides playing bloodborne after playing the other games was really strange because as different from Dark Souls 1 as the gameplay can be it does feel like a more direct and true followup in the level design boss design and narrative design than either of the official Dark Souls sequels or even Elden ring itself it is so gorgeously dense and compact in almost every aspect of its design it makes it rather unlike its sibling games I missed to that sense of a colossally vertical World from Dark Souls 1 from the chapel you ventured down into the burnt ruins of old yarum here years ago the healing Church ran away from the terrible damage it did and the beasts it created sealing the old neighborhood away down at the Towering found foundations that the church would later build on top of the suffering it created the church has two types of ministers the black garbed Hunters like gason like you're supposed to be and then the white garbed Clarence the CL LCS don't heal so much as they experiment in the ancient catacombs under the city where brus was discovered they communed with the old blood and have ever since kept teasing out that blood's power drawing the attention of even stranger forces from the outer Cosmos that first attempt to connecting that whole early city of yarum and the church was buried alive deliberately so at the deepest layer of the deepest city is a forgotten dilapidated Chapel without even a name the humble beginnings of everything above forgotten now Below in it is the blood starved Beast a fearsome and Incredibly aggressive boss whose principal feature both mechanically and thematically is its ravenous hunger it wants to tear you apart and to drink you it's been so long and that comes through amazingly well in its movements intensified even more by the choice of background for the fight in this dilapidated chapel and with the accompanying music there is a lot of Storytelling being done with this boss fight all of it pretty much non-verbal driven instead by a fascinating combin of context and choreography weak to serration weak to fire brittle and dry with years of costic neglect the mechanical weaknesses of the boss go hand inand with its narrative weaknesses as a character killing the Beast opens up the tower that eventually will lead to the choir and lead to a brus here at the bottom though is just lost beast in a shortcut behind where the locked gates are in the Middle District this shortcut leads to the Grand Cathedral of the healing Church all along the massive stair case are statues of saints with amydala heads unlike the Chapel of the Blood star Beast the grand Cathedral is gleaming well kept up by a much healthier Beast vicer Amelia has one of my favorite introductions in any from software game such a classic horror moving moment that it might as well be in black and white you see the shadow of her her hands as she clutches a pendant and then a great change she becomes a beast before your eyes turning around only now to grin it it would have been pointless to greet you with her other face anyway this is her true self the face of beasal sadism hunger isn't Amelia's motivation though it's zealotry you're an intruder a heretic you will be punished accordingly this is one of the longer fights in the game even as it is but it becomes unpredictably longer in the second phase as Amilia takes breaks from attacking you to heal large chunks of her health there's items you can use to disrupt this healing but I never remember to use those items and letting the heal happen leads to such a drawn out feeling of desperation willpower versus willpower that it really changes the character of the fight from Phase 1 to phase 2 characterization and storytelling through combat once again the upper Cathedral Ward is a secret housing the city's orphanage just like esfa Clinic is filled with the results of the old blood experimentations the upper W is a combination of the healing Church's past and future these weird Dopey looking blue dudes are as close to the gods as humans can get without becoming beasts it seems at least without going so far as you do in the game's final ending they are the future I guess a mix of the old blood with the new and they are clearly neither capable nor interested in the kind of grand works the healing church has manifested here in yarum the healing church is a dead end just as the other areas and factions like the scholars of mensis and what remains of the old Hunters prove we've already talked a little about the source of the healing Church's power the elder god from the center of the Catacombs AB brus daughter of the cosmos let's take this opportunity to just look what an incredible design a brus has otherworldly in every way threatening so active with so many moving parts so hard to understand with a torso that's intended to actively confuse a player about which direction it's facing while it's unfair to say that HP Lovecraft never uses concrete detail to describe his creatures a lot of his talent as a writer is in being able to sidestep those details with powerful illusions that the reader has to finish for themselves to see those old images ideas and suggestions given such gorgeous illustration is just artistically tremendous visual art has always been one of the strongest elements of the modern from software Gams but bloodborne's commitment to truly maximizing the presentation of the source material is something unique something special as someone huge into the horror genre bloodborne is a total Revelation I didn't understand that by not paying the price of admission required by the combat's difficulty I was missing one of the best shows in the entire subgenre that same tower that separates the middle and upper Cathedral districts has a hidden Corner tucked behind a door halfway down the Tower with no way to reach it but just to fall just as you can find an Abyssal mirror of the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls 3 suggesting its repetition and persistence through multiple ages or multiple timelines the abandoned Workshop shows that the Hunter's dream was once a real place and by showing that the real one is Dusty and forgotten long sealed off by the modern Church it raises a lot more questions about just what the supernatural version you repeatedly return to is while the story and setting in bloodborne are certainly more concrete than before much is still pleasantly cryptic and open-ended no part more so than the nature of the Hunter's dream and the supernaturally Endless Night of the hunt you progress through so let's pull on a few major threads real quick and try to tie some stuff together you have one directive at the beginning of the game seek pill blood to transcend the hunt no NPC ever offers much better clarification than that however the all of the Hunter's dream is the only being who allows you to level up and she happens to be the only being in the game Who bleeds pale she quite literally allows you to transcend the hunt she prays sometimes to a god or goddess called Flora she's connected to this divine presence who watches down on you your whole journey the hunter moon itself always there a baleful eye watching your Slaughter with some unknown distant satisfaction the real ending of the game happens when you find and consume 3/3 of an umbilical chord originating from three various failures of an elder god trying to birth itself a new one is in the abandoned Workshop another is at the top of game's final Tower the last fight of the last level two more can be found in grosser more uncomfortable circumstances the Elder Gods curse two characters with Unholy pregnancies one is a mad member of the choir who replaces ESF at her Clinic to run experiments on any survivors that you send there another is Ariana a sex worker who is also some kind of dou for Queen can Hurst of the vile Bloods she's like in the story an unwilling heir of sorts to the same Legacy of cosmic rape that centers around Queen yarum The Apparition you sometimes see honestly the fixation on unwanted childbirth and rape from beyond the stars is a pretty rough element of the narrative deliberately shocking deliberately gross horror is often about trying to provoke discomfort especially about the body but there's an odd abstraction and lack of sympathy in the game that makes its inclusion kind of crass here so we can talk about weird star babies and consuming mutated umbilical cords and that's all just kind of genre standard for horror but without Sympathy for the characters involved it kind of reduces the idea of child birth and pregnancy to that whole level of weird and groy things Beyond understanding funny enough this is almost an inherited problem from lovecraft's writing what's so gorgeous about Lovecraft stories at their best is the way that they can articulate or more often suggest the dangerous impossible in the unknown lovecraftian monsters in storytelling erode the sanity of its protagonists exposure to the unknown is not only dangerous but corruptive normaly becomes no longer possible once immersed in the worlds of the cosmic unknown within the context of many of these stories that perspective can be incredibly compelling listen to this bid describing a hall of Statuary in an ancient city of the old ones deep under the Antarctic shelf taken from at the mountains of Madness quote mold compressed twisted and ruptured as they were their Chief common injury was total decapitation I had seen those Primal sculptures too

Here are the voice-over fragments from the first two minutes of the video:

• "my SC again"
• "and'll I know too I'm underneath your spell so darling ifell something burning"
• "it's my excuse the ending of Dark Souls 3 is extremely definitive all kingdoms collide at the end of time as the cosmic cycle of its Universe grinds to a wheezing Halt and from that ending some new painting to fill some new canvas in the wake of Dark Souls from software has released a trio of games that are unique experiences from one another mechanically distinct aesthetically contrasting and widely varying in scope"
• "these games are also all connected on almost every other level they are each one variations on a theme and that theme is Dark Souls bloodborne sakiro Elden ring they all form a loose Trilogy of their own because despite their differences each of them Finds Its unique Voice by adding or subtracting significant elements of gameplay that the Dark Souls had tested and honed"
• "bloodborne was the laboratory for fast combat operating outside of the cosmology of Dark Souls but using the same organizational structure to create a kind of parallel experience a new version of Dark Souls 1 where speed is more important than precision"
• "sakiro kept that same tight structure and then tightened it even further hardening its combat eliminating all of its slack demanding more from the player than it ever had before or likely will again"
• "and then Elden ring which is mechanically a direct W successor to Dark Souls right down to the contents of its Spellbook however it instead Finds Its Difference by breaking the structure of Dark Souls open from interconnected linear dungeons into a true open world"
• "Elden ring sold 12 million copies in its first month in almost impossible degree of success for a technically new IP whose entire pitch was about how it did not conform to Modern design Trends however that success didn't happen overnight and it wasn't a fluke from software has spent the better part of the past to decades making variations of the same game so what right so has Infinity Ward or Rockstar or any number of big Nam Studios and If This Were A criticism so what would be warranted but the truly strange thing about the secondary Trilogy of bloodborne sakiro and Elden ring is that these variations have produced significantly different games than you'd get with just another Ubisoft open world I spent a lot of the pandemic playing open world titles and there was a similarity to them that was disappointing in aggregate Grand Auto would do something and then a dozen other games would seek to replicate the experience with tonal or aesthetic variations it was many ideas all reflecting back on One Core emotional experience this is not the way it is with the from software titles and sequels the opposite in fact they all begin with one concept the Dark Souls proprietary combat Loop and then explore extremely different emotional and interactive experiences by pushing that core idea to contrasting and extreme conclusions by mutating it in truly unexpected ways"

Here are the voice-over fragments from the transcript for the next two minutes (approximately 02:00 to 04:00):

• "I was so grateful to have played the Dark Souls games before attempting any of the ones in this loose Trilogy and their own ways each of these games is more unforgiving at the beginning of their experience than Dark Souls ever was this is balanced by the fact that each game is very aware of both their difficulties and their differences compared to what came before these games tutorial lie more than the Dark Souls titles did they offer more concrete and tight narrative experiences generally and they also Al generally improve on the base formula with each and every experimental variation"
• "the Dark Souls Trilogy is maybe more consistent more linear they all build off of what came before and iterate on the same ideas this secondary Trilogy oddly enough ruminates on many of the exact same themes in imagery as the primary Trilogy of Dark Souls does but it does so diagonally with such major differences in tone and approach that the cumulative experience of playing the games is even more excitingly Dynamic everything I loved about the way Dark Souls 2 for example as a sequel related back to the first game so obliquely is present here too these games all relate back to the core Trilogy of dark souls in strange and oblique ways in more resonant and subtle ways as each of the three games take these same cycles of struggle on death and Decay and push them towards artistically distinct statements each of these games on their own is beautiful each one exceptional in its style and execution but seen cumulatively the game shine even brighter Elden Ring's smash popularity is no fluke no isolated success in the universe of from software the flame of creation burns in Cycles the fuel of previous games providing a p on which Elden ring could flare so brightly into the public Consciousness"
• "years before I managed to get really into Dark Souls I had tried playing bloodborne and I bounced off it incredibly hard it seemed to me like it was both unfair and impossible I spent four hours trying to find my way to the next checkpoint and I failed to make any progress at all coming back to it now after having made it through all three of the Dark Souls games I figured things would be different that I wouldn't find it so difficult and intimidating I was wrong about that bloodborne is now one of my absolute favorites among the whole from software catalog but it has by far the most aggressive and cruel first few hours out of all of them dunks you into the deep end from the start the very first Major Street of the game escalates from one enemy to two to four to 24 in the space of less than a block any three hits from these enemies will absolutely wreck your [ ]"
• "I got past the First Street a lot quicker than I did the first time around but then immediately discovered another problem I wasn't expecting there is no next check point until you beat a boss you can't even spend your souls now called blood Echoes until you discover one of these fights win or die and then come back to the hub area called the Hunter's dream of course if you die you just lost all of those those points so there's a little conundrum for you oh and one more thing you can't block anymore by Design in fact this subtraction is one of the most important aspects of this particular variation on the Dark Souls theme bloodborne is a game about speed and aggression much more than it is about player freedom and versatility there are still substantial build options in weapon Styles but there's been a thorough process by which almost every element of Dark Souls combat and exploration has been stripped down to its most essential Spark characteristics in some ways this makes for a tighter game there is a narrower set of options but these options exist in more obvious balance and harmony with one another in other ways it makes for a much more immediately difficult experience gone was my magic my fancy Rings my upgradeable armor and my shield my precious precious Shield it's not entirely gone there is one called The Wooden Shield whose description reads Hunters do not normally employ Shields ineffectual against the strength of the beasts as they tend to be Shields are nice but not if they engender passivity end quote by the time I found the shield I had fallen out of the habit of even using it forced to adapt by the demands of the game hours ago now it's extremely important to note bloodborne came out before dark souls 3i did prior to bloodborne Souls combat was done with almost a very casually turn-based Rhythm I do a thing the enemy does a thing it's a string of choices and deliberate reactions bloodborne is by contrast with wickedly fast it's centered around completely different design priorities ones where patience is deemphasized in favor of aggression which is the whole theme of bloodborne yarum the city of blood Administration it's under attack from a plague of beasts and you as a newcomer are pressed into Service as a hunter of those beasts but the blood has a will of its own an ancient echo of hunger and fear you're not a hero separate from these beasts you are one of them among them and if you are not even more cravenly violent than they are well you don't remotely stand a chance tonight is the night of the hunter moon and you aren't invited to join in the ry if you're going to spend the whole party cowering behind a steel platter"

Here are the voice-over fragments from the transcript between approximately 04:00 and 10:00:

• "I ended up spending a whole 4 hours on the central yarham checkpoint again but with a key difference I had some semblance of an idea of what I was doing and what I was working towards I needed to kill the cleric beast and to do that I needed to be a whole lot less fragile these first 4 hours were really fascinating to me because of how much more immediately hostile the sign of bloodborne is compared to Dark Souls how much more casually punishing it is towards pensive or conservative play styles I had to relearn all the systems that I had learned in Dark Souls almost I had to unlearn the old way and adapt to the new and that's even including Dark Souls 3 which is more closely related in speed and aggression to bloodborne than it is to Dark Souls 1 and 2 it is shocking how little translated from Dark Souls 3 to bloodborne for me or perhaps not since my favorite play style is the one that bloodborne seems most intent on disrupting which is not unfair Dark Souls 1 and 2 played with a shield and one-handed weapon like I mostly did is extremely methodical and pretty slow lots of clanking and clanging and rolling backwards what ho have at you so forth bloodborne's genius is that it doesn't simply take the shield away but provides a baseline Bedrock mechanic that encourages players to take the exact opposite approach the rally mechanic when you take damage this is represented by an orange bar that disappears in a second or two if you damage enemies in return during this extremely brief orange bar window that health is refunded usually it's not enough time to fully replenish your health bar but with high enough DPS or enough courage to attack multiple enemies at once it is completely possible to zero out the impact of incoming attacks so you can take hits and be damaged neutral much like using stamina to tank damage instead of Health when using a shield in Dark Souls but only if you go against the impulse to back off and reassess the situation only if you go completely bloodthirsty back [ ] and beat the health back out of them many regular and especially boss enemies track backwards roles and punish them rolling into enemies closing the distance getting behind them staying close staying aggressive these are the higher virtues in bloodborne's combat variant a hunter and bloodborne is not a tragic figure like the chosen on dead of Dark Souls a hunter is a Sinister figure time and again the hardest boss fights are against fellow hunters as much as they are against beasts the first two boss fights of the game are meant to give robust impressions of each category of fight of the respective mechanical and thematic dangers of hunters and their deadly prey the cleric Beast is technically optional but it's also the first boss most people find so it doesn't really work out that way as an optional boss it does have an absurdly high health bar for an early game encounter let alone boss number one if you're clever and Swift you can just grind him down but I'm neither of those things and for players like me the boss does serve a tutorialz purpose as seeming impossible health bar can be quickly broken down by Elemental damage bonuses instead of reusable magic as part of your build however it's all about the items in bloodborne at least in the early game oil flasks increase fire vulnerability beasts are weak to fire already so doubling down means thousands of points in bonus damage when you hit them with a Molotov most boss Encounters in bloodborne have these hard Elemental counters and Elemental damage items that you can use completely independent of an investment in the arcane stat those items are available for purchase with Insight Insight is a new version of humanity from Dark Souls that is both used to enable online co-op and as a secondary currency the main similarity it has with humanity is in value and Rarity it's not an item you can just throw around it's meant to be used judiciously the cleric beast is also weak to a new damage modifier unique to bloodborne serration anything with saw teeth counts as serrated including one of the weapons available for free at the start those advantages still weren't enough for me to Prevail though I chose a starting class with high combat damage but middling starting health and I felt unacceptably fragile going up against the cleric beast like I didn't have enough of a margin for error so I ground my way up to level 20 which wasn't even too much of a trudge because I was learning so much at the time and El because yarum is incredibly dense denser than many of the maps in Dark Souls 3 featuring the kind of recursive shortcut driven level design that made Dark Souls 1 so absolutely unique by the time I felt like I had finished exploring this Central yarum checkpoint I was already at level 19 just once more around the circuit and I had enough points to come back swinging that is a confidence that a player has to back up more here in bloodborne than Dark Souls would have demanded because of another variant on a traditional Comfort the Estus flask in Dark Souls they automatically refill in the first game you could increase the amount refilled from 10 up to 20 and then the second and third games have you finding one Estus flask Shard at a time to make a cumulative upgrade for the reusable flask bloodborne takes a simpler but much more severe approach healing flasks are now disposable consumable items if you run out you need to buy more which is tricky to do when you just died or you can Farm more by killing more things which probably means returning to the central yarum checkpoint and running the circuit over and over and over long after the XP has stopped being useful and the boredom of it sets in skilled players can probably maintain m a surplus just going along and by the time I was a new game plus I was just buying them outright but for most of my experience with the game the flask scarcity issue only got worse as I went along by the time I was trying the DLC bosses and chalice dungeons I was spending 20 to 30% of my playtime farming for either flasks themselves or souls to buy the flasks which became prohibitively expensive in the late game I struggled with this problem Less in the new game plus Cycles because the early game allows a player to get a head start before the game actually becomes difficult again but New Game Plus is also where depth 4 and depth 5 Challis dungeons are played and those are an incredible Step Up in adversity and a major drain on your resources farming for flasks added hours to my time with the game unpleasant repetitive boring hours death costs in bloodborne more than any other from software title in more frustrating ways than hollowing in Dark Souls 2 or the reduction penalties and Demon Souls getting stuck can put a player behind their goals even further you can get even more stuck in a way that I had not experienced in Dark Souls and with longer runs to the boss Arenas that in the Dark Souls Trilogy the first mandatory boss is Father gason a fellow Hunter who you can actually summon for help as an NPC against the cleric Beast if you like he is also kind of a tutorial boss but a stricter one than I'd seen in from software game before for you see in a lot of ways he's you he's got a similar melee weapon he's got a similar ranged weapon he Dodges in a similar way to you he represents kind of a mirror figure the game is saying look at this guy do this be like this but faster better and meaner do what he does and then surpass him only then will your journey actually begin idex Gere in Dark Souls I was never like this even for melee builds eex was a simple boss a learning boss a genuine tutorial father gion and especially the almost five goddamn minutes it takes to run over and reset the fight is a much more punishing encounter a Stern tap on the knuckles with a ruler shouting not like that do it again which is only compelling to me up to a point I managed to beat him on my own since I was trying to hoard the Insight but it wasn't hard at all to get summoned into the world of someone else who is having a harder time bloodborne has continued to emphasize and include cooperative multiplayer like from sofor had done so well in Dark Souls a hunter is never alone as a phrase seen all over the game a comforting reminder that so long as you have the insight to summon there is summoning to be had from the absolute foundation on up bloodborne seeks to challenge a player in different ways than it had with the Dark Souls Trilogy it tries to encourage players to try to be something new to play in a new way but it's not as fundamentally prescriptive about it as it appears at first glance like Dark Souls it's still fundamentally wants its players to thrive and to succeed and to that end it gives players the power to help each other through the cruestv but is in practice much more free than that is the reduction of weapon Choice from nearly 100 options down to just a couple dozen especially at the beginning you don't have much more than six weapons to choose from including those found in the environment isn't that limiting well yes if each weapon was just one weapon it would certainly be limiting instead every choice available in bloodborne besides your secondary weapon is a trick weapon that transforms from one mode of damage delivery to another at the touch of a button myself I chose exactly what the guy on the cover was using cuz that guy sure looks like he knew what the score was and I loved it the sof Cleaver does serrated damage quickly enough when fold it down at Short engagement range and then you can flip the cleaver out like a straight razor and it'll deal slower damage Dage at a much longer range giving you an option between the safety of a speedy offence and the safety of keeping enemies further at Bay plus that handy handy serration bonus against beasts the secondary suggested weapon is the Hunter's pistol which requires a stat investment to be viable in terms of damage but even if you never put a single point into your range damage stat the pistol can still be used to pull enemies off of larger groups and stagger enemies in the middle of attacks allowing a dramatic and spectacular critical hit with your melee weapon it is just a fantastic combination the other weapons I favored were the kirkhammer and the holy blade both of which are light heavy combination weapons each has a simple sword of two slightly varying speeds which can stagger smaller enemies well and are especially powerful versus other Hunters keeping them in stun lock Loops larger enemies just shrug off the little slashes so for them you have the heavy two-handed mode either a giant hammer or a Dark Soul style Greatsword these are well capable of staggering large foes but all enemies move so fast and often in such large groups that making heavy weapon attacks is always a tactical gamble by making it so easy and so stylish to switch between the two modes of damage it becomes quite easy to juggle your own disadvantages and vulnerabilities to change your mind and change your approach in seconds even in the middle of a fight speed and ruthlessness are the things that the game wants a player to prioritize and it does everything in its power to assist a player who is willing to meet it halfway even if halfway is still a couple miles further down the road than most games would demand the only thing that does genuinely limit a player is the scarcity of upgrade materials there's only enough in a given playthrough to fully upgrade one or maybe two weapons bringing another two or three of the weapons up to the 9 out of 10 threshold you'd have to come through again on further New Game Plus Cycles to add more bonuses and try out new things which can be rough if you gamble on a weapon that you don't end up enjoying I wanted to like the blast hammer for instance but it isn't much of a trick weapon the second mode just kind of sparks a little flame that goes out very quickly a boring frustrating average performance weapon especially when you can just add fire damage to the more impressive cck Hammer so easily the early game is when you get to try stuff out without worrying about it too much by the time New Game Plus and the late game rolls around you need to be able to put some major upgrades into a weapon for it to be viable at all it's not hard to get something up to plus 6 but plus 9 is where something has to be to really be effective and that Gap where you've got something cool but useless sitting around in your inventory can really stretch on for hours it's the weapons themselves that are so fascinating and so versatile Firearms are a huge part of the game scaling with the blood tinge stat but the bullets are a limited resource and I just didn't like the idea of relying on another item besides the blood flasks that I'd have to farm for Arcane is a more interesting choice it governs the effectiveness of items and also allows a player to use items that function like magic spells Limited in use to your bullet pool Arcane however also augments Elemental damage and you can use gems to convert all of your basic damage into an elemental variant I ended up spending pretty much my entire New Game Plus Cycles adding an Arcane component to my build and this made my playthrough much more Dynamic and interesting the first time though I just wanted it to be simple I wanted strength if everything is scary fast and lethal then I just want to hit him the fewest amount of times to win and I was granted that wish slowly over hours once I started to get comfortable in bloodborne I discovered a world with much more personality than even Dark Souls 1 yarham is the most gorgeous City in the from software catalog it's built with the same Fascination that the Dark Souls Trilogy has with European Gothic architecture but it's more intricately dense by far than anything in Dark Souls 3 the world design has more in common with dark souls 1's Lorden built vertically with every neighborhood tucked inside another building off each other and interconnecting in extremely surprising ways yarum isn't quite as vertical as Lorden was and features quite a few winding rural Wilderness areas like Dark Souls 2 and three had but it has an extremely strict approach to checkpointing that prioritizes shortcuts much more heavily than bonfires called lamps in this game this can lead to some extremely frustrating situations where even with short cuts resetting a boss fight can take actual minutes of your time and involves running past maybe a half a dozen clusters ERS of enemies it's an element of the design that is genuinely hostile to players however as much as it can be a drag in the player experience it is absolutely fascinating as a way to arrange the spaces of the world it leads to levels that are extremely large with many blocks and many wings that nevertheless all radiate out from or thread through the same spot that you entered them from this density bills and it Stacks as you light the lamps defeat the bosses and progress deeper you open up shortcuts between the broader areas revealing the same connectivity at the macro level as there is with just one lamp in its surrounding area yarum is built from swamps up to slums up to the cathedrals of the healing Church's choir all of it built to the glory of the Divine the facilitation of communion between this realm and the intangible Hereafter of course the more work the healing Church accomplishes the less intangible the Hereafter becomes bloodborne isn't a universe of Mythic dichotomies like fire and dark but instead a very tight and glorious told story of cosmic Horror in the vein of HP Lovecraft Lovecraft is famous both for his imagination and for his racism and the latter cancels out the former and a lot of people's estimations of the man's work bloodborne is a phenomenal example of taking the core imagery especially of lovecraft's dream cycle books and decoupling it from the author through creative transformation yarum stands on its own although if you've ever read at the mountains of Madness or dream quest of unknown cadth the imagery is like a living illustration of the most imaginatively arresting parts of those stories lovecraft's Pros is often driven mostly by mood suggestion on specific imagery he sometimes punts by simply describing things as Indescribable beyond the realm of human understanding and only comprehensible in the grip of absolute Madness yarum Civic religion is based entirely around not only the worship of these unfathomable alien Gods but on the mutual exploitation of them the church takes from them learning and blood it mixes their Celestial power with human potential and in doing so creates both beasts and Hunters the less human the church becomes the more they comprehend hence the game's secondary currency Insight at high levels of insight like above 40 horrifying Watchers called the amydala become visible clinging to the high towers of the cathedral Ward the city is infested infested Beyond just beasts the whole thing is tipping into madness deeper and deeper as the magic KN of the Hunter's moon goes on these beings are exploiting the entire city in ways that the church doesn't even really comprehend the density of the environment naturally leads itself to a density of detail it isn't just Gothic it's an insane and surreal hyper Gothic aesthetic where Catholic affectation is mutated into the material with which the game builds its Cosmic horror narratively it's much more explicit and tight than the storytelling done in Dark Souls which pairs so well with the incredible and intricate design time of yarum itself ascending the steps to the great Cathedral tentacled figures raise their hands in worship to something unknown and Sinister and terrible yet this is not the tallest tower the highest place of honor and worship in the city far above is an even more beautiful cathedral home to a brus daughter of the cosmos she was the first god or goddess or whatever found long ago deep in the ancient catacombs of cities even older than yarum that have risen and fallen on this very spot the choir exists to sing to her with her to commune with the Divine and learn their forbidden Secrets abitus is at the foundation of the story and lore but physically you'll find her at the apex of the World hidden in a neighborhood it takes extra optional steps to even unlock in the Dark Souls games the lords of the realm loomed over the kingdom manipulating its Cosmos to their own ends and making it sick in bloodborne the cosmos itself shines down over yarum with its own horrifyingly inscrutable agenda the bloodshot eye of the hunter moon just one of the many alien Gods staring coldly from their High perches until of course you come along to knock them down smashing their ancient flesh into the cobblestones and dirt bloodborne's artistic cohesion isn't limited to just how beautifully the story and the setting complement each other the monster design and rhythm of combat further unify and intensify the game's presentation bloodborne has I think the best creature design out of all of the from software games and I don't say that lightly the absolute best thing about the high difficulty in Boss driven combat of any from software game is how they allow for bosses that are legitimately gorgeous to behold creepy and compelling in equal measure animated with the kind of fluidity that most games never even come close to from demon souls to Elden ring the games are able to express not just challenge with their boss fights but also personality these bosses contribute to the themes to the atmosphere to the storytelling they provide dramatic climaxes for each and every area of the game where mood and music Come Together along with challenge to create an artistically complete experience by exercising tighter control over the amount of tools at the player's disposal the boss fights and bloodborne are also able to orient more tightly around these tools and by doing so exercise more control over the pacing and style of the boss encounters as we'll see when the video eventually Lumbers along the Elden ring trying to design for an extreme multitude of player approaches can lead to some uneven guesswork in encounter design the game kind of has to ignore the most obvious outliers of overpowered and underpowered approaches bloodborne and to an even greater extent sakiro eliminate the possibility of the player being too overpowered or too underpowered their progression has been curated through the linear elements of the design and the borders of possibility that the difficulty curve creates on average it seems like the health totals are higher for bosses in bloodborne than other related games and these bosses run an interesting mix of colossal beasts and Duels versus other hunters who draw on the same list of available weapons and abilities as you do these two things combined lead to fights that require not only finesse but endurance most bosses progress through several stages where their move set dramatically changes the way they change can be unpredictable some tighten up and become more precise with their attacks some gain area of effect capabilities and new spells and some lean into Fury with attacks that come more ferociously than before eliminating the safe attack Windows of the first phase or two of fight the one thing that unifies all of these fights is that aggression increases as the fight goes on and the deeper Health pools that you're fighting through are meant to make sure that a player stays in each phase for a properly dangerous amount of time when I came through on New Game Plus for two playthroughs going after the second and third endings I added an Arcane component to my strength build to use what forms of magic there are in this game and even then magic was little more than a small bonus to damage a secondary tool set that doesn't must represent a whole different play style the way magic works in Dark Souls or Elden ring in New Game Plus the health pools were even deeper to the point where some of the fights are in the 5 to 10 minute range per attempt player damage scales over the course of a couple playthroughs and into the 100 plus level range but the bosses always seem to scale a little higher and I found a lot of the boss encounters on new game plus 2 to be much more desperate and difficult than they even were the first time around despite me being relatively close to the max damage output as far as upgrades and attribute points are concerned baked into the design on the very deepest levels are hedges and dams against the player becoming too overpowered and to maintain the balance of power between the bosses and the play this is a game about hunters and prey with you the hunter but the thrill of that is also in being the Perpetual Underdog in the situation the prey needs to be more powerful than the hunter for the mood to stick in New Game Plus Cycles of Dark Souls and Elden ring a player can approach parody with some of the bosses especially early you can be much more dangerous than them bloodborne is a game that deliberately seeks to be a harsher more aggressive experience and it goes about this not just on the thematic level but in subtle numeric ways as well like the more hostile scaling into New Game Plus in Dark Souls the high difficulty was part of the theme but generally felt more like a puzzle something that could be reoriented and overcome systemically as much as by willpower and good gameplay with bloodborne the difficulty is integrated more deeply into the storytelling brutality cruelty hostility both to the player and from the player these are the foundations of everything the visual art and the narrative are trying to accomplish they are integrated here in bloodborne in a way that's as uncommon as it is impressive sakiro takes these design approaches and intensifies them Elden ring walks them back but here in bloodborne the game's inherent hostility feels the most purposeful and the most balanced of all three of these titles it is trying to create an atmosphere where when the boss dies and a rain of blood pours down on you you just want to open your mouth wide drink of it and scream father gason is a fine early example of difficulty theme and narrative being integrated in the way he acts as a kind of instructor on how to play your own character and as a warning of what you're destined to become once you've heed those instructions but he is only one of many let's now visit the inhabitants of the the cathedral District to its highest Heights and lowest lows down is the direction the game takes you first from the middle position of the Odin Chapel the chapel kind of mirrors the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls 1 the hunter dream is the player Hub area yes but the original Firelink Shrine and the original Dark Souls wasn't like the modern hubs you didn't need to return to it to level up or to upgrade anything its purpose was navigational and thematic a central anchor between up and down ignorance and knowledge the beginning of the game and the end the cathedral Ward Central checkpoint serves the same navigational role branching paths out to not only the required areas but most of the optional areas in the DLC besides playing bloodborne after playing the other games was really strange because as different from Dark Souls 1 as the gameplay can be it does feel like a more direct and true followup in the level design boss design and narrative design than either of the official Dark Souls sequels or even Elden ring itself it is so gorgeously dense and compact in almost every aspect of its design it makes it rather unlike its sibling games I missed to that sense of a colossally vertical World from Dark Souls 1 from the chapel you ventured down into the burnt ruins of old yarum here years ago the healing Church ran away from the terrible damage it did and the beasts it created sealing the old neighborhood away down at the Towering found foundations that the church would later build on top of the suffering it created the church has two types of ministers the black garbed hunters like gason like you're supposed to be and then the white garbed Clarence the CL LCS don't heal so much as they experiment in the ancient catacombs under the city where brus was discovered they communed with the old blood and have ever since kept teasing out that blood's power drawing the attention of even stranger forces from the outer Cosmos that first attempt to connecting that whole early city of yarum and the church was buried alive deliberately so at the deepest layer of the deepest city is a forgotten dilapidated Chapel without even a name the humble beginnings of everything above forgotten now Below in it is the blood starved Beast a fearsome and Incredibly aggressive boss whose principal feature both mechanically and thematically is its ravenous hunger it wants to tear you apart and to drink you it's been so long and that comes through amazingly well in its movements intensified even more by the choice of background for the fight in this dilapidated chapel and with the accompanying music there is a lot of Storytelling being done with this boss fight all of it pretty much non-verbal driven instead by a fascinating combin of context and choreography weak to serration weak to fire brittle and dry with years of costic neglect the mechanical weaknesses of the boss go hand inand with its narrative weaknesses as a character killing the Beast opens up the tower that eventually will lead to the choir and lead to a brus here at the bottom though is just lost beast in a shortcut behind where the locked gates are in the Middle District this shortcut leads to the Grand Cathedral of the healing Church all along the massive stair case are statues of saints with amydala heads unlike the Chapel of the Blood star Beast the grand Cathedral is gleaming well kept up by a much healthier Beast vicer Amelia has one of my favorite introductions in any from software game such a classic horror moving moment that it might as well be in black and white you see the shadow of her her hands as she clutches a pendant and then a great change she becomes a beast before your eyes turning around only now to grin it it would have been pointless to greet you with her other face anyway this is her true self the face of beasal sadism hunger isn't Amelia's motivation though it's zealotry you're an intruder a heretic you will be punished accordingly this is one of the longer fights in the game even as it is but it becomes unpredictably longer in the second phase as Amilia takes breaks from attacking you to heal large chunks of her health there's items you can use to disrupt this healing but I never remember to use those items and letting the heal happen leads to such a drawn out feeling of desperation willpower versus willpower that it really changes the character of the fight from Phase 1 to phase 2 characterization and storytelling through combat once again the upper Cathedral Ward is a secret housing the city's orphanage just like esfa Clinic is filled with the results of the old blood experimentations the upper W is a combination of the healing Church's past and future these weird Dopey looking blue dudes are as close to the gods as humans can get without becoming beasts it seems at least without going so far as you do in the game's final ending they are the future I guess a mix of the old blood with the new and they are clearly neither capable nor interested in the kind of grand works the healing church has manifested here in yarum the healing church is a dead end just as the other areas and factions like the scholars of mensis and what remains of the old Hunters prove we've already talked a little about the source of the healing Church's power the elder god from the center of the Catacombs AB brus daughter of the cosmos let's take this opportunity to just look what an incredible design a brus has otherworldly in every way threatening so active with so many moving parts so hard to understand with a torso that's intended to actively confuse a player about which direction it's facing while it's unfair to say that HP Lovecraft never uses concrete detail to describe his creatures a lot of his talent as a writer is in being able to sidestep those details with powerful illusions that the reader has to finish for themselves to see those old images ideas and suggestions given such gorgeous illustration is just artistically tremendous visual art has always been one of the strongest elements of the modern from software Gams but bloodborne's commitment to truly maximizing the presentation of the source material is something unique something special as someone huge into the horror genre bloodborne is a total Revelation I didn't understand that by not paying the price of admission required by the combat's difficulty I was missing one of the best shows in the entire subgenre that same tower that separates the middle and upper Cathedral districts has a hidden Corner tucked behind a door halfway down the Tower with no way to reach it but just to fall just as you can find an Abyssal mirror of the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls 3 suggesting its repetition and persistence through multiple ages or multiple timelines the abandoned Workshop shows that the Hunter's dream was once a real place and by showing that the real one is Dusty and forgotten long sealed off by the modern Church it raises a lot more questions about just what the supernatural version you repeatedly return to is while the story and setting in bloodborne are certainly more concrete than before much is still pleasantly cryptic and open-ended no part more so than the nature of the Hunter's dream and the supernaturally Endless Night of the hunt you progress through so let's pull on a few major threads real quick and try to tie some stuff together you have one directive at the beginning of the game seek pill blood to transcend the hunt no NPC ever offers much better clarification than that however the all of the Hunter's dream is the only being who allows you to level up and she happens to be the only being in the game Who bleeds pale she quite literally allows you to transcend the hunt she prays sometimes to a god or goddess called Flora she's connected to this divine presence who watches down on you your whole journey the hunter moon itself always there a baleful eye watching your Slaughter with some unknown distant satisfaction the real ending of the game happens when you find and consume 3/3 of an umbilical chord originating from three various failures of an elder god trying to birth itself a new one is in the abandoned Workshop another is at the top of game's final Tower the last fight of the last level two more can be found in grosser more uncomfortable circumstances the Elder Gods curse two characters with Unholy pregnancies one is a mad member of the choir who replaces ESF at her Clinic to run experiments on any survivors that you send there another is Ariana a sex worker who is also some kind of dou for Queen can Hurst of the vile Bloods she's like in the story an unwilling heir of sorts to the same Legacy of cosmic rape that centers around Queen yarum The Apparition you sometimes see honestly the fixation on unwanted childbirth and rape from beyond the stars is a pretty rough element of the narrative deliberately shocking deliberately gross horror is often about trying to provoke discomfort especially about the body but there's an odd abstraction and lack of sympathy in the game that makes its inclusion kind of crass here so we can talk about weird star babies and consuming mutated umbilical cords and that's all just kind of genre standard for horror but without Sympathy for the characters involved it kind of reduces the idea of child birth and pregnancy to that whole level of weird and groy things Beyond understanding funny enough this is almost an inherited problem from lovecraft's writing what's so gorgeous about Lovecraft stories at their best is the way that they can articulate or more often suggest the dangerous impossible in the unknown lovecraftian monsters in storytelling erode the sanity of its protagonists exposure to the unknown is not only dangerous but corruptive normaly becomes no longer possible once immersed in the worlds of the cosmic unknown within the context of many of these stories that perspective can be incredibly compelling listen to this bid describing a hall of Statuary in an ancient city of the old ones deep under the Antarctic shelf taken from at the mountains of Madness quote mold compressed twisted and ruptured as they were their Chief common injury was total decapitation I had seen those Primal sculptures too and had shudderingly admired the way the nameless artist had suggested that hideous slime coating found on certain incomplete and prostrate old ones Those whom the frightful shugs had characteristically slain and sucked into a Gastly headlessness in the Great War of res subjugation they were Infamous nightmare sculptures even when telling of age-old bygone things for shugs in their work ought not to be seen by human beings or portrayed by any beings the Mad author of Necronomicon had nervously tried to swear that none of them had been bred on this planet and that only drug dreamers have ever conceived them formless protoplasm able to Mock and reflect all true forms and organs and processes viscous agutin bubbling cells rubbery 15t spheroids infinitely plastic and ductal slaves of suggestion Builders of cities more and more Sullen more and more intelligent more and more amphibious more and more imitative great God what Madness made those even more Blasphemous old ones willing to use and to carve such things end quote it's the pictures that kind of Pros can paint in a person's head that's the compelling thing about the lovecraftian style and about Cosmic Horror in general the problem is that Lovecraft himself didn't limit his fear of corruption and the unknown to Supernatural questions he felt that way Elso when someone of a different color made eye contact with him at a market he mixed his fear of the normally different with what's so much more compelling in his fear of the supernaturally different there's plenty of stories including the classic call of cthulu that uncomfortably mix this fear of the true unknown with dehumanization of what he simply regards as immoral or irregular bloodborne isn't nearly as bad as lovecrafts work but this thread where menstration and childbirth in bloodborne are treated as being supernaturally incomprehensible on a similar level to Elder Gods from beyond the stars is kind of a traditional tendency of crafting stories it's hard to say if it's such a strong part of the narrative because of Too Close imitation of the source material or if it's part of a more personal set of images and themes that are unique to from software moving towards Elden ring this question of accidental or deliberate becomes cloudier a link between femininity and the moon becomes more explicit and mirrors the use of symbolism and imagery found here or even earlier within the Dark Souls Trilogy without that same weird uncomfortable Focus on unwanted pregnancies regardless of the failure of other characters to give birth to a New Living God the player can fulfill that Destiny themselves by proactively consuming all 3third of that corrupted umbilical cord granting them eyes on the inside of their brains and insight into the corrupting Madness of the universe the most love crafty and victory of all really total corruption through total deliberate exposure to the unknown to seal the deal you must confront the Hunter's Moon you must seek the pale blood if you don't consume the whole cord the moon presence uses you for its own purposes but if you have it rejects you as it had rejected Queen kinghurst in the chosen Ariana instead so it attacks and even here the boss is doing storytelling with its move set it is the platonic ideal of the game's beasts the impulse in the blood that corrupts them into such huge and tortured shapes this is the most animalistically aggressive Beast of all the beasts it seems dangerous in every way predatory fast cunning but not in a human way like the final boss Gman had been in a way that feels totally devoid of Sanity or Reason an actual monster and sure enough when it dies it doesn't say prey slaughtered like it usually does it says nightmare slain not just a symptom of Madness but part of the cause except you didn't get to fight him because you were sane yourself did you you chose to do the thing that gives you eyes on the the inside of your brain not once but three times you're transformed as a result into a princely worm a little Divine slug that will in time become an elder god of the outer sphere it's hardly a satisfying ending for the player character but it is such a wonderful way to drive home and tie off the narrative Arc of corruption you wanted to be the most powerful thing in the game didn't you well you get to be reborn in the cosmic slime where the true power of the universe resides the imagery in the story of bloodborne is frustratingly incomplete without becoming deeply invested in its most frustrating repetitive and hostile aspect of all the Chalice dungeons like everything else The Chalice dungeons are tightly integrated with the story and with the setting long before the city you see today was a civilization called the thumans they made contact with a breus as the healing Church did and invited the same communion with the older guns Queen yarum was their Monarch she's the one the new city is named for over and you see Echoes of Queen yarum her ghost prefaces the most major transitions of the game we see her first after defeating the game strangest boss Rah the vacuous spider there's some suggestion that Rah might have once been a person who like you sought to grow eyes on the inside however they couldn't contain this transformation and now Rah holds the night of the hunt in stasis keeping the moon Presence at Bay Rah takes a lot of things that are already creepy and gross about spiders and makes them worse it's minions have longer creepier legs than regular spiders they leap medium distances they spit this awful corrosive vomit and they spawn in three consecutive waves Rah is vacuous indeed it doesn't even fight back at first and when it does it acts in ways that are genuinely stupid wide area of effect attacks that are essentially vicious Tantrums Rah is the boss of Bergen worth the College of magic and Cosmic studies and it is deeply ironic that this most intimate connection with the for es Beyond destroyed rah's capacity for more knowledge or for understanding completely yam's ghost appears when Rah dies to welcome down the moon presence to worship the god that killed her and her whole civilization you see Queen ynam again at the top of the nightmare of menus the seed of another set of Scholars who sought to transform themselves and commune more closely with the gods to try to bring about the birth that you do in the final ending if you consume all three of those umbilical chords they came close one of the thirds of that chord is that of mergo a failed moonchild whose disembodied cries Echo throughout the game if you have the insight to hear it she stares up her midriff bandaged and blooded suggesting that this was once her fate as well mergo's wet nurse is an awful Cosmic emptiness that guards what remains of the little baby it's not a beast or a god like the others it's pure nightmare pure emptiness the Hunter's Moon cannot set or rise again until the nightmare May is defeated that cavity of space all emptiness and Blades is genuinely frightening as far as Monster design goes the wet nurse's extra phase is to create a disorienting fog and to double itself creating an even more powerful version that appears suddenly out of the Merc was this nightmare the

This video explores the evolution of FromSoftware's "Souls-like" games, specifically focusing on Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring as successors to the Dark Souls trilogy. The speaker, Noah Caldwell-Gervais, argues that these three games, while distinct, form a "loose trilogy" of their own, each pushing the core Dark Souls formula in different directions.

Introduction and the Souls Formula: Caldwell-Gervais begins by noting that after the definitive ending of Dark Souls 3, FromSoftware released Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring. He emphasizes that these games are "variations on a theme," each finding its unique voice by either adding or subtracting elements from the established Dark Souls mechanics. Bloodborne is presented as a "laboratory for fast combat," Sekiro as a further refinement of tightened, demanding combat, and Elden Ring as a shift towards an open-world structure while retaining the core combat loop. He contrasts this with the iterative sequels of other studios, like Infinity Ward or Rockstar, suggesting that FromSoftware's approach leads to more distinct and artistically driven experiences.

Bloodborne: Speed, Aggression, and Cosmic Horror: The video dedicates a significant portion to Bloodborne, highlighting its core design philosophy of speed and aggression, a departure from the more methodical combat of Dark Souls. Caldwell-Gervais points out the removal of shields as a key design choice that encourages players to adopt an offensive stance, further emphasized by the "rally mechanic" which allows players to regain health by damaging enemies shortly after taking a hit. He describes the initial hours of Bloodborne as particularly challenging and hostile, noting the lack of traditional checkpoints until bosses are defeated and the consumable nature of healing flasks, which can lead to frustrating resource management.

The world of Yharnam is praised for its dense, interconnected level design, reminiscent of Dark Souls 1's verticality, and its gothic, cosmic horror aesthetic inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. The game's narrative is noted for being more concrete than Dark Souls, while still retaining elements of cryptic lore, particularly concerning the Healing Church's experiments with "old blood" and the influence of eldritch entities like the Dream Mother, Ebrietas. Caldwell-Gervais highlights Bloodborne's exceptional creature design and boss encounters, arguing that they contribute significantly to the game's themes and atmosphere, acting as dramatic climaxes that unify gameplay, mood, and storytelling. He also touches upon the divisive nature of the Chalice Dungeons, acknowledging their repetitive structure and the frustrating grind they can entail, but also their role in expanding the game's lore and boss roster, particularly their connection to the deeper cosmic horror elements and characters like Queen Yharnam. The combat's emphasis on trick weapons, which transform between modes, is celebrated for adding depth and versatility, allowing players to adapt their playstyle mid-combat.

Sekiro: Precision, Narrative, and the Blade: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is characterized by its intense focus on precise, unforgiving combat. Caldwell-Gervais explains that the game strips away many of the RPG elements found in Dark Souls and Bloodborne, such as customizable stats and varied weapon builds, to concentrate on a core loop of attacking and parrying. The protagonist, Wolf, is a fixed character with a defined personality and narrative, which the game uses to create a deeper player-character connection. Every action, from movement to combat, is tied to Wolf's identity and struggle, aiming to reduce the gap between player and protagonist to "absolute zero."

The video discusses how Sekiro's difficulty is intrinsically linked to its storytelling, with the posture system acting as a narrative device that punishes hesitation and rewards aggression. This rigidity, while artistically impressive and crucial for the game's thematic coherence, is also noted as a potential source of frustration for players who prefer more flexibility or are less adept at mastering its specific combat rhythm. The game's limited toolset, primarily the Katana and Prosthetic Arm, emphasizes a focused approach to challenges, with each tool often serving as a counter to specific enemies or bosses. Caldwell-Gervais highlights the "hesitation is defeat" philosophy, explaining how the posture mechanic and the game's deliberate pacing force players to remain engaged and aggressive. He contrasts this strict adherence to its core mechanics with the more forgiving nature of Elden Ring and the customization options of Dark Souls, suggesting that Sekiro's lack of adjustable difficulty can alienate players who don't mesh with its demanding style. The game's narrative, focused on Wolf's quest to protect Kuro and sever the ties of immortality, is praised for its tight, character-driven plot, drawing inspiration from samurai epics and Japanese folklore, with a particular nod to Akira Kurosawa's films.

Elden Ring: Open World and Player Agency: Elden Ring is presented as FromSoftware's most expansive and player-agency-driven title. Caldwell-Gervais argues that the open-world format, while seemingly a departure, is actually a way to distribute the familiar FromSoftware gameplay loop across a much larger canvas. He contrasts this with the more structured, linear design of previous titles, explaining how the open world allows for a more flexible approach to progression and build customization. The game's initial areas are noted as being more forgiving, acting as a "tutorial region" that allows players to acclimate to the systems before encountering the steeper challenges.

The video highlights Elden Ring's vastness and the player's freedom to explore and tackle objectives in almost any order. This decentralization of content, while offering immense player agency, also means that narrative exposition is more fragmented, relying heavily on item descriptions and environmental storytelling. Caldwell-Gervais notes that while the core combat remains familiar, the open world allows for greater experimentation with builds, spells, and spirit ashes, which he sees as a key accessibility feature, offering a way to manage the game's inherent difficulty without fundamentally altering its challenge. He discusses the controversial "Spirit Ash" system, particularly the Mimic Tear, as a deliberate tool to help players overcome difficult encounters, contrasting it with Sekiro's rigid, non-adjustable difficulty. The game's artistic elements, from its stunning visuals and enemy designs to its lore, are praised, though Caldwell-Gervais expresses a slight disappointment in the more concrete narrative compared to the allegorical nature of Dark Souls. He points to specific bosses like Margit and Malenia as examples of challenging encounters that are designed to test player adaptability, but also acknowledges that Elden Ring's open-endedness and abundance of options can make some of these challenges more manageable through exploration and strategic build choices. The game's success is attributed not just to its open world, but to its ability to retain FromSoftware's unique design identity while making it more approachable through pacing and player freedom.

Conclusion and FromSoftware's Legacy: Caldwell-Gervais concludes by reiterating that Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring represent significant evolutionary steps for FromSoftware. Bloodborne refined the combat for aggression, Sekiro mastered narrative integration through its mechanics, and Elden Ring expanded the scope to an open world, balancing player freedom with challenging gameplay. He emphasizes that FromSoftware's strength lies in its ability to adapt its core formula while maintaining artistic integrity and pushing boundaries, lessons learned from decades of game development. The video highlights the shared "family tree" of these games, all stemming from Demon's Souls, and how each entry, while taking risks, ultimately contributes to a larger, evolving vision. The speaker expresses his personal journey with these games, moving from initial intimidation to deep appreciation, and credits the developer's willingness to trust the player's agency and curiosity as a key to their enduring appeal.