The Masterful Emotional Pull Of Bloodborne

Bloodborne has excellent (if methodical) fast-paced combat, carefully-crafted atmosphere, a soundtrack that waxes and wanes with the ever-building tension, and looks beautiful on current-gen hardware. These factors are important when examining the game’s success, but the real craftsmanship behind one of the less tangible aspects of what makes Bloodborne an amazing game lies in the game’s ability to make you feel, for better or worse.

Bloodborne is even stronger in this respect than the Souls games, due to the underlying horror theme that douses everything in dread. While the Souls games are dark, the full-on horror motif of Bloodborne allows From Software to blend aspects that were also present in those titles with consistent unyielding themes that work to strengthen the experience of being far from the last checkpoint or encountering a terrifying boss.

There’s real feeling here – the biggest lows when carrying thousands of blood echoes into an unexpected enemy encounter and being unable to escape, your furtive blows barely scratching the new opponent before it pummels you into oblivion. Controllers have been thrown, PS4’s have been flipped, and expletives have been uttered as the denizens of Yharnam and beyond rend players asunder. This has been a long argued topic in regards to From Software games – is this trial and error? Is this artificial difficulty? Is it really just about learning boss patterns and moves?

There’s so much emotion in losing a battle to one of Bloodborne’s enchanting but devastating bosses, from the brilliantly lit lake where you battle Rom, the Vacuous Spider to Micolash’s twisting mazescape. For some these lows are extremely off-putting, and with skill, practice, and a few levels encounters can be handled on the first attempt – but it’s the comeback that really sells things after a horrible death or a long string of them. Lifting yourself out of the gutter after an hour of dying to the same boss over and over, setting the controller down and going for a meditative break. I can’t tell you how many times this has resolved many of my boss fight problems – a mental reset can be the perfect restorative when you’re just frustrated and flailing at things like Dark Souls’ Ornstein and Smough.

I’d never want these games to stop dealing out these battles that can dash hopes and dreams for a perfect playthrough on the rocks. Not because of one of the more common theories here, that Souls players are masochists, but because with that sense of defeat comes the sense of victory. There’s nothing better than going back into one of these epic battles and emerging victorious, with the music reaching a feverish crescendo as you deliver that final, masterful blow – often a frenzied strike when all healing items have been consumed and your only hope lies in that one critical attack. The sense of victory blows away many game experiences that have the player winning as a critical aspect of many encounters – these are victories you earn, and they are as much battles with yourself as they are with any amalgamation of pixels on the screen.

In the Souls games and Bloodborne, your victories are proportional to those potentially frustrating controller tosses accompanied by a sailor’s lexicon of salty sea verbiage. You may leap from your couch or chair in a state of euphoria – not, as some assume, from “the thrill of the kill”, but from a sense of true accomplishment. The uncompromising challenge laid before you has been bested, and the game never gave an inch – it’s the same battle it always was, but you’ve found a way to do it. Bested the impossible, defeated the unbeatable. While it’s not quite climbing Mount Everest, it’s certainly the high point of some of the emotional range that can be achieved in one’s living room.

So next time the Shadows of Yharnam pull some tricky maneuver and call some unearthly things from the ground when you least expect it, don’t try to stave off the feelings. Let them come. You’ll be getting the best of them soon enough, and it’s going to feel great.