Seriously.
I can’t see bugger all in this game.
I’m in a chalice dungeon, is that a ladder I see before me, or did the mimic chest from Dark Souls get bored and take another form?
I really don’t know tbh, I can’t trust anything. But chances are one of them slender man pthumerians is waiting behind that corner as I enter the room to waft that neon lamp in my face that automatically Whatsapps all of his mates to come around for a party.
That’s the funny thing about FromSoft games, isn’t it? You’re never sure at what stage you stopped having fun and took a personal vendetta against a swinging pendulum axe bridge.
But then you overcome said annoyingly predictable obstacle to look around the room with utter glee to see if your significant other is for some strange reason sharing in your revelrous victory.
No.
They’re on TikTok sharply exhaling through their nose at the squirrel faking its own death, and fucking bored of watching you run into an axeblade the size of a tectonic plate for the 27th time.
And just like that, you remember you ARE indeed playing a FromSoft game. You’re truly alone.
If you had told me fifteen years ago that I would be enthralled in a series of games that give the player snippets of a narrative with the rest being in invisible ink, I probably would have believed you.
When I say invisible ink, I’m more or less referring to the fact that I’ll try to ascertain what in the lexicon of souls lore is actually going on by reading an item description or exhausting a porcelain sex doll’s dialogue.
Before then immediately darting over to YouTube to grasp the entire metanarrative like a crazed comic book fan who wants to know who Thano’s parents were. (don’t ask me, idk..idc.)
But Bloodborne hits a particularly special place, that place where you know you want something in the theme of October but can’t bring yourself to fire up any Resident Evil for the 623rd time.
The terror begins to diminish when you know the precise coordinates of every herb and typewriter.
And the zombies begin to look like they’re doing forced overtime instead of hunting for jugulars in mindless predatory terror.
I know, these things all exist within Bloodborne too, but the difference is I can’t decide to build my entire character on the premise of shooting infinite bullets out of a completely unreasonable gatling gun in RE, I just get protagonists with hair that’s longer down one side and a moody disposition with 4 bullets to fart at the next colleague who ‘unexpectedly’ turns.
Plus the canonical RE story is that fucking out of control it makes Doom look like a mild flu outbreak.
There are stage plays of RE that are scarier than any of the games if you know what I mean.
Bloodborne on the other hand, I plan to sit the ungrateful and eternally distracted grandchildren I inevitably get down by the fireside to recite the entire tale to on a crisp winter evening.
Wielding a polished cane and putting on my best new-age H.P. Lovecraft mannerisms to describe how I halted a gigantic man-eating boar charge with the single throw of a pebble.
Who am I kidding? I like people even less than he did.
No grand kiddies for gandpappy.
Bye.