Bloodborne and the Evolution of Japanese Game Design
Or How Bloodborne Is One Of The Best Games Ever Made
Bloodborne is the best game of 2015, the best game on the PS4, the best game from From Software (it's always funny to write that, amirite?) and overall one of the best games ever created. But why is that? Why does Bloodborne represent every single great thing about Japanese game design? And why is it so damn fun? Follow my lead as we revisit Yharnam, take a look at From Software's design decisions and kill a few beasts in the process.
Project Beast
Bloodborne was first introduced in Sony's Electronic Entertainment Expo of 2014 as From Software's new IP Project Beast. It was received with enthusiasm by the gaming community, what with the success of the company's two previews games, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. It featured a different scenario than what fans were used to, and you can check out the first video of the game below:
After being renamed Bloodborne, the game was released to critical and popular acclaim in March of 2015. Differently from Dark Souls, the game featured a Victorian inspired setting with a huge influence of H.P Lovecraft's eldritchian horror. The player found himself, after going through a treatment of blood transfusion, trapped in a foreign city during a night of the hunt, where wild, bloodthirsty beasts roam the city.
Like most From Software games, Bloodborne is difficult. The beginning of the game is not for the faint of heart; you'll see yourself trapped in a level filled with mad people, cursed beasts, aggressive NPCs and other dangers such as platforming traps and ambushes. The game needs you to pay attention, learn from your mistakes and carry on.
Well, then it's just another Dark Souls, isn't it?
No. It's not.
Fear The Old Blood
Bloodborne has many similarities with its Souls brothers; however the differences set them hugely apart, so much so that the experience is entirely unique. And it all begins with the health bar.
You see, Bloodborne has a very interesting mechanic that whenever you're hit, you have a certain amount of time to recover some of your health lost and you do it by attacking back. The game forces your hand to be aggressive, makes you counter attack instantly and ferociously in order to survive — and that's the first thing that makes this game completely different than the methodic Dark Souls.
Since the entire game is based on aggression, forwardness and melee combat and everything about the game is design around these themes (more on this later), it changes the way you feel the game. It changes your strategy, it changes your relationship to the currency of the game (blood echoes), it changes, well, everything. Once you start playing Bloodborne, you get right away that this is a very unique action RPG, all designed with its themes and lore in mind in a very, very cohesive way.
And it's fucking genius.
Design Finesse
No one expected Bloodborne to be a bad game. Hidetaka Miyazaki already had a reputation of being an excellent game designer, especially after the releases of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls; those games represented everything great about japanese game design, from superb level design to a deep, involved character progression system. And oh, let's not forget the punishing difficulty, which sometimes made you lose your mind and abandon the game, but most of the time had you come back for more — and once the challenge was beaten, the reward was never on the shinny loot you got from it, but from the fact that you did it. The sense of gratification you get from a Souls game is unmatched to this day.
What no one expected was that Bloodborne would be even better than Dark Souls and improve on it in every single way imaginable. Here are some of the improvements and design quirks that make this game so amazingly good — and keep reading because later on i'm gonna tight all of this in a package so neat it'll blow your mind:
- Streamlined Character Sheet. Since the game is all based around aggressivity and one single class that served both lore and mechanics, the character sheets didn't need to be as complex as in Dark Souls, making for a much more streamlined experience, but equally as deep. It's easier to understand but it's as well thought out in terms of complexity for more seasoned Souls players.
- The Hunters Dream. Just like in Demon's Souls, Bloodborne brings back the idea of a hub world where you can go to whatever waypoint you've unlocked during your explorations, level up, store items, improve your weapons and such. It's a neat idea and this helps the pacing of such a frantic game immensely.
- Unique, expansive, interconnected level design. Just like in Dark Souls, From Software's unique take on level design is back. You'll get sprawling areas, unlock shortcuts and learn a ton of lore by simply looking at walls and trying to understand the cryptic messages the game is trying to tell you. This time around, however, there are some levels which are accessible only through the gravestones on The Hunters Dream, and they feels a little bit more focused.
- Trick weapons. All weapons in Bloodborne have two iterations (and this is why they're called trick weapons), and you can change between them by pressing L1. This makes for a more fluid, adaptable gameplay as you can select a weapon with two very different play styles and switch on a whim.
- Side-step. This dodge move is different from rolling on souls games. It's faster and more precise and speaks well with the fast, aggressive nature of the game.
- Deep, more understandable lore. As you finish Bloodborne, you get a sense of what happened in Yharnam. There's a lot of obscure tales, of course, it's a From Software game, but, at the same time, the story it's a little bit more understandable, has a lot of depth and by the end of game you're not left (completely) in the dark.
And now, the most important design decision in the entire game, one without any of those above wouldn't work and you'd be left with a mess of an experience:
Cohesion.
You see, the entire game is designed around a single theme and everything works around it and for it. I've mentioned time and time again the importance of theming in game design and how it can be a game-breaker when it comes to good design and Bloodborne is the best example of that.
Everything in the game designed around the fact that you're a hunter trapped in a nightmarish world of eldritch horrors and unsightly beasts — you need to feel like you're there, you need to feel the desperation and you need to feel the aggressivity take over you as you slowly descend into madness while slaying what used to be regular folk. So the health bar, the streamlined character progressions system, the interconnected level design, the weapon system, the side step mechanic, everything works for the theme and with it. It's a thoroughly thought out game in every single aspect of its theme and it works because it never deviates from the design premise it establishes from the moment you start the game.
When I first finished Bloodborne, I remembered why I play games in the first place. I remembered why I almost did this for a living, the countless days running away to enjoy Sonic The Hedgehog, designing an entire game based on Final Fantasy Tactics, playing the shit out of Super Mario RPG, getting psyched about Uncharted 3, getting angry and sad when Alys died in Phantasy Star IV, screaming out of joy after my guild's first Arthas' kill on WoW… I play games to live experiences like this, to be transported to another world and enjoy myself and create memories, be it with other players or with myself.
Bloodborne also reminded me of why Japanese game design is great and how it keeps evolving and maturing into something really special. Hidetaka Miyazaki once said that he didn't have a dream and that he wasn't ambitious. Maybe that's just what we needed.
