13:32 I think you misspoke. You said "cause and effect" when you probably meant "Kos and effect," which is an easy mistake to make, though some do say Kosm.
to be fair Lovecraft also had some moments in his works where he goes "The concept and beast was incomprehensible to humans and undescribingly terrifing" >proceeds to describe the beast or phenomenon for half a page or something. So I can kinda see why bloodborne took a more head on approach to cosmic horror and still could count as inspired by classic cosmic horror.
This is true, but Lovecraft also uses conflicting descriptions in order to convey complexity. He gives you an idea of what it is, but also gives you aspects that are seemingly impossible to wrap your head around. Think about something like Color Out of Space: it’s impossible for a human think of a new color, but he uses words to let you imagine the concept of this impossibility. That’s a very hard hurdle to overcome in a visual medium, because now you’d be expected to show the audience a new color that doesn’t exist. I think Bloodborne does its best to tackle some of these themes and ideas, but I think its fundamental design gets in the way.
@@SweetsIsOnline I would say that the color of your favorite skybox is a great example of new colors that reinforce that concept in Bloodborne. The only bright colors that are used in that game (atleast those hues of purple blue) are in the skybox from what I've played so far.
The whole point of these descriptions is that they're completely inaccurate. Its not that the entities are indescribable, everything can be described. They're ineffable, you can give it as many descriptions as you want. That doesn’t mean any of them are accurate.
@@whitenobeard I wouldn't call them *completely* inaccurate, they're just simplified into the nearest alternative that humans can actually comprehend. More incomplete than just wrong. Multiple accounts aren't equally wrong, just equally far away from completion. Like trying to picture every single number from 0 to infinity.
27:45 I've heard it said "H.P. Lovecraft feared two things: black people, and everything else." His was an incredibly troubled mind, but the true racism stands a step above even his general paranoia towards the world and beyond it.
A fact nobody seems to acknowledge, or even KNOW, is that he did actually get better. I wouldn't go so far as to say he stopped being racist, but he mellowed out and seemed to stop his almost universal views about how everyone "other" was bad and evil. His remarks on foreigners and other races lessened and he was, if I recall correctly, less harsh than he used to be when dealing with people he considered "bad" in any respect. You have to understand, his fears really WERE born out of sheer unfamiliarity. He wrote a horror story about AIR CONDITIONERS for Christ's sake! What I'm saying is, when he finally MET the people he hated, experienced the things he feared and just generally got older, he seemed to chill out a bit. I mean ultimately he was still a bastard don't get me wrong but he did actually get better, if only to a certain extent, and I do think we should ACKNOWLEDGE that and not EXCUSE it.
The reason he could imagine these cosmic horrors was because they were the representation of his paranoia towards everything that he deemed as other than himself.
Lovecrafts father died in a mental hospital after years of paranoia and hallucinations. Probably schizophrenia. He claimed at times that he had seen the truth and that others were not ready for it. Lovecraftian horror is basically "What if that schizophrenic rambler was right all along?"
@@YTDariuS-my6dg i agree, if i remember right, i think he even was ashamed of his old views in the letter one month before his death. And his wife was a russian jew. I dont think he was that bad, its just easy to clown on a paranoid guy
To refute the final section of this video, have you considered that the point isn't that you're some superhero who kills all the beasts, but actually the beast itself? The pale blood that's mentioned throughout the game is the Moon Presence (there's some evidence of this in the original Japanese that was lost in the translation), and your mission all along was to seek it. This is a dark fantasy story where you play as the monster, slaughtering your way across a city and dreams in order to usurp a god. There can be no happy endings because no matter what you choose at the end, the horrors never stop. I think that the gameplay enhances the dark fantasy and cosmic horror themes, rather than detracts from them, because you're not a hero and you never were. You are the unknown, coming to this city to show them what really horror is.
It’s also a great exploration into mankind seeking that which they shouldn’t, even when they’re told not to do it. The second your quest was started, you were basically fucked into either horribly dying and giving up, or making it to a goal which you probably don’t want. All the endings are horrible in this game, because all of them rob you of fundamental humanity. One removed your memory, which is all you are. One removed your agency, which is what we use to be ourselves. And the final removed your personhood, and transforms you into something beyond humanity. It’s such a good fucking game, god damn
You are right. There is no 'good' ending in bloodborne, and you are not a superhero because you aren't a hero to begin with. You are doing everything for yourself, not for the well-being of others. There are three levels of success, that's true, but the situation of the world never improves and the nightmare never ends. The only thing changing is your own position in that world: you can end like an blissfully ignorant nobody, in a mid-management position, or as the boss. The pain doesn't end, the only thing that changes is the amount of pain you suffer compared to the amount of pain you inflict.
To debate the final conclusion, BloodBorne is not just about Cosmic Horror or Lovecraft. The real theme behind Bloodborne is "ASCENSION" or "Cosmic Evolution". The interdimensional beings and their eldritch horror is just a by-product of lower life forms like humans trying to comprehend and ascend/evolve their body, mind and soul into a higher form. And we see proof of this in the "True ending" when the player transcends into a baby "great one".
Excellent interpretation, and btw, I think there are story threads and mechanics in others of the games - such as Demon's Souls - that support similar interpretations somewhat less overtly. DS3 has it the least imo, maybe because it sought to continue a narrative rather than to be a self-contained statement, but there are notable traces of themes like you've just described in all the rest
I can't get over the pun that you gain "insight" by "lining your brain with eyes". Also if you put the camera inside the dolls head you can see her eyes have a second set of pupils looking inward. In-sight
30:54 which is the point of the game exactly. We see these greater beings like kos, the orphan, the moon presence, rom, the brain of mensis, ebritas, etc. having supposedly "ascended" above humanity. And yet, they're mortal. And not just that, but they're all hideous, deformed, and in some cases, pathetic creatures. So yes, Willem and Laurence and the Church and Mensis were technically "right", just not in the way they imagined. The point of Bloodborne isn't "Cosmic horror monster scary", it questions the very nature of being human and the concept of humanity. The game is a warning about mankind playing god. That is the the true horror of Bloodborne.
as correct as you are, why then keep calling the game a cosmic horror themed game? (that question isn't specifically pointed at you, more so in general, as a lot of people still call it that)
@@Lin_Eileen i wouldn't call them _more_ sympathetic and caring, they just usually don't go to such extremes. Rather, the Great Ones don't go out of their way to be malevolent towards humanity, as humanity is towards itself. To them, we are like ants - and just like with ants, a person might, on a whim, decide to help an ant out as best they understand or, similarly, might pay so little attention to the very existence of ants that they step on and kill countless without even knowing. What if floods are just a water god expanding its influence in our general direction, and the inevitable waste (because nothing perfectly stores energy) alone is what causes such awful disasters? What if, like a child randomly deciding to dig a hole, earthquakes are just the result of some relatively young god randomly deciding to start one, because why not? Fact of the matter is, to them, it's probably just _interesting_ to hear what people plead for, and now and then they might decide to indulge us for the fun of it. There's no need to hate or destroy us because we're so below them we barely count as amusement for them. The one single instance of when people pissed off a Great One was Kos, who decided to send everyone involved into Ultra Hell - future generations too, just for being vaguely connected. Every other instance of suffering in the game comes, ultimately, from the Great Ones, too, only it's not because they hate us, they just don't care what they want to do is bad for us. Think of how Arianna gives birth to a little baby Great One at the end of her quest, or how countless Hunters go mad from the adverse effects of the Old Blood - take Gascoigne, for instance. He was good enough a person, had a wife, kids, a family. And that whole family suffered because some fucking fratboys a few years back decided to beat an Old One (and it's kid) to death. "Curse the fiends, their children too - and their children forever true." Yet, what sin did Gascoigne's younger daughter commit, save for being daughter to a Hunter? What sin did the Yharnamites commit as a whole - sure, a lot of them are xenophobic dicks, but most of them started out afraid, sick and hopeless; then the Healing Church came with it's "miracle blood" and ultimately made everything worse. At the end of the day, the Great Ones merely function under a wholly different logic to us, and saying that they're compassionate or sympathetic isn't quite right even when the outcome is "good" - the statistics don't exactly add up either, since every time someone got what they wanted from a Great One, it turned out to be a bad thing.
Another reason Gascoigne is a great tutorial boss: explore the arena and you can find a music box that gives you an extra edge in the fight. Tells you a lot, actually. Exploration is valuable. Sometimes the best way to win a fight isn't just slamming your head into it. Use your bloody combat items. And, most interestingly, that combat and lore are tied together. So sometimes learning a bit about your enemies can give you a leg up later, too.
always love to think of all the players who walked around playing the music box in random areas to see if it had an effect anywhere else. I think it does in one other place… can’t remember where tho. I only ever used it the first times I fought papa g. What a hot mess that was.
@@HeatherHolt The music box is a funny trinket. Besudes Father Gascoigne fight and the interaction with the dying Mergo, there are two other instances were the music box has an effect. They are probably glitches, but who knows. The first one is the fight with Mergo's Wet Nurse. If you play the music box in that fight, MWN will try to evade left or right, like if the music box playing was an attack. It does no damage to her, tho. The second one happens in some Chalice Dungeons. Some of them have this large bells, that, if hit with an attack, will make a sound that beckons enemies. That sound can also be triggered by playing the music box near them.
The power fantasy is where the horror truly lies. Think about all the bosses you beat; at first you think you are doing good and cleaning the streets of monsters, but as the story progresses you begin to understand the complexity of why Yharnam is so fucked. Father Gascoigne is a mirror to ourselves, Blood Starved Beast, is probably some sad person who was too far gone, as Djura said, they are just people. Rom is supposed to be an old scholar from Byrgenwerth who ascended and tried to keep the eldritch truth from destroying Yharnam until we step in and remove her, wreaking madness all over the city. Ebrietas doesn't even attack you until you do (as does Rom) alluding she had no reason to be hostile unless she had to defend herself. And there's so many more depth with every encounter, every character and every single enemy that makes you realize that everything is not black and white, no real villains and just a bunch of people making mistakes and wrong decisions that slowly destroy the city, and you the player are definitely the furthest from a hero. If anything, all our actions seem to be more detrimental to the already fucked up situation Yharnam is in. The power fantasy is the point the game is always trying to make from the get go and the first fight with Gascoigne is a man who let the hunt consume him and turned him blood drunk. Killing everything in our path was exactly what led to so much tragedy and we the players are doing exactly that. You are the monster and you should feel bad for killing, but you do it anyway, because its fun.
No, you shouldn't feel bad for killing all those things. You are actually solving the situation depending on what ending you achieve. In any case, bloodborne is literally a one night shift
@@ColdNorth0628yeah I can see that. Instead off pulling apart what few pillars of stability Yharnam had left, you're actually pulling back the rug and the covers to get straight to the source. You can't fix damp without finding the mold, and its often hidden away. Most bosses are the damp, the great ones are the mold.
To debate the final conclusion, BloodBorne is not just about Cosmic Horror or Lovecraft. The real theme behind Bloodborne is "ASCENSION" or "Cosmic Evolution". The interdimensional beings and their eldritch horror is just a by-product of lower life forms like humans trying to comprehend and ascend/evolve their body, mind and soul into a higher form. And we see proof of this in the "True ending" when the player transcends into a baby "great one".
I would say that the blood church are the furthest from morally grey all sides involved are some shade of messed up but the church is one of the worst and was the most responsible for the situation you are in since at the end of the day you are trying to survive and you need to be doing this to get blood to survive. We are here cause we have little choice does that mean all we do is justified no.
I’d actually propose a different reading of the Childhood’s Beginning ending. The Good Hunter comes into the story to save their own life. They come to Yharnham for healing, only to be roped into the night of the hunt. They slowly try to help others, sending them to Oedon Chapel or to Iosefka’s clinic, but things continue to get worse. Gascoigne can’t be saved, he’s too far gone. Arianna can’t be saved, she goes mad when Formless Oedon impregnates her. Oedon Chapel gets whittled away by the disguised beast you found in Hemwick. Your friends, Alfred and Eileen, meet their ends as a result of their personal quests - Alfred going mad to reify a genocidal martyrdom, and Eileen mortally wounded in battle with a foe beyond her abilities as a Hunter of Hunters, passing her badge on to you. More and more you seek to transcend the hunt, to escape the nightmare - and this seems at first like a triumphant path. You put down the One Reborn, an artificial great one. You release the stillborn Brain of Mensis. You kill Ebrietas, who started this whole catastrophe, ending the church’s ambitions for good. You fulfill your mission as a dreaming hunter, and kill the infant Mergo, whose birth caused the fall of Pthumeru. You march on the Hunter’s Dream, refuse blissful ignorance, and tell Gehrman where he and his mission can stick it. You face down his master, Flora, the Pale Moon Presence, beyond all odds you slay her. You’ve done it, you’re free, you can help them… Only, in doing so, you’ve realized the dreams of the madmen you wished to escape, ascended beyond humanity, beyond caring about any of the people you did this to save. It’s a perfect ending precisely because it vindicates the scholars, the church, and the hunters. For all your attempts to subvert their plans for you, for Yharnham, all you ended up doing was take over their scheme to transcend. It’s not an empowering ending (well, apart from the literal sense that you gain immense cosmic power). It’s a tragic one.
And yet, it does potentially give you the power to make things better... and it's the only ending that does. Is it tragic that you had to play by the world's messed-up rules to do that, or is it empowering that you can at all? Maybe it's both.
There is lore throughout the game that insinuates that the great ones we meet throughout the game are the ones that failed to ascend with the other great ones beyond the realm we live in due to them still yearning for human attachments. Ebrietas had been mourning the corpse of Rom the vacuous spider, showing a form of relationship they had together. The moon presence had sent us to go and kill the baby great one Mergo to possibly keep it as the great one with the most influence and power in our world. The brain of Mensis is a great one that seems to have gone mad when trying to ascend and now just attacks anything it can see. Kos had sheltered her child from the outside world and cursed the old hunters in rage for what they had done to her son and the hamlet. Kos' child was fearful of everything around it and screams out to it's mother multiple times throughout the fight for protection. Oedon is known to look for ways to leave behind children in the world. Some details being the times with the prostitute and Iosefka. Mergo is possibly a child of Oedon's due to it not being visible like Oedon is as well. Many of these great ones have connections to the real world that they don't abandon and could explain why they stuck around and not left with the other ones as well.
Revisited Bloodborne recently to run a dnd (actually heavily homebrewed pathfinder 1e) campaign inspired by it and what I've gathered is bloodborne is a very Robert E Howard take on eldritch themes. Robert E Howard (Author of Conan the Barbarian, King Cull, etc...) was good friends with Lovecraft as an author, but held completely opposite views. While Lovecraft focused on the insignificance of mankind and the fear of powers beyond our influence, and even reckoning. Howard's work has always been human-forward. Conan is a champion of the people, someone who reminds us of where we came from and what we are, and just how powerful the indomitable human will can be in the face of incomprehensible powers. Lovecraft's creations have appeared numerous times in Howards works, but never in their original form of an unknowable absolute power beyond mortal reckoning. They appear instead as something to be challenged and overcome by human will, even if they cannot be directly supplanted or destroyed, their influence can be mitigated by the sheer force of human will. Whether intentional or not (given that the influence of lovecraft is obvious and that of howard is much lesser in Bloodborne) Bloodborne can be appreciated best, not as a work of conventional lovecraftian horror (at least in term of gameplay, lore-wise it absolutely can be), but as a work of his good (and much less racist) friend Robert E Howard's take on the same concepts, but one where humans are meaningful and powerful.
This is honestly one of the best videos I have seen on this website. You were able to mix game analysis and memes perfectly, while introducing a concept that I'm sure not many people have thought about. I love Bloodborne, and I have watched so many videos about almost every part of it, but none of them talked about how the game design goes against the themes of Lovecraftian horror. Great video, goodbye, and don't you dare go Hollow.
I remember seeing somewhere that the reason you can ascend is that everyone else either went the way of blood or insight, and you are special because you use both
I see it as a new way to be roped into the cycle. The first ending you are a cog, the average uncritical person feeding the machine and reaping the rewards. The second and third are 2 responses to seeing the hunt for what it is, how it strips away the humanity of others, how it tries to strip yours away. One is available to all. An emotional response, maybe you kill Gehrman out of Mercy, a defiant "FUCK YOU" to the night of the hunt. One that is punished by being forced into one of the most pivotal roles of the hunt. In the other you prove you not only know the hunt, but that you don't care. You have seen the cycle and you see a way to "win". So you do. And become just as trapped as you would be if you replaced Gehrman. You are at the top of the cycle but still a part. And much like in the other endings you are a replaceable part as well. Is the Gehrman you kill in your next playthrough really Gehrman? Is the moon presence we kill the first? How many cycles will you last before your ending concludes just like the first. Your execution.
If you look in the water immediately after entering the fishing hamlet from the astral clocktower, youll see yharnam below. When you find the note "the sky and the cosmos are one" it's referring to the fact that the dimensions within bloodborne are stacked vertically atop each other. By the same merit, the sea and the cosmos are also one. Remember how we entered the pocket dimensions to battle Rom?
Hearing Rain World music whilst you talk about ascension somehow triggered something in my brain. I am now cursed to think of the healing church whilst trying to think of the ancients from Rain World.
@@imfrizzy2442it would make my old ass ps4 happy bc it sounds like it’s gonna take off and fly to Berlin when I go on yet another Bloodborne play thru binge. I dont mind 30 fps locked tho, really if you can BL4 Bloodborne with 30fps you can play any game at 30fps (not that you should HAVE TO…but you could).
I don't think there's a single other game that merges its gameplay, setting and story/lore into one cohesive package. Sekiro comes close but I think Bloodborne especially blends its mechanics,/style into the environment, which feed off one another as you, the player, becomes either more desperate to escape or more fiendish to press on. There's a real meta-narrative happening where you become the beast, where at first you feel trapped in Yharnam and over time you flip that and it's everyone else that's trapped with you. The more you play, the deeper you fall into the Hunt.
@@geordiejones5618 Yep. The first Dark Souls comes very close too, I think Bloodborne kinda perfects what it was trying to do story-wise... although I prefer how in Dark Souls, not understanding shit is kinda part of the story in itself. You're being manipulated and don't even realize it because you don't know WTF is going on.
With the Fishing Hamlet, they didn’t just kill everything, they actively experimented on the villagers and Kos’ corpse. I’m also pretty sure Willem and Lawerence had already went their separate ways before this but I’m unsure.
The reason Bloodborne makes no sense to you is because we are used to meet a villain, the only twist is that everybody you meet is a victim, the true villain being the Great Old Ones.
21:50 There's actually a reason for the superstitions of the old hunters. When you heal using a blood vial you stab the syringe into your right leg. The old hunters didn't know that the blood itself was what caused the beasthood and instead believed it to be an infection
I'd argue that the endings and the power fantasy ultimately don't undermine the themes. In the case of the endings because either the sunrise or slavery ending are both thematically perfectly in line with the type of horror it goes for, replacing gherman is the most satisfying one for me. In both cases you end up unable to change anything about the night of the hunt, and the cycle will go on. The rebirth ending I can see your point more, but I think that Bloodborne differs fundamentally from Lovecraft in that it's a horror epic. I think that's reflected in the fact that it's not a survival horror game even though it has a lot of things that could be found in one. It's action horror. It retains the horror thanks to the difficulty and the enemy and area design, but also encourages you to best it, to become more ferocious than it. I think that in a lot of ways understanding the ramifications of your actions and your role in all of it is at the core of what makes these game's stories great. The rebirth ending is no more supposed to be positive or conclusive than either of the other. You can follow the madness down to the bottom and figure out you gotta eat the umbilical cords but is that a good thing? Is transcending the hunt a good thing for anyone but you? Or even you, considering you become something completely uknowable to the player? In a sense you do vindicate the madness of Laurence Wilem and the rest, so would you do it just to kill one more thing? To win? The ending itself isn't really grandiose at all, it's very odd and sudden. The doll holding a newborn is just haunting. For all we know that's the birth of the most fucked up great one of all. That's why I mean it's an epic.It's more tragic than it is nihilistic, and tragedy proper needs their characters to have enough agency to be able to at least destroy themselves. Having an avatar mute random protagonist puts you in a position where the story of your character succeeding isn't really the same as would be thematically for the protagonist in a book. You have your victory against the enemies as a player, but even the third ending remains a hollow victory, let alone an eternal curse or being cut off and forgetting everything. Gameplay wise Bloodborne throws enough terror, punishment and heinous shit your way that it manages to balance the player's empowerement with the horror in my opinion. And in the moment you begin the power fantasy is based off consumption of blood vials, murder points and Insight, you were following in Laurence and Wilem's footsteps the whole time already😂
Speaking of horror epics. You should check out "Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath" by HP Lovecraft. I would go as far as saying that Bloodborne draws heavily from this big story as it deals with dreams and confronting the Old Gods.
By my view the ascension ending is in the same grey area that embodies the game's other endings. I view the game as being about humanity, and the choices, methods, and ways of thinking that lead us to lose our own, or strip it away from others. With that interpretation in mind here's how I see the endings. In the ending where you submit and wake from the dream you were a perfect cog. You didn't question or faulter, you killed what you were asked to and reaped the benefits of the blood you calusly spilled, spared the guilt of memory as you health is restored. The next two endings I interpret as the "defiant endings". Their themes mirror each other, each being an embodiment of how your character reacts to the cycle of violence that is the hunt when truly examined. How you respond when you realize all the PEOPLE you killed and why you did it. In the ending where your hunter replaces Gehrman, you make a sacrifice of yourself. A show of mercy towards Gehrman in an act of defiance, if only a meaningless one, against the night of the hunt and the person it pushed you to become. And in that process maintaining your humanity, at least for a time. In the end you are still forced to uphold the unbreakable cycle of the hunt. How many times do you need to see it before you break? In the other you are no longer sacrificing yourself and keeping your humanity, but the other way around. You give away every recognizable part of yourself, physically and likely mentally as well, in the grand pursuit of something greater. You are now what is orchestrating the hunt. Even then I'd argue you'd never be truly free, you have proven your nature. The pride and drive for knowledge only the night of the hunt can provide, assuming you have a choice in that matter. Regardless, great ones have died before, how many times will the cycle run before you find a hunter breaking free of your own embrace. In all 3 endings you feed into the machine, in all 3 the hunt goes on, and in all 3 you will eventually be replaced as it all starts over a new.
im actually so upset you don't have half a mil subs minimum like legitimately crisp editing and joke timing, absolute quality scripts, perfect analogies and an overall 10/10 personable presentation i mean it when i say this sweet but keep up the grind dude you're gonna slowly rise and climb bit by bit until one day you hit a lucky stride and then you're never gonna look back you might feel like shit at times and like you might not get there but fuck dude i just wanna chat with you about video games for like 3 hours at 2am when we're going through shit and nobody else managed to hit that exact vibe and these videos are kind of like a little palatable mimicry of that fuck you for being so cool ly
I just find it frustrating going into a game and losing and I don't know why. I don't know how to do anything cause I don't know why and I can't figure out anything cause nothing explains why. If I knock on your door and you tell me the poet's last regret came before the hordes not of flesh but in hearts; Then I leave, just open the fucking door!
@@magnusm4 - You lost because someone stabbed you - Literally the first thing you can read in-game tells you to seek Paleblood and the first helpful NPC you meet is like "oh the Healing Church probably has some I guess" - Of course no one's going to open their doors to beast hunters that may very well be beasts themselves
bro who tha hell picks drake in that question while giving a sigificant answer. everyone in the know picks kendrick. everyone serious about rap picks kendrick. what's the point of asking the opinion of someone that heard couple of songs each max when they were airing every 10 mins in the radio?
One more thing that many players get wrong about most of these Great Ones bosses is that you don't actually kill them. They are avatars that can exist in our plane of existance, for an example after you kill an Amygdala in the Nightmare Frontier, it is AN Amygdala also known as a Lesser Amygdala, the true one resides on a completely different plane of existance, one that is unfathomable to us. The reason why you can see other Amys in Yahar'Gul and Yharman after killing the one in Nightmare frontier reinforces that. The certified true Great Ones that we see in the game like Amygdala, Erbertias, Moon Presence and even the Orphan of Kos are formless as stated in the game, therefore they cannot truly die. The Lovecraftian horror is still there, however perhaps a little too cryptic and hidden for players to feel it after their first playthroughs.
My favorite thing about fromsoft games is that the smallest thing has a book's worth of lore to go with it. Like the healing in Bloodborne, such a small portion of the game but takes up 80% of the lore.
First off, I just want to say, the production value of this video is INCREDIBLE, you deserve more attention purely from the effort alone. However towards the end when getting to "The Point" I think you may have wildly missed the mark on Bloodbornes themes, the story is not about cosmic horror or "the unknowable truth", the Lovecraft inspired aesthetic is just that, inspired, but its not the focus. Theres a reason a dichotomy is drawn between the beasts and the great ones, ALL the great ones we fight are implied to be former humans who have ascended, like Rom. The real theme of Bloodborne is "Evolution" The beasts represent the past, the primal roots of humanity, a regression, the kin of the cosmos represents mankinds hubris in their desire to advance. The Id vs the Ego. They ascend, and are proven right yes, but its a twisted monkeys paw sort of deal, they lose their sense of self. All the great ones are said to desire children they are incapable of bearing due to their complex ascended biology. Its such a innate instinctual desire to reproduce that once we ascend to this godlike state, we are still at the mercy of this one basic reproductive compulsion, no matter how far we evolve we still return to this principal of life. Thats what the Moon Presence wants, a surrogate child, you or Gehrman will suffice. Also, just saying, theres no evidence we actually killed any of the Old Ones in any way that matters to them, Ebrietas, Rom and Amygdala are still alive in the dream realms, evidenced by their inclusion in the chalice dungeons which you can only acquire AFTER killing their physical forms, and they can be refought as many times as you wish unlike many of the mere mortal beasts and hunters you fight in the base game. The chalice dungeons even confirm Yharnam is only the next in a long line of civilizations who have fallen for this ascension trap. And even comparing to the works of Lovecraft. _Cthulu got his ass knocked out by the bow of a small boat._ So you know, its not like the precedent was set that they were COMPLETELY untouchable.
My interpretation is very different, at the very beginning of the game you're told you came to this tiny clinic because you're sick and you'll be entering a fever dream, that you explicitly need to fight your way out of, the "true" ending is when gehrman wakes you up by taking your head, the healing is complete your trials are over, the other endings are diving deeper into your psyche, challenging more terrifying aspects of yourself and the world, until eventually, you are no longer the person you were, your hunger for the unknown, your chasing of greater beasts makes you far worse than the monsters lurking in your mind, you become a prisoner to yourself, trapped in your own eldritch fears
In the defense of my Fromsoft playstyle, my character would be too stupid to even understand he's being made crazy. The ultimate defense against unknowable entities, stupidity. Honestly, stupidity is both the greatest boon and greatest failing of mankind.
I do think the “true ending” is thematically satisfying in the sense that while you do kill the moon presence and become a great one, you seem to be pretty much… helpless? We know the great ones are killable at least in some abstract sense- Kos is, after all, murdered, and other great ones’ physical bodies were experimented on and tortured. The thing is, clearly some level of Kos’ existence continues beyond the planes of being we can reach. She supersedes what we see as her body, though the pain we cause her seems to affect her. And anyway, the player never becomes a great beast like the other great ones we see- they become like one of the baby great ones, the ones that lie on the ground and wait for you to kill them. We ascend, but we become wretched and helpless and are no better off in any meaningful sense. We are perhaps weakest of all in this ending.
Yeah but we have a protector lady. It's not like people are much stronger as babies either. If you can hang on to your human memories, maybe you can try to protect the world. Maybe even attempt to fix it. You know how and where the rest failed. You have the eventual power and Influence to do it.
@SweetsIsOnline “Eldritch/Cosmic Horror” was the phrase used as a translation. Though Lovecraft has influence in the game, this aspect is one that didn’t entirely translate properly. Several Bloodborne content creators have shown the Japanese vs English translation and transliteration to show how this one didn’t line up. The words “Eldritch” and “Cosmic” don’t get used in the original Japanese, so I’d say FromSoft did what they wanted and borrowed influence. The design and function of the great ones was their own creation, not a 1 for 1 ripoff from Lovecraft. Otherwise, great video 👍
Taking 27 minutes to mount an argument for the thesis presented in the title only to fail at doing so before moving on after a mere 4 minutes is kinda insane. Pretty good editing though, and I appreciate your passion for Bloodborne very earnestly.
I don't see the issue. Humans are beasts and the great ones, despite being powerful, are also beasts: they trascend human existence, but they are not unreachable, only difficult to reach -their blood changes human nature, after all. They speak another language and live another kind of reality, but they exposed themselves to humans in order to have children (proving that they are beasts or biological life in that matter) and part of their being became understandable and vulnerable to humans because of that. The Hunter is the "lucky" human to get rid of his humanity and become a great one -by eating the umbilical cords, gaining insight and drinking the blood of many powerful beings (including many great ones). This isn't Lovecraft lore, it only takes inspiration from it.
9 years and BB is still going strong. Born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood; the only thing that’ll make BB irrelevant at this point is BB2. . . . Subscribed!
Holy crap 10/10 video. This was awesome however I gotta point out 1 thing we meet and see many ascended humans into Kin in the game Living failures, rom & celestial emissary are all acceded human being with it being heavily implied that celestial emissary used to be children. Especially as we see the good isoldia turned into one aswell after she is replaced. Mergo aswell being the child of Queen yharman and Oden the formless great old one that also impregnated Ariana its a whole thing but all in all fucking loved this video and it was super fun to listen too
Once i heard that the diference between bloodborne and other souls is that in souls you are the rookie knight who is recieving soft guidance on your way to what you want to do. And in bloodborne YOU are that person that everyone goes to looking for help but the problem is that you are as much of a rookie as in the souls, and that incapacity reinforces that aura of despair the game has.
if you haven't watched the medical metaphor on youtube , you should i loved the game more than dark souls at the time , but when i watched that series , it cemented bloodborne as a gaming masterpiece that will never be topped up by anything , not even elden ring is that deep
My take on the story of Bloodborne, specifically regarding the 'true' ending had always centered around an often overlooked fact. The main character is not just a stand-in for the player, but rather a character with their own Agenda. Someone who specifically came to Yharnam, immune to the 'curse' of the beast (as can be seen in the intro cutscene), to receive Blood Ministration. Furthermore the Cainhurst Summons Letter solidifies that the character came here with a purpose and also suggests that the narrator is not all-knowing. Now. The reasoning behind why the Player Character chose to come here was most likely with the goal of ascending to godhood, however we know little as to why they want to achieve this or how they came to know about this knowledge. A very straightforward idea would be something along the lines of them working for a different god and wanting to take over, or simply coming from a place that gone through similar experiences, failing there and hearing about Yharnam. (These are just the most straight forward reasons as to why it could be) Another would simply be that the Doll is also a god that wished for a child (as gods in Bloodborne tend to do via surrogates) and as such the player character was chosen, contacted and brought to Yharnam to usurp the role. The line 'Ah You've found yourself a Hunter', for me had always been the Doll addressing the character rather than say the Messengers, further gleaming that more is going on (also the fact that with Insight she talks to you, makes you stronger as her champion, the fact that Gehrman doesn't know she moves and speaks). So while the outsider makes for an easy stand-in for the player, it also makes sense as to why the umbilical cord ending is what it is. Cosmic Horror is not only about ununderstandable things that defy logic. At the forefront it is about the concept of understanding something life changing, and that understanding then being taken away. To only be left with maddening questions and screams.
30:35 Okay. I have a counterpoint, There is another example of a person not going mad or turning into a beast but turning into a Great One like you do. The most likely one is Rom. In Micolash's prayer to Kos(m) he asks to be granted eyes as "[Kos] once did for the vacuous Rom." This could imply that Rom didn't always look like that and was most likely a mortal woman. She was granted insight by Kos (or Oedon if The Paleblood Hunt is to be believed) and became a great one like you did. This could show that we aren't "special" per se because we transcend humanity, we know this has happened before.
There is a Great One named Oeden, which is the only "Formless" Great One in the entire game. You don't fight him, yet he is everywhere in the game, referenced in the Healing Church locations like Cathedral Ward. There are runes dedicated to the "Formless One," and I speculate that Mergo could be the child of Oeden. You also never see Mergo. So it sorta stays true to the cosmic unseen horror thing too. You also don't comprehend many enemies/Great Ones without enough Insight (madness) so imo it doesn't detract too much from the cosmic horror thing much at all
One of the coolest things about Bloodborne that I've recently learned is that Bloodborne bosses attack at an actual rhythm. Yes. BLOODBORNE IS A RHYTHM GAME, and it hides it so well. Lady Maria's boss battle is a waltz. Meaning your battle is actually a DANCE!! It's so cool!! (The same dance rhythm is also in DS3's Dancer of the Boreal Valley, which is why that battle feels so Bloodborne-esque, but that's the only DS boss that does the same from what I know.)
If you want a Bloodborne protagonist experience in a Lovecraft story you should read the Randolph Carter stuff. I mean, I dont recommend it in general, but it does fit the description you've provided. Yharnham is basically Kadath.
the editing is really good, entertaining and not always 100% staying on the point to make it less boring but also not video cutting ping pong at all. Also great music choice
for the final section you mentioned that being able to kill all of these eldritch beings that are supposed to be unfathomable undermines the horror aspect but if you think about it this way, you're an unknown entity who came to yarnham, you've never known the strife of everyone living here, you weren't indoctrinated into the superstitions that create even more fear and to top it off you yourself are somewhat of an eldritch entity even before getting the ascension ending a seemingly unremarkable nobody comes to your town and starts slaughtering everything in their path without a care or break in their stride. that alone would be unfathomable to residents already living the nightmare.
Excellently done video, really solid analysis, narration, script and editing! I'd agree that Bloodborne doesn't really strike the horror part of cosmic horror, but to me it never really felt like it was trying to, because the meaning I got from the game is less about these cosmic entities, but humanity itself. The cosmic horror themes felt more of the set dressing to help tell the metaphorical story and express the themes in an interesting way, rather than be at the core of what Bloodborne is about. Though that's just how I've always seen the game, each person will inevitably see things just a touch differently. That said there was a very interesting theory I saw from a video going over boss designs of Bloodborne, from TBSkyen's playthrough/analysis video of the Orphan of Kos. He set forth an interesting "parasite theory" to Bloodborne, and that theory actually does make the game much more horrifying to think about. That the true horror wasn't the old ones themselves, but something far more insidious and far more hidden. Definitely give it a watch if you never have, its a great theory!
In Bloodborne, the true horror is you. It's in the very message you receive every time your hunt succeeds. Prey Slaughtered. The beasts, the Great Ones, the fallen hunters. They are all nothing but prey.
Similar to how/why Edgar Alan Poe invented the psychological horror genre (man's life was _stupid_ tragic), H.P. Lovecraft invented the psychological horror genre because the circumstances of his life left him a shivering mess. As a child he had weekly visits to an insane asylum after his father "went mad," grew up being smothered by his emotionally abusive mother until she "went mad" too. And since she'd instilled in him the British "bloodline" form of racism and he'd inherited both his parents' anxiety disorders, he spent his entire adult life convinced he too would one day "go mad." I think the reason we tend to give his extreme xenophobia a pass is because even though it taints all of his work, it's usually so over-the-top and incoherent that we don't take it seriously.
I think you miss the point of Bloodborne a bit. The game isn't a Lovecraft story, it's merely inspired by it. You say it's hypocritical but I fail to see any hypocrisy in its actual theming or storytelling. It isn't about some super special dude coming in, gaining superpowers, and wrecking house. If you want to make a very literal reading of the game while also insisting that it is definitely trying to be a Lovecraft story, then i guess you have a point in your last section, but it's pretty surface level. I don't think Bloodborne is trying to be Lovecraft, it's just inspired by it in several areas, but still doing its own thing. It's like when people say Dark Souls or Elden Ring are just based on Berserk, rather than acknowledge the actual fact that they're merely inspired by it in a few ways while still doing their own thing. I think it's more fair to say that Bloodborne appropriates elements of Lovecraftian storytelling for its own purposes. The theme of Bloodborne is pretty clearly about how monstrous mankind can be in their endless search for knowledge, and the suffering that is caused as a result. Look at the Research Hall in the DLC. Look at the atrocious experiments the Healing Church committed against innocent people all for the sake of attaining knowledge that wasn't theirs to know. The fact that as soon as they catch wind of an actual god washed up on the shore, the hunters slaughter a village and violate the pregnant corpse with experiments, resulting in the creation of the Hunter's Nightmare, a purgatory that acts as a capsule of the cruelty and suffering the hunters have caused on others and on themselves. The beasts in Old Yharnam were created from the Healing Church's own blood and experimentation, and then the district was burned down to contain the problem that THEY created, the beasts were largely innocent, transformed against their own will, and the were punished for a crime they didnt commit by those that did. We the player are afforded an opportunity to finish the job that the Choir and the Church and the School of Mensis started. They all had the pieces to the puzzle but were transformed or consumed or driven mad before they could accomplish their goal. We pursue that same goal with the same relentlessness and brutality that they did and slaughter our way through men, beasts, and gods, all for something that we don't understand and were never supposed to have. And what is our reward? Our ascension to godhood gives us no answers or knowledge or power, it simply leaves us helpless and completely stripped of whatever humanity may have remained. I could go on more and more but i think I've got my point across. If I was a better writer I'd make a video of my own because I think Bloodborne is one of the most universally misunderstood games when it comes to what it's actually about and what it's trying to say.
I do wonder if your opinion on the umbilical cord ending here has changed since playing Fear & Hunger? Because, at least to me, it seems fairly clear that in that ending, our character basically ends up as a Bloodborne equivalent of Funger's New Gods. We don't turn into one of the true Great Ones, we only barely make it to the level of one of the Ones that failed to ascend. Even doing everything we can, with all of our knowledge and all the resources at our disposal, we still only make it to like, the larval form of a failure. We don't "win", in context it's barely an ascension.
Even in the ending where you “watch him become a gaaawwwd” (sorry), it’s still a bit of a horrifying ending. Why? Because you become the very thing you were eliminating. The others still suffer, the others still exist. Depending on the bosses you faced, Ludwig is still tormented, Maria is still watching the clock tower, Orphan of Kos is still holding a nightmare above the hunters, etc. My favorite is waking up from the dream since it matches the Lovecraftian horror far better. However, becoming a god is still horrifying in the context seen.
I myself just beat the game for the first time and it was not that bad I killed almost every boss first try including dlc bosses and my death count was only 40
I think the most horrifying part of Bloodborne, and the thing that a lot of people forget, is that there is a very real disparity between the endings. through the old hunters DLC, you bear witness to the spectacle and tragedy that was the killing of Kos which ultimately set much of the game's story into motion. Though with the endings, they indicate that, on some level, the Hunter's Dream is a very real thing, you awaken in some random street far away from the clinic in which you first partook of the blood, meaning you wandered about. But then in the dream, you butchered MANY people along the way. "Away, Away" takes on a whole new meaning, when you consider that the hunters within the dream, are, in the real world, people driven completely insane by the blood, and go on a murderous rampage. Narratively, I think that the waking ending is the 'true' ending of the game, that Gerald killing you within the dream is a representation of the hunter's sanity snapping back to reality, much the same as a dream of falling and waking just before death pulls you back into the waking world.
The thing with Blodborne is that it takes from lots of different sources, themes and inspiration and it's able to mix them all seamlessly together to ultimately do its very own thing. Nothing it does detract from the dark, eldritch and horror themes but adds to them imo. Showing higher beings visually is not something Lovecraf hasn't done before, describing in detail some of them and making his own drawings sometimes. And the insight mechanic, which allows you to see the world in a truer form in a purely visual way, only adds even more to the horror that you're now able to experience fully. While I see your point at the end, I don't think it makes the game worse in any regard. The "true" ending for me at least doesn't feel empoweing at all. Inspiration is not meant to make something like the thing it takes from, but to use it to make something new. And Bloodborne succeeded in this flawlessly. Ultimately Bloodborne is about human nature, our thirst for knowledge, the atrocities we can do to obtain it, the duality that exist witin every person... and the evolution of the human species. Within the game, the "true" ending felt very natural even if it departs from some of the source material. And at the end one thing that Lovecraft wanted and did himself was for others to take from his and others works to make their own stories and add their own interpretations to it all.
I disagree with your point. You look at us killing everything and see us as a chosen one meant to level up and slay a deity. That however couldn't be further from the truth. Let's look at 2 pieces of music, and in just 2 boss themes we can see our characters journey. I also want to explain to you just how cosmic horror the 3 endings of this game really are. How we went from a lost soul with a purpose who became a hunter, into an eldritch powered blood drunk monster that cannot be stopped until it's either been severed from, put into, or outright transcends the very beings that made this nightmare known as Bloodborne. We start the game with the objective to find Pale Blood and we never learn quite what that is nor why we're going to Yharnam after it. After going through the motions and visiting the Hunter's Dream we spend the tutorial not only as a player learning mechanics but as a new Hunter learning to fight to survive so we can find Pale Blood at the Grand Cathedral. The theme that shows our mentality best is Father Gascoigne's theme. You may think that that's his theme but it isn't, it's ours. We're a new hunter in an odd new world and we have to fight to survive which for this first portion of the game I'd say fits the theming of our journey and it's at the start of the game. Now for the second theme that symbolizes us. We've went through the entire game and have fought so many absurd people and creatures the very world is falling apart. How many times have we died just to respawn to die again and revive over and over. We continue to grow stronger, our strength is the only constant we have. Grow stronger survive, what was our goal? Who knows, we're not even searching for it anymore. Just escape, must escape. Survive to escape. We face the DLC and learn the truth, but does that help our character or only further their unseen madness? Final boss we fight the first hunter, of course we'll win. We've survived worse, now we face one of the few Eldritch Nightmares in the game, the Moon Presence. It tries to take us to use us as it has Gherman for it's own inscrutable means. It can't however, we've had the umbilical cords we're too far along to be taken like this. We're capable of ascending, and because we're a maddened unstoppable force the Moon Presence is scared. It's movements show to us it's afraid and if we play as intended we're the aggressor hunting it until its demise. What does this have to do with our second theme? Simple, our second theme is the Moon Presence's theme. It's a song that honestly a killer or outright monster would have, and it's ours. It's how the Moon Presence and every other late game boss views us. We cannot be stopped. We will transcend The Hunt, and even then who's to say we won't continue the madness of The Hunt even after ascension? We're now an inscrutable Great One. The endings are all sad, not a single happy or even remotely close happy ending. First ending we're free from the Dream, but we're very susceptible to The Hunt. In this ending we're just like Jura and Aileen. Sure we're free from the Dream, but not the Hunt hell we're easy prey for it now because we're no longer immortal thanks to The Dream, and we don't have as strong of goals as Jura nor Aileen. Second ending debatably even worse, because now we replace Gherman and we not only continue The Hunt, but we now presumably condemn so many new Hunters. We've went from a victim to the perpetrator whom is still the victim. Last ending is the best right, we're a Great One free from it all we've ascended! Is that so? Great Ones are inscrutable. Who knows what goal we have now? We very may well create a new Fishing Hamlet or a new Yharnam for whatever new goal we will inevitably have as a new born Great One, and for what? Will our story go as the Moon Presences did? Do this absurd goal only to be slain and replaced by a Hunter we raise up? This isn't an ideal fantasy it's horror at its finest we don't know wat happens once we ascend. We may very well be the same as the monsters we've slain. Jura says it best: "Those aren't monsters you're slaying, they're people. You're the monster.". Bloodborne isn't hypocritical. It's Visceral, and we're not a chosen one protagonist. We're just another victim a little luckier than the others, and even then we're still a victim to a cycle we can never stop nor control. Worst of all we may even become a monster that just continues it all over again. Yet that seems to be the best ending, for better or for worse ascending is our best shot. Maddened by insight and blood. Willem was right Insight can lead us to ascension, Laurence was also right the Old Blood can lead us to ascension. We are, however mere men, and we're not made to be any more than just that. This is the beauty of Bloodborne. May chaos take the world!
What about Moon Presence and the Wet Nurse? Also even though it’s not a physical Great One, the Orphan of Kos is the spirit of one. Plus the Amygdala are Lesser Great Ones but you could definitely make an argument that they still have all the properties of a full Great One, just with less power.
@@penguinruler4512 yeah those are lesser great ones . In Lovecraft Theory the Old Great Ones like Azethoth : are 15 billion years old and the size of a galaxy with thousands of appendages and limbs that are themselves alive the size of planets . Cthulhu is a lesser great one but even a whisper would drive the whole human race insane in an instant . They can also bend space and time or transport you to another dimension like : Hell or a Nightmare
@@swordguy1243 ya but in Bloodborne lore they have a different definition of an Old Great One. Like Moon Presence is a fully fledged Great One and I know Oeden the Formless is also one, but technically the other ones are debatable.
@@penguinruler4512they are all formless. You never truly encounter a great one because you simply cant. The moon presence is simply a physical manifestation of the great one, not its true self. You moreso resist its power rather then truly defeating it
As a day one Bloodborne fan who played the demo before launch at a convention, I find your video to be one of the best ones yet. You see and appreciate this game on the same level as many of us do even without being a day one player. Plus the jokes are hilarious, especially the one about Florida 😂 But I will say a caveat about your sponsor: excess b12 intake can increase inflammation and cause a lot of annoying side effects like headaches or nausea. So be careful with consuming stuff that’s 100%+ of the DRV. Not a doctor, everyone should do their own research etc. really I’m just being a woreywart/mom friend I guess 👍
10:59 "early prevention of the scourge, achieved by disposing of victims......AND EVEN POTENTIAL VICTIMS *BEFORE SIGNS OF SICKNESS MANIFEST THEMSELVES* " Ok i'm sold, Bloodborne is the most metal game ever
I've played bloodborne years ago and I just realized something, the Hunter's Nightmare can go many ways. First area can be considered Ludwig's nightmare, Second area is Maria's and the third area is area all hunter's will suffer from whether they know it or not. Ludwig's area is pretty much all about the Cathedral Ward district, where he was rather famous. He feared about what the church might do with the hunters, and that scared him as the area is filled with corpses of people and beasts in a constant bloody battle. The astral clock tower being Maria's nightmare as it haunts her. She's haunted by her past and regrets, behind her is the Hamlet and in front of her is the Research Hall where she failed the captive patients. All she can do is seclude herself but it's useless as no matter where she looks she'll be reminded of what the hunters and the church did. The fishing hamlet is the place barely any hunter ever goes, newer hunters who reach it will only ever look at it as "why does this matter?" when in truth it shows the horror of being a hunter. What we all eventually do in the game. We don't get sad when fighting a boss and win. We celebrate with a text saying "Prey Slaughtered." one could look at that as we're already becoming blood drunk as all we do is kill senselessly with self perceived glory. That's just how I take it now after coming up with the thought. Probably looked into it a bit but I find it interesting, chances are many people already came up with the exact same idea years ago.
I'm going to disagree on the last part. You're right in the fundamental tension between fun shooty action and cosmic horror, a genre about disempowerment. However, there are ways to get around that, usually thematically. Eternal Darkness did it by unceremoniously killing your characters and then, a final gutpunch, it's revealed that your victory was just another elder deity's machinations. Bloodborne does something similar, yet perhaps even less personal. None of the endings are good endings. Childhood's beginning is just as much a loss of agency as replacing Gerhrmen, precisely because you are not seeking it. To transcend the hunt, you loss your humanity and you become locked in the cyclic hunts just as much as you were before, but as Flora's replacement instead of Gehrmen's.
That part of "only we succeeded where others failed" i disagree, if the game is about humans and how they trample over everyone to ascend, that being through blood or insight, it's very poetic that you ascend using both ways, it shows that every conflict in the world ends up being futile, and also in the game
I think this is mostly a pretty good breakdown, but I do have to disagree on the final point. As someone who understood what cosmic horror was about before playing bloodborne, it never clicked with me until I played it. The moment for me was when I realized that I could now see the giant amygdala clinging to the side of Oedon Chapel, and this stirred something visceral within me. There is an element of power fantasy one could say, sure, but ultimately in the case of bloodborne unlike most other fromsoft titles, something is off. For starters, you don't know what is real. You imagine you do, you think maybe waking up will release you from the nightmare, but then you remember that 'waking up' is merely ignorance of the greater scope of the universe, that everything is layered dreams within the mind of some greater uncaring eldritch being. You may brush it aside as 'just tentacle monsters', however this fails to recognize the fact that one of these creatures can trap an entire generationally unrelated group of people bound to the same concept of 'hunting' into an eternal purgatory over a past grudge. You also don't know for sure whether you yourself might be a beast, since the game was initially marketed with a detail somewhat left out from the game, the fact that beasts project their beasthood onto others. While I tend to imagine, as most do, that our player is a hunter, it's a question that has stirred with me since I first played regardless, what if those Yharnam townsfolk we've been slaughtering in droves are actually more human than we are? It leaves an eerie sense of doubt in your mind, even if you don't truly believe it, because that notion is something difficult to come to grips with. You also aren't aware of everything that actually happens to you in the game, like you see a source of frenzy and don't think much of it, but your blood reacts profoundly to it, so much it seeks to escape your body if not diluted by 'sedatives' which are literally just basic human blood. Implying something inside you, knows more than you do (we'll get back to that). None of the game's endings are ostensibly good or bad. 'You wake' up in ignorance, live forever in a dream, or 'ascend' to godhood... or do you? You see, a theory that has been shared around a bit now focuses largely on the persistence of parasitism seen in the game, maggots, spinal fluid amoebas, vermin (which may or may not exist?), kos parasites, snakes, eyes, blood dregs, phantasms, blood echoes, the moonlight greatsword, quicksilver ( to justify that specifically, it's implied to be related directly to Formless Oedon), etc. In almost every circumstance, these parasites alter the mind, and you the player, are no exception. In fact, I would propose the idea that you may not play as a hunter at all, but rather a 'bloodborne' parasite, one which seeks to grow from the nourishment of it's parent, or surrogate, and begin the cycle all over again. This is why I think you missed the true cosmic horror at play here, the designs of the monsters are cool, and theories abound about the individual great ones, their motivations, their capabilities, and what they even are, but put all that aside. The fact of the matter is, what makes bloodborne so compelling is how much it gives us to work from, yet how little we actually understand. For every certainty there is an uncertainty. Are we a beast, a hunter, a parasite, or do we actually exist in the 'waking world' at all? How many layers does the dream extend? How much are we not seeing? We see Ebrietas regardless of our insight level, she is a 'left behind' great one, and so despite all of the grandiose presentation, is she actually the least significant or least worthy great one? Basically, we just don't/can't truly know.
The only thing bad about bloodborne, i can say, is a constant camera issue present in all fromsoft game. And jump on O after spinting, which im happy to see never returned.
I love the hat so much, in part because I forgot that wasn’t a part of your typical look until you pulled attention back to it in Character Designs. Bloodborne is one of those rare things I can listen to people go on and on about over and over again. I love hearing different perspectives on this game. There is something so visceral about Yharnam that pulled me in once upon a time and has never truly let me go.
You know, in all the years Bloodbore has been my favorite video game I literally never understood why the rally mechanic was a thing. Thank you for finally answering that question
I don’t think any of the endings are meant to be satisfying. The irony is that being a foreigner is what allowed us to take on the things that the others were so seduced by. The endings all still say that there is no escape from the cycle. These were only Gods to those who treated them that way. Much like how humans treat their ideas of Gods. All human gods are flawed and petty and these celestial gods are no different. They obsess over finding new children when they inevitably lose their own and then keeping them like a doll (see what they did there) that no one else can play with. The way that the moon presence grabs you and hugs you is disturbing but it’s also not the act of some all powerful deity. These things were incomprehensible to humans during what appears to be their steam age. But it’s all relative.
I disagree with your talk on the final ending, as Lovecraft and his writing cohort also wrote endings to their storoes where the main character either died, went mad, or (and this is the important one) were transformed, either forcibly or voluntarily, into an eldritch horror beyond the comprehension of mortal men. The key distinction is that these transformations alway, *always* came at a heavy price, mainly the loss of self and/or one's memories and humanity, and an inability to interact with humanity as you used to. In transforming into an eldritch horror, you are no longer himan, nor do you identify with them or whatever miserable fate befalls them. In Bloodborne's true ending, you have shed your humanity and become an infant Great One with no memories or connections to your past, and no care for the suffering of the ants of humanity beneath you, implying that you will more than likely perpetuate the cycle of madness and destruction that befell the Pthumereans before, and Yharnum now. On the surface, it looks like you, the player, have won, but it literally costs you everything, including your past, present, and future, and it ultimately changes nothing, as the future is still one characterized by humanity's frailty and insignificance in the face of higher powers that care nothing about us, as giants care not for the ants crushed beneath their feet when walking, which is very inline with the themes of HP Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.
Great video but I have to, as apparently many other people here, disagree with your final points. In every single FromSoft game you are basically the "chosen one". Yes, FromSoft usually does not do chosen one concept the same way as others, it is not chosen one saving everything, being the good bro here grandma let me walk you across the road, but it is still the concept of chosen one. The whole concept of SoulsBorne genre is "YOU are the one who will perservere and do the THING that nobody else could".
Oh my gosh I broke down laughing when I saw the long John silvers with the scholar of the first sin subtext and you ask “people go here?” Honestly my favorite new soulsborne joke 🤣
About "beating the boss and getting a degree" I got this not too far from release after migrating and finished the thing before leaving home for my honeymoon. That was a long time.
you made a solid point about something I wished to see more of in bloodborne, that being a power you cant win against, there was a taste with the frenzy radius near the brain but in videogame fashion you cut down the chains holding it and no longer is the frenzy a threat. what if they kept that cut moon presence final form fight but instead of winning you got to witness its true cosmic scale in some form and just lose
Given some thought to the matter: I think are character at that moment can visually describe a great one if insight is present to see the great one, but the description will change depending on who is able to see such indescribable figures. The insight tho does prevent insanity but since we partake in blood ministration since the beginning they kinda balance out in a twisted way as we get more insight we keep the beasting at bay but use the blood viles to heal. I never understood people’s dislike for this healing venture as its one of if not the main trope of the game. The thing i think some people miss for the dlc is that its an entirely different world to the base world. In that world your fighting that worlds Laurence, as our worlds Laurence’s head sits on an altar. Ludwig i believe is base world sent to dlc world turned monster and considering you can only get vermin from the dlc, Valtr is dlc world sent to base world to recruit for dlc world’s infestation as seen as the hunter who tries to kill you outside that tower at the lamp is base world, jelly you got the part for the club and not him. I can understand the “how can you kill a god” thinking but considering its “all a dream” it gives in to a power fantasy that becomes achievable due to it being a game and a dream in the same sense. I have loads more on this game but the comments already too long, its a favorite title cant you tell, so ill leave with this: this is a great insight to an already perfect game, i just hope we get a remaster (not a remake, trust me) that gives us a little more content to mull over on a 60fps setting with a save port, it would save/change my life. Edit:18.8k subs in the vid you said 10k, holy crap 8k over night basically.
Killing gods is a pretty common thing in Japanese media so it's really not that surpring that you get to kill a bunch of them in Bloodborne despite being a cosmic horror.
The best part of Bloodborne not making sense is that, that's the point of the lore itself. The more you know, the more mad you go. Look at Micolash who looked too deep and went insane.
The slightly faster cadence in your voice when you chugged the gamersupps absolutely killed me lmao. Also, phenomenal video, have watched several times.
Your complaint is reasonable, but a big thing you missed is that the physical forms of the Great Ones are not their be-all-end-all form. They're essentially the absolutely best way they could be represented on the pitiful Waking World plane, kind of like how Carl Sagan described a 3D boot in 2D world. All the Great Ones exist in other planes, and "killing" them in the Waking World does very little in the grand scheme. Your point about human insignificance being overlooked in the game could still stand with these facts in mind, but it's not as much of a problem as you posited
I would like to add in some insight and my own interpretations inspired by the Dreamlands series and works of Lovecraft's peers. It is stated in numerous works in some way or another that in the realm of dreams, the human psyche becomes physically equivalent to the souls of outer gods and other beings. That the human subconscious and the human mind, within the dreamlands, can greater contest with and comprehend the unknowable horrors of the universe. In bloodborne, where do we kill every god we kill? We kill their physical bodies within the dreams. Not their true selves, not the essence of what the gods truly are, but their psyche given flesh. Bloodborne makes a point that almost all of the old gods once had physical bodies or that they lose their child in the process of ascension. I think the Gods of bloodborne are not true gods, but just beings that have reached a scale beyond human. Beings that can exist *simultaneously* within both the dream and the physical world. So when we kill them within the dream, we kill their true bodies, or at least part of their true selves, and remove their influence from our collective subconscious. The moon presence is not permanently slain, you start your ascension by taking in the umbilical cords that either it severed from its own child, or perhaps the physical remnants of the umbilical cord of the orphan of kos. You physically become part of it, in a sense, and thus can contest it. Without this umbilical cord, the moon presence simply makes you the next host of its will. It's next pawn. You have to take in the essence of the child it wishes to reclaim to do this. The orphan of kos? Killing him doesn't do anything. You don't get the message Nightmare Slain until you then go to his soul, still clinging to his dead mother by a shadowy umbilical cord, and sever it. This isn't even mentioning some of the other beings, the unknown great ones like Oedon, who has no physical form, but who's influence seems to manifest in the very blood of every living being, or at least every being that takes in the Old Blood. The eldritch horror in bloodborne, in my opinion, lies in the places that the game doesn't explain, the things that we have no true answers for, and the fact that even if we blend the Victorian Horror (beasts and monsters are real and we must kill them) with the cosmic horror (beasts and monsters are real and we cannot understand them and they don't care about or understand us), they aren't actually hypocritical of themselves. The blend of them means that even if you don't understand them, you must try to kill them, and even if you try to kill them they can't really die within the mortal realm. We don't know what happens after the transcendence ending, but we know that without the moon presence, the dream should collapse. Will we vanish with it? Are we maintaining the hunter's dream ourselves now? Are we going to create our own dream realm, or perhaps fall into another? As for the final point: I think the point is less that you are special and better than everyone else, and more that all those madmen were "right," at least in the sense that "Yeah the old gods ascended from mortals at some point too," but killed and tortured thousands to reach their ends. You do the same, really, as you slaughter everything in your path to reach the heights they were piling up bodies towards... It's like if Griffith did everything he did, started the ascension ritual, and then before he said "I sacrifice" Guts snatched his ass and said "No, I sacrifice you" or something lmao There's more I could try to say but I just thought some of this may be interesting to you and perhaps give a new angle to your own thoughts on bloodborne. Either way, fantastic video, thank you for the laughs and the insight.
I just started, at the shadows of yharnum. Put well over 20 hrs so far, my cooworker asked if ive ever played a souls game. He said to start here since its the hardest in his opinion, and anyone i ask agrees with him. I love this game so much, like favorite game kinda levels. I give my coworker an amazing thank you
The cosmic horror of Bloodborne comes from the experience Eid the story in its initial playthrough. There are still loads of details in the story so vague we can only hypothesize as to their outsources. Even the endings aren’t concrete. We have no idea why all of this came about, where the beings came from or what the full reach of their power is. The cosmic horror still exists as the arguement against its existence folds in on itself.
13:32 I think you misspoke. You said "cause and effect" when you probably meant "Kos and effect," which is an easy mistake to make, though some do say Kosm.
Lmao 🤣
kosm and effect
Just one word: *clicks tongue* Noice!
10/10 comment.
Dude that was beautifully done 10/10 I agree with guy above me lol
to be fair Lovecraft also had some moments in his works where he goes "The concept and beast was incomprehensible to humans and undescribingly terrifing"
>proceeds to describe the beast or phenomenon for half a page or something.
So I can kinda see why bloodborne took a more head on approach to cosmic horror and still could count as inspired by classic cosmic horror.
This is true, but Lovecraft also uses conflicting descriptions in order to convey complexity. He gives you an idea of what it is, but also gives you aspects that are seemingly impossible to wrap your head around. Think about something like Color Out of Space: it’s impossible for a human think of a new color, but he uses words to let you imagine the concept of this impossibility. That’s a very hard hurdle to overcome in a visual medium, because now you’d be expected to show the audience a new color that doesn’t exist. I think Bloodborne does its best to tackle some of these themes and ideas, but I think its fundamental design gets in the way.
@@SweetsIsOnline I would say that the color of your favorite skybox is a great example of new colors that reinforce that concept in Bloodborne. The only bright colors that are used in that game (atleast those hues of purple blue) are in the skybox from what I've played so far.
The whole point of these descriptions is that they're completely inaccurate. Its not that the entities are indescribable, everything can be described. They're ineffable, you can give it as many descriptions as you want. That doesn’t mean any of them are accurate.
@@whitenobeard
I wouldn't call them *completely* inaccurate, they're just simplified into the nearest alternative that humans can actually comprehend.
More incomplete than just wrong.
Multiple accounts aren't equally wrong, just equally far away from completion.
Like trying to picture every single number from 0 to infinity.
Have you seen what he named his cat?
27:45 I've heard it said "H.P. Lovecraft feared two things: black people, and everything else." His was an incredibly troubled mind, but the true racism stands a step above even his general paranoia towards the world and beyond it.
A fact nobody seems to acknowledge, or even KNOW, is that he did actually get better. I wouldn't go so far as to say he stopped being racist, but he mellowed out and seemed to stop his almost universal views about how everyone "other" was bad and evil. His remarks on foreigners and other races lessened and he was, if I recall correctly, less harsh than he used to be when dealing with people he considered "bad" in any respect. You have to understand, his fears really WERE born out of sheer unfamiliarity. He wrote a horror story about AIR CONDITIONERS for Christ's sake! What I'm saying is, when he finally MET the people he hated, experienced the things he feared and just generally got older, he seemed to chill out a bit. I mean ultimately he was still a bastard don't get me wrong but he did actually get better, if only to a certain extent, and I do think we should ACKNOWLEDGE that and not EXCUSE it.
The reason he could imagine these cosmic horrors was because they were the representation of his paranoia towards everything that he deemed as other than himself.
I think his cat's name was pretty adorable.
Lovecrafts father died in a mental hospital after years of paranoia and hallucinations. Probably schizophrenia. He claimed at times that he had seen the truth and that others were not ready for it.
Lovecraftian horror is basically "What if that schizophrenic rambler was right all along?"
@@YTDariuS-my6dg i agree, if i remember right, i think he even was ashamed of his old views in the letter one month before his death. And his wife was a russian jew. I dont think he was that bad, its just easy to clown on a paranoid guy
To refute the final section of this video, have you considered that the point isn't that you're some superhero who kills all the beasts, but actually the beast itself? The pale blood that's mentioned throughout the game is the Moon Presence (there's some evidence of this in the original Japanese that was lost in the translation), and your mission all along was to seek it. This is a dark fantasy story where you play as the monster, slaughtering your way across a city and dreams in order to usurp a god. There can be no happy endings because no matter what you choose at the end, the horrors never stop. I think that the gameplay enhances the dark fantasy and cosmic horror themes, rather than detracts from them, because you're not a hero and you never were. You are the unknown, coming to this city to show them what really horror is.
This guy gets it!!
It’s also a great exploration into mankind seeking that which they shouldn’t, even when they’re told not to do it. The second your quest was started, you were basically fucked into either horribly dying and giving up, or making it to a goal which you probably don’t want. All the endings are horrible in this game, because all of them rob you of fundamental humanity. One removed your memory, which is all you are. One removed your agency, which is what we use to be ourselves. And the final removed your personhood, and transforms you into something beyond humanity. It’s such a good fucking game, god damn
You are right. There is no 'good' ending in bloodborne, and you are not a superhero because you aren't a hero to begin with. You are doing everything for yourself, not for the well-being of others.
There are three levels of success, that's true, but the situation of the world never improves and the nightmare never ends. The only thing changing is your own position in that world: you can end like an blissfully ignorant nobody, in a mid-management position, or as the boss. The pain doesn't end, the only thing that changes is the amount of pain you suffer compared to the amount of pain you inflict.
To debate the final conclusion, BloodBorne is not just about Cosmic Horror or Lovecraft. The real theme behind Bloodborne is "ASCENSION" or "Cosmic Evolution". The interdimensional beings and their eldritch horror is just a by-product of lower life forms like humans trying to comprehend and ascend/evolve their body, mind and soul into a higher form. And we see proof of this in the "True ending" when the player transcends into a baby "great one".
Excellent interpretation, and btw, I think there are story threads and mechanics in others of the games - such as Demon's Souls - that support similar interpretations somewhat less overtly. DS3 has it the least imo, maybe because it sought to continue a narrative rather than to be a self-contained statement, but there are notable traces of themes like you've just described in all the rest
I can't get over the pun that you gain "insight" by "lining your brain with eyes".
Also if you put the camera inside the dolls head you can see her eyes have a second set of pupils looking inward. In-sight
30:54 which is the point of the game exactly. We see these greater beings like kos, the orphan, the moon presence, rom, the brain of mensis, ebritas, etc. having supposedly "ascended" above humanity. And yet, they're mortal. And not just that, but they're all hideous, deformed, and in some cases, pathetic creatures. So yes, Willem and Laurence and the Church and Mensis were technically "right", just not in the way they imagined.
The point of Bloodborne isn't "Cosmic horror monster scary", it questions the very nature of being human and the concept of humanity. The game is a warning about mankind playing god. That is the the true horror of Bloodborne.
as correct as you are, why then keep calling the game a cosmic horror themed game?
(that question isn't specifically pointed at you, more so in general, as a lot of people still call it that)
This needs to be the top of the comments so everyone sees it.
@@shadowsketch926it has a theme of cosmic horror but it isn't a cosmic horror game
the game actually paints the great ones as more sympathetic and caring creatures than humanity
@@Lin_Eileen i wouldn't call them _more_ sympathetic and caring, they just usually don't go to such extremes. Rather, the Great Ones don't go out of their way to be malevolent towards humanity, as humanity is towards itself. To them, we are like ants - and just like with ants, a person might, on a whim, decide to help an ant out as best they understand or, similarly, might pay so little attention to the very existence of ants that they step on and kill countless without even knowing. What if floods are just a water god expanding its influence in our general direction, and the inevitable waste (because nothing perfectly stores energy) alone is what causes such awful disasters? What if, like a child randomly deciding to dig a hole, earthquakes are just the result of some relatively young god randomly deciding to start one, because why not?
Fact of the matter is, to them, it's probably just _interesting_ to hear what people plead for, and now and then they might decide to indulge us for the fun of it. There's no need to hate or destroy us because we're so below them we barely count as amusement for them. The one single instance of when people pissed off a Great One was Kos, who decided to send everyone involved into Ultra Hell - future generations too, just for being vaguely connected. Every other instance of suffering in the game comes, ultimately, from the Great Ones, too, only it's not because they hate us, they just don't care what they want to do is bad for us. Think of how Arianna gives birth to a little baby Great One at the end of her quest, or how countless Hunters go mad from the adverse effects of the Old Blood - take Gascoigne, for instance. He was good enough a person, had a wife, kids, a family. And that whole family suffered because some fucking fratboys a few years back decided to beat an Old One (and it's kid) to death. "Curse the fiends, their children too - and their children forever true." Yet, what sin did Gascoigne's younger daughter commit, save for being daughter to a Hunter? What sin did the Yharnamites commit as a whole - sure, a lot of them are xenophobic dicks, but most of them started out afraid, sick and hopeless; then the Healing Church came with it's "miracle blood" and ultimately made everything worse.
At the end of the day, the Great Ones merely function under a wholly different logic to us, and saying that they're compassionate or sympathetic isn't quite right even when the outcome is "good" - the statistics don't exactly add up either, since every time someone got what they wanted from a Great One, it turned out to be a bad thing.
Another reason Gascoigne is a great tutorial boss: explore the arena and you can find a music box that gives you an extra edge in the fight. Tells you a lot, actually. Exploration is valuable. Sometimes the best way to win a fight isn't just slamming your head into it. Use your bloody combat items. And, most interestingly, that combat and lore are tied together. So sometimes learning a bit about your enemies can give you a leg up later, too.
I thought the ONLY way to get that music box was talking to Gascoigne’s daughter near the fountain
Yes I'm mixing it up with the brooch
always love to think of all the players who walked around playing the music box in random areas to see if it had an effect anywhere else.
I think it does in one other place… can’t remember where tho. I only ever used it the first times I fought papa g. What a hot mess that was.
@@HeatherHolt The music box is a funny trinket. Besudes Father Gascoigne fight and the interaction with the dying Mergo, there are two other instances were the music box has an effect. They are probably glitches, but who knows.
The first one is the fight with Mergo's Wet Nurse. If you play the music box in that fight, MWN will try to evade left or right, like if the music box playing was an attack. It does no damage to her, tho.
The second one happens in some Chalice Dungeons. Some of them have this large bells, that, if hit with an attack, will make a sound that beckons enemies. That sound can also be triggered by playing the music box near them.
The power fantasy is where the horror truly lies. Think about all the bosses you beat; at first you think you are doing good and cleaning the streets of monsters, but as the story progresses you begin to understand the complexity of why Yharnam is so fucked. Father Gascoigne is a mirror to ourselves, Blood Starved Beast, is probably some sad person who was too far gone, as Djura said, they are just people. Rom is supposed to be an old scholar from Byrgenwerth who ascended and tried to keep the eldritch truth from destroying Yharnam until we step in and remove her, wreaking madness all over the city. Ebrietas doesn't even attack you until you do (as does Rom) alluding she had no reason to be hostile unless she had to defend herself. And there's so many more depth with every encounter, every character and every single enemy that makes you realize that everything is not black and white, no real villains and just a bunch of people making mistakes and wrong decisions that slowly destroy the city, and you the player are definitely the furthest from a hero. If anything, all our actions seem to be more detrimental to the already fucked up situation Yharnam is in. The power fantasy is the point the game is always trying to make from the get go and the first fight with Gascoigne is a man who let the hunt consume him and turned him blood drunk. Killing everything in our path was exactly what led to so much tragedy and we the players are doing exactly that. You are the monster and you should feel bad for killing, but you do it anyway, because its fun.
Why should I feel bad? Im cleaning house of everything they did. Better to remove it then to let it sit there and get worse.
No, you shouldn't feel bad for killing all those things. You are actually solving the situation depending on what ending you achieve. In any case, bloodborne is literally a one night shift
@@ColdNorth0628yeah I can see that. Instead off pulling apart what few pillars of stability Yharnam had left, you're actually pulling back the rug and the covers to get straight to the source. You can't fix damp without finding the mold, and its often hidden away. Most bosses are the damp, the great ones are the mold.
To debate the final conclusion, BloodBorne is not just about Cosmic Horror or Lovecraft. The real theme behind Bloodborne is "ASCENSION" or "Cosmic Evolution". The interdimensional beings and their eldritch horror is just a by-product of lower life forms like humans trying to comprehend and ascend/evolve their body, mind and soul into a higher form. And we see proof of this in the "True ending" when the player transcends into a baby "great one".
I would say that the blood church are the furthest from morally grey all sides involved are some shade of messed up but the church is one of the worst and was the most responsible for the situation you are in since at the end of the day you are trying to survive and you need to be doing this to get blood to survive. We are here cause we have little choice does that mean all we do is justified no.
I’d actually propose a different reading of the Childhood’s Beginning ending.
The Good Hunter comes into the story to save their own life. They come to Yharnham for healing, only to be roped into the night of the hunt. They slowly try to help others, sending them to Oedon Chapel or to Iosefka’s clinic, but things continue to get worse. Gascoigne can’t be saved, he’s too far gone. Arianna can’t be saved, she goes mad when Formless Oedon impregnates her. Oedon Chapel gets whittled away by the disguised beast you found in Hemwick. Your friends, Alfred and Eileen, meet their ends as a result of their personal quests - Alfred going mad to reify a genocidal martyrdom, and Eileen mortally wounded in battle with a foe beyond her abilities as a Hunter of Hunters, passing her badge on to you.
More and more you seek to transcend the hunt, to escape the nightmare - and this seems at first like a triumphant path. You put down the One Reborn, an artificial great one. You release the stillborn Brain of Mensis. You kill Ebrietas, who started this whole catastrophe, ending the church’s ambitions for good. You fulfill your mission as a dreaming hunter, and kill the infant Mergo, whose birth caused the fall of Pthumeru. You march on the Hunter’s Dream, refuse blissful ignorance, and tell Gehrman where he and his mission can stick it. You face down his master, Flora, the Pale Moon Presence, beyond all odds you slay her. You’ve done it, you’re free, you can help them…
Only, in doing so, you’ve realized the dreams of the madmen you wished to escape, ascended beyond humanity, beyond caring about any of the people you did this to save. It’s a perfect ending precisely because it vindicates the scholars, the church, and the hunters. For all your attempts to subvert their plans for you, for Yharnham, all you ended up doing was take over their scheme to transcend. It’s not an empowering ending (well, apart from the literal sense that you gain immense cosmic power). It’s a tragic one.
And yet, it does potentially give you the power to make things better... and it's the only ending that does. Is it tragic that you had to play by the world's messed-up rules to do that, or is it empowering that you can at all? Maybe it's both.
There is lore throughout the game that insinuates that the great ones we meet throughout the game are the ones that failed to ascend with the other great ones beyond the realm we live in due to them still yearning for human attachments. Ebrietas had been mourning the corpse of Rom the vacuous spider, showing a form of relationship they had together. The moon presence had sent us to go and kill the baby great one Mergo to possibly keep it as the great one with the most influence and power in our world. The brain of Mensis is a great one that seems to have gone mad when trying to ascend and now just attacks anything it can see. Kos had sheltered her child from the outside world and cursed the old hunters in rage for what they had done to her son and the hamlet. Kos' child was fearful of everything around it and screams out to it's mother multiple times throughout the fight for protection. Oedon is known to look for ways to leave behind children in the world. Some details being the times with the prostitute and Iosefka. Mergo is possibly a child of Oedon's due to it not being visible like Oedon is as well. Many of these great ones have connections to the real world that they don't abandon and could explain why they stuck around and not left with the other ones as well.
Arianna. Her name is Arianna.
Revisited Bloodborne recently to run a dnd (actually heavily homebrewed pathfinder 1e) campaign inspired by it and what I've gathered is bloodborne is a very Robert E Howard take on eldritch themes. Robert E Howard (Author of Conan the Barbarian, King Cull, etc...) was good friends with Lovecraft as an author, but held completely opposite views. While Lovecraft focused on the insignificance of mankind and the fear of powers beyond our influence, and even reckoning. Howard's work has always been human-forward. Conan is a champion of the people, someone who reminds us of where we came from and what we are, and just how powerful the indomitable human will can be in the face of incomprehensible powers. Lovecraft's creations have appeared numerous times in Howards works, but never in their original form of an unknowable absolute power beyond mortal reckoning. They appear instead as something to be challenged and overcome by human will, even if they cannot be directly supplanted or destroyed, their influence can be mitigated by the sheer force of human will. Whether intentional or not (given that the influence of lovecraft is obvious and that of howard is much lesser in Bloodborne) Bloodborne can be appreciated best, not as a work of conventional lovecraftian horror (at least in term of gameplay, lore-wise it absolutely can be), but as a work of his good (and much less racist) friend Robert E Howard's take on the same concepts, but one where humans are meaningful and powerful.
This is honestly one of the best videos I have seen on this website. You were able to mix game analysis and memes perfectly, while introducing a concept that I'm sure not many people have thought about. I love Bloodborne, and I have watched so many videos about almost every part of it, but none of them talked about how the game design goes against the themes of Lovecraftian horror. Great video, goodbye, and don't you dare go Hollow.
Passing off meme lore as real is a bit frustrating, but oh well
Cringe
Glazing
It's definitely a video....
D ridin like this gon get you pregnant 😭😂
Trick weapons are so dope that I am literally homebrewing them into my DnD games.
Fuck yeah
I remember seeing somewhere that the reason you can ascend is that everyone else either went the way of blood or insight, and you are special because you use both
I see it as a new way to be roped into the cycle.
The first ending you are a cog, the average uncritical person feeding the machine and reaping the rewards.
The second and third are 2 responses to seeing the hunt for what it is, how it strips away the humanity of others, how it tries to strip yours away.
One is available to all. An emotional response, maybe you kill Gehrman out of Mercy, a defiant "FUCK YOU" to the night of the hunt. One that is punished by being forced into one of the most pivotal roles of the hunt.
In the other you prove you not only know the hunt, but that you don't care. You have seen the cycle and you see a way to "win". So you do. And become just as trapped as you would be if you replaced Gehrman. You are at the top of the cycle but still a part. And much like in the other endings you are a replaceable part as well.
Is the Gehrman you kill in your next playthrough really Gehrman? Is the moon presence we kill the first? How many cycles will you last before your ending concludes just like the first.
Your execution.
@@samfish2550 I think you are right. The cycle never ends, the only thing that changes is your position in the pecking order.
you're also slurping up eldritch umbilical cords like spaghetti. I'd say that helped.
@@eldritchcupcakes3195 that probably helps.
If you look in the water immediately after entering the fishing hamlet from the astral clocktower, youll see yharnam below.
When you find the note "the sky and the cosmos are one" it's referring to the fact that the dimensions within bloodborne are stacked vertically atop each other.
By the same merit, the sea and the cosmos are also one. Remember how we entered the pocket dimensions to battle Rom?
Hearing Rain World music whilst you talk about ascension somehow triggered something in my brain.
I am now cursed to think of the healing church whilst trying to think of the ancients from Rain World.
wait where I cannot hear it
Nothing makes me happier than seeing bloodborne still talked about
Its still a damn masterpiece
i bet a pc port would make u happier
@@imfrizzy2442it would make my old ass ps4 happy bc it sounds like it’s gonna take off and fly to Berlin when I go on yet another Bloodborne play thru binge. I dont mind 30 fps locked tho, really if you can BL4 Bloodborne with 30fps you can play any game at 30fps (not that you should HAVE TO…but you could).
Legit never considered enemy blood explaining rally
I don't think there's a single other game that merges its gameplay, setting and story/lore into one cohesive package. Sekiro comes close but I think Bloodborne especially blends its mechanics,/style into the environment, which feed off one another as you, the player, becomes either more desperate to escape or more fiendish to press on. There's a real meta-narrative happening where you become the beast, where at first you feel trapped in Yharnam and over time you flip that and it's everyone else that's trapped with you. The more you play, the deeper you fall into the Hunt.
@@geordiejones5618 Yep. The first Dark Souls comes very close too, I think Bloodborne kinda perfects what it was trying to do story-wise... although I prefer how in Dark Souls, not understanding shit is kinda part of the story in itself. You're being manipulated and don't even realize it because you don't know WTF is going on.
Pretty intuitive tbh
With the Fishing Hamlet, they didn’t just kill everything, they actively experimented on the villagers and Kos’ corpse. I’m also pretty sure Willem and Lawerence had already went their separate ways before this but I’m unsure.
The reason Bloodborne makes no sense to you is because we are used to meet a villain, the only twist is that everybody you meet is a victim, the true villain being the Great Old Ones.
21:50 There's actually a reason for the superstitions of the old hunters. When you heal using a blood vial you stab the syringe into your right leg. The old hunters didn't know that the blood itself was what caused the beasthood and instead believed it to be an infection
I'd argue that the endings and the power fantasy ultimately don't undermine the themes. In the case of the endings because either the sunrise or slavery ending are both thematically perfectly in line with the type of horror it goes for, replacing gherman is the most satisfying one for me. In both cases you end up unable to change anything about the night of the hunt, and the cycle will go on. The rebirth ending I can see your point more, but I think that Bloodborne differs fundamentally from Lovecraft in that it's a horror epic. I think that's reflected in the fact that it's not a survival horror game even though it has a lot of things that could be found in one. It's action horror. It retains the horror thanks to the difficulty and the enemy and area design, but also encourages you to best it, to become more ferocious than it. I think that in a lot of ways understanding the ramifications of your actions and your role in all of it is at the core of what makes these game's stories great. The rebirth ending is no more supposed to be positive or conclusive than either of the other. You can follow the madness down to the bottom and figure out you gotta eat the umbilical cords but is that a good thing? Is transcending the hunt a good thing for anyone but you? Or even you, considering you become something completely uknowable to the player? In a sense you do vindicate the madness of Laurence Wilem and the rest, so would you do it just to kill one more thing? To win? The ending itself isn't really grandiose at all, it's very odd and sudden. The doll holding a newborn is just haunting. For all we know that's the birth of the most fucked up great one of all. That's why I mean it's an epic.It's more tragic than it is nihilistic, and tragedy proper needs their characters to have enough agency to be able to at least destroy themselves. Having an avatar mute random protagonist puts you in a position where the story of your character succeeding isn't really the same as would be thematically for the protagonist in a book. You have your victory against the enemies as a player, but even the third ending remains a hollow victory, let alone an eternal curse or being cut off and forgetting everything. Gameplay wise Bloodborne throws enough terror, punishment and heinous shit your way that it manages to balance the player's empowerement with the horror in my opinion. And in the moment you begin the power fantasy is based off consumption of blood vials, murder points and Insight, you were following in Laurence and Wilem's footsteps the whole time already😂
Speaking of horror epics. You should check out "Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath" by HP Lovecraft. I would go as far as saying that Bloodborne draws heavily from this big story as it deals with dreams and confronting the Old Gods.
By my view the ascension ending is in the same grey area that embodies the game's other endings.
I view the game as being about humanity, and the choices, methods, and ways of thinking that lead us to lose our own, or strip it away from others.
With that interpretation in mind here's how I see the endings.
In the ending where you submit and wake from the dream you were a perfect cog. You didn't question or faulter, you killed what you were asked to and reaped the benefits of the blood you calusly spilled, spared the guilt of memory as you health is restored.
The next two endings I interpret as the "defiant endings". Their themes mirror each other, each being an embodiment of how your character reacts to the cycle of violence that is the hunt when truly examined. How you respond when you realize all the PEOPLE you killed and why you did it.
In the ending where your hunter replaces Gehrman, you make a sacrifice of yourself. A show of mercy towards Gehrman in an act of defiance, if only a meaningless one, against the night of the hunt and the person it pushed you to become. And in that process maintaining your humanity, at least for a time. In the end you are still forced to uphold the unbreakable cycle of the hunt. How many times do you need to see it before you break?
In the other you are no longer sacrificing yourself and keeping your humanity, but the other way around. You give away every recognizable part of yourself, physically and likely mentally as well, in the grand pursuit of something greater. You are now what is orchestrating the hunt. Even then I'd argue you'd never be truly free, you have proven your nature. The pride and drive for knowledge only the night of the hunt can provide, assuming you have a choice in that matter. Regardless, great ones have died before, how many times will the cycle run before you find a hunter breaking free of your own embrace.
In all 3 endings you feed into the machine, in all 3 the hunt goes on, and in all 3 you will eventually be replaced as it all starts over a new.
im actually so upset you don't have half a mil subs minimum
like legitimately
crisp editing and joke timing, absolute quality scripts, perfect analogies and an overall 10/10 personable presentation
i mean it when i say this sweet but keep up the grind dude
you're gonna slowly rise and climb bit by bit until one day you hit a lucky stride and then you're never gonna look back
you might feel like shit at times and like you might not get there but fuck dude i just wanna chat with you about video games for like 3 hours at 2am when we're going through shit and nobody else managed to hit that exact vibe
and these videos are kind of like a little palatable mimicry of that
fuck you for being so cool
ly
This is probably one of the nicest comments I’ve ever gotten. I want you to know that this really does mean a lot to me. Thank you.
My apologies, I want to experience bloodborne without anything, I don't know shit about this game
Smart
I just find it frustrating going into a game and losing and I don't know why. I don't know how to do anything cause I don't know why and I can't figure out anything cause nothing explains why.
If I knock on your door and you tell me the poet's last regret came before the hordes not of flesh but in hearts; Then I leave, just open the fucking door!
@@magnusm4 - You lost because someone stabbed you
- Literally the first thing you can read in-game tells you to seek Paleblood and the first helpful NPC you meet is like "oh the Healing Church probably has some I guess"
- Of course no one's going to open their doors to beast hunters that may very well be beasts themselves
This guy is seriously underated as fuck. Algorithm needs to boost this guy.
no cussing
1 minute into the vid, he was sitting on the floor of the hunter's dream, and that got him a sub lol
The fact that amelia's clothes are stuck to her head implies she transformed head-first and idk how to feel about that
Sweets, I have to know. Kendrick Lamar or Drake?
Stupid question. Kendrick.
@@SweetsIsOnlinebut… hotline bling…
bro who tha hell picks drake in that question while giving a sigificant answer. everyone in the know picks kendrick. everyone serious about rap picks kendrick. what's the point of asking the opinion of someone that heard couple of songs each max when they were airing every 10 mins in the radio?
@@indiegenerateDrake only knows the hotline blings when it’s a minorrrrrrr
yo it's the godzilla guy
One more thing that many players get wrong about most of these Great Ones bosses is that you don't actually kill them. They are avatars that can exist in our plane of existance, for an example after you kill an Amygdala in the Nightmare Frontier, it is AN Amygdala also known as a Lesser Amygdala, the true one resides on a completely different plane of existance, one that is unfathomable to us. The reason why you can see other Amys in Yahar'Gul and Yharman after killing the one in Nightmare frontier reinforces that. The certified true Great Ones that we see in the game like Amygdala, Erbertias, Moon Presence and even the Orphan of Kos are formless as stated in the game, therefore they cannot truly die.
The Lovecraftian horror is still there, however perhaps a little too cryptic and hidden for players to feel it after their first playthroughs.
You get it. 😍
My favorite thing about fromsoft games is that the smallest thing has a book's worth of lore to go with it. Like the healing in Bloodborne, such a small portion of the game but takes up 80% of the lore.
First off, I just want to say, the production value of this video is INCREDIBLE, you deserve more attention purely from the effort alone.
However towards the end when getting to "The Point" I think you may have wildly missed the mark on Bloodbornes themes, the story is not about cosmic horror or "the unknowable truth", the Lovecraft inspired aesthetic is just that, inspired, but its not the focus.
Theres a reason a dichotomy is drawn between the beasts and the great ones, ALL the great ones we fight are implied to be former humans who have ascended, like Rom.
The real theme of Bloodborne is "Evolution"
The beasts represent the past, the primal roots of humanity, a regression, the kin of the cosmos represents mankinds hubris in their desire to advance. The Id vs the Ego.
They ascend, and are proven right yes, but its a twisted monkeys paw sort of deal, they lose their sense of self.
All the great ones are said to desire children they are incapable of bearing due to their complex ascended biology. Its such a innate instinctual desire to reproduce that once we ascend to this godlike state, we are still at the mercy of this one basic reproductive compulsion, no matter how far we evolve we still return to this principal of life.
Thats what the Moon Presence wants, a surrogate child, you or Gehrman will suffice. Also, just saying, theres no evidence we actually killed any of the Old Ones in any way that matters to them, Ebrietas, Rom and Amygdala are still alive in the dream realms, evidenced by their inclusion in the chalice dungeons which you can only acquire AFTER killing their physical forms, and they can be refought as many times as you wish unlike many of the mere mortal beasts and hunters you fight in the base game.
The chalice dungeons even confirm Yharnam is only the next in a long line of civilizations who have fallen for this ascension trap.
And even comparing to the works of Lovecraft.
_Cthulu got his ass knocked out by the bow of a small boat._
So you know, its not like the precedent was set that they were COMPLETELY untouchable.
I played this game 20+ times and i did not know stamina regen could change based on equipment haha
As far as what I can find, the weight system is actually completely removed since update 1.04
My interpretation is very different, at the very beginning of the game you're told you came to this tiny clinic because you're sick and you'll be entering a fever dream, that you explicitly need to fight your way out of, the "true" ending is when gehrman wakes you up by taking your head, the healing is complete your trials are over, the other endings are diving deeper into your psyche, challenging more terrifying aspects of yourself and the world, until eventually, you are no longer the person you were, your hunger for the unknown, your chasing of greater beasts makes you far worse than the monsters lurking in your mind, you become a prisoner to yourself, trapped in your own eldritch fears
AWAY AWAY!!! is one of my most quoted lines from anything, glad to see it get some love
The berserk music playing at 11:50 is amazing. Great video!
I love the comedy in this video! Especially the part when you mentioned you had a girlfriend, truly hysterical!
Jokes aside, great video sweets!
you *are* the cosmic horror in bloodborne imo
In the defense of my Fromsoft playstyle, my character would be too stupid to even understand he's being made crazy.
The ultimate defense against unknowable entities, stupidity.
Honestly, stupidity is both the greatest boon and greatest failing of mankind.
I do think the “true ending” is thematically satisfying in the sense that while you do kill the moon presence and become a great one, you seem to be pretty much… helpless? We know the great ones are killable at least in some abstract sense- Kos is, after all, murdered, and other great ones’ physical bodies were experimented on and tortured. The thing is, clearly some level of Kos’ existence continues beyond the planes of being we can reach. She supersedes what we see as her body, though the pain we cause her seems to affect her. And anyway, the player never becomes a great beast like the other great ones we see- they become like one of the baby great ones, the ones that lie on the ground and wait for you to kill them. We ascend, but we become wretched and helpless and are no better off in any meaningful sense. We are perhaps weakest of all in this ending.
Yeah but we have a protector lady. It's not like people are much stronger as babies either. If you can hang on to your human memories, maybe you can try to protect the world. Maybe even attempt to fix it. You know how and where the rest failed. You have the eventual power and Influence to do it.
Dark souls remastered being the subway of FromSoft fast food is probably the best thing anyone has ever said on anything surrounding FromSoft at all
@SweetsIsOnline “Eldritch/Cosmic Horror” was the phrase used as a translation. Though Lovecraft has influence in the game, this aspect is one that didn’t entirely translate properly. Several Bloodborne content creators have shown the Japanese vs English translation and transliteration to show how this one didn’t line up. The words “Eldritch” and “Cosmic” don’t get used in the original Japanese, so I’d say FromSoft did what they wanted and borrowed influence. The design and function of the great ones was their own creation, not a 1 for 1 ripoff from Lovecraft. Otherwise, great video 👍
Taking 27 minutes to mount an argument for the thesis presented in the title only to fail at doing so before moving on after a mere 4 minutes is kinda insane. Pretty good editing though, and I appreciate your passion for Bloodborne very earnestly.
I have watched Bloodborne analysis videos with twice the length and half the bredth, depth and humour.
Please keep making videos.
I don't see the issue. Humans are beasts and the great ones, despite being powerful, are also beasts: they trascend human existence, but they are not unreachable, only difficult to reach -their blood changes human nature, after all. They speak another language and live another kind of reality, but they exposed themselves to humans in order to have children (proving that they are beasts or biological life in that matter) and part of their being became understandable and vulnerable to humans because of that.
The Hunter is the "lucky" human to get rid of his humanity and become a great one -by eating the umbilical cords, gaining insight and drinking the blood of many powerful beings (including many great ones).
This isn't Lovecraft lore, it only takes inspiration from it.
9 years and BB is still going strong. Born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood; the only thing that’ll make BB irrelevant at this point is BB2.
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Subscribed!
6:01 holy shit I never realized that the rally mechanic has an actual lore reasoning. The enemies blood heals you.
Holy crap 10/10 video. This was awesome however I gotta point out 1 thing we meet and see many ascended humans into Kin in the game
Living failures, rom & celestial emissary are all acceded human being with it being heavily implied that celestial emissary used to be children. Especially as we see the good isoldia turned into one aswell after she is replaced.
Mergo aswell being the child of Queen yharman and Oden the formless great old one that also impregnated Ariana its a whole thing but all in all fucking loved this video and it was super fun to listen too
Once i heard that the diference between bloodborne and other souls is that in souls you are the rookie knight who is recieving soft guidance on your way to what you want to do.
And in bloodborne YOU are that person that everyone goes to looking for help but the problem is that you are as much of a rookie as in the souls, and that incapacity reinforces that aura of despair the game has.
if you haven't watched the medical metaphor on youtube , you should
i loved the game more than dark souls at the time , but when i watched that series , it cemented bloodborne as a gaming masterpiece that will never be topped up by anything , not even elden ring is that deep
My take on the story of Bloodborne, specifically regarding the 'true' ending had always centered around an often overlooked fact. The main character is not just a stand-in for the player, but rather a character with their own Agenda.
Someone who specifically came to Yharnam, immune to the 'curse' of the beast (as can be seen in the intro cutscene), to receive Blood Ministration.
Furthermore the Cainhurst Summons Letter solidifies that the character came here with a purpose and also suggests that the narrator is not all-knowing.
Now. The reasoning behind why the Player Character chose to come here was most likely with the goal of ascending to godhood, however we know little as to why they want to achieve this or how they came to know about this knowledge.
A very straightforward idea would be something along the lines of them working for a different god and wanting to take over, or simply coming from a place that gone through similar experiences, failing there and hearing about Yharnam. (These are just the most straight forward reasons as to why it could be)
Another would simply be that the Doll is also a god that wished for a child (as gods in Bloodborne tend to do via surrogates) and as such the player character was chosen, contacted and brought to Yharnam to usurp the role.
The line 'Ah You've found yourself a Hunter', for me had always been the Doll addressing the character rather than say the Messengers, further gleaming that more is going on (also the fact that with Insight she talks to you, makes you stronger as her champion, the fact that Gehrman doesn't know she moves and speaks).
So while the outsider makes for an easy stand-in for the player, it also makes sense as to why the umbilical cord ending is what it is.
Cosmic Horror is not only about ununderstandable things that defy logic. At the forefront it is about the concept of understanding something life changing, and that understanding then being taken away. To only be left with maddening questions and screams.
30:35 Okay. I have a counterpoint, There is another example of a person not going mad or turning into a beast but turning into a Great One like you do. The most likely one is Rom. In Micolash's prayer to Kos(m) he asks to be granted eyes as "[Kos] once did for the vacuous Rom." This could imply that Rom didn't always look like that and was most likely a mortal woman. She was granted insight by Kos (or Oedon if The Paleblood Hunt is to be believed) and became a great one like you did.
This could show that we aren't "special" per se because we transcend humanity, we know this has happened before.
every time you upload i die a little inside knowing nobody will ever make a video this good again (until you make a better video in like a month)
There is a Great One named Oeden, which is the only "Formless" Great One in the entire game. You don't fight him, yet he is everywhere in the game, referenced in the Healing Church locations like Cathedral Ward. There are runes dedicated to the "Formless One," and I speculate that Mergo could be the child of Oeden. You also never see Mergo. So it sorta stays true to the cosmic unseen horror thing too.
You also don't comprehend many enemies/Great Ones without enough Insight (madness) so imo it doesn't detract too much from the cosmic horror thing much at all
One of the coolest things about Bloodborne that I've recently learned is that Bloodborne bosses attack at an actual rhythm. Yes. BLOODBORNE IS A RHYTHM GAME, and it hides it so well. Lady Maria's boss battle is a waltz. Meaning your battle is actually a DANCE!! It's so cool!! (The same dance rhythm is also in DS3's Dancer of the Boreal Valley, which is why that battle feels so Bloodborne-esque, but that's the only DS boss that does the same from what I know.)
If you want a Bloodborne protagonist experience in a Lovecraft story you should read the Randolph Carter stuff. I mean, I dont recommend it in general, but it does fit the description you've provided. Yharnham is basically Kadath.
the editing is really good, entertaining and not always 100% staying on the point to make it less boring but also not video cutting ping pong at all. Also great music choice
for the final section
you mentioned that being able to kill all of these eldritch beings that are supposed to be unfathomable undermines the horror aspect
but if you think about it this way, you're an unknown entity who came to yarnham, you've never known the strife of everyone living here, you weren't indoctrinated into the superstitions that create even more fear and to top it off
you yourself are somewhat of an eldritch entity even before getting the ascension ending
a seemingly unremarkable nobody comes to your town and starts slaughtering everything in their path without a care or break in their stride. that alone would be unfathomable to residents already living the nightmare.
Excellently done video, really solid analysis, narration, script and editing! I'd agree that Bloodborne doesn't really strike the horror part of cosmic horror, but to me it never really felt like it was trying to, because the meaning I got from the game is less about these cosmic entities, but humanity itself. The cosmic horror themes felt more of the set dressing to help tell the metaphorical story and express the themes in an interesting way, rather than be at the core of what Bloodborne is about. Though that's just how I've always seen the game, each person will inevitably see things just a touch differently.
That said there was a very interesting theory I saw from a video going over boss designs of Bloodborne, from TBSkyen's playthrough/analysis video of the Orphan of Kos. He set forth an interesting "parasite theory" to Bloodborne, and that theory actually does make the game much more horrifying to think about. That the true horror wasn't the old ones themselves, but something far more insidious and far more hidden. Definitely give it a watch if you never have, its a great theory!
In Bloodborne, the true horror is you. It's in the very message you receive every time your hunt succeeds. Prey Slaughtered. The beasts, the Great Ones, the fallen hunters. They are all nothing but prey.
Similar to how/why Edgar Alan Poe invented the psychological horror genre (man's life was _stupid_ tragic), H.P. Lovecraft invented the psychological horror genre because the circumstances of his life left him a shivering mess.
As a child he had weekly visits to an insane asylum after his father "went mad," grew up being smothered by his emotionally abusive mother until she "went mad" too. And since she'd instilled in him the British "bloodline" form of racism and he'd inherited both his parents' anxiety disorders, he spent his entire adult life convinced he too would one day "go mad."
I think the reason we tend to give his extreme xenophobia a pass is because even though it taints all of his work, it's usually so over-the-top and incoherent that we don't take it seriously.
I think you miss the point of Bloodborne a bit. The game isn't a Lovecraft story, it's merely inspired by it. You say it's hypocritical but I fail to see any hypocrisy in its actual theming or storytelling. It isn't about some super special dude coming in, gaining superpowers, and wrecking house. If you want to make a very literal reading of the game while also insisting that it is definitely trying to be a Lovecraft story, then i guess you have a point in your last section, but it's pretty surface level. I don't think Bloodborne is trying to be Lovecraft, it's just inspired by it in several areas, but still doing its own thing. It's like when people say Dark Souls or Elden Ring are just based on Berserk, rather than acknowledge the actual fact that they're merely inspired by it in a few ways while still doing their own thing. I think it's more fair to say that Bloodborne appropriates elements of Lovecraftian storytelling for its own purposes.
The theme of Bloodborne is pretty clearly about how monstrous mankind can be in their endless search for knowledge, and the suffering that is caused as a result.
Look at the Research Hall in the DLC. Look at the atrocious experiments the Healing Church committed against innocent people all for the sake of attaining knowledge that wasn't theirs to know. The fact that as soon as they catch wind of an actual god washed up on the shore, the hunters slaughter a village and violate the pregnant corpse with experiments, resulting in the creation of the Hunter's Nightmare, a purgatory that acts as a capsule of the cruelty and suffering the hunters have caused on others and on themselves.
The beasts in Old Yharnam were created from the Healing Church's own blood and experimentation, and then the district was burned down to contain the problem that THEY created, the beasts were largely innocent, transformed against their own will, and the were punished for a crime they didnt commit by those that did.
We the player are afforded an opportunity to finish the job that the Choir and the Church and the School of Mensis started. They all had the pieces to the puzzle but were transformed or consumed or driven mad before they could accomplish their goal. We pursue that same goal with the same relentlessness and brutality that they did and slaughter our way through men, beasts, and gods, all for something that we don't understand and were never supposed to have. And what is our reward? Our ascension to godhood gives us no answers or knowledge or power, it simply leaves us helpless and completely stripped of whatever humanity may have remained.
I could go on more and more but i think I've got my point across. If I was a better writer I'd make a video of my own because I think Bloodborne is one of the most universally misunderstood games when it comes to what it's actually about and what it's trying to say.
I do wonder if your opinion on the umbilical cord ending here has changed since playing Fear & Hunger?
Because, at least to me, it seems fairly clear that in that ending, our character basically ends up as a Bloodborne equivalent of Funger's New Gods. We don't turn into one of the true Great Ones, we only barely make it to the level of one of the Ones that failed to ascend. Even doing everything we can, with all of our knowledge and all the resources at our disposal, we still only make it to like, the larval form of a failure.
We don't "win", in context it's barely an ascension.
Even in the ending where you “watch him become a gaaawwwd” (sorry), it’s still a bit of a horrifying ending. Why? Because you become the very thing you were eliminating. The others still suffer, the others still exist. Depending on the bosses you faced, Ludwig is still tormented, Maria is still watching the clock tower, Orphan of Kos is still holding a nightmare above the hunters, etc. My favorite is waking up from the dream since it matches the Lovecraftian horror far better. However, becoming a god is still horrifying in the context seen.
I myself just beat the game for the first time and it was not that bad I killed almost every boss first try including dlc bosses and my death count was only 40
I think the most horrifying part of Bloodborne, and the thing that a lot of people forget, is that there is a very real disparity between the endings. through the old hunters DLC, you bear witness to the spectacle and tragedy that was the killing of Kos which ultimately set much of the game's story into motion. Though with the endings, they indicate that, on some level, the Hunter's Dream is a very real thing, you awaken in some random street far away from the clinic in which you first partook of the blood, meaning you wandered about. But then in the dream, you butchered MANY people along the way.
"Away, Away" takes on a whole new meaning, when you consider that the hunters within the dream, are, in the real world, people driven completely insane by the blood, and go on a murderous rampage.
Narratively, I think that the waking ending is the 'true' ending of the game, that Gerald killing you within the dream is a representation of the hunter's sanity snapping back to reality, much the same as a dream of falling and waking just before death pulls you back into the waking world.
The thing with Blodborne is that it takes from lots of different sources, themes and inspiration and it's able to mix them all seamlessly together to ultimately do its very own thing. Nothing it does detract from the dark, eldritch and horror themes but adds to them imo. Showing higher beings visually is not something Lovecraf hasn't done before, describing in detail some of them and making his own drawings sometimes. And the insight mechanic, which allows you to see the world in a truer form in a purely visual way, only adds even more to the horror that you're now able to experience fully.
While I see your point at the end, I don't think it makes the game worse in any regard. The "true" ending for me at least doesn't feel empoweing at all. Inspiration is not meant to make something like the thing it takes from, but to use it to make something new. And Bloodborne succeeded in this flawlessly.
Ultimately Bloodborne is about human nature, our thirst for knowledge, the atrocities we can do to obtain it, the duality that exist witin every person... and the evolution of the human species. Within the game, the "true" ending felt very natural even if it departs from some of the source material.
And at the end one thing that Lovecraft wanted and did himself was for others to take from his and others works to make their own stories and add their own interpretations to it all.
I disagree with your point. You look at us killing everything and see us as a chosen one meant to level up and slay a deity. That however couldn't be further from the truth. Let's look at 2 pieces of music, and in just 2 boss themes we can see our characters journey. I also want to explain to you just how cosmic horror the 3 endings of this game really are.
How we went from a lost soul with a purpose who became a hunter, into an eldritch powered blood drunk monster that cannot be stopped until it's either been severed from, put into, or outright transcends the very beings that made this nightmare known as Bloodborne.
We start the game with the objective to find Pale Blood and we never learn quite what that is nor why we're going to Yharnam after it. After going through the motions and visiting the Hunter's Dream we spend the tutorial not only as a player learning mechanics but as a new Hunter learning to fight to survive so we can find Pale Blood at the Grand Cathedral.
The theme that shows our mentality best is Father Gascoigne's theme. You may think that that's his theme but it isn't, it's ours. We're a new hunter in an odd new world and we have to fight to survive which for this first portion of the game I'd say fits the theming of our journey and it's at the start of the game.
Now for the second theme that symbolizes us. We've went through the entire game and have fought so many absurd people and creatures the very world is falling apart. How many times have we died just to respawn to die again and revive over and over. We continue to grow stronger, our strength is the only constant we have. Grow stronger survive, what was our goal? Who knows, we're not even searching for it anymore. Just escape, must escape. Survive to escape. We face the DLC and learn the truth, but does that help our character or only further their unseen madness? Final boss we fight the first hunter, of course we'll win. We've survived worse, now we face one of the few Eldritch Nightmares in the game, the Moon Presence. It tries to take us to use us as it has Gherman for it's own inscrutable means. It can't however, we've had the umbilical cords we're too far along to be taken like this. We're capable of ascending, and because we're a maddened unstoppable force the Moon Presence is scared. It's movements show to us it's afraid and if we play as intended we're the aggressor hunting it until its demise.
What does this have to do with our second theme? Simple, our second theme is the Moon Presence's theme. It's a song that honestly a killer or outright monster would have, and it's ours. It's how the Moon Presence and every other late game boss views us. We cannot be stopped. We will transcend The Hunt, and even then who's to say we won't continue the madness of The Hunt even after ascension? We're now an inscrutable Great One.
The endings are all sad, not a single happy or even remotely close happy ending. First ending we're free from the Dream, but we're very susceptible to The Hunt. In this ending we're just like Jura and Aileen. Sure we're free from the Dream, but not the Hunt hell we're easy prey for it now because we're no longer immortal thanks to The Dream, and we don't have as strong of goals as Jura nor Aileen.
Second ending debatably even worse, because now we replace Gherman and we not only continue The Hunt, but we now presumably condemn so many new Hunters. We've went from a victim to the perpetrator whom is still the victim.
Last ending is the best right, we're a Great One free from it all we've ascended! Is that so? Great Ones are inscrutable. Who knows what goal we have now? We very may well create a new Fishing Hamlet or a new Yharnam for whatever new goal we will inevitably have as a new born Great One, and for what? Will our story go as the Moon Presences did? Do this absurd goal only to be slain and replaced by a Hunter we raise up? This isn't an ideal fantasy it's horror at its finest we don't know wat happens once we ascend. We may very well be the same as the monsters we've slain. Jura says it best: "Those aren't monsters you're slaying, they're people. You're the monster.".
Bloodborne isn't hypocritical. It's Visceral, and we're not a chosen one protagonist. We're just another victim a little luckier than the others, and even then we're still a victim to a cycle we can never stop nor control. Worst of all we may even become a monster that just continues it all over again. Yet that seems to be the best ending, for better or for worse ascending is our best shot.
Maddened by insight and blood. Willem was right Insight can lead us to ascension, Laurence was also right the Old Blood can lead us to ascension. We are, however mere men, and we're not made to be any more than just that.
This is the beauty of Bloodborne. May chaos take the world!
Technically speaking the main character never encounters a true Old Great One
What about Moon Presence and the Wet Nurse? Also even though it’s not a physical Great One, the Orphan of Kos is the spirit of one. Plus the Amygdala are Lesser Great Ones but you could definitely make an argument that they still have all the properties of a full Great One, just with less power.
@@penguinruler4512 yeah those are lesser great ones . In Lovecraft Theory the Old Great Ones like Azethoth : are 15 billion years old and the size of a galaxy with thousands of appendages and limbs that are themselves alive the size of planets . Cthulhu is a lesser great one but even a whisper would drive the whole human race insane in an instant . They can also bend space and time or transport you to another dimension like : Hell or a Nightmare
@@swordguy1243 ya but in Bloodborne lore they have a different definition of an Old Great One. Like Moon Presence is a fully fledged Great One and I know Oeden the Formless is also one, but technically the other ones are debatable.
@@penguinruler4512they are all formless. You never truly encounter a great one because you simply cant. The moon presence is simply a physical manifestation of the great one, not its true self. You moreso resist its power rather then truly defeating it
As a day one Bloodborne fan who played the demo before launch at a convention, I find your video to be one of the best ones yet. You see and appreciate this game on the same level as many of us do even without being a day one player. Plus the jokes are hilarious, especially the one about Florida 😂
But I will say a caveat about your sponsor: excess b12 intake can increase inflammation and cause a lot of annoying side effects like headaches or nausea. So be careful with consuming stuff that’s 100%+ of the DRV. Not a doctor, everyone should do their own research etc. really I’m just being a woreywart/mom friend I guess 👍
10:59 "early prevention of the scourge, achieved by disposing of victims......AND EVEN POTENTIAL VICTIMS *BEFORE SIGNS OF SICKNESS MANIFEST THEMSELVES* "
Ok i'm sold, Bloodborne is the most metal game ever
25:48 one of the hardest cutscenes to ever grace gaming, right up there with both of Gael's cutscenes
I especially love how the music shifts from chaotic and frantic to elegant and rhythmic
I've played bloodborne years ago and I just realized something, the Hunter's Nightmare can go many ways. First area can be considered Ludwig's nightmare, Second area is Maria's and the third area is area all hunter's will suffer from whether they know it or not.
Ludwig's area is pretty much all about the Cathedral Ward district, where he was rather famous. He feared about what the church might do with the hunters, and that scared him as the area is filled with corpses of people and beasts in a constant bloody battle.
The astral clock tower being Maria's nightmare as it haunts her. She's haunted by her past and regrets, behind her is the Hamlet and in front of her is the Research Hall where she failed the captive patients. All she can do is seclude herself but it's useless as no matter where she looks she'll be reminded of what the hunters and the church did.
The fishing hamlet is the place barely any hunter ever goes, newer hunters who reach it will only ever look at it as "why does this matter?" when in truth it shows the horror of being a hunter. What we all eventually do in the game. We don't get sad when fighting a boss and win. We celebrate with a text saying "Prey Slaughtered." one could look at that as we're already becoming blood drunk as all we do is kill senselessly with self perceived glory.
That's just how I take it now after coming up with the thought. Probably looked into it a bit but I find it interesting, chances are many people already came up with the exact same idea years ago.
I'm going to disagree on the last part.
You're right in the fundamental tension between fun shooty action and cosmic horror, a genre about disempowerment.
However, there are ways to get around that, usually thematically. Eternal Darkness did it by unceremoniously killing your characters and then, a final gutpunch, it's revealed that your victory was just another elder deity's machinations.
Bloodborne does something similar, yet perhaps even less personal. None of the endings are good endings.
Childhood's beginning is just as much a loss of agency as replacing Gerhrmen, precisely because you are not seeking it. To transcend the hunt, you loss your humanity and you become locked in the cyclic hunts just as much as you were before, but as Flora's replacement instead of Gehrmen's.
That part of "only we succeeded where others failed" i disagree, if the game is about humans and how they trample over everyone to ascend, that being through blood or insight, it's very poetic that you ascend using both ways, it shows that every conflict in the world ends up being futile, and also in the game
I think this is mostly a pretty good breakdown, but I do have to disagree on the final point. As someone who understood what cosmic horror was about before playing bloodborne, it never clicked with me until I played it. The moment for me was when I realized that I could now see the giant amygdala clinging to the side of Oedon Chapel, and this stirred something visceral within me. There is an element of power fantasy one could say, sure, but ultimately in the case of bloodborne unlike most other fromsoft titles, something is off.
For starters, you don't know what is real. You imagine you do, you think maybe waking up will release you from the nightmare, but then you remember that 'waking up' is merely ignorance of the greater scope of the universe, that everything is layered dreams within the mind of some greater uncaring eldritch being. You may brush it aside as 'just tentacle monsters', however this fails to recognize the fact that one of these creatures can trap an entire generationally unrelated group of people bound to the same concept of 'hunting' into an eternal purgatory over a past grudge.
You also don't know for sure whether you yourself might be a beast, since the game was initially marketed with a detail somewhat left out from the game, the fact that beasts project their beasthood onto others. While I tend to imagine, as most do, that our player is a hunter, it's a question that has stirred with me since I first played regardless, what if those Yharnam townsfolk we've been slaughtering in droves are actually more human than we are? It leaves an eerie sense of doubt in your mind, even if you don't truly believe it, because that notion is something difficult to come to grips with.
You also aren't aware of everything that actually happens to you in the game, like you see a source of frenzy and don't think much of it, but your blood reacts profoundly to it, so much it seeks to escape your body if not diluted by 'sedatives' which are literally just basic human blood. Implying something inside you, knows more than you do (we'll get back to that).
None of the game's endings are ostensibly good or bad. 'You wake' up in ignorance, live forever in a dream, or 'ascend' to godhood... or do you? You see, a theory that has been shared around a bit now focuses largely on the persistence of parasitism seen in the game, maggots, spinal fluid amoebas, vermin (which may or may not exist?), kos parasites, snakes, eyes, blood dregs, phantasms, blood echoes, the moonlight greatsword, quicksilver ( to justify that specifically, it's implied to be related directly to Formless Oedon), etc. In almost every circumstance, these parasites alter the mind, and you the player, are no exception. In fact, I would propose the idea that you may not play as a hunter at all, but rather a 'bloodborne' parasite, one which seeks to grow from the nourishment of it's parent, or surrogate, and begin the cycle all over again.
This is why I think you missed the true cosmic horror at play here, the designs of the monsters are cool, and theories abound about the individual great ones, their motivations, their capabilities, and what they even are, but put all that aside. The fact of the matter is, what makes bloodborne so compelling is how much it gives us to work from, yet how little we actually understand. For every certainty there is an uncertainty. Are we a beast, a hunter, a parasite, or do we actually exist in the 'waking world' at all? How many layers does the dream extend? How much are we not seeing? We see Ebrietas regardless of our insight level, she is a 'left behind' great one, and so despite all of the grandiose presentation, is she actually the least significant or least worthy great one? Basically, we just don't/can't truly know.
The only thing bad about bloodborne, i can say, is a constant camera issue present in all fromsoft game. And jump on O after spinting, which im happy to see never returned.
I love the hat so much, in part because I forgot that wasn’t a part of your typical look until you pulled attention back to it in Character Designs.
Bloodborne is one of those rare things I can listen to people go on and on about over and over again. I love hearing different perspectives on this game. There is something so visceral about Yharnam that pulled me in once upon a time and has never truly let me go.
I’ve been waiting for this since the hk vid ngl
I love your videos man. And I wanna ask, when is your next video coming out? If don't have an idea yet, i suggest The Last of Us.
You know, in all the years Bloodbore has been my favorite video game I literally never understood why the rally mechanic was a thing. Thank you for finally answering that question
Inspiration for Bloodborne has even more insane lore
it goes by name "An Agony of Effort, The True Story of Bloodborne - Part I: Inspirations"
I don’t think any of the endings are meant to be satisfying. The irony is that being a foreigner is what allowed us to take on the things that the others were so seduced by. The endings all still say that there is no escape from the cycle. These were only Gods to those who treated them that way. Much like how humans treat their ideas of Gods. All human gods are flawed and petty and these celestial gods are no different. They obsess over finding new children when they inevitably lose their own and then keeping them like a doll (see what they did there) that no one else can play with. The way that the moon presence grabs you and hugs you is disturbing but it’s also not the act of some all powerful deity. These things were incomprehensible to humans during what appears to be their steam age. But it’s all relative.
I disagree with your talk on the final ending, as Lovecraft and his writing cohort also wrote endings to their storoes where the main character either died, went mad, or (and this is the important one) were transformed, either forcibly or voluntarily, into an eldritch horror beyond the comprehension of mortal men. The key distinction is that these transformations alway, *always* came at a heavy price, mainly the loss of self and/or one's memories and humanity, and an inability to interact with humanity as you used to. In transforming into an eldritch horror, you are no longer himan, nor do you identify with them or whatever miserable fate befalls them. In Bloodborne's true ending, you have shed your humanity and become an infant Great One with no memories or connections to your past, and no care for the suffering of the ants of humanity beneath you, implying that you will more than likely perpetuate the cycle of madness and destruction that befell the Pthumereans before, and Yharnum now. On the surface, it looks like you, the player, have won, but it literally costs you everything, including your past, present, and future, and it ultimately changes nothing, as the future is still one characterized by humanity's frailty and insignificance in the face of higher powers that care nothing about us, as giants care not for the ants crushed beneath their feet when walking, which is very inline with the themes of HP Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.
Great video but I have to, as apparently many other people here, disagree with your final points. In every single FromSoft game you are basically the "chosen one". Yes, FromSoft usually does not do chosen one concept the same way as others, it is not chosen one saving everything, being the good bro here grandma let me walk you across the road, but it is still the concept of chosen one. The whole concept of SoulsBorne genre is "YOU are the one who will perservere and do the THING that nobody else could".
The monsters are not the unknowable horror, its the hunters. The capability that humanity has within is the horror.
Oh my gosh I broke down laughing when I saw the long John silvers with the scholar of the first sin subtext and you ask “people go here?” Honestly my favorite new soulsborne joke 🤣
About "beating the boss and getting a degree"
I got this not too far from release after migrating and finished the thing before leaving home for my honeymoon.
That was a long time.
you made a solid point about something I wished to see more of in bloodborne, that being a power you cant win against, there was a taste with the frenzy radius near the brain but in videogame fashion you cut down the chains holding it and no longer is the frenzy a threat. what if they kept that cut moon presence final form fight but instead of winning you got to witness its true cosmic scale in some form and just lose
Given some thought to the matter:
I think are character at that moment can visually describe a great one if insight is present to see the great one, but the description will change depending on who is able to see such indescribable figures. The insight tho does prevent insanity but since we partake in blood ministration since the beginning they kinda balance out in a twisted way as we get more insight we keep the beasting at bay but use the blood viles to heal. I never understood people’s dislike for this healing venture as its one of if not the main trope of the game. The thing i think some people miss for the dlc is that its an entirely different world to the base world. In that world your fighting that worlds Laurence, as our worlds Laurence’s head sits on an altar. Ludwig i believe is base world sent to dlc world turned monster and considering you can only get vermin from the dlc, Valtr is dlc world sent to base world to recruit for dlc world’s infestation as seen as the hunter who tries to kill you outside that tower at the lamp is base world, jelly you got the part for the club and not him. I can understand the “how can you kill a god” thinking but considering its “all a dream” it gives in to a power fantasy that becomes achievable due to it being a game and a dream in the same sense.
I have loads more on this game but the comments already too long, its a favorite title cant you tell, so ill leave with this: this is a great insight to an already perfect game, i just hope we get a remaster (not a remake, trust me) that gives us a little more content to mull over on a 60fps setting with a save port, it would save/change my life.
Edit:18.8k subs in the vid you said 10k, holy crap 8k over night basically.
“we got jakey at home”
Killing gods is a pretty common thing in Japanese media so it's really not that surpring that you get to kill a bunch of them in Bloodborne despite being a cosmic horror.
19:18 the worst news I’ve received all day
Pretty sad that BB drops any beast theme right after Amelia and doesn’t interact with it again.
The best part of Bloodborne not making sense is that, that's the point of the lore itself. The more you know, the more mad you go. Look at Micolash who looked too deep and went insane.
The slightly faster cadence in your voice when you chugged the gamersupps absolutely killed me lmao.
Also, phenomenal video, have watched several times.
Your complaint is reasonable, but a big thing you missed is that the physical forms of the Great Ones are not their be-all-end-all form. They're essentially the absolutely best way they could be represented on the pitiful Waking World plane, kind of like how Carl Sagan described a 3D boot in 2D world. All the Great Ones exist in other planes, and "killing" them in the Waking World does very little in the grand scheme. Your point about human insignificance being overlooked in the game could still stand with these facts in mind, but it's not as much of a problem as you posited
I would like to add in some insight and my own interpretations inspired by the Dreamlands series and works of Lovecraft's peers. It is stated in numerous works in some way or another that in the realm of dreams, the human psyche becomes physically equivalent to the souls of outer gods and other beings. That the human subconscious and the human mind, within the dreamlands, can greater contest with and comprehend the unknowable horrors of the universe.
In bloodborne, where do we kill every god we kill? We kill their physical bodies within the dreams. Not their true selves, not the essence of what the gods truly are, but their psyche given flesh. Bloodborne makes a point that almost all of the old gods once had physical bodies or that they lose their child in the process of ascension. I think the Gods of bloodborne are not true gods, but just beings that have reached a scale beyond human. Beings that can exist *simultaneously* within both the dream and the physical world. So when we kill them within the dream, we kill their true bodies, or at least part of their true selves, and remove their influence from our collective subconscious.
The moon presence is not permanently slain, you start your ascension by taking in the umbilical cords that either it severed from its own child, or perhaps the physical remnants of the umbilical cord of the orphan of kos. You physically become part of it, in a sense, and thus can contest it. Without this umbilical cord, the moon presence simply makes you the next host of its will. It's next pawn. You have to take in the essence of the child it wishes to reclaim to do this. The orphan of kos? Killing him doesn't do anything. You don't get the message Nightmare Slain until you then go to his soul, still clinging to his dead mother by a shadowy umbilical cord, and sever it.
This isn't even mentioning some of the other beings, the unknown great ones like Oedon, who has no physical form, but who's influence seems to manifest in the very blood of every living being, or at least every being that takes in the Old Blood. The eldritch horror in bloodborne, in my opinion, lies in the places that the game doesn't explain, the things that we have no true answers for, and the fact that even if we blend the Victorian Horror (beasts and monsters are real and we must kill them) with the cosmic horror (beasts and monsters are real and we cannot understand them and they don't care about or understand us), they aren't actually hypocritical of themselves. The blend of them means that even if you don't understand them, you must try to kill them, and even if you try to kill them they can't really die within the mortal realm. We don't know what happens after the transcendence ending, but we know that without the moon presence, the dream should collapse. Will we vanish with it? Are we maintaining the hunter's dream ourselves now? Are we going to create our own dream realm, or perhaps fall into another?
As for the final point: I think the point is less that you are special and better than everyone else, and more that all those madmen were "right," at least in the sense that "Yeah the old gods ascended from mortals at some point too," but killed and tortured thousands to reach their ends. You do the same, really, as you slaughter everything in your path to reach the heights they were piling up bodies towards... It's like if Griffith did everything he did, started the ascension ritual, and then before he said "I sacrifice" Guts snatched his ass and said "No, I sacrifice you" or something lmao
There's more I could try to say but I just thought some of this may be interesting to you and perhaps give a new angle to your own thoughts on bloodborne. Either way, fantastic video, thank you for the laughs and the insight.
I just started, at the shadows of yharnum. Put well over 20 hrs so far, my cooworker asked if ive ever played a souls game. He said to start here since its the hardest in his opinion, and anyone i ask agrees with him. I love this game so much, like favorite game kinda levels. I give my coworker an amazing thank you
I've always considered the succumb ending as the "good ending" and the slug ending as the "secret ending", myself 😁 Good video!
The cosmic horror of Bloodborne comes from the experience Eid the story in its initial playthrough. There are still loads of details in the story so vague we can only hypothesize as to their outsources. Even the endings aren’t concrete. We have no idea why all of this came about, where the beings came from or what the full reach of their power is. The cosmic horror still exists as the arguement against its existence folds in on itself.
the problem could just be solved by making the main characters a child of the gods, like how in eldritch horror the gods try to have children