BREAKING NEWS: Bloodborne’s Japanese release date announced for February 5, 2015! (Source: Sony Pre-TGS Stream)
I woke up early on Saturday to beeline straight for the ‘Bloodborne’ demo at this years Pax Prime. This is my most-anticipated game of 2015 for a number of reasons including the return of the design director from ‘Dark Souls I’ and hints at a world that will wrap back around on itself as you explore and discover. These design points were lacking in ‘Dark Souls II,’ so I waited with bated breath for my turn to hopefully experience the mechanics and exploration I knew and loved from the first entries in the series.
‘Bloodborne’ invokes a muted world of suffering much like its Souls counterparts, and in the town before you it seems as though some terrible blight is causing the inhabitants to slowly go insane and attack everything in sight. Unlike the “Hollow,” these enemies are turning to something more supernatural and familiar in Western lore… Werewolves. From Software has not yet confirmed this, but evidence strongly suggests that this is what’s happening to the town’s residents.
When you see folks stumbling and shambling through the world around you, they exhibit strong rage and tufts of fur poke out from various articles of clothing. (This is admittedly difficult to observe between trying to dodge their attacks and take them down since you only get one death to play with in the demo.) When I looked at the Bloodborne Reddit this morning, there were also several contributors who believe the protagonist might be a vampire, which makes a lot of sense given the title and the fact that you can consume blood to regain health. To me, everything points to the blight as some kind of supernatural catalyst, and maybe this will be a new take on Western creature lore!
Oh, and then there’s this screenshot:
I’m also very happy (relieved) to report that Bloodborne’s combat system feels excellent and returns back to the same design traditions of ‘Demons’ Souls’ and ‘Dark Souls I.’ You need to observe your enemies to defeat them without taking massive damage, and learning various combat moves will give you a sense of accomplishment as you progress through the game. Although the heavy difficulty is still in-tact, being smart about how you tackle certain enemies, kiting a few foes towards you at a time, or exploring for unorthodox paths around large groups of enemies will lead you to success.
New to Bloodborne is a mandatory dual-wield requirement in which you’ll carry a gun in your left hand and a melee weapon in the right. Each melee weapon also now comes with extensions that allow you to switch attack types mid-swing and inflict a lot of damage if you can find the ideal execution. You can’t carry a shield, but you can now parry with both your gun and your melee weapon, which makes for some really cool counter-attacks! (Insider tip: the backstabs also look incredibly bad ass.)
The exploration had me hooked within seconds. I found pebbles (giant stones), Molotov cocktails, blood vial refills (health refill) and stimulants but the folks running the booth kept asking me if “I needed help to find the ‘right’ way,” to which I responded, “This is Bloodborne, there’s always another way.” Since this comment was met with a huge smile and they seemed impressed at my ability to get to the boss, I feel as though we’ll get the chance to do a lot of crazy and unorthodox pathing through the game.
Summing up my thoughts… pre-order this monster as soon as humanly possible! Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long after the Japanese release to get our chance at slaying some wolvies.