Why Bloodborne Is The Best Modern Horror Game

Hunter's Nightmare.
bloodborne

In typical From Software fashion, most of the true details are hidden away behind item descriptions, dialogue, and visual cues, yet several general themes are easily understandable. Usually in horror games, developers, authors, or directors try to make the antagonist personal in some way to the hero/heroine in order to help establish a connection with the reader, yet Bloodborne skips this idea entirely.

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The massive cosmic horrors  known as “The Great Ones” have no tangible connections to your lone Hunter and the developers double down on this by having everyone around see them as gods of a new age.  (Which has caused almost all of the Yharnamites to go insane and perform an insane amount of rituals, sacrifices, and experiments to understand them) You are just another human to these beings and just the smallest blip on the radar in this world. There is nothing special about your character and it’s clear that most of “The Great Ones” don’t even see you as a threat since only two fight you in the actual story

bloodborne crow

Yet, Insight is probably Bloodborne’s most brilliant mechanic as it not only slowly scales up the difficulty with the player but begins to unravel the world around you. The concept is the more Insight you consume the more dangerous enemies will become (usually with a few new moves), but it’s more than that. You are tapping into forces beyond your comprehension and there is a threshold point where the cosmic horrors that have been watching you fully appear. Enemies now are more twisted and their visual designs reflect the true madness that has plagued this town.

It’s a brilliant mix of Victorian and Lovecraftian themes that help reinforce to the player just how bad this city has gotten and that you are dealing with things you couldn’t possibly fully understand. These ideas are typical of Lovecraft’s work but are only enforced further by the classical Victorian concepts such as dread, falling from grace, and hubris. This allows From Software to create some truly horrific enemies that have essences of both these horror genres.

However, all horror is subjective, so what might scare one person could be laughable for the next. Yet, that doesn’t mean Bloodborne is a bad horror game or make it any less of a masterpiece in video game scares. It’s the macabre storytelling, world, and design choices that make it a frightful experience. Yet, what makes it the best horror game of the modern era is its willingness to make players not only feel insignificant but downright useless. You’re not a hero or the one person who can save the day like many horror games place you as, just another nameless hunter out at night. It’s up to you to muster up the courage and not end up as just another corpse for the Yharnamites fire. Bloodborne makes its struggle grand, yet deeply personal at the same time.

Everyone’s mad in the world of Bloodborne and it’s up to you to try and put this puzzle back together. There is no saving the day in Bloodborne, only surviving long enough to see the light.


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Author
Collin MacGregor
Collin was a Senior Staff Writer for Twinfinite from 2016 to 2017 and is a lover of all things horror. When he's not healing his teammates in Overwatch, raiding in Destiny, making poor choices in Dark Souls, or praying for a new Ape Escape you can now find him working at Bungie as an Associate World Designer.