Bloodborne : Joining conflicting genres

Vinícius De Los Rios Haddad Laurindo Number 21800981 Discipline : Crítica e Análise de Videojogos Teacher Rui Craveirinha Universidade Lusófona do Porto

June 2019 Summary Bloodborne is a game known for its gothic aesthetic and cutthroat difficulty, being generally highly regarded, despite the fact it tries to join action RPG elements with horror, two genres that are almost opposite in both execution and intent. And yet, it somehow works. Throughout this paper, we will explore what the definition of a genre is, how does it apply to a videogame, and study how Bloodborne manages to meld normally contradicting ideas into a cohesive whole.

Introduction Bloodborne is a Playstation 4 exclusive videogame developed by the Japanese company From Software and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, released worldwide on March 2015. It was directed by ; produced by Masaaki Yamagiwa and Teruyuki Toriyama; designed by Kazuhiro Hamatani; programmed by Jun Ito; and composed by Ryan Amon, Tsukasa Saitoh, Yuka Kitamura, Nobuyoshi Suzuki, Cris Velasco and Michael Wandmacher.

Hidetaka Miyazaki

Bloodborne sees an outsider wake up in the Victorian city of , after undergoing a blood transfusion from the “magic healing” blood of the town. However, the area is now ravaged, and everyone has all but gone mad. Trapped in a living nightmare, the newly born hunter must now fend for themselves, as they try to discover the truth that’s hidden behind the madness, and maybe something deeper… It was received particularly well, not receiving a single review below 9 out of 10. And yet, it joins genres that, ordinarily, would never work together. Now, how does that happen? Genre First and foremost, before we can analyze genres, we must first define what the word means. Well, genre is one of those topics that you can identify the meaning of easily, but actually putting said meaning into words is complicated. Basically, a “genre” is, as defined by the Oxford dictionary, “A style or category of art, music, or literature” (Oxford Living Dictionaries). Essentially, what that means is that a genre is a collection of codes, styles, mechanics, what have you, that, when brought together, create a cohesive “feeling” to whatever work of art they apply to. From that, one can analyze any said work, and then classify it within whatever genre makes the most sense for it. If it has enough codes to be placed within an existing one, but is just outside of the box enough that it doesn’t quite blend in with other works of said genre, then it can create a “sub-genre”, where it’s codes become a new definition to compare with those of others. If the work is completely different, to the point it can’t fit anywhere, it creates it’s own unique genre. When it comes to videogames, there are a plethora of things that define each genre : gameplay, visuals, mechanics, narrative styles, besides others. In Bloodborne’s case, it belongs in a few : first and foremost, its an Action RPG, which is defined by an open world you can explore freely, good amount of character customization and real time combat; it can also be classified as a -like, a sub-genre of RPGs with a strong emphasis on complex narratives and worlds, but, most importantly, brutal difficulty (which isn’t surprising, seeing as the game comes from the same company that made , which created this sub-genre); it also encompasses elements of cosmic horror, which is a sub-genre of horror specialized in existential terror, as well as gothic horror elements, most strongly characterized by almost human monsters and a strong emphasis on the macabre; and it can also be defined as a survival horror, best defined by (shockingly), the feeling of desperation as you try to survive a world that’s out to get you. “Why, hello there!”

Now that we have a decent understanding of the genres of this game, the question remains : why are they conflicting, and why do they work? Well, to understand that better, we must first define better these genres, at which point it will become clear how they create attrition between each other. Empowerment As Ben put in his article about cosmic horror (Ben Kuchera, 2019), “The real tension of cosmic horror isn’t that the cost to stop an existential threat might be too high, but that the danger it poses may seem so all- encompassing that we’re comfortable doing nothing at all”. Cosmic horror is all about the unknown. Not because the scary monster is good at hiding, but because the scary monster is so powerful that it’s virtually impossible to even fathom its sheer might. More than anything, however, it’s about existential terror. What that means is that cosmic horror isn’t so much about a dangerous supernatural being that poses a direct threat to you as much as it is about a dangerous supernatural being that humans are powerless to do anything about. It thrives in that feeling of meaninglessness, that maybe we are nothing compared to the universe. That maybe, when faced with something actually important, we would just be insignificant. Disposable. That we don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. One of examples of that feeling can be found in the story “The Call of ”, by H. P. Lovecraft (effectively the father of the genre). As the ship crew, now utterly devastated after a brutal ship battle, boards the enemy ship, the Alert, and, as they scrounge for resources, the tides twist and turn to reveal an ancient… something. Made of material that can’t be aptly described, and with a geometry that can only be defined as “wrong”.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Amidst the weirdness, however, they find a gargantuan door that, when opened, reveals a similarly gargantuan monstrosity. As the thing starts swallowing the sailors down, they all run, desperately, back to the boat. Only two make it back. The captain, in a panicked frenzy, however, tries to ram the boat into the beast. Much to his horror, however, not only did the monster not even seem to react, but the little damage dealt heals effortlessly in seconds. Realizing that it’s worthless to try and fight off the thing, he flees. Needless to say, his crewmate seems to go mad following the event, and the captain goes into what can only be described “The Cal of as a paranoid lunacy. Cthulhu and Other As one can tell from that summary, Cthulhu Weird Stories” isn’t scary because he’s a big and dangerous (1999) monster. He isn’t a character. He is existential terror in the flesh. To him, a human is as ants are to humans, utterly insignificant. You can’t defeat Cthulhu. You can’t reason with Cthulhu. All you can do is hope that you can run faster than he can give chase. And you probably can’t. More than anything, as with most horror stories, but especially with cosmic horror, the main goal is to disempower the reader. To make them feel small and afraid. That is, to some extent, the exact opposite of the action genre, which aims to empower the player, often by letting them control a weapon of mass destruction resembling as a human (Kratos from “” is a good example). As a result, the two genres are particularly contradictory, seeing as the two attempt to evoke directly opposing feelings. As such, the question remains : how does Bloodborne manage to conciliate both into a cohesive whole? Well, the best way to understand the success of one is to understand the complications of achieving such success by way of examining another’s failure. The Call To better explore how difficult the task of joining such opposing genres can be, it would be preferable to showcase how attempting said feat can backfire horribly. For that purpose, one of the better examples is “The Call of Cthulhu : The Dark Corners of The Earth”. It was a videogame released in 2006, developed by Headfirst Studio and published by Bethesda Softworks, to absolutely no fanfare, being a commercial flop and sinking its developer into bankruptcy. It is a cosmic horror first-person shooter with adventure game and detective game mechanics included.

Right off the bat, much like Bloodborne, The Call tries to meld two genres that attempt to invoke wholly different experiences : cosmic horror and first-person shooter, the former being built around disempowerment, the latter, about empowerment. It also does quite a few similar things to Bloodborne : the finds themselves stuck in a dangerously unwelcoming town, which is plague-ridden by a disease that mutates and twists the residents into terrifying abominations. Being hunted unceasingly by the horde of monsters, they have no choice but to adapt and face the danger head-on, if they have any hope of seeing the light of day again. It is almost uncanny, although such similarities could be chalked up to their mutual inspiration in cosmic horror, especially in Lovecraft’s mythos. However, unlike its high-profile counterpart, Dark Corners doesn’t quite stick the landing, failing to join its genres in a way that feels satisfactory. That can be mainly chalked up to the fact that it does a poor job of mitigating the empowerment aspect. At first, when all the player can do is crawl and hide, the monsters pose a legitimate threat and thus, the player feels afraid. And yet, once you get a firearm, the once dangerous residents of Innsmouth become cannon fodder, being easily dispatched by a couple well-placed shots.

When in doubt, shoot.

Worse is the fact that, while it tries to employ a limited resource system, Dark Corners still fails in that aspect by having simply too many items scattered about. There is always more ammunition and healing items to be had for those who explore a bit more, which would be good in a normal open world game, but destroys the tension in a horror one. Even then, it tries to also employ a limit on how many of each type of ammunition and healing you can carry, but, when you have six different guns, each with enough ammo to down a whole brigade, there’s no real reason to fear anything. If that is the main reason for The Call failing on a survival horror level, then the ability to easily dispatch whole deities makes it fail on the cosmic horror level. See, the player gets to actually fight some of the mythological beings of the , and, as Extra Credits argued in their video about the portrayal of Cthulhu in games (Extra Credits, 2014), the main problem with even trying to portray him is that his appeal isn’t something that can be transmitted by making the beast an enemy in a videogame. As expressed before, Cthulhu isn’t a character, he’s the incarnation of existential terror. The reason for his popularity is that he embodies that overwhelming feeling that you are insignificant, that you will never amount to anything remotely close to his power. To even imply that there is a way to defeat him would be to suggest he isn’t an all-powerful deity far beyond man’s comprehension, and doing such a suggestion misses the point of Cthulhu completely.

Cthulhu

Of course, said principle also extends to the other entities of the Lovecraftian mythos, which, in turn, becomes the main reason Dark Corners fails : it tries to turn what should be beings of unfathomable strength into regular monsters, which, in doing so, makes them much less imposing, and, by extension, much less scary. Surviving vs. Thriving With the failures of the forefather well explained, it’s time to look at Bloodborne again, and take an in-depth look at its successes. Well, its brutal difficulty can certainly be counted as a factor. As Jim puts it in his video about Bloodborne (Jim Sterling, 2015), “As powerful as you make your hunter, you’re not doing it to dominate Yharnam’s monsters : you’re doing it to survive them.”. Bloodborne’s resists becoming about empowerment, by way of making sure the player is never truly safe. Bloodborne doesn’t care about your feeling, and will gladly stomp on you; Bloodborne doesn’t tolerate your failings, and any mistake can be your last one; Bloodborne doesn’t give you a hand when you are in desperate need, it German Suplexes you into the ground and then pisses on you, as the iconic “YOU DIED” message appears over your remains. “You came into the wrong neighborhood.”

That, by itself, would make it a pretty good horror experience, as you desperately crawl your way through a world that will more than willingly remind you of why you shouldn’t be here. But, as Jim mentions, there are various factors at play besides that. Bloodborne keeps a limited resource system, down to even the most vital items, where, no matter how many of one item you have, you can only take a limited amount to the world as you try to survive the mad-ridden streets of Yharnam, which ensures the player to be infinitely paranoid to conserve resources as much as possible, increasing the chances they will get themselves on a bad situation. Bloodborne’s non-player characters (NPCs) are almost all hostile, and the few that are passive are either walking time bombs, just waiting to have an inevitable psychotic break, or are generally the type one wouldn’t normally trust at a glance (like a prostitute or a hunter whose job Alfred the description is hunting other hunters), increasing Executioner the feeling of solitude and isolation. Bloodborne story is vague and full of holes, leaving up to the imagination of the player how the events fit together, and, as The Closer Look deposits on his video about the art of horror (The Closer Look, 2017), there’s nothing scarier than what the viewer themselves can imagine. Even the pantheon of quasi-deities of Bloodborne defies what one would expect of an action game. Much like Dark Corners, you can kill some of those supernatural beings, however, unlike that game, in here you’re never quite sure if they truly died or not. One good example is Amygdala, a weird six-armed, bipedal and gargantuan being with a head in the shape of an amygdala. You can fight one as a , too. However, after defeating it and going a bit further into the game, you end up at Yahar’gul, and, much to the player’s dismay, there are dozens of Amygdalas. Everywhere you look, there’s one, clutched to the side of a building, staring at your hunter. Above that, Bloodborne refuses to give the player closure in the matter. Was that Amygdala you killed part of a species? Is “Amygdala” the name of the species or the name of that individual one you killed? Maybe they are all just fragments of a larger being? Questions upon questions, not even an attempt at an answer. By denying to give definitive proof of anything, the player is forced to imagine the possibilities. Eventually, they start questioning everything. Maybe killing enemies makes no difference, and they can all just come back and devour you whole once they feel like it. Worse yet, that’s more or less the case. See, in the chalice dungeons, one can find several bosses, including ones that you can kill in the main game, and which the games acknowledges as the same being. All in favor of making the player paranoid that everything they are doing is pointless and insignificant. True existential terror.

Amygdala

The “Rally” system could also be a factor in Bloodborne’s favor too. When taking damage, the health lost will be orange instead of the usual red for a few seconds. If the player attacks an enemy while this is in effect, they immediately recover a portion of the amount lost, potentially being able to recover everything. By being made this way, Bloodborne invites those who take a hit to risk to throw caution to the wind and jump into the enemy, raising the chances they will find themselves in the pointy end of the opponent’s blade. This increases the amount of stuff they have to consider at once, increasing with it their paranoia. Yharnam is also a factor. The gothic Victorian town is brimming with danger, and it’s dimly lit streets and undertones of occultism and other shady rituals give off a strong gothic horror vibe to the whole ordeal. The cult of blood is no slouch in that aspect either, ensuring the correlation with stories like Dracula.

Yharnam

The grotesqueness of everything could be counted as a factor too. There’s blood literally everywhere. There’s more than a few scenes of gore and brutality. When enemies are defeated, they often explode into a geyser of fluids that leave your hunter drenched in crimson coloring. Some of the monstrosities you encounter are particularly noteworthy, being unholy abominations of body parts strewn together, and they only get worse as the game progresses. The stamina system, another staple of the Souls-like sub-genre, can be counted as well. As Jim puts it in his video (Jim Sterling, 2015), “Similarly, the game’s endurance meter, a stamina bar that governs your ability to attack, dodge and run, shapes itself to become a crucial game of resource management, as you work with a limited pool to be able to swing your hits and get out of fuck back city when it’s time to roll away from harm.”, it effectively works to increase paranoia, as the player constantly has to keep aware of how much stamina is being consumed for whichever action is being performed, increasing the chances of everything going wrong due to a distraction. Most of all, however, is that Bloodborne refuses to empower the player. Any and every encounter with a hostile force may easily end badly. The player can never get too cocky, or they will find themselves in a puddle of their own bodily fluids. It’s not about thriving by decimating everything in your path, but surviving a world that has all but gone insane. True survival horror.

“Death hath cometh for thee”

Conclusion To conclude, Bloodborne manages to make a great horror game on top of a great action game because, among other factors, it ensures that the player is never comfortable when playing. There’s always the possibility of something going wrong. Its various systems, like a limited supply of items and limited stamina pool, as well as a dingy and decrepit world that is brimming with peril and insanity, all coalesce to ensure a true horror experience even for those who aren’t easily scared. Most of all, however, Bloodborne refuses to let the player feel empowered, and swiftly dispatches any who dare get a little too arrogant. Its brutal difficulty might very well be the secret ingredient Dark Corners was missing. No matter how advanced in the game you are, there’s always some type of death waiting around the corner for those who aren’t careful. No matter how skilled you are, a single wrong button press can put everything you’ve worked so hard for in jeopardy. No matter how smart you are, no amount of brains will help as you’re being torn limb from limb by a horrid monstrosity. No matter how much you want to escape, there’s no way to run other than forward, right into the clutches of danger. Such is the nature of the hunt. Descent

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